Gauravonomics Blog

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Ever since TechCrunch reported on Google’s social networking plans, codenamed ‘Maka-Maka’, the entire blogosphere is going gaga over it.

While a lot of bloggers are looking at ‘Maka-Maka’ in a Orkut vs. Facebook context, I think Google will be short-selling itself if it looked at the opportunity in such a limited way:

The bigger vision is to combine all of Google’s apps and services through Maka-Maka. Google already has so much data on you, depending on how many Google apps you already use. It just needs to bring everything together… in different ways, along with data about you from other social services across the Web, and give developers access to the social layer tying all of these apps together underneath. The real killer app for Google is not to turn Orkut into a Facebook clone. It is to turn every Google app into a social application without you even noticing that you’ve joined yet another social network. (TechCrunch)

By the way, if you are wondering what ‘Maka-Maka’ means, it may refer to a Hawaiian song about friendship, a shop for women’s dresses, a Japanese RPG (role playing game), or a modern, all-color adult manga about two girls who appear to be “friends with benefits” (via Andy Beal).

As marketers, we often forget that consumers are people too.

Adam Crowe’s Facebook group called Stop Calling Me a Consumer! might serve as a timely reminder (via Get Shouty).

If you are looking out for the next potential Internet phenomenon, head to Save An Alien.

The Israeli Facebook-only startup asks you to adopt an alien before a meteor strikes an alien planet in six months and kills the entire population of 10 million unique aliens (via TechCrunch).

I have already saved my alien (Dugkat is green, wears a black tie and has a really ugly family he wants me to help save); have you saved yours yet?

The ‘Conversation Age’ e-book is a collaborative e-book project conceived by Drew Mclellan and Gavin Heaton -

- 100 authors. We’re a few but need more.
- The overriding topic is “The Conversation Age” — where you take it is up to you.
- The items are short - one 8.5″ x 11″ page — it can be words, diagrams, photos (again up to you) If it is words - about 400, give or take a couple.
- We write it quickly and get it out there. We publish electronically.
- We make it available online for a small fee and we donate 100% of the proceeds to Variety the Children’s Charity — which serves children across the entire globe.

My contribution to the e-book is a chapter titled ‘Create Conversations, Not Clutter’. Here’s a teaser excerpt from the chapter -

While all of us agree that we need to create conversations with our customers/ readers and build a community around them, most of us end up creating clutter instead of conversations. In this article, I will share with you my thoughts on creating conversations, not clutter.

For the rest of the chapter, you’ll have to wait for the e-book.

According to the the Forrester Research Social Technographics report, social technology, or web 2.0, behaviors can be categorized into a ladder with six levels of participation (via ZDNet) -

- Creators (13%): Publish web pages or blogs, upload videos to video sharing sites.
- Critics (19%): Comment on blogs, post ratings and reviews.
- Collectors (15%): Use RSS, tag Web pages.
- Joiners (19%): Use social networking sites.
- Spectators (23%): Read blogs, watch peer-generated video, listen to podcasts.
- Inactives (52%): None of these activities.

The percentages don’t add up to 100% because, apart from the inactives, the other five levels of participation overlap with each other.

Forrester recommends that instead of looking at Web 2.0 as a list of technologies to be deployed on an ad hoc basis, marketers should first analyze where their customers are on the Social Technographics ladder and then create a Web 2.0 strategy to transition them to the next step.

Here are my top of the mind thoughts on the Social Technographics report -

According to Compete, Orkut, which is the default social networking site in India, is only ranked #8 in terms of attention and an even more lowly #22 in terms of number of visitors, amongst all social networking sites.

The question to ask here is: for a precocious teenager in Kolkata, what is more important -

- That MySpace is 300 times bigger than Orkut?
- That a million other social networking sites offer more advanced features than both Orkut and MySpace?
- That all her friends have profiles on Orkut?

The key to building a successful social networking site is to own a niche. MySpace owns the bigger niche (USA), but Orkut owns the niches that will grow faster (Brazil and India). These numbers will look very different in a few years from now.

Given that you have only one sidebar in your browser, what would you use it for? For chatting (Google Talk), for social networking (Mozilla ProjectCoop), for social bookmarking (del.icio.us), or for something else? (via Red/Write Web)