Gauravonomics Blog

Welcome to Gauravonomics Blog! Subscribe to my combined feed in a feed reader or by e-mail and you'll never miss a single post. Thanks for visiting!

(Cross-posted on my fellowship blog - How International Values Shape Communications Technologies)

While reading through chapter 2 of Howard Rheingold’s ‘Smart Mobs’, I started thinking about how the three laws of networked technologies (Sarnoff’s Law, Metcalfe’s Law and Reed’s Law) relate to social media in BRIC countries –

1. Sarnoff’s Law: The value of a broadcast network is proportional to the number of viewers (n).

2. Metcalfe’s Law: The value of a telecommunications network is proportional to the square of the number of users of the system (n²).

3. Reed’s Law: The value of a group forming network (or a social network) increases exponentially, proportional to 2 raised to the power the number of users in the network (2ⁿ).

In Sarnaff’s network, the only communication possible is one-to-many. In Metcalfe’s network, the only communication possible is one-to-one. In Reed’s network, all types of communication are possible, including one-to-one, many-to-many and some-to-some, so it’s effectively any-to-any.

I’ll be spending some serious time this year working on MobiChange, a social entrepreneurship venture that will leverage mobile social networking for mobilizing social change.

No, I don’t know enough about either “mobile social networking” or “mobilizing social change”, but I do know that mobile-based communities can be critical catalysts for transforming youngsters into committed change agents. So, I’ll start from whatever little I do know and learn the rest.

I was inspired to dream up MobiChange by Umair Haque’s exhortation to use technology to solve real problems and Po Bronson’s advice to search for something you can devote your life to.

To receive updates about MobiChange, enter your e-mail address below –

Quick Summary: Check out the fourth edition of ‘The Best of Indian Business Blogs’, a weekly digest by business bloggers you trust.

The Idea

The basic idea is simple: we form a network of five to ten influential Indian business bloggers to promote link-worthy posts from other Indian business bloggers in the form of a weekly digest published on our respective blogs.

The People

The present members in our network are (in alphabetical order):-

- Gaurav Mishra, that is, yours truly, is a marketer and a social media enthusiast (Blog, Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter).

- Gautam Ghosh is an HR professional and a veteran business blogger (Blog, Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter).

- Kiruba Shankar is India’s original A-list blogger and podcaster and a regular speaker at technology conferences (Blog, Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter).

- Palin Ningthoujam is a public relations professional and the founder of India PR Blog (Blog, Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter).

- Rajesh Lalwani is the founder of social media agency Blogworks (Blog, Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter).

- Ranjan Varma is the writer of personal finance online weekly Personal Finance 2.01 (e-Book, Blog, Facebook and Twitter).

Quick Summary: Check out the third edition of ‘The Best of Indian Business Blogs’, a weekly digest by business bloggers you trust.

The Idea

The basic idea is simple: we form a network of five to ten influential Indian business bloggers to promote link-worthy posts from other Indian business bloggers in the form of a weekly digest published on our respective blogs.

The People

The present members in our network are (in alphabetical order):-

- Gaurav Mishra, that is, yours truly, is a marketer and a social media enthusiast (Blog, Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter).

- Gautam Ghosh is an HR professional and a veteran business blogger (Blog, Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter).

- Kiruba Shankar is India’s original A-list blogger and podcaster and a regular speaker at technology conferences (Blog, Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter).

- Palin Ningthoujam is a public relations professional and the founder of India PR Blog (Blog, Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter).

- Rajesh Lalwani is the founder of social media agency Blogworks (Blog, Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter).

- Ranjan Varma is the writer of personal finance online weekly Personal Finance 2.01 (e-Book, Blog, Facebook and Twitter).

Quick Summary: Read why language (English vs. vernacular), mode of access (Internet vs. mobile) and social dynamics (global vs. Indian) will be the three dimensions of differentiation for Indian social networking sites.

In my previous post, I wrote about why Indian social networking sites need to differentiate themselves –

Most of the Indian social networking sites are basically India-focused Facebook/ MySpace/ Orkut/ LinkedIn clones. Such clones would only be popular amongst a small set of twenty-something Indians in metros who won’t want a clone anyways.

I also presented a typology of Indian social networking sites on a 2X2 matrix with Indian-vs-global social dynamics on the X-axis and Indian-vs-global user appeal on the Y-axis –

– and suggested that –

To really build an identity and a broad Indian user base for themselves, Indian social networking sites need to reflect the unique nature of relationships in the Indian society.

Three Dimensions of Differentiation: Language, Access and Social Dynamics

Based on the discussion in the comments section and on Twitter, Facebook and e-mail, I have realized that there are, in fact, three dimensions of differentiation for Indian social networking sites — language (English vs. vernacular), mode of access (Internet vs. mobile) and social dynamics (global vs. Indian).

Quick Summary: To build an identity and a broad Indian user base for themselves, Indian social networking sites need to reflect the unique nature of relationships in the Indian society.

According to a recent cover story in the Outlook Magazine, there are almost 10 mn users of social networking sites in India. Orkut has 7.1 mn users, Facebook 1.6 mn, BharatStudent 1.7mn, Fropper 1.0 mn, BigAdda 1.4 mn, Minglebox 0.6 mn, adding up to 13.4 mn (tweet). Add smaller social networks, factor in duplication across social networks, and the total user base for social networks in India may be ~10 mn (tweet).

As the number of Internet users in India is estimated at between 20 mn and 30 mn by most sources, at least one third of all Internet users in India now use a social network.

Quick Summary: In Mumbai? On Twitter? Register for the first Mumbai Twitter Meetup. Not on Twitter? Find seven reasons why you should sign up for Twitter today.

Yesterday, when I tweeted about wanting to do a Mumbai Twitter Meetup —

Blog meets are so passe. I want to do a Mumbai Twitter meet. Anyone interested? (Twitter)

– I received half a dozen responses within seconds.

Within the hour, I had set up a @MumbaiTwit Twitter account, a dozen people had started following it, Aalaap Ghag (@aalaap) and Kapil Bhatia (@kapilb) had posted about the event and Aalaap had set up a Mumbai Twitter Meetup event on Facebook. Phew!

So, if you are in Mumbai and on Twitter, let’s meet up for the first Mumbai Twitter Meetup.

When? 5 pm, Saturday, December 29, 2007.

Where? Flat No A/65, Sea Lord, Cuffe Parade, Mumbai.

If you are planning to attend, here are a few things you should do in the run up to the event –

Vakow! front page

Vakow! user page

Vakow! is a new Indian web 2.0 startup for people who “luv SMS Forwards”. Basically, Vakao! lets you post SMSes from web or mobile; tag, rate, comment on and share SMSes with your friends; and subscribe to users or tags to receive SMSes.

While I’m not a huge fan of SMS forwards, I know a lot of (mostly) young people who are. Therefore, Vakow! looks like it is ‘lowest common denominator’ enough to appeal to young people in a way that, let’s say, user generated content won’t. Vakow!’s user interface is also quite cool and, therefore, likely to appeal to the young audience it is targeting.

Valow! is the brainchild of two twenty-something youngsters Rahul and Amit who were amongst the earliest employees at Webaroo.

The duo will most probably try to monetize Vakow! through advertising and content syndication. If Vakow! scales up well, content syndication will be easy and I can even see youth oriented marketers wanting to advertise on Vakow!. What’s more, I can totally see Vakow! as a popular app for the Indian community on The Facebook or the OpenSocial platform.

In an earlier post I talked about why marketers should not approach digital media (online/ mobile/ DTH) with the ‘interruption’ marketing paradigm so prevalent in traditional media (TV/ print/ radio/ outdoors): because digital media is very good at engaging with a million customers one at a time, but very bad at reaching a million customers at one time. This is especially true for India, where mass media still hasn’t peaked in terms of either reach or credibility and digital media is still extremely niche and fragmented.

In another earlier post, I talked about how most marketers and agencies in India are still clueless about the basic principles of digital media. I’m sure that most Indian marketers are present on digital media on the basis of the 5% rule: during a campaign, 5% of the budget should be allocated to digital media. As a result, even when marketers flirt with the digital media, their digital media initiatives are almost always ad hoc, mostly ineffective and often quickly abandoned.

In my new ten-post series on how brick and mortar marketers in India should use digital media, I’ll describe ten small, but smart, tricks that you can rely on to fully leverage the potential of digital media -

What is OpenSocial?

TechCrunch revealed today that, instead of launching a new social networking platform, Google will launch OpenSocial, a set of three common APIs that application developers can use to create applications that work on any hosts, social networks, that choose to participate. These APIs give developers access to the data needed to build social applications: access to a user’s profile, their friends, and the ability to let their friends know that activities have taken place. The initial lineup of hosts, or participating social networks, include Orkut, Salesforce, LinkedIn, Ning, Hi5, Plaxo, Friendster, Viadeo and Oracle (update: MySpace, Bebo and SixApart have also joined OpenSocial). The initial lineup of developers include Flixster, iLike, RockYou and Slide.

You can also see a press release on the subject posted on John Battelle’s Searchblog.

What is my overall impression of OpenSocial?

In my opinion, Google gets three on three for not calling it Maka-Maka, for not falling into the Orkut vs. Facebook trap -

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.