Welcome to Gauravonomics Blog! Subscribe to my feed in a feed reader or by e-mail and you'll never miss a single post!
NYT reports on the paradox of high growth with low profit potential that web 2.0 companies have to deal with in international markets –
Web companies that rely on advertising are enjoying some of their most vibrant growth in developing countries. But those are also the same places where it can be the most expensive to operate, since Web companies often need more servers to make content available to parts of the world with limited bandwidth. And in those countries, online display advertising is least likely to translate into results.
This intractable contradiction has become a serious drag on the bottom lines of photo-sharing sites, social networks and video distributors like YouTube. It is also threatening the fervent idealism of Internet entrepreneurs, who hoped to unite the world in a single online village but are increasingly finding that the economics of that vision just do not work.
Perhaps, a lighter version of the service in bandwith-starved Asia and Africa is not such a bad thing. Perhaps, Asia and Africa should build their own web 2.0 companies that are designed for low bandwidth.
Tim O’Reilly draws parallels between Google, Walmart and MyBarackObama.com to argue that the real value of web 2.0 is in “the use of the network as a platform to build systems that get better the more people use them” and not in harnessing explicit user contribution –
I came to see just how closely MyBarackObama.com emulated these ideas of the real-time enterprise in accounts of the Houdini project, a bold program in which poll watchers eliminated the names from voters who had actually made it to the polling station from the “get out the vote” call lists.
MyBarackObama.com definitely harnessed explicit contribution, providing a platform for volunteers to organize and host local calling parties, to blog, or perform other campaign activities. But ultimately, Obama’s ground game–old fashioned precinct-level organizing, amped up to a new level by an army of distributed volunteers armed with mobile phones and coordinated via a web application–was the key to his victory. The “explicit” social media elements of MyBarackObama.com paled in impact compared to the development of a next generation electronic nervous system, in which volunteers were trained, deployed, and managed by a web application who used them, in John McMullen’s memorable phrase, as “souls in the great machine.
Speaking in the context of the dotcom meltdown, Jeff Bezos says that while it’s tempting to see the Internet using the California Gold Rush analogy, it’s more useful to apply the electricity analogy.
Both electricity and internet are thin horizontal enabling layers that go across multiple industries. The web applications we have seen so far are, in fact, similar to the first wave of electric appliances. For instance, just like web applications use the physical network infrastructure laid out for long distance telecommunications, the first wave of electrical appliances used the electric network laid out for the light bulb. So, it’s only to be expected that web applications, like the first electrical appliances, will include both life changing innovations and amusing failures.
I believe that Jeff Bezos’ conclusion in 2003 — “there’s more innovation ahead of us than behind us” — is equally valid in 2008, and that’s true for both the protocol/ platform and the application/ user interface layers. Which is a good thing, especially for those of us who missed both the dotcom and the web 2.0 booms.
Slide 1: The ideas in this presentation will form the core of my first fellowship paper. So, if you understand micro-finance, or ICT4D, better than I do, do share your feedback with me. I’ll be grateful.
Slide 2: I see the development process as an hourglass. At the top of the ‘development hourglass’ are the more privileged societies and the challenge here is to build engagement in the development process. At the bottom of the ‘development hourglass’ are the less privileged societies and the challenge here is to enable access to the development process. The challenge in the middle of the ‘development hourglass’ is to connect the top with the bottom via an institutional infrastructure and enable flow, a role that has been traditionally performed by development aid agencies.
Slide 3: Technology can be a vital enabler in the technology hourglass. Web 2.0 and mobile 2.0 tools can help create engagement in the more privileged societies. Community telecenters and mobile phones can help enable access in the less privileged societies. Enterprise ICT and enterprise 2.0 solutions can help the institutions in the middle connect the top to the bottom in a more effective and efficient manner.
Over the last two years, I have been fortunate to be included in conversations around social media thought and practice in India in multiple roles — as a traditional marketer who understood social media, as a blogger who wrote about social media, as an early adopter of new social media platforms, and as a connector of social media thinkers and practitioners. I think that I was able to play the last three roles primarily because of my first role. Much of my legitimacy as a thinker/ blogger and most of the connections I was able to make were rooted in my role as the custodian of a big brand that was engaging with the social media space in a meaningful way.
Over the last few months, my focus has moved away from social media marketing to other use cases of social media in developing countries, especially the use of social media for social change. As I explained in the introductory episode of my fellowship podcast, my research really lies at the intersection of three worlds that (surprisingly) don’t really understand each other — the web 2.0 world, the technology policy world, and the ICT4D world — and also borrows heavily from cultural studies.
In the introductory episode of our weekly fellowship podcast, Ben, Pavneet and I explain why our research on social media in BRIC countries is uniquely interdisciplinary, share the personal biases with which we are approaching our research, summarize what we have learned so far, and share our plans for the rest of the year.
The starting point of our research is to understand how differences in culture, access and language in BRIC countries impact the three core values of social media usage — collaboration, community and user generated content — across tools and devices. Pavneet’s focus is on the community and he explores two really important use cases for social media — consumer advocacy and civic engagement. Ben’s focus is on the individual and he explores issues of identity and privacy in the context of social media usage. My role is to pull it all together into a meaningful framework.
So, our research really lies at the intersection of three worlds that (surprisingly) don’t really understand each other — the web 2.0 world, the technology policy world, and the ICT4D world. But, beyond that, it’s really rooted in the tradition of cultural studies and borrows heavily from research related to business, government and development.
Quick Summary: Check out my first podcast on Indicast where Aditya Mhatre, Aditya Mishra, VeerChand Bothra and I discuss why startups need workaholics and why mobile will drive web 2.0 usage in India.
My First Podcast on Indicast
I had a great time last Sunday recording my first podcast with Aditya Mhatre, Aditya Mishra, VeerChand Bothra (tweet) on why startups need workaholics and why mobile will drive web 2.0 usage in India (tweet).
All three of them have extremely rich backgrounds, resulting in an extremely vibrant discussion —
- Aditya Mishra is deeply involved in the startup ecosystem in India through his work (he has the fancy title of Entrepreneur-in-Residence at TCS) and his role as the organizer of BarCamp and Kickstart (Blog, Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter).
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.
- X- X- X-
If You Are in Mumbai & on Twitter, Attend the Mumbai Twitter Meetup
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.
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.
Steve Rubel started talking about it yesterday and, within a day, everyone is talking about the web 2.0 bubble -
The bubble really began in earnest when Google bought YouTube. That’s when every person with an entrepreneurial itch woke up and smelled the hype and money. Prior to then, startups were more focused on the entrance, not the exit.
There’s the glut in venture capital: $3.4 billion invested in fledgling Internet firms in 2007, the most torrid pace since the height of the Web 1.0 mêlée. There are those lunatic valuations… There’s the frothy run-up in the NASDAQ… And then there’s the flood of derivative, dum-dum start-ups inducing a severe case of dot-com déjà vu.
Despite some tremors, online advertising is now a juggernaut that promises to only become more powerful as companies like Facebook start creating sophisticated networks where fine-grained behavioral targeting is possible. More than 1.3 billion consumers around the world now use the Internet, and the global growth curve is steep. Meanwhile, the main source of unbridled mania in the nineties, IPOs, are a non-factor this time around. Instead, the boom is being driven by giants with riverine profit flows and vast reservoirs of cash.
