2011 as year of Social Media revolution

2011 was truly the year when Social Media and technology took big leaps making its presence felt in the mainstream discourse of the country. Impressed by the revolution brought about by Arab spring, Indians immersed themselves watching desi viral videos, tweeting about their love for fighting corruption and also being threatened of censorship.

The year of Social Media revolution

Anna’s fight against corruption proved how to use Social Media socially in true terms. From uploading Anna’s speeches to YouTube right from Tihar jail, to letting supporters know the nuances of Lokpal through collaborative Google docs and presentations. Facebook and Twitter was used to their best advantage garnering more than half a million followers on Facebook, and thousands of tweets every hour.
Internationally, the Tunisian Mohamed Bouazizi in Dec 2010 e posted his last message on his Facebook wall before setting himself on fire after repeated police harassment. What started in Tunisia was tweeted and blogged throughout the Middle East leading to Arab spring. Countries like Egypt, Libya and Syria erupted despite government imposed internet blackouts. Armed with their cell phones and access to proxy servers the Arabs let the world know about their revolution through YouTube, twitter and Google Maps among others. Common people like Google employee Wael Ghonim played their part in mobilising people, reporting the massacres and atrocities by using technology to stay one step ahead of the government.

India Wakes to Flash Mob viral video after 26/11 anniversary

A group of 200 dancers dressed in casuals danced to the tunes of ‘Rang de basanti’ at Mumbai’s Chhatrapati Shivaji Terminus generating more than a million hits on YouTube within first 4 days. Organised by Mumbaikar Shonan Kothari this flash mob synced into the national psyche riding on a patriotic wave.
Inspired by the CST Flash mob, cities like New Delhi and Chennai organised their own riding the viral wave. Talking about viral Videos, Kolaveri Di a love song sung by Dhanush went viral within 24 hours of its launched. Loved and tweeted by celebrities like Amitabh Bachchan led to the viral onlslaught on YoutTube. In little over a month, the video now has 30 million hits and has been even featured on YouTube’s blog. Several remakes of the original version has only led to its popularity establishing the importance of video as a critical content marketing tool.

Social networking top pass time among Indians

Nothing suggested otherwise but the final reaffirmation came in the month of December through a a report titled ‘It’s a social world’ by ComScore which proved beyond doubt that online Indians are truly social as much as their international counterparts. From a total online population of 45.9 million users, 43.4 million spend time on social networks like Facebook, Orkut, BharatStudent, LinkedIn and Twitter. 94.8% of online Indians use social networking, that is an average time spent of 3.4 hours. Facebook became the dominant network in India last year and continued to stay ahead of the competition.

India gets tough on Social Media

Kapil Sibal, the Indian took the Social Media companies by the horns asking them to remove offensive material from sites like Facebook, Twitter and Google. As netizens cried censorship there was confusion all around regarding what measures he intended to take to clean the web for Indians. Pharses like #idiotKapilSibal were most tweeted the day this announcement was made. Sites like Facebook and YouTube have extensive set of guidelines to remove defamatory content from their streams. However, Kapil’s pre-screening of content was considered just undoable and simply an impossible task which would required millions of pages to be screened.

India delivers Akash, the world’s cheapest tablet

What was supposed to be worth $35, the Indian tablet was launched for $60. The wifi enabled tablet based on Android operating system is set to revolutionise the education sector. Akash was widely reviewed internationally for features that prove its worth for the money with rugged features suited for Indian conditions. However, it was also criticised for its poor battery life with limited options for apps,, software, and not so impressive construction.

Lets sign off 2011 with this interesting video from Google

RIM slashes Playbook rates by over 50% in India

Image via Wikipedia

Research in Motion (RIM) the Canada based makers of Blackberry Playbook is offering the tablet at a highly discounted rate of over 50% in India. This was announced today as part of limited season offer.

The 16 GB model can be bought at Rs.13,490 ($254) in the Indian market instead of Rs.27,990 ($527) as it was originally priced. The 32 GB model is available for Rs.15,990 ($301), the 64 GB model is being offered for Rs.24,490 ($461) against their regular prices of Rs.32,990 ($401) and Rs.37,990 ($462) respectively.

This could be the much needed push towards gaining a part of the market share in emerging markets like India where Apple products like iPhones and iPads are just beginning to make their presence felt. RIM has just been able to sell 800,000 Playbooks globally during the first 9 months of its launch which is dismal when compared to Apple, which sold over 11 million iPads till September. With a growing middle class having a disposal income, gadget shopping is fast becoming the favourite pass time of Indians.

No doubt Asian markets like India are price sensitive and could provide RIM the much needed depth when global cues have increasingly added to its long list of woes.

The year 2011 has been particularly bad for RIM, when it saw being threatened to be banned by governments of India and Indonesia for not being able to follow local government data and privacy laws. Recently, RIM announced that it would be taking charges worth over half a billion dollars due to two major failures this year.  The over production of Playbook tablets had amounted to $485million as surplus inventory for the company. Earlier another major disaster struck RIM in the form of network outages in October which affected users in Europe, Middle East and Africa, further lowering consumer confidence in Blackberry.

RIM’s shares this year have plummeted to a multi-year low, the company has shed about $30 billion in value this year so far. The year is not yet over for Blackberry, which is also facing a trademark lawsuit from BBM Canada, a research measurement organisation over the Blackberry Messenger (BBM) trademark. In an earlier instance a US court had forced RIM to change the name of its operating system from BBX (now its called Blackberry 10).

Related articles

• Trademark lawsuit leads to Blackberry’s woes (socialmediaalley.wordpress.com)
• RIM and Indonesia battle it out over security concerns (socialmediaalley.wordpress.com)

Trademark lawsuit leads to Blackberry’s woes

Image by Roozbeh Rokni via Flickr

Adding to the woes of Research in Motion Ltd, the Canada based manufacturers of Blackberry devices has been sued by BBM Canada for using the BBM trademark. BBM popularly known as Blackberry Messenger (BBM) is the messenger service by RIM with 50mn users’ worldwide.

However, BBM Canada which stands for Bureau for Broadcast Measurement, a broadcast and audience measurement organisation has expressed the trademark infringement citing that it has been in operations longer than RIM. BBM Canada was established in 1944 much before RIM’s messenger service came into existence. Though, Bureau for Broadcast Measurement started using the shorthand of its name BBM only since 2001.

RIM has been known to spend a considerable amount advertising its BBM services and such a suit if settled against it could lead to losses. Earlier in the month, a US court had forced Research in Motion to change the name of its new operating system, which was originally called BBX. BBX has now been renamed to ‘BlackBerry 10.’

It has been possibly the worst year Research in Motion Ltd with several lows. RIM was threatened to be banned from countries like Indonesia and India for non-compliance with government policies and refusing to share encrypted data services provided on Blackberry mobile phones.

After a recent warning last week regarding the delay in the launch of new Blackberry device which is now scheduled to arrive only in the latter half of next year, RIM’s shares had plummeted to a multi-year low. RIM is not doing good sales and is facing tough competition from Apple’s iPhone and other Android based devices. Rim has also shed about $30bn in value this year so far and has been facing problems due to over production of Playbook tablets which amounted to $485million as surplus inventory. The prolonged network outages during October in Europe, Middle East and Africa had played its part in dipping consumer confidence in Blackberry’s ability to provide a seamless service.

This article of mine was originally published in Daily Post. You can access it here

Google’s Android touches 700,000 activations every day

Android

The interest in Android based mobile phones and tablets has been growing and according to a recent update by Google’s mobile chief Andy Robin, there are now 700,000 daily activations on the platform each day. The update was made on Google+, a social network launched by Google in July 2011.

The hike is explosive growth for Google promoted operating system which was pegged at 550,000 devices by Google chairman Eric Schmidt at a Le Web conference held in Paris two week back.

In his public update on Google+ Andy further mentioned that “…and for those wondering, we count each device only once (i.e. we don’t count re-sold devices), and “activations” means you go into a store, buy a device, put it on the network by subscribing to a wireless service.”

According to http://www.9to5google.com, a web resource on Google, “to put it in perspective, 700,000 devices a day is almost 5 million every week, or 21 million a month, or over a mind-boggling 250 million a year.”  These figures play a fast catch up to Apple’s iPhone which sold 4mn iPhone 4S within the first week of its launch.

It should be noted here that Apple’s generates bulk of its revenue through the sale of iPhones and ipad leading to iOS activations. However, Android is installed on various mobile and tablet devices through various vendors like HTC and Samsung reaching low cost emerging markets selling products at a cheaper rate compared to Apple’s iOS enabled services.

Google has been aggressively promoting Android and trying to fill in the void left after its mentor Steve Job’s demise. Andy Robin during a AsiaD conference held last week had remarked, “…the DNA in the people walking the halls at Apple is a very powerful combination of the arts and computer science, and I don’t think that’s changed with Steve’s passing. That combination of creativity and computer science, it’s still there. Apple will certainly miss Steve’s leadership, but now it’s time for the other guys to step up.”

Experts on the blogosphere believe that if Android is able to sustain the growth rate then daily activations by the end of next year could touch 2.5 million a day, amounting to at least 900 million activations a day. However, Google may not be making much money out of Android activations as they are routed through third party vendors, meanwhile Apple makes a healthy margin of more than 30% on its activations and sales.

This article of mine was originally published in Daily Post. You can also access it here

Related articles

• Android is not a copy of iPhone: Schmidt (socialmediaalley.wordpress.com)

Last week: SOPA, Facebook, Google+ and its a Social world

Image via Wikipedia

Covering major highlights of last week: SOPA, Facebook, Google+ and its a Social world

SOPA: The beginning of the end?

Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA), a bill with US congress had the online community entrenched with guns blazing against the government and those companies supporting it. The part of the  community consider the bill as an misguided attempt to stop web piracy. Among other things the bill proposes to introduce website blocking at the DNS level, and against any associated sites that is “facilitating” infringement, or “enabling” it on the web holding copyright infringement to websites that host user generated content. This would amount to blatant censorship and wipe millions of pages of content from several startups and companies like YouTube and Facebook. More than 40 of top Silicon Valley companies are now publicly against SOPA including Foursquare, Facebook, Twitter, Google, AOL and Mozilla among others.

The online community is protesting against those supporting SOPA. This week GoDaddy, which initially supported the bill came under fire from users on social media, some companies even threatening to withdraw 1000’s of their domains registered with it. GoDaddy finally got the message and on Friday withdrew its support to SOPA.

On Wednesday Scribd, the social reading and publishing website made every document on the site disappear word by word to reflect the implication the bill has against free speech. Paul Graham, the founder of Ycombinator, the most successful business incubator threatened to block companies supporting the bill from its demo day denying them access to millions of dollars in seed funding.

Advertisers get access to Facebook Timeline

Keeping advertisers at bay from the personal space of users has been the hallmark of social networks that have thrived in the last decade. Facebook this week announced the introduction of ‘Sponsored stories’ allowing advertisers to cannibalise your News Feed, though it would be limited to one story a day and marked as ‘sponsored’. The phenomenon of social advertisements which will utilise the content from users social graph as advertisements promise a higher conversion rate.   Facebook even created a special webpage to explain users what this new feature is and that the company spends more than $1billion each year to support its business and needs ads to pay the bills.

It’s a Facebook’s Social World

A report by the same name by Comscore for 2011 proves that it actually is a social world with 82% of world population engaging in social networking sites representing 1.2 billion users.  Facebook is way ahead of other networks and despite the launch of Google+ and LinkedIn gaining momentum none of these platforms seem likely to cause any disruption in this segment.  “In October, Facebook reached more than half of the world’s global audience (55 percent) and accounted for approximately three in every four minutes spent on social networking sites and one in every seven minutes spent online around the world.”  In Indian context 95% online audience use social networking and older age groups are catching up fast. Though, the total online users in India remain unimpressive at 45.9mn.

Google+ losing steam

Within first 2 weeks of its launch in July Google+ the much awaited and hyped social network from Google was quick to gain 10million users. According to Google’s annual Zeitgest list, ‘Google+’ was the number 2 fastest growing search term of the year.  However, the spike hasn’t lasted since the launch and the network has slowed down considerably with the exception of times when new features for the network were announced. When compared to search queries for Facebook, Google+ seems like a dwarf. Search queries are indication people’s intent and the lack of it reflect the loss of interest in the network.

This article of mine was originally published in Daily Post. You can also access it here

Related articles

• 95% of online Indians spend time on social networking sites (socialmediaalley.wordpress.com)
• GoDaddy goes back on pro-SOPA stance to avoid boycott (digitaltrends.com)

‘Sponsored Stories’ to show in Facebook news feed from 2012

Image via CrunchBase

Facebook is all set to allow ‘Sponsored Stories’ social advertisements in the ‘news feed’ from early 2012. This could prove to be a turning point for online advertising and dig into the pockets of current paid search and display advertising offered by Google Adwords and Adsense.

Sponsored Stories are Facebook’s ad units which turn a user’s page updates, likes, application activities and checkins into advertisement. Sponsored Stories were introduced for the first time in early 2011.

This is a drastic change for Facebook which hasn’t shown advertisements in the ‘News Feed’ since 2008. The ads will be displayed as ‘sponsored’ and would be limited to just one story per day. Users’ won’t be able to opt out of the sponsored stories which will be related to the pages they like and their friends’ activity. However, they can block certain ads depending on personal preference so that what they view in their news feed is not offensive or misleading. This would also act as feedback mechanism on the network to allow effective retargeting.

This would prove to be a major boost for advertisers, who are already using fans page activity and user generated content as sponsored social ads, which through this initiative would also appear in the organic feed of the user. So far, sponsored stories were displayed distinctly on the side bar of the organic feed of the user termed as news feed. The sponsored stories in the current format  command an impressive 46% click through rate and with an revamped format it is expected to be even higher.  According to various researches done on online behaviour, users spend most of their online time on Facebook and socialising with their friends, another reason for Facebook to offer advertisers more ways to utilise the platform.

Social ads increase the relevance of an advertisement by acting as a direct referral from a user’s fan base on the platform. These are considered to be unobtrusive unlike traditional advertisements and are more of an opt-in service transforming the activity on the platform as a source of advertisements.

Following similar trend of giving more priority to advertisers within the social news stream on social networks, Twitter had introduced ‘Promoted Tweets’ within users’ timeline early in the year. Experts believe there is always a risk of backlash as thriving social networks which prioritise a positive user experience have been averse to include advertisements within users’ social interactions. However, the subtlety with which Twitter and now Facebook aim to woe advertisers the risk is minimal.

The sponsored stories would be introduced on the mobile devices with some delay. Founded by Mark Zuckerberg in 2004, Facebook is world’s largest social network with 800mn overall members.

This story of mine was first published in Daily Post. You can access it here