1) On 24^th Jan 2010, DNA Mumbai carried an article by R.Krishna on the topic ’This social networking website helps you meet friends online’. The article talks about the utility and the growing popularity of Foursquare-a location-based networking site in India, starting with Mumbai.  The article sums the benefits by quoting a Mumbai user, Shakti Salgaokar, using the Foursquare application on her iPhone, “The moment I start the application, Foursquare pinpoints my location using the GPS on my iPhone. Using my location, it tells me about various places nearby. It also gives me a to-do list recommended by other users. If I were in Dadar TT, it can list places like D Damodar, Pritam da Dhaba, or the Mumbai-Pune bus-stand. For someone new to the city, this can be of real help”.  The article then wraps up prophesying Foursquare to be in 2010 what Twitter was in 2009.

Comment- While the site is a rage in the west, particularly the US, in India it is still in its nascent stage. Abroad the site has tied-up with restaurants, gyms and other establishments to offer deals and discounts to users, in India this is yet to happen.  However, location-based networking has the potential to become a huge rage in a country like India,

2) On 25^th Jan Financial Chronicle ran an article ‘Twitter disables feature on website over security flaw’.  The article reported that following a programming flaw and a security warning of user information falling vulnerable to hackers, Twitter disabled users from displaying updates on their websites using flash technology. The article quoted Mike Bailey, senior security analyst with Foreground Security of Orlando, Florida, ‘my analysis of the Twitter site showed that it could have been vulnerable to attacks for more than a year, but that it was impossible to know whether the hackers had exploited the Adobe flaw.’

Comment- Considering the popularity and the huge user base of Twitter, security flaws like these are dangerous with crimes such as identity-theft and spamming posing serious threats. However, it is comforting to know that Twitter took immediate measures to protect its user information.

3) Times of India carried an article on 25^th Jan on the topic ‘Thousands of friends online? Brain can handle only 150’ which elaborated on how despite friend lists numbering thousands on social networking sites like Orkut, Facebook, Twitter etc, the human brain is programmed to remember a meager 150only. The article reports, ‘Researchers at Oxford University, led by Robin Dunbar, have developed a theory known as “Dunbar’s number” in the nineties which claimed that the size of our neocortex- the part of the brain used for conscious thought and language — limits us to managing social circles of around 150 friends.’ The research carried out across various social groupings states that people maintain the same inner circle online that they maintain offline.

Comment- To have or aspire to have a big social circle is human nature. We build relationships either for business networking purposes or purely for the sake of social interaction. However, in practical terms it would become difficult to socialize with every person we ‘befriend’. Therefore, we filter down activities to who we meet offline and who online. The above article also makes a case a point at the end, ‘Girls are much better at maintaining relationships just by talking to each other. Boys need to do physical stuff together’. This explains why women are considered relationship-builders.

4) Times of India also carried another story on 26^th Jan about ‘Tweeting for change: new platform for activists’ by Mahafreed Irani.   The article talks about the evolving role of social networking sites from a chattier platform to steering causes into real lives. Using cases in point, the writer states, ‘Catalysts for change are using Web 2.0 platforms to engage people and spread the word using already existing social networks. Some prefer using technology to initiate the campaign too.’

Comment- Without doubt, social networking sites are an excellent marketing medium that targets the largest user base with quickest response rate.

5) Another story published in The Economic Times and The Financial Chronicle on ‘Before Applying for that job, do recheck your Facebook page’ and ‘Employers use Facebook to scan job-seekers’ elaborated on the growing tendency of employers to check candidate profiles on social networking sites before hiring. Quoting a survey conducted by online job-site CareerBuilder India, the article stated, ‘42% of employers have found content on social networking sites which leads them not to hire prospective candidate’. Poor communication skills, lying about qualifications, bad-mouthing previous employer or colleague or sharing confidential information online were amongst the reasons rated.

Comment- With the world shrinking to the size of a palm, it becomes imperative to be well-aware of one’s online identity on all levels. It is crucial to maintain a dignified profile without any embarrassing or misleading content that may work against one’s chances of securing a job or client.

6) Deccan Chronicle carried an article by Goutam Das titled, ‘Good Job, Well done Mr Tharoor’ on 26^th Jan elaborating on the submersion and influence of Twitter in our daily lives and the role of Shashi Tharoor in adding to the Twitter chirp. Goutam states, ‘the time is ripe for another term Tharoorati in recognition of Shashi Tharoor’s contributions to the medium’.

Comment- The influence of Twitter cannot be overlooked. Truly, Twitter allows for a greater interaction for consumers to connect with and attract a brand’s attention to their grievances, businesses with clients and stars with their fans. And Twitter scaled new skies following the coverage Mr Tharoor’s tweets received in the media.

7) For all game-enthusiasts, Financial Chronicle reported good news its 26^th Jan edition as ‘Facebook gets five new games’. The writers, Ari Levy and Adam Satariano, report game company Digital Chocolate designing games for Facebook after releasing more than 50 iPhone games for Apple since December 2008. The article quotes Trip Hawkins, Founder, Digital Chocolate as ‘we will have five games available on social networking site Facebook  this quarter and five more in the period ending June’ . The first game MMA Pro Fighter has about 145,000 monthly active users and is built upon creating mixed- martial-arts fighter teams for free.

Comment- Facebook as a platform works for the benefit for all. The fact that companies, especially game-firms, are making millions by promoting their games through applications on Facebook establishes Facebook’s marketing power. Users on their end have first-hand access to numerous games while collaborating or competing with countless other people. So Facebook is happy as the most popular marketplace, Gamers are happy they have so many options and the gaming firms are ecstatic their products are bringing in millions.

8 ) In what can only be called a miracle, a man and his daughter were reunited after 48 years throught Facebook. Deccan Hearld posted an article on Jan 27^th ‘Facebook reunites man, daughter after 48 years’. The British father-daughter duo was reported to have last met when she was three.  By finding her half-sister on Facebook and corresponding with her, daughter Frances finally met her father, Tony Macnouton.

Comment- The power of social networking sites has again been demonstrated. Truly, the real purpose of a social networking site has been proven through this family’s emotional saga. This is one loyal fan-base that Facebook will have won itself for sure.

9) Deccan Chronicle published an article ‘Blocking in a 2.0 universe’ by Deepak Kumar that talked about Facebook’s surprising and unpopular move to block a website-Web 2.0 Suicide Machine and sending a cease and desist notice to another-Seppukoo.com that responded by displaying the notices on their websites. The article states, ‘In a 2.0 world, it should be the consumer’s prerogative to visit or not visit a site, even for the purpose of deleting their profiles there. There is an element of contradiction in the two stands taken by Facebook-while it has advocated baring its user’s information to all; it has closed select gates to users wanting to delete their FB profiles.’

Comment- While Facebook makes the stand that it does not permanently remove a user’s personal information for future re-activation of their account, yet this does little to relieve a user’s uneasiness. With cyber crimes becoming increasingly frequent, it is discomforting to learn that one’s personal information remains stacked in a cache with Facebook, sometimes for many years despite deleting the account. This compromises user privacy since with whom Facebook shares this information and for what purpose is also unknown to the user.  Websites such as Web 2.0 Suicide Machine and Seppukoo do not delete your account but merely empty the cache storing your social network account contents.  This ensures user information does not get used without their knowledge.

10) Economic Times ran an article ‘Facebook may lock in its net dominance’ that looked at how Facebook has grown to keep user loyalty through its constant new positioning moves. The writer looks at the concept of ‘technological lock-in’ which means ‘the more a society adopts a certain technology, the more unlikely the users are to switch’. The writer further elaborates, ‘Facebook is the new mobile phone by positioning itself to be the user’s online identity through Facebook Connect’.

Comment: Truly, Facebook has become an integral part of our lives. It’s considered the 3^rd most populated country (online) and the growing applications and services specially designed for Facebook only proves its authority and high usage. But Facebook is not stopping here. To ensure its position in the top slot, it is constantly redefining its user’s experiences. Thereby, it is not surprising to see it becoming an integral part of one’s identity.

11) Financial Express covered an article by Amit Bhavani on ‘Making Money Online’ on 28^th Jan that elaborated on how blogging had come to pay a nice dividend from its initial hobby days.  The article states, ‘There has been a continuous 10% growth in the number of blogs and bloggers in India every year, with the majority hailing from the urban community.’  The article continues to talk about the blogging exercise and provides a how-to on blogging.

Comment- Blogging requires an interest in a given field and good writing skills. A blogger can build up loyalty slowly with interesting posts and use search engines to drive traffic. And once the blogger is established and has a good readership, he can earn money by writing reviews, comparing and analyzing products and publishing posts.

12) Asian Age looks at how teenagers view their parents joining Facebook in its article ‘Go on, add your parents as friends’ by Edlyn G. D’Souza. The article looks at how parents have caught on to the Facebook phenomenon and how their children don’t mind being friends with them. However, there are some who are not comfortable with sharing certain information with their parents online and are utilizing the privacy settings on Facebook to conceal the same.

Comment-This depicts how parents and youngsters are using Facebook to build a closer relationship thereby redefining how social interaction was being redefined within a familial set up.

13) Business Line published an article on ‘IT Solution that helps manage mobile digital social life’ on 29^th Jan. The article talked about the new offering in the market, DaVinci Social-built to manage multiple mobile digital identities by IMImobile. ‘DaVince Social is part of the DaVinci services and product portfolio that brings together music, social networking, mobile advertising, mobile marketing voice and messaging services.’

Comment- Such a facility will ensure users one stop communications platform and subsequently quicker access to all of their content.

14) Deccan Chronicle ran a story on 29^th Jan on web hoaxes and online journalism in their article ‘In the web of deadly rumours’ by Debarun Borthakur.  The article covers the recent hoax about Hollywood star Johnny Depp’s untimely death while listing other hoaxes about Tom Hanks, Natalie Portman, Miley Cyrus and Kanye West with many more. On the Indian front, Jyoti Basu was amongst those targeted by online journalism.

Comment- Online Journalism is all about traffic and thus online news portals utilize such gimmicks. What is heartening is that journalism in India does not resort to such tricks, as yet! Whether it will stay so or will become a widely used phenomenon in India remains to be seen.

15) Deccan Chronicle also featured a story on the concept of ‘nearsighted dating’ with its article ‘Photos can be deceptive’ by Tenzin Dechen on 29^th Jan. The article defines the new trend of choose a person by looking at their photos on social networking sites such as Facebook , Orkut or Twitter and then meeting them in person on a date. The article quotes, ‘But instead of making the dating process easier, youngsters feel this is worse, because the real deal is almost always a letdown’.

Comment- It is always advisable to first check out a person’s background, their friend circle, links and attitude online rather than deciding to meet someone purely on the basis of their good looks. More often than not, the photos are either photo shopped or highly misleading. More often than not, people project images of what they would like to be rather than their true self.

16) Hindustan Times looks at the concept of online selling and advertising through its article ‘Social Selling Logs in’ on 1^st Feb. The article explores how Indian marketers are utilizing social media to woo Indian youth. Under the umbrella of social media, social networking sites, gaming sites and social applications are the channels used. The article states, Social media offers marketers micro-targeting opportunities and the means to engage the user through communities and other applications.’  The article lists big banks, leading travel companies and consumer electronics brands that utilize the power of social media.

Comment- Today’s youth is different from the youth of yester-year and so are the channels used by them. If marketers or brands want to communicate or target the youth and their influencers then they will have to use these very mediums to promote themselves or their product or service.

17) Facebooking, Twittering, Orkuting etc can have some adverse effects ranging from being sacked to being jailed or even getting divorced. Or so says the article ‘Social networking ke side-effects’ by Harsimran Singh featured in Economic Times on 1^st Feb. The article informs readers on amendments made by India’s IT Act which now consider ‘status messages and Tweets admissible as electronic evidence and the onus of the posts  on these accounts now rests solely on users, say cyber lawyers’. The article states,’ using a private key which in this case is a password is an electronic signature under the IT Act. Internet posts can also amount to defamation when read with the laws on defamation’.

Comment- The increasing adoption of the online world in India is also increasing the problems posed by its misuse. And with the level of ignorance of cyber laws in the country, most of the users are unaware that they are responsible for the information that they put up on the web-site rather than the social networking site. It is better to be safe than sorry and make oneself familiar with the IT Act to avoid any untoward incidents in the future.

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Puneet Singh (Twitter) from Fore School of Business, Delhi and Arushi Gupta (Twitter) from Indian Institute of Technology, Delhi have joined us as interns. For the next couple of months they will work on specific live projects that will impact.

Puneet would be working on a project in which he would be looking at Business to Business (B2B) Communities – and finalising on what are the various types of B2B communities that can be leveraged by organizations to engage with their clients.

Arushi would be working along with Karthick and Freddie on what goes into building private community of young trendsetters – a community focused on observing trends and also on how marketers and organizations understand and engage these trendsetters.

I like how Indian social activists are using social networking platforms for fundraising, or creating awareness for their causes.

Isha Foundation’s $100K win in the Chase Community Giving Contest is a good example of non-profits using social platforms to get support for a cause for fundraising. A very persuasive lady from Isha Foundation even called me to ask me to write a post supporting their bid.

The Wall Project, Batti Bandh, The Bicycle Project and The Sapling Project have all got attention recently for using Twitter and Facebook for promoting their programs. The Pink Chaddi Campaign, Grassroutes, NGOPost, Bell Bajao and Blank Noise are some of my favorite examples of Indian digital activism campaigns.

However, using Facebook and Twitter to spread a brand-related or cause-related message doesn’t excite me anymore. I would be excited if activists used social platforms to enable collaboration, like Vote Report India did, or build a long-term community, like iJanaagraha is trying to do. I have earlier written about the need for activists to go beyond content and conversations, to tap into the collaboration, community and collective intelligence layers. Ellen Miller’s Sunlight Foundation is showing us how in the area of government transparency and accountability.

Here’s the full text of the TOI story –

Social networking sites are new age activist’s handiest tools
Mahafreed Irani, TNN

Facebookers had a new distraction last week: a request from 100 US based charities to vote for them so that they could mop up a cool one million dollars to pursue their ‘big idea’ to change the world. Thousands of users from India logged on to vote for their favourites like Give India and Isha Foundation in the Chase Community Giving race. For them, it was the easiest way to contribute to the cause.

Social networking sites have clearly moved beyond frivolous chatter and self-aggrandisement to a worthier cause: they’ve become the new age activist’s handiest tools. From bringing people together to beautify walls in the city (The Wall Project) and encouraging them to save electricity (Batti Bandh) to getting them to donate their old cycles to rural children (The Bicycle Project) and engaging them in sapling plantation drives (The Sapling Project), these sites have built up successful online movements and then dexterously steered them into real life.

The benefits of building a movement using the Internet are self-evident : no capital costs and speedier-thanspeedy responses. Every time Batti Bandh organiser Keith Menon has to make an announcement , he simply posts an update and the over 6,000 members and fans of the Batti Bandh community on Facebook get the news delivered to their inbox. Netizens from countries as far away as Czechoslovakia, New Zealand, Netherlands and Pakistan have joined the group and posted their views on the campaign.

Like Batti Bandh, the other three movements too were initiated in Mumbai and then went national thanks to the online momentum. Take the Wall Project—what started as a touch-up for a Bandra home has now become a movement with over 2,000 volunteers to beautify cities across India. After photographs of paint jobs of walls along Senapati Bapat Marg were uploaded, members from Bengaluru, Pune and Kolkata started discussing their own city walls on the forum. Parag Gandhi, one of the facilitating members , spends a few minutes giving direction to the conversation—the rest of the content, including photos, news and updates are user-generated.

A user in Pune who wants to paint walls asked, “We are a group of 50 people and very enthusiastic about painting. There is no doubt that we have many walls dying for a dash of colour but the Pune Municipal Corporation (PMC) won’t permit.’’ In response, a member was quick to post, “Forget the PMC, when they see the value you are creating they will automatically come to you. Find private walls, educational institutes, schools or hospital walls instead.’’

Catalysts for change are using Web 2.0 platforms to engage people and spread the word using already existing social networks. Some prefer using technology to initiate the campaign too. Just last month, two Mumbai techies Satish Vijaykumar and Ranjeet Walunj created a website, a Twitter profile to make sure their city could breathe easy. The internet was used as a propaganda tool for their initiative The Sapling Project. A few tweets and Facebook statuses later, over a hundred people had signed up for the sapling plantation drive. They met at Shivaji Park, collected saplings and now post updates about their saplings’ progress on Twitter, Facebook, Flickr and YouTube.

Impromptu acts of kindness have sprouted on Twitter too. Last week, tweeple from India started the T4H (Twitteristan for Haiti) by posting links to the Google Crisis Response page and the American Red Cross page to encourage their followers to donate. Popular tweeple like user ‘@b 50/Bombay Addict’ on Twitter posted updates like, “India gives $1m aid to Haiti. What? Rs 4.6 crore? That’s all we got? The daily turnover on BSE+NSE is Rs 80,000 crore.’’ and “The BMC will spend Rs 15 crore to clean Mumbai’s beaches. And that’s all we got?’’ to provoke his following of over 2,500 to donate.

On Diwali day last year, Twitter member Anaggh Desai decided to use the power of online networking to raise some money for charity. The 46-year-old Mumbai-based entrepreneur asked people to send him a Deepwish (Diwali greeting on Twitter) and pledged 25 paise for every wish that he received to Goonj, an NGO. Excited by the idea, 41 other tweeple decided to donate amounts ranging from 50 p to Rs 5 for every greeting tweeted at them. After 36 hours, Rs 55,000 was collected from tweeple all over India and even the US and Saudi Arabia towards educating the girl child.

The city also participated in two twestivals (offline meets organised and promoted online to collect funds for charity). The Mumbai chapter of the twestival last September collected Rs 40,000 for the NGO Help A Child.

Menon from Batti Bandh wants to leverage the power of the community on Twitter to facilitate car and taxi pooling . He is in the process of building an application that will let tweeple tweet their starting point and destination , show the route on Google Maps and allow other tweeters to join in.

However, there are dissidents. Social media researcher Gaurav Mishra thinks that online communities need to take their activities to the next level. “After a person has switched off electricity for an hour or planted one sapling, what next?’’ he asks. “Organisers have to decide on how they want to create sustained involvement .’’

Cross-posted at Gauravonomics: Social Media and Social Change.

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Background: When it comes to investing & saving ones own hard earned money , people prefer researching, asking others, going for tried and tested methods and moreover playing safe. Investments and savings are something that are although done by almost everyone but then not everybody has an expertise and hence people generally prefer taking expert advice, ask peers, research, read news just to keep themselves informed and updated. Many banks, financial institutions, trading and brokerage companies have realized this behaviour and are using a social web presence to solve their problems.

Scope: In this post I have covered three types of social media efforts by the BFSI sector. The first category represents the social media efforts by banks & financial services towards personal banking, the second category of efforts are towards targeting corporates, SMEs & entrepreneurs while the third is towards targeting the investors into stocks to make them smart traders. You will see a fundamental difference in the way these institutions use social web to target these three different categories.

Illustration:

a) Social media efforts towards personal banking: A large no. of BFSI institutions have realized that providing a platform to people to talk and learn about their business needs helps them multifold. Firstly, it helps them position themselves as an institution which cares to enable people to make smart savings and investments. Secondly, it helps them listen relevant conversations and establish conversations and relationships for business development. Thirdly, it helps them understand the current needs and feedback of customers which is like the best market research ever. In this a very inspiring effort has been made by the Young&Free Alberta community powered by the Servus Credit Union to give a voice to the young generation. Y&F launches annual contest where the community chooses its spokesperson. This spokesperson then participates in the community as Y&F ambassador and educates and converses with others through blogs, videos etc. Y&F also oganizes many events for its commuity which include year round online contests and offline events. (For more details see mohit’s post at 2020 Social blog).

ING Direct is also making several efforts in wooing savers on social web. They have a Saver’s Blog and a community for publishing feel good news about markets and investment called Savings feel good. The news is either submitted from press or by community members. The community also runs timely contests to build interests.

Another interesting effort in this direction is by mint.com which is a maney management and budgeting software company. They have a tweet aggregator platform with tweets from various experts on savings, budgeting, retirement, loans etc.They also have an official blog on similar topics.

As you must have realized that all these communities are architectured around people expressing their financial needs and helping people make smart savings and gain important informations about investments.

b) Social media efforts for corporates, SMEs and entrepreneurs: In such efforts the focus is to help the SMEs and entrepreneurs network and gain valuable information and aid related to their business. For example the Visa Business Network helps you find out businesses in your locality, related vendors, partners, suppliers and customs. It also helps you discuss important information in your work related discussion group, set up business related goals and get help from others to achieve them. A possible goal can be ‘to same some xy amount of money by year end. The person can get interesting article links from the community on savings. Or a goal can be ‘to find business through referrals’

Effectively you can see that the aim of the community is to help businesses communicate, learn and network. It helps the financial institute powering the community listen about the financial needs and ideas among entrepreneurs. Also it sends across the message that the bank reaches out to help businesses which helps them bringing in more business. Amrican Express, HSBC and Bank of America also has similar business networks the details about which you can get from mohit’s  last blog post

Another interesting effort here is by Kiva which is a one to one micro lending community where entrepreneurs submit their business idea. For this kiva partners with micro lending institutions. The community helps the entrepreneurs reach financial targets.

c) Social media efforts focussing on stocks and trading: There are a bunch of trading communities which are helping people become smart investors, invest in right direction, communicate with expert and get relevant market information. Also these communities help professional traders gain reputation as influencers. A good example is Covester where members can follow other members investments, read and write information blogs and if they see a trader making very good investments, the can align their investments with him and give him a share in profits for sharing his data.

There are other online invester’s communities like Zecco, Moneyrec, Stockhouse and Trade2win. Tipd gives a stock and financial news aggregation platform and news community. People consume, curate and create news articles on a model similar to digg.com. The value for these stock related conversations can be estimated from the face that certain corporates like Berkshire Hathaway have discussion forums for their own stocks.

Visiting these communities are worth it. We would love to have some such India focussed communities by large banks as there are many people here who because of dearth of good investing knowledge  and lack of trust on private banks go for safest government investments like FDs and RDs giving very low returns. Also there are many who do not understand the financial jargons of the large investment products given by these banks. Banking communities can definitely help there.

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The presentation I made is here:

The other panelists chose to speak rather than present, so I can’t share the presentations here

There was a lively Q&A session where some students asked me interesting questions on cloud computing, ranking users on Twitter and how Social Media could help small enterprises recruit employees.

Overall a great learning experience for me!

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The Social Technographics profile is based on in-person interviews with 353 SEC ABC online adult respondents in metropolitan India (including Mumbai, New Delhi, Kolkata, Bangalore, and Chennai) between March and April 2009.

Using the top Indian website in each category (as per October ‘09 data from Vizisense) as a reference, it’s easy to see that these numbers cannot be right, especially for Joiners –

- Overall Internet Population: 42.9m

- Creators: No estimates
- Critics (Mouthshut): 0.8m (2%)
- Collectors (Digg): 0.9m (2%)
- Joiners (Orkut): 15.5m (36%)
- Spectators (YouTube): 10.9 (25%)
- Inactives: No estimates

I had earlier tried to estimate the Social Technographics profile of metro India using public data. Since then, I have revised some of these estimates, based on Vizisense data and discussions with the JuxtConsult folks.

Incidentally, Forrester also released its new Social Technographics in the US report last week and added a new category called Conversationalists, to factor in the increased importance of status messages on Twitter, Facebook and other social networks.

Based on back of the envelop calculations, with Vizisense data as the starting point, here are my broad guesstimates for each category:

- Creators: 3m (7%)
- Conversationalists: 5 (12%)
- Critics: 5m (12%)
- Collectors: 5m (12%)
- Joiners: 20m (47%)
- Spectators: 20m (47%)
- Inactives: 15m (35%)

What do you think? Do the Forrester Social Technographics numbers resonate with your experience with social media in India?

Cross-posted at Gauravonomics: Social Media and Social Change.

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I have earlier written about how caste-based communities on Facebook and Orkut reflects the realities of India’s splintered society.

The ancient Indian custom of caste has made its way into the modern world of social media.

Social networking site Orkut — the most popular social media platform in India — is not only a place where young, urban Indians can connect with friends like Americans do on Facebook. It’s also a platform where they can meet others in their caste… (and) engage in benign discussions and debates on various caste-related issues like marriage, religion and politics.

So what’s happening here on Orkut, Facebook and other social media sites in India? Some argue the country’s young people no longer feel comfortable talking about caste in public. Instead, they retreat to an anonymous online world to debate and discuss issues. Not everyone agrees.

Social media expert Gaurav Mishra said Orkut and similar sites do not increase caste discussions. Rather, they accurately reflect that Indians still very much identify with their caste and want to form groups around them.

“Surprisingly with urbanization, with education, with more people traveling and getting exposed to other cultures, these divisions have not really gone away. Caste even now — even in urban, educated India — is still an extremely big issue,” said Mishra, CEO of online marketing firm 2020 Social. “So therefore it is not surprising given how deeply entrenched caste is in Indian society that it manifests itself online also.”

As more Indians go online, and the internet reaches beyond the most urban and educated layer of society, caste activity will become only more prevalent, Mishra said.

Cross-posted at Gauravonomics: Social Media and Social Change.

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I believe that real-time search is indeed a game-changer of search. The real power of Twitter lies not in being able to send and receive 140 letter messages, but in being able to search for tweets about people, brands, locations and events in real-time. Twitter realizes this: that’s why it has put search at the center of its redesigned homepage. Facebook realizes this: that’s why they are moving strongly towards a public status message oriented design. Google and Microsoft/ Bing realize this too: that’s why they are working hard to integrate real time status messages in their search results.

The ability to search real time status updates is already changing search behavior for early adopters like myself. I use Twitter search to discover what people are saying about a breaking news story, who else is present at the event I am attending and what are the early reviews for a movie that was released earlier in the day. The next big step is an ability to search for what my friends, people like me, or people near me are saying. As this behavior is adopted by the mainstream, I expect profound repercussions for both brands and publishers.

One important change is that search results will become both more dynamic and more personalized. Which means that search engine marketing will begin to look more like social media marketing. Suddenly, the depth, duration and keyword density of your content will begin to matter less and the freshness, relevance and proximity of our conversations will begin to matter more.

Along with the above changes in content search and consumption, I see a parallel change in content creation. When Blogger, Wordpress, YouTube and Flickr made it easy to create and share articles, videos and photos, several consumers started thinking of themselves as writers, photographers and filmmakers. Still, the focus was on creating content, and it needed significant time and effort to create content, so the barrier was still to high for most.

Then, Twitter popularized the idea of real-time status messages and the content creation barrier came crashing down. Not only that, the nature of content itself changed, to conversations between people. So, people are more likely to organize themselves around conversations now, not content, and that’s a fundamental shift.

The self-perpetuating viral loop is at the core of word of mouth marketing and Twitter and Facebook have made it more potent than ever. Word of mouth has always been the holy grail of marketing and, now that it is more easy to seed and track than ever before, all marketing is beginning to look a little bit like word of mouth marketing.

Here is the full text of the story:

Points of View: Will real-time search affect the business of search?
Kapil Ohri | afaqs! | New Delhi, January 18, 2010

Google and Bing have introduced the concept of real-time search, which will also show results from recent Twitter, Facebook and blog updates. Is this the way to go now?

Pushkar Sane
Chief digital officer, North and South Asia, Starcom MediaVest Group

For starters, it will increase the ‘volume’ of indexed pages and the natural search rankings for brands may change rapidly based on momentum built by social conversations. Brands will need to re-orient their approach for search as it will bring up organic results with social conversations, making it difficult for brands to get their ‘controlled content’ in front of people. They will have to try harder in organising content, integrating ’social elements’ and optimising it continuously.

While positive conversations will help in enhancing brand equity, negative ones will accelerate the erosion as bad news travels fast. Finally, brands need to create a seamless strategy for digital with search and social at its core by getting rid of specialist silos within digital or within marketing.

Mohit Hira
President, Training.com, NIIT

If you had searched, on Google for Copenhagen on the morning after the climate talks failed, you’d have first got a Google Map result and then one old item on the Climate Summit followed by a Wikipedia entry. Now, try the same search in real-time using Google’s Experimental Lab. You’d get links posted by the minute on BBC, Twitter, YouTube and a chronological list that grows longer before your eyes.

The action has been shifting from publishers to user-generated social media content. If you’re smart enough to worm your brand into digital conversations in real-time, you’re likely to get picked up. Not in weeks or months, as is the case with new sites and search engine optimisation (SEO), but in minutes. But this doesn’t mean that life is short for search engine marketing (SEM). It will take a while before everyone switches to real-time search by default. Also, things will be unpredictable in the short term.

Mahesh Murthy
Founder and chief executive officer, Pinstorm

SEO has become a low-value commodity activity, farmed out to individuals. Till a few years ago, all you had to optimise were text results. Today, a smart business will optimise results related to text, videos, images, twitter updates and blog entries – because the search engine results page consists of all of these.

I hope it will lead advertisers to increase their focus on social media platforms such as Twitter and Facebook. Advertisers will find that if they are not on Twitter, their customers and rivals already are – and that the conversation is already going on there. Many brands tend to think of things in the TV paradigm – ‘run me a month-long campaign’. A social media campaign has to be 24 x 7 x 365.

Gaurav Mishra
Chief executive officer, 20:20 Social

I believe that real-time search is indeed a game-changer for search. The real power of Twitter lies in being Able to search for tweets about people, brands, locations and events in real-time. The ability to search real-time status updates is already changing search behaviour for early adopters like me. I use Twitter search to discover what people are saying about a breaking news story or who else is present at the event I am attending.

As this behaviour is adopted by the mainstream, I expect profound repercussions for both brands and publishers. An important change is that search results will become both more dynamic and personalised – meaning that search engine marketing will begin to look more like social media marketing. Suddenly, the depth, duration and keyword density of your content will begin to matter less and the freshness, relevance and proximity of our conversations will begin to matter more.

Cross-posted at Gauravonomics: Social Media and Social Change.

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I have earlier written about noteworthy social media initiatives from Indian news and media companies. Here’s my take on why we haven’t seen more such initiatives so far and why I see it changing over the next 2-3 years.

Newspapers in the US are rushing to build business models for the web because the print business is in trouble. Newspaper readerships and advertising revenues continue to fall and more young people are reading news online than in print.

In India, the newspaper business is in much better shape. Only one-third of Indians read newspapers, which means that there is a lot room to grow readership. Advertising spend in India is low at half a percent of GDP, compared to two percent in most developed countries, so there’s also room to grow advertising revenues, even after factoring in the increasing influence of TV and digital. Finally, the internet user base in India is only one tenth of the newspaper reader base in India, so the numbers don’t always add up for building an online business model.

However, even though newspapers aren’t in a do or die situation today, they do need to build a strong digital business for tomorrow.

Searchable multi-media content, user participating through rating, commenting and sharing, journalist blogs, and presence on social networking platforms like Facebook and Twitter are already standard for several Indian newspapers. I won’t be surprised if Indian newspapers also adopt consumer generated content, two way conversations between journalists and readers, customizable home pages, and even social networks and APIs over the next two years.

If they don’t stay ahead of the wave, it will be a do or die situation for them before they realize it.

Cross-posted at Gauravonomics: Social Media and Social Change.

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Web in its new avatar (Social Media)  facilitate interactive information sharing, interoperability, user-centered design and collaboration, has given consumers the power to make or break reputations, enhance or damage brands, create winners and losers in the marketplace, and do so with lightning speed. At the same time, social media offer unparalleled access to unfiltered customer opinion, opportunity to understand  the real influencers,  and opportunities to leverage user-generated content.

Note: There are many popular blogs, forums, and review sites around Banking and Finance. But in this post I am focusing on how large banks and financial institutions are adopting social media to reach out to customers, prospectus and Influencers.

Community efforts from Banks and Financial Institutions.

HSBC Community for SMB

This online community HSBC Business Network is for SMB and entrepreneurs. The focus is to empower new start-up companies to succeed by enabling them to network and form relationships with each other, as well as leveraging the expertise and support of HSBC’s business specialists

Common Wealth Credit Union (Groundswell Award Winner, 2008)

To positioned itself as a progressive and transparent financial institution with heart, Common Wealth Credit Union launched an online community for Alberta’s Generation “Y”. A lifestyle platform for youth to self express and support called Young & Free. Its a fully integrated marketing campaign combined with a spokesperson search to find the voice of Alberta’s under 25 crowd.

Common Wealth embraced the power of the social web by tapping into popular sites like YouTube, Facebook, Flickr and Twitter to create an immersive experience where compelling user-generated content takes centre stage. To position it as a democratic, transparent organisation they launched a yearly campaign to find  “Young & Free Alberta Spokesperson”.

The winner from the contest became a paid employee of the credit union, working full time with the job description: talk, type and tell good stories – essentially a full time blogger for the credit union for one year.

American Express – Open Forum

The Open forum is a very interesting way that American Express is using to share information and start conversation with small business owners.  Some of the key highlights of the OPEN Forum initiative are: building brand equity, acquiring new customers, and building loyalty of existing customers.

It’s a excellent example of how to develop a vibrant social media community around a target segment.

Schwab Listening community (Groundswell Award Winner, 2007)

Charles Schwab launch a private online community “Money and More” made up of 350 25-to-40 year old Generation X non-Schwab clients. Idea was to listen to a focused group of Gen-Xers that was brought together on a community platform to better understand – how to become their investment service provider of choice 10 or 15 years down the road. What they learned was so powerful that they were able to create new products and services to meet the needs of this target group— resulting in a 56% increase in GenX customers vs. a year ago Based on insights from the community, Schwab lowered account minimums to $1,000, introduced Schwab’s high-yield Investor checking account with a high yield, and developing an online landing page specifically for the Gen X target.

Barclays Bank – 100 Voice Community

The 100 Voice community is student focused community where students can share their opinions on money management and student finances. Its a marketing driven program to create visibility and conversation around the benefits of the Barclays Student account and enable students to share their experiences with others.

Bank of America : Small Business Online Community

This Small Business Online Community includes a ‘Forums’ section, where SMEs can post questions and seek help and advice from others in the community. Registered users can also post their stories of business success and share tips for overcoming business challenges. The community-generated content will be supplemented by a range of expert articles.

Vancity – ChangeEverything.ca

Change Everything is a project of Vancity, Canada’s largest credit union. The Change Everything web site was spurred by the spirit behind Vancity’s new campaign. ChangeEverything.ca is an online community targeted (but not limited) to residents of Vancouver, Victoria and B.C.’s Lower Mainland.

Once Registered, the user start blogging about his progress toward making that change. But the real substance of the site happens when someone comes across the user blog and gets inspired; they can join it. Now both of them are blogging, discussing, and potentially collaborating on making the change happen. Its one of the best community engagement program I have come across.

I intend to update regularly this list of Banks and Financial Institutions on social media. So, if you know of any other Bank or FI with social media presence, do send me an e-mail or leave a comment below.

Cross-posted at Mohitvermablog.com

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