WATBlog.com - Web, Advertising and Technology Blog in India

Bing includes Twitter in results - real time search? Not Quite

Siddarth Raman — Fri, 03 Jul 2009 06:50:00 +0000

The Bing v/s Google Battle has been raging on for quite some time now. Companies are giving Twitter a lot of attention, and it’s not rivals like Facebook , but software giant Microsoft who has also entered the Twitter arena to grab as much attention as possible. In a recent report, Microsoft has started tweeting, they have a lot of products which are constantly being discussed on Twitter, and has probably realized the necessity of having an official mouthpiece on the popular platform.

Meanwhile, Microsoft’s fast emerging search / decision engine Bing seems to be growing at a decent rate. They seem to be trying their best to one-up market leader Google by being the first to introduce Real-time Tweets as part of their search. We did a recent analysis of real time search engines, and Microsoft seems to be rushing to tackle the challenge head-on. However, don’t be disillusioned, your tweets will not feature on Bing. The catch - only high-profile Twitterers / Tweeters (?) will be indexed and feature on Bing’s search results. As PC World editor correctly points out, it seems almost an attempt for the heck of it without adding much utility to the search capabilities. Bing’s famous “decision” engine merely features the most recent tweets of famous people if we search for them. Several famous personalities like Ryan Seacrest and Al Gore are added to the strong list of about a thousand something. What is seemingly hard to understand is what Bing hopes to achieve by adding their tweets to search results. If people were inquisitive about “their “views on pertinent topics, following them would probably be a more useful option. Hopefully, Bing will be expanding the scope of their indexing soon. Whether, that will affect their main marketing campaign against Google of providing “streamlined” results with less junk is to be seen.

Meanwhile, rumours have been around for quite a while about Google entering real-time search. Google has obviously noticed the potential of micro-blogging and real time results, though it is doing little now to promote its own platform Jaiku. In a rather funny observation, a search on google for “search engine” returns Altavista as the 1st result, Bing as the third, and Google a distant eighth. Bing features neither itself now Google. It might seem forced with Bing promoting itself as a “Decision Engine”, but what about Google? A lack of identity or a different perception of itself as opposed to what it initially gained recognition as? One can only wonder about the reason for the apparent paradox.

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“Kambakkht Ishq” starts Digital Movie Promotion with Hungama Digital Pvt Ltd.

seema — Fri, 03 Jul 2009 06:31:28 +0000

The recent tiff between producers and multiplexes had prevented the release of several movies for the last few months. Now, to offset the delay, several movies are releasing at the same time with promoters doing everything they can to catch the limelight. Today much awaited movie “Kambakkht Ishq” will release. What is interesting to note is that promoters are looking at digital media as an important and essential medium to market the popularity of their movies. The makers of the movie and Hungama Digital Media have started digital promotion to ceate excitement among the audience.

Humgama Digital Media has launched:

Mobile Game: A Mobile racing game in which user can play the role of Bollywood Actor Akshay Kumar and highlight the nostalgic gender fight between the two protagonists. Users can complete the game by playing various stunts and collecting objects.
Mobile Voice VAS Service: A dial-a-number service where you hear Akshay Kumar and Kareena Kapoor provide stunt and beauty tips respectively.

Apart from that, film director Sabbir Khan has also written about the movie on his blog

Blogging has become really popular among the film fraternity in India, with several stars blogging, and even using Facebook and Twitter to connect to their fans.

India has 400 million subscribers and more than 50 million people have internet access. Film makers can’t ignore this large audience base. With Bollywood realising the potential of Digital Marketing and the scope Social Media Promotion, it won’t be long before the trend picks up prominently. The unconventional is expected and appreciated, so experiments with social media are to be expected in the near future trends of advertising and brand promotion.

Soon, makers of “Kaminey”, another Bollywood film in the pipeline will be releasing their movie. It remains to be seen whether other movie makers catch on to the trend and exploit digital media for its potential.

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Ajit Balakrishnan On What Is Wrong With The Digital Space, What It Needs & What Lies Ahead..

Rajiv Dingra — Fri, 03 Jul 2009 04:47:48 +0000

Ajit Balakrishnan - Chairman of Rediff.com gave the keynote at the IAMAI Digital Marketing Conference held at Delhi yesterday. Personally I felt it was one of the best keynotes that Ive heard at any event. Ajit traced the growth of internet right from 1995 to this day and also pointed out key pain points for the growth of Internet today and gave his insights into the road ahead.

Pain Points of Digital Media

On Internet Statistics

Ajit stated that as per his estimated the Internet audience is about 35-40 million (Contradicts Juxt Consult Report which states 47 million). He also stated that there is no doubt in his mind that in ten years India will be the largest internet market with 300 million users. He though felt that a lot needs to change for that 10 year dream to become a reality.

On the slow growth rate of Internet

A decade ago when internet service provide licenses were being distributed about 250 licences were distributed to ISPs. But ISPs found it tough to scale as the starting gate i.e. the no landline numbers was so small that ISPs couldnt grow, At the same time mobile became cheaper and available. He stated that broadband business is like building bridges and roads and so its a 25 year game for returns. The ISP’s never got that much time or investment to build out the internet infrastructure.

On Credit cards a pain point for lack of ecommerce

Ajit stated that India’s credit card penetration was dismal and that has been the real reason of the slow growth of ecommerce in India.

On IAMAI and Its Role

Ajit criticized IAMAI on the fact that it projected bigger and bigger internet userbase numbers and growth predictions in its reports over the years. There is little use of this and infact the government feels that if the internet penetration is any which ways growing fast then there is no need of their intervention to quicken the pace.

On Investment Ecosystem

Ajit stated that according to him there was a lack of intelligent domestic VC’s in India. The problem with them is that they are investment bankers who have been in the west and some of them would give the money to young entrepreneurs and then “screw” them over on exit startegy in board meetings.

On Why is Local VC Industry Important

This is because the American Vcs follow the american economy cycles and if the current recession is anything to go by India is far removed from the american recession impact though American VC’s aren’t as their money flows from there. There is another dying need in the Indian space and that is for Angel Investors. Ajit stated that in india we need not more than 25-75 lakhs of investment for a seed stage startup to get things up and running but there aren’t enough individuals around investing in companies. He felt what was missing was to option to write off one’s losses if the startup that the angel invested in didn’t work out.

Solution to the pain points

On Governments Role

Ajit is stated that one of the key roles is that of the government if Internet has to grow any faster. He stated that even in the west the basic infrastructure like the http protocol and the internet was developed from the defence budgets and later came into the public domain. Even the IT services Industry in India which is a multi crore giant today with several global companies became so after the government supported the industry with tax exemptions, infrastructures support etc.

Ajit felt the government needs to do the same with broadband infrastructure in India as access was the first hurdle in building the internet economy. Ajit also felt that the govt has an enormous amounts of funds via LIC and UTI and can be a funds of funds to aid startups at the seed level and drive innovation in this space.

According to Ajit moral of the story is that we need to engage the Government. Cyber cafes are important for growth and the same need to be encourage. He pointed out at the chinese industry where broadband cafes built the gaming industry. He also pointed out that the Chinese have a very liberal VAS industry where operators give 75% of the revenue share to content creators. In India operators part no more than 16-20%. The TRAI needs to intervene in this and make this % atleast upto 50% for content businesses to grow.

On IAMAI’s Role

Ajit felt that IAMAI needs to play the role of interfacing with the government inorder to get all the above done and make Internet growth story a reality.

On Possibility Of Debit Card Revolution

Ajit felt that the lacuna on the Credit card penetration could be filled by Debit card which had a penetration of over 100 million in the country. Its important to encourage the use of debit cards online because that is what can propel ecommerce and there by get more advertisers advertising on the medium

On the need for a relevant media measurement system for Internet

Ajit felt we as an industry were not speaking the language that the advertiser understands. The advertiser understand GRP which is the television rating system. We need a uniform system of measurement for the Internet which can be compared to the television and the reach of both media can be compared.

Looking ahead.. Ajit made the following predictions..

3G to be active by middle of next year only fear is that the spectrum should be used for data and not for voice. DOT & TRAI need to regulate the usage of 3G.
Middle of next year to be the tipping point for the internet space
In 5 years the preferred mode of access to the internet will be the mobile

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Mobile Numbers to start with 8 and have 11 digits soon

Saurabh Agarwal — Fri, 03 Jul 2009 03:31:12 +0000

It seems that every Indian is trying to grab a mobile phone leading to a humongous requirement of new mobile numbers. Mobile numbers starting with 9 have come to an end and DoT has given permission to telecom companies to allocate new numbers starting with 8. According to TRAI, India has 415 million cellular subscribers at the end of May 2009 compared to 277 million a year ago, a whooping growth of 50 percent.

Since mobile numbers starting with 9 are coming to an end TRAI has allowed operators to allocate numbers starting with 8 which means addition of around 380 million new numbers if the number of digits are still kept to 10. It is also excepted that DoT will increase the number of digits in a mobile number to 11 which will add substantial numbers for disposal. DoT has also ordered the stopping of the usage of 95 in STD and trunk calls, which has freed around 10 crore numbers half of which will be allocated to the operators and rest will be reserved by DoT.

How will it impact operators:

1. Operators will be able to add new users without any number crunch.

2. Operators will be able to open a new stream of revenue as VIP numbers have always been in the limelight and people are willing to pay a good amount for them. Amit Malhotra from ludhiana paid whooping 15 lakh for a VIP number.

Various operators have already been selling VIP numbers for a huge sum. Tata Indicom hosts a site named Ichoose where users can bid for a mobile number .

3. Operators may have to invest in new hardware as some telecom systems have been hardcoded for 10 digit number system which may bring some huge costs specially for the operators who have just joined the telecom revolution.

Users of course, will only benefit from it. It will also benefit the telecom industry in the long run, since more people can apply for a connection without being overly affected by the number crunch.

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Idea to Launch Idea Madhur - Will Grass Roots Music Tap in at the Grass Roots?

Maneesh Madambath — Thu, 02 Jul 2009 14:23:38 +0000

Music and entertainment have been the most prolific VAS in use in India amongst the many available. In a bid to make the most of the scenario, Idea has launched Idea Madhur. It is a music driven value add that focusses on forgotten artists and folk/grass roots music.

The focus of course is to move beyond the urban markets as has been the trend since some time (UTV launching audio movies for instance). Idea is essentially looking it Rural India to source content as well as find markets for this initiative. The focus is on folk music and authentic ones at that which can touch a chord with the masses in those specific region. They will be beginning with Andhra Pradesh during the Filmfare awards (Southern) of which Idea is the Title sponsor.

According to Afaqs, Idea’s CMO Pradeep Shrivastava said, ” Idea had identified select markets to unearth authentic folk music and had already started a pilot in Andhra Pradesh. “At present, we are working with music companies and grassroot-level artistes to create content based on seven genres of folk music in the state. However, it will take a couple of months for us to introduce this content on the mobile as it requires high-quality music recording and then converting the content to the mobile format, before launching it in other regions,” he added.

So essentially the VAS itself will take a few months before it reaches the masses, so it would be too early to judge on how this might be received. Idea with its innovative marketing efforts (on traditional media if not digital) has struck a strong brand chord with the nation and can therefore find itself in a position to market this one better. The fact that it is entering more circles with their own specific regional characteristics would mean this move can actually be a masterstroke.

This is so because the myriad cultures in India find its definition in the music that they play. They carve a special identity not only for themselves as folk genres but also for the people there. And we all know how much of a social part regional and linguistic identity plays in today’s India (sons of the soil anyone?). These music based services will obviously be used as caller tunes, message and ring tones, etc. One doesn’t need a hypothesis and proof to see that the reason CRBTs have worked is not just because people love music but they find it identity defining. And in that context Idea already has a winner on its hand.

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Facebook takes on Orkut in India

Guest Author — Thu, 02 Jul 2009 11:39:23 +0000

by Pranav Agarwal

Facebook vs Orkut. Which one of these do you have an account in? Chances are, both. Orkut was an early entrant into the Indian Social Networking Scenario. Facebook, which arrived much later, however seems to grabbed quite some attention. Though both were launched at the same time, Facebook was initially not very popular in India.

Facebook has already generated waves across the world by becoming the No. 1 Social Networking site in the USA overtaking one-time market leader, Myspace and becoming THE most popular site in Indonesia

Well, just to go over the Orkut and the Facebook battle for the grater number of users in india, Orkut still leads. Orkut leads with 13 million users, while Facebook has just 3.2 million users in India. Moreover, the traffic ranks of these social networking sites also reflect the dominance of Orkut over Facebook in India. Orkut has a traffic rank of 4 whereas Facebook has come up to the 8th spot in the overall Alexa traffic rank for India.

So, as per Alexa rankings, it’s clearly visible that Orkut is more prominent than Facebook in India.But the question is, for how long?

Facebook has been growing slowly in India but for the past 3 months since its growth began accelerating rapidly. Its popularity started increasing somewhere near the start of this year and since then the growth has been very productive for Facebook. The result being, the number of users joining Facebook almost doubled in the month of May and June. While Facebook has been growing slowly and steadily in India for the last couple of years, Facebook exploded in May and June, doubling from 1.6 million to 3.2 million monthly active users in the country in the last 60 days.

Orkut has been trying to capitalise on its already large audience base in India, but Facebook is trying its best to woo audiences over. So, Facebook is definitely gaining momentum in the social networking race, with frequent improvements and increased customisation. But will it surpass Orkut in the race for the best social networking site in India ? That remains to be seen.

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Event Update: proto.in Pune 25th july

Guest Author — Thu, 02 Jul 2009 10:46:50 +0000

By Pranav Agarwal

There have been several startups in the past 3-4 years and it has become difficult for them as well as for the concerned industry to connect to them and to understand their innovative products. We have been following companies that help promote new technologies since we started.

Among the companies that help startups, the most renowned one is proto.in (http://www.proto.in). For the past three years, proto.in has become a support platform for the start-ups to showcase their products to a selected gathering. Till now, they have conducted 5 such startup events in Chennai, Delhi and Bangalore and showcased close to 100 startups of which several have have been able to connect to the potential hires, and develop new business oppurtunities.The last proto.in event in Delhi was very successful and we even picked out the some of the best startups that particular time.

proto.in has been a great platform for the startups and after a great success in their previous editions, they are now conducting the start-up event in Pune on the 25th of july at the Dewang Mehta Auditorium, Persistent Systems, Pune. the entire entrepreneurial ecosystem would be looking forward to the event and witness India’s 15 most promising start-up’s.

What’s special this Proto.in?

Witness the 15 most promising startups on the proto.in showcase

This edition of proto.in would also focus on the policies that support Startups and analyze it in order to take complete leverage of the existing policies in both the IT and the non IT sectors . This will help startups get a complete picture of the pros and cons of the policies for them.

A keynote address in the startup landscape by Mr. Ganesh Natarajan (CEO – Zensar Technologies, Chairman - IT & ITES CII and Member - Chairmen’s Council NASSCOM)

An in-depth analysis on the Intellectual Property Rights. IPR is a developing concept in India, and quite relevant to all. The topic will be taken up by renowned experts with focus on the impact of IPR on startups.

We’ll be there at proto.in. If you are also interested, log in to http://www.proto.in/the-event/registrations/ to join. proto.in will be held in Pune on the 25th of July.

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Mouthshut set to propel Social media interaction, to give free accounts to brand owners

Raghav Soni — Thu, 02 Jul 2009 10:10:28 +0000

Mouthshut, a pioneer in user generated content is set to change the social media scenario in India as it would soon be doling out free accounts to corporate and brand owners for brand reputation management.

Mouthshut initiatives holds weight as it is one of the largest user generated portals in Asia with around 32 lakh registered users. This free service which is slated to be launched by July would surely propel the social media presence of many small businesses which were earlier shying away due to its paid nature. Through the free service site registrants would be allowed to create a brand page on MouthShut and even be allowed to resolve issues and respond to users’ complaints.

Farooqui - CEO, Mouthshut said, “We are part of the social media and we will keep innovating to stay ahead of the curve and adapt ourselves to customers’ needs. The objective of free service is to help brands reach out to their customers and resolve their problems, and this will help us in our revenue generation too.”

Social Media equals Brand reputation management

The availability of greater number of brands and companies jumping on the social media bandwagon would surely help in generating more quality interaction for customers. It could also turn into a cash cow for companies like Mouthshut in the long run. Today many companies like Facebook, Second Life, offer free tools to brand owners along with premium offerings which helps in mitigating the cash flows from their UGC management.

Today, many in corporate world are realizing the importance of social media presence which as a channel has the potential to even destroy a brand reputation completely. Companies like ICICI bank and many other financial services today fork out anywhere around 3-5 crores each year on online reputation management alone, especially considering a lot of their retail trading services are offered online.

Social media today has become an important tool for users to convey their message to brands, through which it has gained importance as a brand reputation platform.This is a win-win situation for both users and brand owners as both get a clear indication of the reputation of the brand and its competitors and can make their respective decisions.

In the future, sites such as Mouthshut will continue to propel as the need of UGC and Brand reputation management have become vital although major improvements are still required for proper servicing of both clients

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TRAI issues draft guidelines for mobile number portability

Raghav Soni — Thu, 02 Jul 2009 09:38:27 +0000

It seems TRAI wants to leave no stone unturned for smooth implementation of Mobile Number Portability in India. It has therefore issued a draft legislation to clear the uncertainty surrounding the introduction of mobile number portability.

The draft guidelines describes the rights, obligations and duties of both the telecom operators in consideration for the changing of telecom operators by subscribers.

The draft guidelines lays down major rules such as:

A mobile subscriber shall be eligible to make a request for “porting” (changing) his mobile number upon expiry of a period of ninety days from the date of activation of his present mobile connection.

The recipient operator, within five days of receiving a written request, has to carry out subscriber verification according to the guidelines for acquiring a new user.

Upon verification, the request is to be forwarded to the donor operator (to whose network such mobile subscriber number currently belongs) for seeking its clearance.

This draft guideline mainly implies that a user would be able to switch telecom operator in a week (upto five days). The question regarding the charging of MNP still remains unanswered by TRAI. TRAI has asked for comments from stakeholders on the proposed draft guidelines by July 14.

MNP allows a user to change their telecom operator without changing the mobile phone number. TRAI had earlier indicated that it expects MNP to be implemented by 20 September 2009 in all metros and some states,the MNP charges are rumored in the range of Rs. 250-400. DoT has already selected two companies – Syniverse Technologies and MNP Interconnect – to implement and manage MNP.

What remains to be seen is how many people will actually avail of this facility to shift operators. In a competitive telecom market like India’s it’s unlikely that people would change unless they are extremely dissatisfied with the service. Also, since almost all the players provide similar services and prices, the Rs. 250-400 transfer cost might prove to be a deterrent.

This however could serve as an opportunity for new entrants in the industry. New telecom operators might decide to bear the cost of transfer on themselves in order to lure users to change. Of course, the implementation of MNP would only improve competition between service providers, the benefit of which will come to the user. It could also urge providers to initiate “loyalty programs” which could offer benefits to users who agree to a long-term contract with the provider.

The MNP reform has been hanging for a long time and with its implementation in sight, better guidelines would only help the cause. WATBlog earlier reported the benefits which could be accrued by Telecom VAS players through the introduction of MNP. Now the attention would be mainly on the pricing of MNP and fingers would still be crossed so that it finally sees the light of the day.

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Gmail Introduces Drag n Drop Mail Feature

seema — Thu, 02 Jul 2009 08:38:06 +0000

Today after coming to office, I opened my gmail account first and got a new window informing me about new drag and drop feature of gmail labels. Using the new features, I managed to add labels, manage them and organise my inbox easily and effectively.

Gmail is constantly adding new features to its product to maintain user retention and increase the list of subscribers. Now, lets have a quick look of new added features:

Location: Labels appear on Left navigation just above the chat list, accompanied with Inbox, Drafts, Chats and other system labels.
Hide & Show: You can hide or show the labels as per your wish and have full control over labels and their presentation. Most commonly used labels are automatically shown although you can hide them too. Labels can also be deleted from here by clicking the down-arrow to the left of that label.
Drag and Drop: This is most innovative and interesting feature added in gmail. No need to check the mail and move to folder, just drag n drop the mails onto the labels. Dragging labels into the “more” menu to hide them and vice versa can also be done. You can also change labels through Settings function. Now, the people who complain about Gmail not having drag and drop like Outlook can be happy.

This change means END OF Right-side Labels which was an experimental Gmail Labs feature. However, this is the first Labs feature that Google is retiring from its basket. Removing Right side labels indicates gmail users that don’t rely too much on Labs feature, because Google can take them away at any time.

Read More on this on their Official Google Blog

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Bindass TV Channel Launches Bindass.com - An Online Platform For Buddies

Rajiv Dingra — Wed, 01 Jul 2009 13:01:09 +0000

Bindass, the youth centric TV channel from the UTV Group has launched Bindass.com - a community platform for the youth. Just like MTVIndia’s connected they seem to have integrated it with facebook connect platform to reach out to the youth on facebook. Bindass already had a platform in Bindass.tv which showcased their TV programming. Bindass.com though is different as its trying to be a platform for on campus youth by providing both campus related content and entertainment content.

We caught up with Vahishta Mistry - VP - Interactive at UTV to know more about Bindass and its initiatives online:

1) How is the current site different from the previous site? What features have you added? Why a new platform when you already had Bindass.tv?

a) Bindass.com is a standalone web product. Our earlier site was a support mechanism for our shows – while we had a number of very rich and interactive offerings there, they were ultimately tied to the television channel. While all of those initiatives will continue even though Bindass.com has been launched, the fact is we feel there is a distinct opportunity for Bindass to become an even more relevant brand with its TG, through this product. The new features which we believe are viral and sticky, are the Bindass Buddies tool (located in the Campus section); this is a support network for new college students. We allow colleges to create their own spaces online wherein mentors, or Bindass Buddies, who are senior students, coach and guide junior students or fresher’s through their initial few months in college. On an ongoing basis, they also send updates on stuff happening on campus as well as posting events and opinions, answering questions, etc. Our scalable technology allows any college to sign up and create a page as well as nominate buddies. This three-click process happens when a user signs up and indicates what college he belongs to. Another feature we’re quite happy to implement is Facebook Connect, which enables users of Facebook to sign in to our site using only their Facebook username / password combination. The added benefits to us and the users are: no sign up form to fill, higher pool of potential users to tap into, the ability for any activity that takes place on our site to be reflected on FB. Finally, the rest of our site too, is a very robust content offering – we have identified the key types of content that dovetail well with our TG and our brand and we have striven to bring out the essence of ‘bindassiyat’ in all our content – from movie and music reviews, to gig coverage of local college bands, to interviews of some of the hottest stars in Bollywood and the Indian music industry and even our celeb bloggers, who will be launched soon.

2) Who are you targeting via this online platform?

a) Our primary target, as with our television channel offerings, are college students and first jobbers, people who understand and instantly vibe with what it means to be Bindass, to live their lives with humour and masti and fearlessness

3) What is the long term goal of the platform? Can you give us numbers in terms of projected users you plan to attract in first year?

a) The long-term goal is to make the Buddies product as much a part of the college experience as possible – the offering is viral, fills a gap in the market (both offline as well as online – no similar product exists despite a clearly vocalized need from the TG) and to make Bindass.com a destination for the sort of content that brand Bindass is best known for – iconoclastic, funny, edgy and irreverent. In terms of actual user / page views numbers, while its early days yet, our initial response leads us to believe that we should see at least a few million users by end FY2009 / 10 and our page view per user number are high (avg. of 11 – 12) so we should be quite comfortable!

4) Is there a revenue model for this platform? What is it? How long before you start making money?

a) Our model will always be a blend of advertising (online + on air) and creation of cheap, easy-to-buy and high-on-value web products / downloadable. While it’s too early to discuss the latter, the former is already in motion – we have great partners in Virgin Mobile and NIIT who have come on board to help make our Bindass Buddies even more successful. Virgin Mobile is our presenting sponsor and NIIT is an associate sponsor. It is always gratifying to see people buy into a concept and share our faith and vision of a successful and profitable product. The advertising support from Virgin and NIIT point towards even more success in the (very) near term.

5) Would there be a mobile aspect to the platform? How soon?

a) Yes there is – our technology platform supports the site being browsed on almost any handset – though we will need to implement this. The timeframe for that is a couple of months. However, we believe that merely allowing passive browsing is nowhere near enough for a mobile product – we intend to launch easy-to-install and easy-to-use applications which will allow our users to interact with the data on our site. We might launch extremely targeted apps for each type of user – college student, general content browser, etc because the needs of each user will differ and with that will come the logistical issues of how to market them, etc, but we have a very clear plan on how to do that and we are highly convinced that these products will be as much of a success as our website currently is.

6) Would bindass.com be a separate business unit? Or be a part of the TV channel?

a) Bindass.com is a part of the TV channel right now and its costs, revenues, etc form a part of GENX Entertainment’s P&L statement.

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Citibank To Launch A Trial Project For Mobi-Payment With Vodafone And Nokia

Raghav Soni — Wed, 01 Jul 2009 08:10:11 +0000

It looks like payment gateways has become a main attraction for financial services giants as Citibank India, consumer banking arm of Citigroup, has tied-up with Vodafone Essar Ltd and Nokia India to launch a pilot project testing its Mobi-payment solution in India.

The pilot project is said to be one of the largest ever taken and is currently launched in Bangalore.The mobi-payment technology which the Citibank is testing is called NFC(near field communication) allowing users to make payments by just intercepting their mobile phone against a reader terminal.Thus the mobiles in future could be used in the same way as wallets.

The technology was also tested in New York and has undergone similar trials in other countries like Singapore although has not seen much success off lately. Near Field Communication or NFC, is a short-range high frequency wireless communication technology which enables the exchange of data between devices (MOBILE AND READER TERMINAL) over a 10 centimetre distance.

NFC as a mobi-payment technology has not seen much success in India despite being deployed by few other companies. Citibank is banking on 400+ million cell phone users to drive demand for m-payment gateways. The tie-up with two big telecom players may also provide the right kind of exposure to this ambitious project.

WATBlog earlier did a story on feasibility of Mobi-payments and also the various technology that could be utilized to proliferate Mobi-payment uses. According to Gartner, the number of users making payment via mobile will be more than 190 million by 2012.

In India the success of NFC as m-payment gateway largely depends on users who find other mobi-payment solutions like SMS based and auto-IVR etc cumbersome to use. The technology has also seen security concern raised by few users in the past.

Telecom companies through such tie-ups are looking at increasing their offerings which may accrue financial benefits in the future.Thus it could be said that India is leading the race in M-commerce although it has seen laggard performance in E-commerce till now.

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MTV Promotes New Show Via Facebook App ‘Celebrity Connect’

Rajiv Dingra — Wed, 01 Jul 2009 07:00:44 +0000

MTV India has always been very active with its social media activities and we have tracked the same here at WATBlog be it for MTV roadies or Battleground 2. Now MTV has chosen to integrate facebook in the launch of its new show Connected. This show is about how connected real twins can be. Inorder to connect with the youth Mtv India has integrated facebook connect with its microsite available on mtvindia.com/connected.

Screenshot below:

The app is called ‘Celebrity Connect’ where users will be able to choose their celebrity look-alike from a range of sportsmen, politicians and bollywood celebrities and this will be published as an update on their Facebook profile! This reminds us of an app we reviewed here which was on similar lines by Myheritage.com

One may ask whats the incentive to users?

Well the user with the maximum claims on look-alikes and the closest match of a consumer with a celebrity will be featured on MTV! Additionally end users of mtvindia.com will also be able to rate and comment on the celebrity connections.

What does facebook have to say about this tie up?

Meenal Balar, International Marketing Manager for Facebook had this to say about the tie up with MTV “We are excited to see MTV’s ‘Celebrity Connect’ powered by Facebook. Using Facebook Connect, users can now register to connect with their top celebrities in 2-clicks, and easily share and discover celebrity choices with their Facebook friends. This is a great way for MTV India to create deeper social engagement on their site through Facebook technology.”

Facebook Connect - Facebooks brand strategy solution?

The above tie up with MTV is a clear example of how Facebook plans to use its facebook connect feature. The youth is hooked onto facebook (it being among the top 10 sites in India) and all of them remember the facebook ids. Given this fact Facebook connect gives a great platform to brands to reach out to a youth centric audience without making them fill any registration form. It also gives brands an access to facebook features and also users a way to connect with different of their brands. In short this seems like a win win situation for facebook and brands.

With regards to the above tie up one is not sure if there are commercials involved from either party. Ideally facebook should be charging MTV but given that facebook connect itself is a free tool and building and uploading an app on facebook is also free I doubt there might have been exchange of commercials.

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YouTube Will Now Let You Link Off Site - Expect Traffic Games on Videos

Maneesh Madambath — Tue, 30 Jun 2009 18:29:26 +0000

Now when I say traffic games they aren’t quite the kind of games that YouTube publishers started building recently. It rather works on the metaphor of playing tricks using features that weren’t made for such tricks.

The games however can now happen because of what YouTube plans with an update to its advertising system.

According to Techcrunch, YouTube is unveiling what they call the Call-To-Action Overlay,which is a semi-transparent pop-up that links viewers to any website you choose.

This is big news, especially for direct marketers and their likes. One doesn’t need to talk about the insane amount of traffic that YouTube gets. Marketers realized therefore very early the potential that the site has to drive traffic on to their web platforms. It started with funny videos, to video blogging, to ads with made for web viral elements.

However, despite all the apparent benefits that YouTube seemed to provide, there was always a constant nagging issue. The issue of embeding external URLs. I have watched countless videos of people spelling out web URLs, typing them out on screen, leaving URLs as post roll ads after the video is done. All this in the hope that the viewers note them down and come to the site by typing them out. Seriously, YouTube made things very difficult for marketers.

Part of the reason was of course the same as why Yahoo never bought Google when it could - putting URLs sends traffic out of the site. For a site that banks on engagement and higher user presence through the length of the video (video sites require the video to be completely viewed for advertisers to pay them, mostly) this is a critical point. Therefore this move by YouTube though a blessing for marketers, is quite a brave on Google’s part.

The immediate impact of this move can be felt by the following group of people:

Online marketers who sell online/affiliate products
Independent musicians who can link the video to their online album stores
Bloggers/ Social Media Junkies
Online learning centres and resources

..to name a few.

However, there is a catch still. YouTube has made this feature live only for those who pay to be on the promoted videos program. Like TC says, You don’t have to pay anything extra for the Call-To-Action overlay, but you do have to be a paying YouTube advertiser.

It would be interesting to note if this move would actually improve YouTube’s revenues with more users now willing to pay for it and have embedded offsite links, which on the face of it works like Google Adwords. It would also be a point to note if YouTube actually begins to send hordes of visitors like other social media tools like Digg and SU.

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Propelling The Call for a Creative Renaissance in Online Advertising

Maneesh Madambath — Tue, 30 Jun 2009 16:44:45 +0000

Randall Rothenberg, CEO of the Interactive Advertising Bureau, has called for a “creative renaissance” on the Internet, which he said has been “an unthinking hostage to a direct-marketing culture and tradition that devalues creativity and its long-term effect on brands.” (Adage)

Impressiveness never goes unnoticed, and we have seen that time and again on the web in the rise and fall of web assets. This is the same with advertising on any media, Zoozoo’s certainly being a worthy and recent example. Again, this isn’t a post on creative freedom and how brands need to look beyond numbers on the web, far from it. This is a post questioning the creative strength of the digital marketing men and women in India (on a general note).

The point being mooted is that creative work online - whether they be banner ads, PPC copies, newsletters, web design or web content - don’t quite match up to the standards required for ads to perform on the web. Sure there might be good one’s but they are exceptions than a rule more often than not. More than a lack of talent or skill, this can be purely attributed to a general lack of the required infrastructure and tutelage and an honest effort to hone potentials into creative vehicles churning out brilliance.

Of course from a creative house perspective, there is the perennial complaint of brands not shelving enough to foster creativity. And that’s an understandable problem, however, now when brands seem more willing to allocate higher numbers to digital media maybe this point loses its sheen. Again, as evangelists and aware members of this eco system, it is upon us to go the extra mile and make innovation happen. Such efforts will lead to better performance thereby elicit more responses and in general make online advertising more efficient. We all stand to gain by that.

Lack of investment in creative pursuits again is not the core matter at hand. I believe that even if higher tags are put on creative skills, say graphic designing for instance, it might not push up the degree of creativeness the web demands. This is because the investment required is not in skill sets, rather it is required in the mindsets of the creative folk.

The web might not be a special medium but it for sure is an unique medium unlike the similarity that tend to exist between say print and television. It creates unique habits among its users, and it creates subsets of behavioral tendencies among them. This in turn means that any advertising or marketing effort needs to tailor itself to these points pertaining to the users. To understand this one needs to understand the web and study how it impacts people. It is not CSS or Javascripts, it is not Flash or Silverlight, rather it is understanding human behaviour that needs studying. Just like it is not the camera that rather the script that makes ads on television work.

In such a scenario, the onus of advertising on the web actually begins to fall on the shoulders of publishers. They need to create content that engages people enough that they begin to spend time online. The more time that is spent, the more observation creative beings can make and they can then bring out better ads. If India as an advertising destination can perform well to a certain extent in traditional media is because of the impact had on the society. The web needs to follow suit.

In that context one can go back to the point of lack of infrastructure and how mass adoption is required and that is where the challenge really lies. True but only to an extent. The fact is that the 60 odd million Indians who are online, we are not doing enough to satisfy them. TV in India didn’t happen overnight, for many years there was just one channel seen on Black and White screens, but advertising and good ones at that happened then. It is their performance and impact that led to its adoption by brands.

Digital media needs to create such an impact. It needs a creative renaissance. It needs an epoch making season.

Again, even though I dismissed the skill set and technology knowledge earlier as secondary to mindset training, its role can definitely not be underplayed. Technology gives wings to imagination, it drives the functions that creativity carves and makes actions happen. Here again, publishers online must take the lead in making knowledge accessible and investing in technology (read standards) themselves.

Digital Media is a huge canvas, but that doesn’t mean you need bigger brushes, rather it calls for you to have a bigger vision. As children of this media it is upon us to not only safeguard its core virtues but also stretch its inherent strength. This medium needs a fresh approach, a fresh perspective with nimble feet and we all need to be in this together.

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‘Delete’ - New Way To Tackle Cyber Crime In India

Raghav Soni — Tue, 30 Jun 2009 12:22:06 +0000

We probably hear a lot about awareness drive by government regarding various human and social illnesses but its first time that the Hyderabad police has launched a campaign named ‘Delete’ on the similar lines to drive awareness regarding Cyber crimes in India.

Hyderabad Police has launched an awareness drive comprising of speeches, real life incidents regarding the cyber crime taking place in India.The campaign named ‘Delete’ also offers Cyber Mantra, a list of guidelines and advice to avoid any mishaps with cyber crimes.

Cyber crime seems to have seen a rise due to the rise of social networks and internet usage. Many Internet users are being trapped by cyber squatters even causing financial losses. This includes e-mail sent by some Nigerians urging users to claim unaccounted money by paying few thousand dollars in advance.

Many users have also cried foul about stealing of credit card details by cyber cafe’s and other key loggers in use. The rise in hacking of user accounts has also seen a major advance thus also causing social and moral distress to many Internet users.

The main aim for the campaign is to turn cyber victims into Cybervangelists, people coming forward with their cyber crime incidents. This could provide a better platform to understand cyber squatters and thus could be tackled very effectively. It may also help in increasing awareness as Cybervangelists turn public perceptions regarding their immunity from cyber crimes.

The ‘delete’ campaign also gives away many freebies like caps, Delete campaign t-shirts etc to encourage people for participating in such drives. The Police has also opened a site for the campaign purpose [Delete Know bouts ]. A user could also get cyber cyber cops to come at his place to give him CYBER MANTRA by mailing at given address.

This sort of Campaign is a good start to raise mass awareness regarding cyber crimes. The need to regulate online crimes and put it to jurisdiction is important as today it touch millions of lives in many ways. The police working closely with cyber crime branch should also facilitate easy reporting of cyber crimes.

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Growth Predictions - Online at 44%, Mobile at 600% in FY ‘09-10 - Digital Media Outlook Report

Rajiv Dingra — Tue, 30 Jun 2009 04:44:32 +0000

Webchutney - The Digital Marketing Agency has released the first edition of its annual report which looks at the future prospects of the Digital Media Industry in India. This report analyzes the digital medium by analyzing the ad-spends of the Top 500 marketers who control two thirds of all advertising spends in India. The interview was conducted with the sampled marketers, who were typically C-level executives (13% of them were Brand Heads, 15% were Marketing Communication Heads and almost 72% were Marketing Heads).

The report is made in association with JuxtConsult. Some numbers from the report are as follows:

The report also does some crystal ball gazing into the future. Here are the future growth predictions:

As the statistics show above both Internet and Mobile show increased spending in year 09-10. Infact mobile is expected to grow faster than any other medium.

Our Take: These are interesting findings but the credibility of the same is questionable as Webchutney itself is a digital agency and hence a pro-digital media report is expected. We would really like an independent body or research agency to carry out such research reports to give a fair as well as credible insight into the digital media space. Nonetheless the report is quite informative and it does give insights into the reasons for digital media spending and media spending by top 500 advertisers.

The report can be read below:

The report is available for a free download at: http://www.scribd.com/doc/16945866/WebChutney-Digital-Media-Outlook-Report-2009

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Native Mobile Apps Vs Web Based Mobile Apps - An Analysis

Pradeep Kumar — Tue, 30 Jun 2009 04:14:23 +0000

Mobile apps have taken the world by storm be it Apples iphone apps or growing number of Anrdoid apps or Palm pre apps. Apple has already seen one billion mobile app downloads, Palm pre app catalog hit 1M downloads in less than three weeks of it’s release and Piper Jaffray estimates that mobile app spending will top $13 billion worldwide by 2012,nearly fivefold increase over 2009. It’s like heavens are raining gold over mobile apps, especially native app developers and app stores.

Amid all this the question that makes me think over and over is what are the odds in favor of mobile browser over mobile apps, Let’s have a look at the status quo.

Status Quo is Native Mobile Apps Rule

Native mobile apps can work offline and they don’t need an internet connection to operate.

Native apps deliver great experience to the user, especially with the recent developments in multitouch capabilities providing richer gaming and multimedia experience.

Native apps can access GPS, calender and address book effectively using PIM data delivering superior functionalities.

Alike web apps native apps do have a sustainable business model. The app store distribution model has been a great success. Ex: iPhone and palm besides others.

…and Mobile web apps?

There are some advantages associated with mobile web apps too viz.,

The cost of development is very less compared to the native apps

no upgrade installations required on the user front

cross platform support is easily achieved by supporting different web browsers

and these reasons obviously were not enough for the proliferation of web apps, but here’s a good news.

For local content browser still rules

It has been recently found that when it comes to finding local content, browser still rules, ComScore reported that the number of people in the U.S. who sought local content on mobile devices grew 51 percent from March 2008 to March 2009 and that mobile browser is most popular way to find local content with 20.7 million browser users in March 2009, up 34 percent versus a year ago. Only about half as many people use downloaded apps to find local data.

What will possibly trigger the proliferation of web apps?

Google Gears

Google gears is one of the most important development in the mobile web browser front. Google gears will not only eliminate one of the main hurdles, the offline functionality,it could add richness to the web applications. Google gears though cannot access PIM data it has a geo-location API which let’s the applications access the location data.

Google gears is already available on IE Mobile, Opera Mobile and Android Devices.

HTML5

HTML5 is probably going to be the native app killer, a ground breaking upgrade to the existing specification, will probably change the way we use web. HTML5 not only enables a browser to play multimedia without any plugins but also brings richness to the web apps without a Flash or Silverlight plugin.

Some of HTML5 features are already available on Firefox 3.5, IE8 and iPhones Safari browser

Flash 10

Full featured flash will be soon available on smartphones running Windows Mobile, Android, Nokia S60/Symbian and Palm beginning 2010.

ARM, the company with the most widely used processors in mobile devices is working with Adobe to optimize Flash 10 for it’s processors pushing it for wider adoption.

Full featured flash obviously implies rich applications and multimedia on web apps.

So what are the odds in favor of web apps?

If further developments happen soon enough, which is quite probable, we will see more web based mobile apps and cloud computing and less native apps, until then you just have to download the mobile apps from the app stores.

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The Other Side Of Iran’s Supposed ‘Twitter Revolution’

Aditya Rao — Tue, 30 Jun 2009 04:01:41 +0000

Last week, I wrote a very detailed post on the Iran controversy and the importance of social media communications; on how Twitter and the new online media has emerged as the hero in Iran by helping us get the news from the very heart of chaotic Iran. The current Iran government might have clamped its hands down on the communications network there, but the news still did manage to trickle out, albeit a bit slowly.

I again emphasize on the fact that the protests are still being organized in Iran via traditional offline networks and calling the gallant efforts by the supporters of democracy at Iran a “Twitter Revolution” will be doing them injustice. (And it looks as if Gaurav Mishra agrees with me here)

So, I thought of writing this post from the other side.

From the government’s side and what have they been doing to crack down on the protests and stopping the viral spread of WOM (word of mouth) to the outside world.

The real conclusion that many people here tend to forget is that for regimes hell bent on surviving their rebels, electronic dissent is so much easier to suppress than traditional methods of organizing information. The Iran government has one of the most sophisticated mechanisms in the world for censoring the internet on Iranian soil, which allows them to see every packet of data travelling in the digital lines. The Iranian government is using a method called Deep Packet Inspection; where all digital traffic in the country is routed to a single choke point and can thus be inspected and monitored. This includes every e-mail, tweet and blog post. Technical experts then set up filters for some specific hot keywords and hence keep the bad stuff from going out. Because of the crowd sourcing capabilities of Social Media, it’s now no longer enough to block access to web sites hosted elsewhere.

This monitoring capability is not new and is being used in many countries, most notably being The People’s Republic of China. The Iranian machines were provided by a joint venture between the cell phone giants Siemens and Nokia. It was apparently a very ‘small’ part of the huge deal which included mobile phone networking technology. I personally think it’s still a wonder that the two companies have still not faced any PR backlash because of this.

If you stop and think about it, it’s pretty obvious that it’s not just the good guys who will know how to use the power of web to their advantage? One thing of which I am really proud is that the Internet sure is giving the government one hell of a time, those sons of ….

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