INTERACTIVE MARKETING BLOG

I’m back after almost 3 weeks

noreply@blogger.com (Sampad Swain) — Wed, 29 Oct 2008 13:50:00 +0000

I’m blogging after almost 3 weeks. I have lot of things to share about whats been happening with me or this blog and why this sudden change of things around “Interactive Marketing Blog“.

First of all, due to a sudden mishap I met with a car accident which kept me away from blogging (I’m not getting into nitty gritty of it). Secondly, after much dilly-dallying I have shifted over to my own domain which will stay as my name goes. So please if you have been reading my blog at http://managementchords.blogspot.com then please change your bookmarks to make it easier for us to keep in touch. One of the main reasons I shifted over my own domain is the lack of freedom in Blogger which I think most of us know.

Some of the fallouts of shifting over to new domain was to let go off my hundreds of comments which you folks have posted. Sooner or later I’ll figure something out to republish it here. So if you folks have some nifty suggestion on this, please mail me at sampad.s[at]gmail.com or just post a comment.

Finally, rest of the things around me & this blog has been rounded off to make your time spent here in this site more worth it.

Nonetheless, Thank you for all your support via Twitter, FriendFeed, Emails & Phone calls.

Special Thanks:

Abhishek Shah, Santosh P, Daksh Sharma and few others for helping me in setting up this site.

THANK YOU

Perfect Social Media Marketing Job Description

noreply@blogger.com (Sampad Swain) — Thu, 09 Oct 2008 07:30:00 +0000

Recently I was going through one of India's online digital news content sites where I stumbleupon this. Below is the job content of a "Social Media Marketing Evangelist". Why this interested me if you ask, then my answer is clear one- I never thought that India has yet grown into a Social Media Marketing bedrock where EVANGELISTS are required. But it seemed like I was wrong to some extent. Even though we have not reached the critical mass of using SMM in our communication strategy but surely it has gained some amount of traction.

Below is the job description of a Social Media Marketing Evangelist required by some Indian SMM company. What excited me is the last couple of lines on the experience column i.e. "Deep Passion for Social Media is MUST". I believe that "Passion" is one thing without which a Social Media Evangelist can't pull the rabbit out of the hat since the very crux of Social Media is formed to democratize the participation of customers. So passionate marketers can always create loyal evangelist customers since the birth of social media was due to the long list of unattended customers who were never heard or given any due attention in the old marketing communication process.

Is Facebook really Listening?

noreply@blogger.com (Sampad Swain) — Thu, 09 Oct 2008 07:05:00 +0000

Click here for the inset picture

This is what Facebook Team has to say about my feedback on their new design. Below is the content of the mail they sent me today.

Hi,

We appreciate your feedback about the new site design. We’re constantly trying to improve things on the site, so it is good to know what is working for you and what isn’t. Unfortunately, we can’t write individual responses to each of these emails, but we are reading them. We hope these changes make the site even more useful for you. If there are any specific changes you recommend, please let us know.

You may also want to check out this note ( http://blog.new.facebook.com/blog.php?post=31033537130) from our founder and CEO, Mark Zuckerberg, and read his thoughts about the new Facebook.

If you are having any problems with your account, you can also check out our Help page ( http://www.facebook.com/help.php) where you'll find information about Facebook as well as the answers to many answers of your questions.

Thanks again for writing in.

-The Facebook Team

The highlight bold portion of the above content shows that Facebook cares. But how much care is care if they don't change the new design which I believe is still filled up with useless apps. Though I just hope the Facebook returns to its old design where navigation was so easy and user friendly.

Get More Juice on Google's SMS Channels

noreply@blogger.com (Sampad Swain) — Tue, 07 Oct 2008 10:20:00 +0000

Google India has just introduced a new product called Google SMS Channels that lets you subscribe to news alerts, blog updates and other kinds of information like horoscopes, jokes, stocks or even cricket scores via SMS text messages. (Courtesy: Blogoscoped)

So, if you're based in India, and don't have the time to visit my blog on the net, or to read the posts on the email newsletter, then you can now subscribe to it via SMS, using Google's SMS channels in India and get some Interactive Marketing Blog's juice in your mobile handset.

CLICK HERE to subscribe.

More Info: Google SMS Channels, which seems to have lot in common with SMS Gupshup, is free both for content publishers as well as mobile phone users who subscribe to text updates via SMS.

Families or friends can create private SMS groups on Google SMS channels and stay in touch via SMS without paying any fees to their mobile carrier. (Courtesy: Digital Inspiration)

What's your Tweet Worth?

noreply@blogger.com (Sampad Swain) — Sun, 05 Oct 2008 08:17:00 +0000

This is a perfect "lazy sunday" post. This post will provide some juice on Twitter and the state of things. For almost a year now, Twitter has been the poster child for everyone who has been chasing Bright & Shiny Objects in the Web.

Now a new service called Twittad is launched which wants to monetize the Twitter background real estate. The company is allowing Twitter users to make their page backgrounds available to the highest bidder. Each listing includes the number of followers, the duration, and the price. Advertisers can then purchase the spots, with Twitter ad collecting a 5% commission on the transaction. So far there aren’t enough transactions completed to estimate the average value of a Twitter follower over a given time period, but this example of a recently sold ad spot for an account with 250 followers went for $5 for one month.

Now the company is sponsoring WhatsYourTweetWorth, a vanity site where you enter your Twitter name, and it tells you how much your Tweets are worth based on how many followers you have.

But there are inherent problems with this new business model:

1. Page backgrounds are not clickable (See here) and there is no easy way for a third-party service to track any meaningful metrics other than impressions.

2. With so much activity taking place on your friend timeline in the Web Interface or in a third-party apps, profile pages are not necessarily valuable estate.

3. Lastly, one most imminent problem is that I rarely go to my friend's Twitter profile since their tweets are visible on my twitter profile or third-party apps. So its like pushing ads to myself only at the end of it all.

Few possible solutions:

1. Try working out these ads in a blended format with the tweet stream (though it may prove out to be annoying).

2. Forget about trying to sell ads on Twitter pages, and put ads on WhatsYourTweetWorth instead.

3. These ads can at the best work out as pure brand advertisements for clients who just want to push in their messages in the twitter profiles.

Despite the inherent problems in Twittad’s model, there are a number of other companies attempting to monetize web page backgrounds, including AdCamo, who is providing a platform to both publishers and ad networks.

Courtesy: TechCrunch & Mashable

Top 10 Predictions on Social Networking

noreply@blogger.com (Sampad Swain) — Fri, 03 Oct 2008 14:00:00 +0000

In my last post on Indian Social Networking Trends, I drew analogy between one of Dina's post and beta launch of Yahoo's SpotM. So this time around, I took the liberty to go much beyond trending and give much more concrete and holistic view of how Social Networking space will shape up for the future.

Though I wrote about it here, here & here, so this time around I will try to provide some more juice on social networks. Here are some of my top 10 social networking prediction are:

1. Mobile Networking will catch up mainstream: Interaction in social networks happens most often through messages which is the most common feature. Some call it wall posts, other as scraps etc. It is most frequent among younger generation who wants to be connected 24*7. Mobile devices will become a savior since its the only device which is ubiquitous and its reach is wide. But certain hindrances are still to be overcome like the browser based networks don’t leverage the power of the mobile device, and client based applications are blocked by service providers and handset limitations. So once someone utilizes this potential to create an application that has enough traction to catch the attention and remove the tech limitations of browser apps compatibility with mobile devices and stuff like service providers blockades, then connectivity isn't a issue.

2. "Content is King" will be the buzzword: Yes, the content is the buzzword. Some may find it difficult to fathom it but it's true. The content of the network, we all will be in is going to be the single most factor which could win over the Social Networks battle.

3. The "longish" long tail will prevail: Over the past year, its unimaginable to find that there are scores of social networks on the fringes - social networks for babies, mothers, Lesbian/Gay/Bisexual/Transgender/Questioning and many more unique yet prevalent social networks. So power of the longish long tail will prevail in Social Networking.

4. Interactive Apps will augment social networks: Sandeep has an interesting take on this one - The new interactive mechanisms for many social sites may be backed by artificial intelligence. This will bring spice to the entire model. For instance, your social network or online group will show itself to be angry, happy, sad, etc., all on its own, as a result of its members' input. These small and unique interactive developments will engage the users to a great extent.

5. Content Creation & Consumption will happen at the source: Social networks won't just be a platform to feed & share your personal life with friends & family. It will become our megaphone to voice about anything & everything around us. Though first round initiatives have been taken - Thanks to Google.

6. Changes in "Content Delivery" of Social Networks: Content delivery via social networks will change over time. Social networks will act also as an entertainment cum information window for users in world wide web viz. ChillX.

7. Monetization of actionable content in Social Networks: Monetization has been a problem for social networks (read here, here & here too). But once social networks are able to position themselves as branded content providers like MySpace have done then monetization won't be pain. But for this enough critical mass is needed for which social networks have to duly rely on other distributive mediums like progressive mobile networks etc to spread their content.

8. Medium will become the message in Social Networks: Since we are talking about social networks which provides vast information pool at free cost for end users, so medium itself is easy to spread and theme based social networks will definitely plug in more users who will in turn out to be evangelists to spread the message. One of the networks which I know is working towards it is ChillX which wants to attract Indian Gen X & Y to form a community of users who share & spread.

9. The power of community will prevail: Social networks are typically measured in terms of registered users, unique users and engagement (in terms of time spent, page views per unique user etc. This will be on the rise once social networks are able to draw users into community. This will be on the rise in the near future.

10. Geographically & Culturally focused Social Networks: The popularity of social networks varies by region. In the U.S., Myspace and Facebook are most popular; in India and Brazil, Orkut rules; China has QQ; Europe has Hi5. So we will see more & more of geographically & culturally focused social networks like Viacom's Flux which will stress on “Personal community”. (Read more on this here).

So these are Top 10 Social Networking predictions that will prevail in the near future. I'll do a series of such posts in the future too as on when it happens.

Singularity, Human Intelligence & Google

noreply@blogger.com (Sampad Swain) — Wed, 01 Oct 2008 17:32:00 +0000

The concept of singularity dates back as long as the evolution of computers go if not more than that. But what excited me about the whole Singularity concept is Kevin Kelly. He is a genius and pioneer of Web (and I'm just being modest). In his recent post on his blog, he wrote this:

......a smarter than human artificial intelligence will bring about yet smarter intelligence, which in turn will rapidly solve related scientific problems (including how to make yet smarter intelligence), expanding intelligence until all technical problems are quickly solved, so that society's overall progress makes it impossible for us to imagine what lies beyond the Singularity's birth. Oh, and it is due to happen no later than 2045. I agree with parts of that. There appears to be nothing in the composition of the universe, or our minds, that would prevent us from making a machine as smart as us, and probably (but not as surely) smarter than us. My current bet is that this smarter-than-us intelligence will not be created by Apple, or IBM, or two unknown guys in a garage, but by Google;

Continuing with the same, I want to share few couple of points on Kevin's take on Artificial Intelligence (AI), Human Intelligence and Google of course.

1. The question posed on Kevin's "Thinkism" by Yihong Ding is something which we tend to overlook at times i.e. the evolution of human brain potential with advancement of technology. If we keep both AI and human brain in X-Y axis, then we just can't keep one as constant and other as variable since chances of advancement in evolution will definitely show duality. So haven't we turn out to be more smarter than we were before?

Hypothesis: “Singularity” is that machine intelligence which may be improved rapidly while human intelligence keeps at the same level. However, the reality might not simply be this way. When we improve machines by artificial intelligence, why can’t machines improve us on human intelligence as well? Because of the machines we invented, we can think better and think further beyond the limit of our single brains. We may have collective human brains to think just like machines collaborate their computational power.

2. My second point is ImindI:This new startup company more or less shows what lies in the future. I call it close & personal web. The Web will know everything about us like what we like, what we don't like etc. We can call it as "Our mind on the Web". Read this post, it will provide more insights what I'm talking about.

3. The third point is of course Google- the one point stop for most Web visionaries. It has defined web 1.0, defining web 2.0 and more necessary will define web 3.0, but thats not all. The last & final frontier for Google to embed itself into our lives is "How much is the limit". People will feel strangled for privacy but the question that will be asked in the future is the trade-off between privacy or convenience. I guess we already know the answer, so I don't want to make it obvious here. So Google, even according to Kevin will emerge sooner or later as the World Wide Computer on the internet. And it is very possible that this other intelligence beyond ours would emerge on or long before 2045.

Lousy Customer Service

noreply@blogger.com (Sampad Swain) — Fri, 26 Sep 2008 01:51:00 +0000

Click on the inset picture

There are many things which can make a customer go mad. One of them is lousy customer service. But this inset picture says it all. Just when an unassuming customer is entering a retail shop, he sees this.

Quote-unquote: Management is not responsible for any loss of hand baggage deposited with security.

My question is: Who is then? Isn't security a part of your team? TRUST is one factor which takes a lifetime to build and here it is broken at the very instant when a customer is entering the retail shop.

Image courtesy: Siddhartha Reddy (Twitter handler)

Indian Social Networking Trends

noreply@blogger.com (Sampad Swain) — Wed, 24 Sep 2008 16:00:00 +0000

I've to say upfront that I'm a keen observer of Social Media, which by now must be quite evident if you're a regular to this blog. If not then I may have something interesting for you. So keeping with the blog post, I keep a track about what's hot & what's not in Social Media and much so in Social Networking especially in India.

The genesis of this blog post is Dina Mehta's blog post on "Future of Social Networking" and more so a recent development from Yahoo! Indian Arm which came up with a new Social Networking site dubbed as SpotM for the age bracket 16-24 to capture the growing Indian market (Read my post here).

So on this recent Yahoo! development, I also commented my opinions as to what would fancy Indian users so as the capture their imagination & in turn take advantage of growing Indian market. Below are my comments from my previous post:

....within a span of 2-3 years there have been plethora of Social Networking Sites (SNS) developed by Indians and International giants like Google, Facebook, MySpace etc. So for SpotM, it better be good, different, fast, high on usability and wide reaching otherwise another failed investment.....

On the hindsight, I recently came across another site called ChillX which has tried to position itself as a site where Indian youth can hang out dubbed as "Hamara Desh". Now a quick usability check gave me a very good impression about its various features its blogs, videos, news and my favorite- the chat applet. Though this may be nothing new to most of us, but surely this site has unique Indian community feeling which I saw lacking in most western counter parts as of now. Also if I'm not wrong then this site's positioning is more "Community Based" i.e. it wants to build a community of Indian Youths.

So taking cues from Dina's statement on Social Networking's future

“Networks based on & layered around location, access, presence & context. Those that enhance real-world interactions. Enabling choice, privacy and control”

it seems evidential that without these key ingredients i.e. layered network effects across location, access, presence & most importantly context which enhances real world interactions with different users will define the future of Indian Social Networking Space.

So what do you think will click in Indian Social Networking Space?

Top 10 Social Media Blogs in India

noreply@blogger.com (Sampad Swain) — Mon, 22 Sep 2008 13:53:00 +0000

The genesis of this post started long time back when I started the Social Media Marketing space in India for a while now. After hovering around in the Web, I've found very few comprehensive lists on Social Media Blogs in India. So this effort is primarily to put all those insightful & interesting blogs under "Top Social Media Blogs in India's" list and rank them accordingly.

The "Top 10 Social Media Marketing blogs" list ranks blogs according to Google PageRank, Alexa Rank, Number of Feed Subscribers, Technorati Authority and My Ranking (as Sampad's Rank).

#1	Gauravonomics (RSS)	8	4	5	3	5	25
#2	Rajesh @ BlogWorks (RSS)	8	5	5	3	2	23
#3	India PR Blog (RSS)	7	4	5	3	2	21
#4	Customer World (RSS)	7	5	3	3	2	20
#5	Kiruba Shankar (RSS)	7	5	3	1	3	19
#6	Dina Mehta (RSS)	5	5	3	3	3	19
#7	Bhatnaturally (RSS)	8	3	5	1	1	18
#8	Technology, Mobility, Usability and other Musings (RSS)	7	5	3	1	1	17
#9	Brants (RSS)	7	4	3	1	1	16
#10	Daksh's Marketing Blog (RSS)	5	5	3	1	1	15

The list down below are the rest of the blog which are trailing behind as per the ranking to get into the top 10 list.

#11	Interactive Marketing Blog (RSS)	6	4	3	1	1	15
#12	Marketing in a branded world!! (RSS)	6	3	3	1	1	14
#13	MisEntropy (RSS)	6	3	3	1	1	14
#14	Saurabh Garg (RSS)	6	2	3	1	2	14
#15	Marketology- Emerging Trends (RSS)	5	4	1	1	3	14
#16	One Size Fits One (RSS)	5	4	1	1	1	12
#17	CheckPosts- On Marketing Media and Culture(RSS)	4	4	1	1	1	11
#18	Digerati Forum (RSS)	3	3	1	1	1	9

Each of the five factors range from 0 to 10, where 10 is the maximum score. The maximum total score for each blog, therefore, is 50. There will be monthly updates on the ranking. Below you will find the details about the algorithm:

Blogs Considered: The list considers only blogs that have high percentage of Social Media related content. Topics might range from Social Media news, information, tips, building communities, conversations etc.

Google PageRank (0 to 10): Google PageRank is a link-analysis algorithm that interprets web links and assigns a numerical weighting (0 to 10) to each site. The actual PageRank was used in the algorithm.

Alexa Rank (0 to 10):Alexa ranks sites with an algorithm that incorporates page views and reach (the percentage of all web users who have visited that particular site). This ranges were determined based on the Alexa Rank (i.e., 150k and up, 150k-100k, 100k-75k, 75k-50k) and each range was asssigned a number (1 to 10).

Feed Subscriber (0 to 10): Subscriber ranges were determined (i.e., 1-50, 50-100, 100-150, 150-200 and more) and each range was assigned a number (1 to 10).

Technorati Authority (0 to 10): Much like the InLinks count, Technorati's Authority count is the number of blog (as opposed to individual links) that link to a particular blog. Ranges were determined based on Technorati's Authority rank (i.e., 1-100, 100-200, 200-400, 400-600 & more) and each range was assigned a number (1 to 10).

Sampad's Rank (0 to 10): This is the only subjective measure in the algorithm to be assigned to the blogs which will be ranked. The actual rank depends on the content of the blog posts, quality of the blog posts, frequency, creativity & relevancy.

P.S. These are the best blogs on Social Media in India. If you also want to feature in the "Best Social Media Blogs in India" list, please link back to this post or else mail me at sampad.s [at]gmail.com your Blog Address and RSS feed for review. As soon as your blog gets listed, will mail you back.

Google's Intelligent Cloud & Kevin Kelly's "Next 5,000 days of the Web"

noreply@blogger.com (Sampad Swain) — Fri, 19 Sep 2008 13:55:00 +0000

From Google Blog Post:

"...The internet has had an enourmous impact on people's lives around the world in the ten years since Google's founding. It has changed politics, entertainment, culture, business, health care, the environment and just about every other topic you can think of. Which got us thinking, what's going to happen in the next ten years? How will this phenomenal technology evolve, how will we adapt, and (more importantly) how will it adapt us?....."

Some more juice on this: "....Thus, computer systems will have greater opportunity to learn from the collective behavior of billions of humans. They will get smarter, gleaning relationships between objects, nuances, intentions, meanings, and other deep conceptual information. Today's Google search uses an early form of this approach, but in the future many more systems will be able to benefit from it."

Now this is real damn interesting stuff - Future of Google or should I say Future of Internet. Saurabh has got some interesting stuff to share here on "Future of Search" too.

What really got me excited was not the word Future which is all around this blog post but the prediction of different set of minds towards one direction i.e. Future of Search linked with Google & Internet par se.

Check out the video from Kevin Kelly from TED Talks.

One suggestion would be to check the comments down below the video.

Though this is the end of the post but the question will still remain: Where are we going? So just to put it in simple words, the best way to predict the future is to invent it, so we will be doing our best to make good on our experts' words every day - Karen Wickre & Alan Eagle, Series Editors of Intelligent Cloud from GoogleBlog.

Yahoo Launches SpotM in India

noreply@blogger.com (Sampad Swain) — Fri, 19 Sep 2008 13:35:00 +0000

From TechCrunch: "......Yahoo India announced that it has launched yet another social network for the 16-24 age bracket in an attempt to capture the growing market in India. And although scant details are available, it sounds interesting.

Target Market:

Dubbed SpotM, the new social network will bring college-aged and those close to going to college together in one space.

Marketing/Targetting Dilemma:

There’s no word on how Yahoo will be able to ensure everyone using the service is really as old as they claim, but Yahoo believes it can manage that problem.

Points of Differentiation:

SpotM attempts to differentiate itself by offering two features:-

1. The idea of a secret friend.

2. SMS integration with anonymous chat.

According to Yahoo, SpotM will allow users to make friends with other users and if they choose, make those friends private so other users don’t know about the relationship. SMS integration with anonymous chat will let users correspond via SMS without revealing their phone number.

Scepticism:

It’s nice to see Yahoo try something new, but whether or not its privacy initiatives will really work in its favor remains in doubt. As social networks become more popular, it’s transparency that parenting groups are looking for, not privacy. And once those issues arise, every social network buckles under the pressure. Will Yahoo be any different?

SpotM is currently in private beta.

My Comments:

I’m not too sure about this new initiative by Yahoo since already within a span of 2-3 years there have been plethora of Social Networking Sites (SNS) developed by Indians and Intl giants like Google etc. So for SpotM, it better be good, different, fast, high on usability and wide reaching otherwise another failed investment I suppose to nudge Indian expectations from Yahoo.

Twitter Changes to 'New Twitter' with New Design

noreply@blogger.com (Sampad Swain) — Fri, 19 Sep 2008 02:18:00 +0000

Today Twitter changed its old design to new and much loved new design which is being appreciated a lot. Take a look at the hundreds of responses from Twitterverse.

Also take a look at freezed Search.Twitter (Formerly Summize) screenshot for all the responses via tweets which is no less than WoW, Whoa....

It s needless to say that hundreds of responses are being fed per minute about the new design also being dubbed as "New Twitter".

Also check out the trending topics of Search. Twitter which has "New Twitter" as most talked about news (Marked in Red in above picture).

Check out the official Blog of Twitter here to read from the horses mouth about the new changes.

Integrating Friendfeed into Twhirl

noreply@blogger.com (Sampad Swain) — Mon, 15 Sep 2008 18:53:00 +0000

This is an awesome new development coming from Chris Brogan via Twitter (link here). Reason why I'm excited about this new development is two fold:

1. I'm a huge fan of Data Aggregation and I feel sites like FriendFeed is just the tip of the iceberg since the future of internet in this age of ageless & countless information and on top of that millions of social tools available to track them makes our life more complex. So data aggregators like FF is sigh of relief since it has not only aggregated data but social tools like Flickr, Twitter, Blogger, digg, StumbleUpon and others in one platform from where we can track everything.

2. I always tried to keep a tab on Friendfeed (FF) but unfortunately always forget to check it out.

So this little bit of information made me quite excited since now I can track FriendFeed & Twitter together from Twhirl (twhirl is a desktop client for the Twitter microblogging platform, powered by Adobe AIR).

Down below is the steps of how to pull FriendFeed in Twhirl account (Source: Mzinga):

If you don't have Twhirl already, you need to start by downloading Adobe Air.
Once you download air and install it, download the beta version of Twhirl from Leo Laporte's site (don't go to Twhirl's site, the latest version they have is only .0.8.5)
Before you install Twhirl, make sure you have your current version of Twhirl closed if you currently use it.
This is the slightly tricky part - open up the new version of Twhirl and click on the logo in the top right-hand corner of the application (it looks like a mini green and white hurricane)
See screenshot below: The key is to select "FriendFeed" as an application option in the bottom left-hand corner:
a) Once you do this, enter your account info in the box just to the right and click the plus sign.
b) Now select your Friendfeed account from the list above.
c) Click "Connect" and this should prompt you for your "remote key" - click on the link below the box if you don't have one and it will pop up a FriendFeed browser window with your key.
d) Copy, cut and paste the key into your Twhirl dialogue box and hit enter.

Thanks again to Chris Brogan & Aaron Strout for sharing this information.

Image Courtesy: Mzinga

Read the official Twhirl release: twhirl 0.8 released - adding friendfeed support

Blog Info: HP Blog Printing Shutdown

noreply@blogger.com (Sampad Swain) — Mon, 15 Sep 2008 16:41:00 +0000

This is a part of the mail I got on 9th September, 2008 for one of my widgets on right hand sidebar which helps users to print posts by just clicking it. It seems that now you can't! If you can't read what the mail reads (Screenshot of the mail above), then this is the literature portion:

Following up on our email dated Aug. 15, 2008, this is a reminder that HP Blog Printing will be discontinued on Sept. 15, 2008 and the print dialogue that is invoked when a blog reader clicks on your blog will no longer be active.

In order to ensure that your blog readers are not negatively affected by this change, please follow the step-by-step instructions outlined in the links below to remove HP Blog Printing from your site....

So apparently, today as in 15th September, 2008 is the late date you can avail this useful widget. Gosh, I so wish that they wouldn't shutdown the widget since lot of users like it.

Read more on Launch of this Widget from Mashable.

Excuse me Mr. Marketer...

noreply@blogger.com (Sampad Swain) — Sun, 14 Sep 2008 10:28:00 +0000

...if this is the state of Marketing then "Sex Sells, not Marketing". Or this is the reason that marketing jargon like Market Penetration, Below the Line, Positioning etc seems to be derived straight from it.

Whatever the case is, Marketers, please use this as an example of over-the-top, gratuitous use of sex to sell...(Picture Courtesy: From 5 Blogs Before Lunch)

How Google Won Search War: A marketer's outlook

noreply@blogger.com (Sampad Swain) — Fri, 12 Sep 2008 12:32:00 +0000

This Screencast says it all I believe. If it's still being not evidential then let me clear up few things then.

This is the screencast of Google way back in May, 1999 & the Screencast of Yahoo in May, 1999 which I took from Way Back Machine which archives everything in internet from past to present.

Now a quick check of the links above will show 110+ links for Yahoo way back in 1999 whereas Google had none. So food for thought is why did Google win over Yahoo in the search wars? Everyone must have their own reasons but surely I can figure out one. Google anticipated our actions in terms of needs, wants & desires in the most simplistic way. Isn't that how businesses should be run? We overkill it by adding complexity in our marketing messages by re-running those boring, slapstick ads over & over again till customers get bored and start ignoring.

So Friday's thought from my side as a Marketer is: What is the oppurtunity gain/loss between choosing complexity from simplicity for customers? Any thoughts from your side is most welcome.

IAMAI Digital Marketing Conference (Bangalore,2008): Key Insights on the Intersection of Man, Technology & Culture

noreply@blogger.com (Sampad Swain) — Tue, 09 Sep 2008 11:14:00 +0000

This post talks about 3rd IAMAI Digital Marketing Conference held at Bangalore. I'll post about the broad implications later in the subsequent post of course but for now enjoy the ride through a list of tweets (Courtesy WatBlog). In between, you will find certain discussions marked green. These are the pointers which I feel makes this blog post's title apt: Key Insights on the Intersection of Man, Technology & Culture. And as usual if you feel like you've anything to say, please comment in the section below to have a discussion.

(I)“ANALOG VS DIGITAL: WHERE TO SPEND MARKETING BUDGETS NOW AND WHY”

Discussions in this section revolved around: Sellers of traditional media tout that media such as broadcast TV allows advertisers unrivaled impact and reach, attributes that become even more valuable as media fragments. Sellers of digital media counter that pinpoint targeting and ever-improving analytics make spending more in digital the right choice. Below is the crux of the discussions:

1. LIVE from #IAMAI: Goggle Ads click-through-rate (CTR) is 16% in India – Mahesh Murty, Managing Director, Pinstorm Technologies (Tweet)

2. LIVE from #IAMAI: Consumer is the new muse for our brand, that should be the approach - Chetan Marwah , Partner & Chief Executive Officer, ISHIR Digital (Tweet)

3. LIVE from #IAMAI: Move from cost per click (CPC) to cost per impact (CPI) to get better deals (Tweet)

4. LIVE from #IAMAI: Jet airways spend 50% of their digital budget in international markets whereas only 10% in India (Tweet)

5. LIVE from #IAMAI: Prediction -TV is going to be primarily digital & we are goin to see the marketer going to ask why was his ad not seen there - Mahesh Murty, Managing Director, Pinstorm Technologies (Tweet)

(II) NEW MEDIA TOOLS

Discussions in this section revolved around: The Internet was just the beginning; these days media planners are faced with a plethora of new digitally-derived media forms from podcasts to blogs, social networking to SMS, all of which need to be evaluated to see if they might meet clients needs. But how to go about it? Our panelists will help you figure that out. Below is the crux of the discussions:

6. LIVE from #IAMAI: In India, YouTube is the 6th most trafficked as per Alexa - Naren Nachiappan, MD, Jivox (Tweet)

7. LIVE from #IAMAI : Video impressions going to surpass search in Q1, 2009 in North America – ComScore (Tweet)

8. LIVE from #IAMAI : Bandwidth barrier in india is surpassed by users by downloading in office and background buffering – Naren Nachiappan, MD, Jivox (Tweet)

9. LIVE from #IAMAI: In 2005 blogs as a search category overtook magazines - Parminder Singh, Business Head - Technology & Media, Google (Tweet)

10. LIVE from #IAMAI : Customer doesn’t click on online ads as they dont want to move away from page. Try using gadgets to initiate conversation – Parminder Singh, Business Head - Technology & Media, Google (Tweet)

11. LIVE #IAMAI : Social Networks should be used to create brand evangelists and not primarily ads placement – Parminder Singh, Business Head - Technology & Media, Google. (Tweet)

12. LIVE from #IAMAI : In India, Leads from Mobile Search Ads is 3 times better & purer than desktop search leads – Parminder Singh, Business Head - Technology & Media, Google, (Tweet)

13. LIVE from #IAMAI: 71% of those who consume mobile internet ads say there perception of brand and recall has increased – Parminder Singh, Business Head - Technology & Media, Google, (Tweet)

14. LIVE from #IAMAI : For Google, mobile search queries in India is 10% of desktop queries (Tweet)

15. LIVE from #IAMAI : In US iPhone alone generates 2x the search queries of all other smart phones put together (Tweet)

16. LIVE from #IAMAI : Mobile UI is key to growth of it evolving as a medium – Parminder Singh, Business Head - Technology & Media, Google, (Tweet)

17. LIVE from #IAMAI : Rohini (Citation reqd.) - Intel Online India - Traditionally online treated as bleeding edge and therefore Marketers are wary (Tweet)

18. LIVE from #IAMAI : Rohini (Citation reqd.) - Intel Online India - Our Facebook game statistics: 16000 played, 500 per day talking about it online (Tweet)

(III)“HOW TO FIGHT WEB-WARINESS AND EMERGE AS A WINNER”

Discussions in this section revolved around: Convincing a company to spend more money in digital media is one challenge; to get it to use new media forms to break creative ground is an even bigger one. But there are those who have done it, and on this panel, we’ll hear from them-three gutsy clients who innovated not just in the media they’ve used, but in the work they’ve produced for them. Below is the crux of the discussions:

19. LIVE from #IAMAI : Big TV (Reliance DTH service) generates 50,000 leads online in two days - Tushar Vyas, Chief Marketing Officer, Sure Waves (Tweet)

20. LIVE from #IAMAI : Namrata Sehgal, Senior Manager, Trilogy - Most ads with high decibel on web have less than 1% click through rate (CTR)! We say "No wonder twitter has no ads" (Tweet)

21. LIVE from #IAMAI : Gaurav Gupta, Regional Manager Asia Pacific- Retail Operations, General Motors asks how many brick & mortar are here? Just couples of hands show up in audience! Web Wary are we? (Tweet)
22. LIVE from #IAMAI : General Motors’ 2.5% of all sales in India is through digital channel without any other channel involved for GM. Gaurav Gupta, Regional Manager Asia Pacific- Retail Operations, General Motors - (Tweet)

(IV) THE BLENDED SEARCH REVOLUTION

Discussions in this section revolved around: The first generation of search engines ranked pages based on the content of those pages alone -- the words on the page. The second generation increased relevancy by analyzing links. The third generation, Search 3.0, is upon us now in full force. Today’s search engines automatically blending in results from specialized or "vertical" search engines such as video search or local search. This session looks at the revolutionary change happening with blended search and how search marketers can ride the wave to success. Below is the crux of the discussions:

23. LIVE from #IAMAI : 31% images, 17% videos, 36% news - Clicking percentage on search results in a blended search - Milind Mody, CEO eBrandz (Tweet)

24. LIVE from #IAMAI : Search engines are valued high because they are content finders in context across mediums - Vivek Bhargava, Managing Director, Communicate2 (Tweet)

25. LIVE from #IAMAI : Search has not yet evolved - Narasimha Jayakumar, Business Head – Travel & Local, Google India (Tweet)

(V) TRAFFIC TO WEBSITE AND CONVERSIONS

Discussions in this section revolved around: In the beginning driving traffic was necessary and sufficient, now the dynamics of business has changed driving traffic is important but not sufficient, in the competitive environment with increasing cost per acquisition as marketers there is need for better understanding of website visitors and advertisers look for conversions. This session would look at the importance of digital marketing and maximum potential realization of digital marketing with relevant examples.

26. LIVE from #IAMAI - 'Use of good tracking & analytics software should be a core of ROI. Don’t just use freeware' - Anurag Gupta, Managing Director, DGM India Internet Marketing.

Tweet Courtesy: http://twitter.com/watblog

3 Forces that will affect Marketing forever

noreply@blogger.com (Sampad Swain) — Tue, 09 Sep 2008 04:24:00 +0000

This post is random musings from a idle blogger's mind. Early in the morning, lots of things are running in my head. So just wanted to pen down few thoughts. Primarily, the collision of 3 forces has/will change almost everything about Business:

People (Customers, Clients, Partners)
Technology (Web 2.0, Web 3.0, Cloud Computing and stuff like that)
Webonomics

1. People: They are always depended on each other and draw strength from each other (in other terms PEOPLE INFLUENCE PEOPLE).

2. Technology: It has changed everything as far as people’s social interactions are concerned.

3. Webonomics: The economics of the Web i.e. Webonomics which fancies catchy yet profound models like The Long Tail, Freemium etc are redefining the modern day business models.

So if you’ve a brand (and you’ve not involved/participated in conversations), then you are under threat. Your customers have always had an idea about what your brand signifies, an idea that may vary from the image you are projecting. Now they are talking to each other about that idea. They are redefining for themselves what that brand means to them. So your spending of millions & millions of dollars creating that brand is under threat since all these times you never came out of your air-conditioned board room to interact with your customers who now are at all time interacting & influencing each other.

Inspired from the book: Groundswell

Google Chrome, Android, Cloud Computing & My trends

noreply@blogger.com (Sampad Swain) — Fri, 05 Sep 2008 12:23:00 +0000

I kick started the year with lot of optimism and hope, especially for the netizens. That’s why I wrote this post on 01-01-2008. Excerpts of that post are down below:

"…On 31st December, 2007 GoogleBlog posted "This year of Google blogging"
which gives a lot of hints about where actually we are heading, not only in tech
space but also about general human psyche. The article contains a small piece on
the posts which captured maximum attention as well as linkbacks from other
bloggers in general. So here what's written in the article...The posts that
elicited the most reaction in terms of views and linkbacks include (courtesy
GoogleBlog):

1) The much-discussed "Gphone" news
2) Our thinking about the upcoming FCC spectrum auction.
3) What the OpenSocial APIs could mean
4) How a black screen might not save energy
5) Announcing the Knol test project
6) Building your own Google homepage

It's very simple to come up with trends for the future. Actually the past always have some clues for the future. So it becomes kind of easy to build upon it. So, looking at the maximum viewed posts, it kind of gave me the key towards the future. The ubiquitous question for every marketer ::What do customers/users want?:: My conclusions from these snippets are based on the point that giving much attention to such posts mean they want to know more about it. So when users want to know more, it becomes apparent for marketers to align their thinking in that direction. So my conclusion would be that "Users need more power, more control & all in all something which is more about THEM i.e. users" which can be in the form of Knol, OpenSocial API's etc.So lets hope 2008 brings optimum coherence between customers/users & marketers.
So, "User Federated Space (UFS)" era is now!!....”

So, come September 2008, it seems we are quite on the track. What interested me in writing this post was the way those developments are taking place. From the above 6 points of my January post, many things get clearer. Though for some, Google is evil & for some Google is God but what Google is can be explained by this small sentence: “they are a freak of a company; the best advertising business ever built is funding the largest collection of mad scientists ever assembled”. Now that's what one of the posts of AVC talks about. Interestingly it also talks about Google’s future trends and how it will shape our lives. Down below is the post:

“…...Google is building a collection of web apps, like gmail, gcal, and google docs, that businesses are increasingly relying on. My personal goal this year is to get our firm completely off of the office suite and into the google suite. As builders of web apps, Google understands that the infrastructure for the deployment and operation of web apps just isn't there yet.

And so they are doing something about it in three important places.

1) They are building a modern browser, Chrome (Point 3 of my trend post above i.e. OpenSocial API's) that resembles an operating system as much as a browser. If you haven't read the Chrome Comic Book, you should do that. It's not that Google wants to build a better version of Internet Explorer or Firefox. They want to build a better environment for running web apps.

2) They are building a mobile operating system, Android (Point 1 of my trend post above i.e. GPhone), which is also designed for running web apps in a mobile environment. I think in time, Google's Android will be to the iPhone what Windows was to the Mac. The iPhone laid out many of the killer mobile device innovations, but it’s a closed device, a closed carrier relationship, and even a closed application store. Android will take all of those good ideas and put them on every device, with every carrier, and in partnership with every app developer. You'd have thought that Apple would have learned the lesson that you can't control the entire ecosystem with the Mac, but they did not.

3) Google is all about the cloud. They have developed all of their apps in what goes for the cloud these days. They've build a great cloud computing platform in App Engine. And they will certainly support other cloud computing environments that emerge. Google's DNA (like Intel's DNA) is about supporting an entire ecosystem. The more web apps that are built, the better Google will do. So they will do anything and everything they can to support the development of a robust cloud computing environment for web apps. It is on this three legged stool (browser, mobile, cloud) that Google's future will be built. And sitting here today, it seems like they are well organized and have a great strategy for doing just that.

Now after 2 random posts (one from my earlier blog & other from AVC), two things becomes quite clear.

1. I was right about the Google’s future trends I covered in January.
2. Secondly, something is more important than me pin pointing the trends. I’m talking about Browser, Mobile & Cloud which is the table stakes for companies to win over potential customers. Now surely Google has identified it but let’s wait and watch who else joins the race so that GooG doesn’t feel too alone.

So what do you think? Where are we heading?

'Yours Truly' featured in AdAge Power 150

noreply@blogger.com (Sampad Swain) — Wed, 03 Sep 2008 07:15:00 +0000

This is the 2nd in the 'Yours Truly' series in this blog. This time around, my blog featured in the ADAGE POWER 150 list which showcases the best that there is from the Marketing, Advertising & Media blogs and bloggers from around the world.

From now on, I'll keep the Power 150 widget on the right bar of 'Networks & Affiliations' tab which will keep updating the rank status of this blog.

Apart from the usual excitement on being featured in the much elite list of bloggers, I'm quite aware that this levies more responsiblity on blogging front. Though for the past week or so, posting has reduced due some other engagements but it also shows that I'm quite aware of it. And whenever and wherever possible I'll keep blogging.

Till then, keep coming on if you've missed any previous posts and please comment/criticize/appreciate if you feel like you need to.

Guess!

noreply@blogger.com (Sampad Swain) — Tue, 26 Aug 2008 10:06:00 +0000

Click for the inset picture

In the inset picture, I have pasted the screenshot of my blog's visitors from different countries in the past one year from 26th August, 2007 to 26th August, 2008.

So can you guess how many countries have they visited from?

Please comment in the section below. Correct answers to the extent of ± 5 would be much appreciated.

Swainism # 3: Free Information, Idea Diffusion, Future of Community & Hyperconnected Customers

noreply@blogger.com (Sampad Swain) — Tue, 26 Aug 2008 03:31:00 +0000

This post talks about my usual rants about how information which has become almost free due to one of the biggest development of human history which can change everything especially business and how it works and its subtle yet definitive repurcussions on human behavior. These are my random thoughts:

1. In a world, where information is readily available at almost zero cost (≈ free) with the advent of internet, even a small pebble can create a huge wave which can revolutionize the entire human race’s way of looking/perceiving things since we all are living in a century of “Idea Diffusion”. So modern day businesses have to be as nimble footed/flexible/agile to adapt to this ever manifesting change in the way customers act/react/perceive matter.

2. Future will look bright for those companies which will know how to accumulate those nodes of disjointed data, transform into information & capture it at one place and distribute it amongst small if not huge community of like-minded people who care about you.

3. Before pondering, why your Y-o-Y charts are shifting southwards, ask these questions – Where are your customers? Where are they spending most of their time? How are they communicating with each other? I’ll try figuring out the answers, though with a hint of warning i.e. they have shifted into the realm of ‘e’ with the world around it. Oh if you’re unable to comprehend then consider yourself to be the Tyrannosaurus Rex since I was referring to INTERNET. So you spending on them sums up to nothing since they have ignored you all this while and now it’s your turn to

Click here for the picture link

I'll talk about this model in the subsequent posts. You can say this is the very model on which "Social Media" was built upon.

How should we use Twitter: Classification & their Impact on us

noreply@blogger.com (Sampad Swain) — Fri, 22 Aug 2008 09:10:00 +0000

Today an interesting conversation (here, here & here too) with Asfaq led me to brood over one simple question. How should Twitter be used? Now simple it is but its implications are manifold. To pen down some of my thoughts on “How we Tweet?” led me to another sort of thinking, i.e. does our tweeting ways or techniques of posting those short, succinct, terse messages (tweets) impact the way we think/perceive ideas/notions or stuff like that? I believe they do. I’ll take this post into two ways. First, will try to understand broadly how all those zillion of tweets posted per day around the world can be classified into and then how are they can impact the way we think/perceive about various things around us.

Firstly, those terse messages which we all have coined as Tweets can be broadly classified as:

1. Question/Enquiry Tweet: This category of tweets fall majorly into What, Where, When, How and all the other statements which ends with a question mark. These kinds of tweets generally take advantage of the collaborative framework of Twitter.

2. Share Tweet: This type of tweets are classified as sharing information in the form of links (mostly short & terse url), events & news or anything & everything which a person feels can be shared. This is the bread & butter for those ever-hungry bloggers looking for some extra bit of attention into their blog through some visitors.

3. Me Tweets: This category of tweets, I feel is the most significant yet abhorred ones for many since it creates clutter or noise in Twitter. This type of Tweet talks only about specific ones like I’m sleeping, I’m drinking coffee/beer, my girlfriend/boyfriend left me blah blah blah. Come one, not too many people want to listen to you. For this, I remember one very apt line: “…If you want to be boring, talk yourself; if you want to be interesting, talk everything other than yourself…” But as I said, this type helped Twitter survive because they have given us space where we can voice our opinions & life par se. So lastly no complaints there at least.

Lastly, how can those terse messages impact our thinking/perception:

A small incident happened today in the morning while I was on twitter. Moksh Juneja posted a small tweet on Airtel = Vodafone goof up which caught Twitter’s attention big time and people started forming their own opinion about Airtel & Vodafone.

I’m not saying that it’s wrong but the point I want to make is that all the money spent by companies on the brand building and portraying images about themselves get slapped every now and then since consumers are no fool nowadays. Information and connectivity is dirt cheap if not free. So holding back is not the solution anymore. You (companies) can’t hold back conversations anymore and consumers will make an impression about you and in turn influence others too. So the questions remains what are you doing about it? Get into the new system or die watching it out!

P.S. I always take business examples since it’s an easy fix to keep score.

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