Gauravonomics Blog

Irish Times Story on Iran’s Twitter (Non-)Revolution

gauravonomics@gmail.com (Gaurav Mishra) — Wed, 17 Mar 2010 04:15:51 PDT

Irish Times recently quoted me in a story on how Iran’s Twitter (Non-)Revolution was a figment of our collective imagination.

Earlier, I have written extensively about how the Western media had over-hyped Twitter’s role in Iran’s Green Revolution.

Here’s the full text of the story –

The revolution was not tweeted
The Irish Times – Saturday, February 20, 2010

The protests following last year’s Iranian election were hailed as the ‘Twitter Revolution’. But a new reports claims Twitter had little or no effect on the events that unfolded. So does social media have a role to play in social activism? asks MARY FITZGERALD Foreign Affairs Correspondent

REMEMBER ALL the headlines breathlessly declaring last summer’s post-election turmoil in Iran to be some kind of Twitter Revolution? When tens of thousands of Iranians took to the streets to protest Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s disputed return to power, countless western commentators rushed to declare the microblogging service the hero of the hour. Twitter was hailed as a valuable instrument for organising demonstrations, acting as a means of communication between protesters, and providing the latest information on the dramatic events unfolding in the Islamic Republic. “The revolution will be twittered,” proclaimed US-based blogger Andrew Sullivan.

“This is it. The big one,” opined new media guru Clay Shirky.

The Twitter Revolution narrative became so compelling that a US state department official reportedly asked the company to postpone maintenance work so as not to disrupt the flow of tweets apparently emanating from Iran. British prime minister Gordon Brown argued that this brave new digital world meant that something like the Rwandan genocide could not happen again.

But the notion that Twitter and other social media played a defining role in orchestrating one of the greatest challenges the Islamic Republic has faced in its 30-year history always seemed vastly overcooked to anyone who was on the ground in Iran at the time.

Of the scores of protesters I met in Tehran and two other major cities, Isfahan and Shiraz, only one had ever used Twitter, and she admitted that was only once or twice. Most had never even heard of it. With internet access disrupted and text-messaging services shut down, Iranians learned of the anti-government rallies through word of mouth or calls made on landline phones.

The Iranian Twitter Revolution meme is thoroughly debunked in Cloud Culture , a new study examining the impact of social media on the way we live our lives. It reports that a third of Iranians have internet access and the number of Twitter users in the country during last June’s unrest amounted to just 0.082 per cent of the population. “It’s clear that its influence in co-ordinating a serious challenge to a powerfully entrenched regime was wildly overstated,” the report notes.

The idea that Iran was undergoing a Twitter Revolution incorrectly characterised and even trivialised what happened last summer, says Parvin Ardalan, a leading Iranian women’s rights activist who attended the protests. “It was much deeper and wider than that. It involved people from every level of society,” she argues, adding that the focus on Twitter, Facebook and other social media helped bolster the Iranian regime’s claims that the protests were part of a western conspiracy to destabilise the country.

THE EXAMPLE OF Iran poses broader questions regarding the use of new media for social and political activism in authoritarian states. The novelty of these tools and their potential to change the way we behave and interact has given rise to what some have termed techno-utopianism. One of the sceptics when it comes to techno-utopianist ideas about the power of the web as a tool for dissidents in oppressive states is Evgeny Morozov, currently the Yahoo! Fellow at Georgetown University. Morozov, whose book on the internet and democracy will be published later this year, argues that the more democratic a country already is, the greater role social media can play.

“I’ve come to believe that it’s not our faulty understanding of the internet, but our faulty understanding of modern authoritarianism and the process of democratisation that confuses us,” he says in an e-mail interview.

“I bet most pundits and policy wonks in Washington, and to a smaller degree Brussels, think of Iranians or the Chinese as being on the brink of the revolution – all they need to add is just some technology . . . This is a very naive view and it underestimates the degree of popularity that these regimes actually enjoy. In short, I think we need to sort out our politics before we even start thinking about technology’s role in it.”

Morozov says his main concern relates to the growing politicisation of cyberspace, in which “the US government acts or speaks as if Google/Twitter/Facebook are the next Voice of America – which makes authoritarian governments suspect that all users of such services are potentially revolutionaries of some sort.” Sooner or later, he maintains, this will lead to “the further ‘localisation’ of the web, whereby local Chinese, Iranian, Russian companies will become more successful than American ones.”

AN UNFORTUNATE consequence of this, Morozov adds, is that native firms are much more likely to bow to government censorship pressure. “To a large extent, this is already happening in China.” The potential of the web and social media as tools for political and human-rights activism is a double-edged sword. There is much evidence of repressive governments developing increasingly sophisticated programmes to monitor, manipulate and subvert information transmitted on the internet.

“Surveillance and censorship is growing and the lack of security for digitally stored or communicated information is becoming a major problem for human-rights defenders in some countries,” says Dublin-based human rights organisation Front Line.

Working with Tactical Tech, an international NGO that trains advocates in the use of technology for social change, Front Line has developed a digital security tool kit so that activists can learn about ways to ensure confidential e-mail and instant messaging, anonymous surfing and censorship circumvention, data encryption and secure file deletion. At its biannual conference held in Dublin last week, Front Line organised workshops on digital security for some 100 human rights defenders attending the event.

“There is great enthusiasm about the potential of these tools,” says Wojtek Bogusz, a digital security consultant who works with Front Line. “Very often it is the only way to get your voice heard outside a particular country, and sometimes it is the only way of communicating internally too.

“We can see how powerful and serious this is as a means of communication from the actions governments like those in China and Iran are taking to control or suppress it.”

Ali, a man who works for Tactical Tech, says the importance of the sense of community engendered by social media should not be underestimated. “Human rights activists can often feel isolated and their work can make them feel like David against the Goliath. These tools help by allowing them discover that people on the other side of the world are doing similar things. That brings a feeling of empowerment.”

Gaurav Mishra, who has organised social media-based campaigns for elections in India, says one of the main reasons to use Twitter or Facebook in these contexts is that it increases the chances that your cause will catch the attention of an international media obsessed with such tools. “Political organisers use these tools because they create a multiplier effect – not only do you get a story about the campaign but then you also get a story about the fact they are using social-networking tools,” he told BusinessWeek in the wake of the Iranian protests last year. “So you get two stories for the price of one. The international media loves [the] social-networking world. But in India or in Iran, their use is still somewhat limited.”

I build and nurture online communities as CEO of 2020 Social. Read my bio, interview me for a media story, invite me to speak at a conference or ask me how we can help you. E-mail me at gauravonomics@gmail.com, call me at +91-9999856940, or connect with me on Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, YouTube, or Slideshare.

If you liked this post, you should check out some other posts like this:

Outlook Money Story on Social Media As a Career Option

gauravonomics@gmail.com (Gaurav Mishra) — Wed, 17 Mar 2010 03:52:58 PDT

Outlook Money recently quoted me in a story on social media as a career option –

I am not a social media specialist. Should I acquire social media skills?

Yes. “Social media skills are a multiplier to all sorts of conventional functions. A layer of social media skills over and above your core skills set can help you add value to yourself and your organisation,” says Gaurav Mishra, CEO, 2020 Social. This specially applies to people in the PR and marketing domain, those who have a primary responsibility in engaging with an audience… (but also to) HR professionals can use the social media as a recruitment tool to locate the right candidate based on skills and work profile.

Here is the full text of the story –

The Right Connect
As Companies increasingly use social media to reach out, it opens up a new career avenue
Anagh Pal

***

The Guiding Lights

1. Social Media Marketer/Strategist: Responsible for shaping and guiding the strategy and tactics to manage the social media presence of a brand. Those with a background in conversational marketing and PR domain are generally considered for this role.
2. Community Manager: Acts as a central communication channel between the company and its stakeholders on the web. His job is to create a passionate community of users, and spread the word about his company through all mediums.
3. Social Media programmers/developers: They need to build social applications that can use and integrate Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, Orkut and other platforms to manage a client’s brand presence. Competence in open-source platforms like Wordpress, Joomla etc., and programming expertise in languages like php is required.
4. Social Media trackers and taggers: Their job is to track brand mentions in social media. They need to be able to distinguish good posts from bad and ones to respond accordingly
5. Social Media Writers: People who can respond and write on behalf of a brand and can communicate in the right tone and manner.
6. SMO (Social Media Optimization) Specialist: An SMO specialist uses social media to attract traffic to the company’s website in combination with search engine optimisation. Should have knowledge of writing key-word rich blog-posts, and RSS optimisation.

Source: Iffort Consulting, Pinstorm)

***

Delhi-based Gautam Ghosh, a consultant at 2020 Social—a firm that helps clients leverage social technologies—is a regular on Twitter. Recently, he underwent an eye surgery. Ghosh had put up a tweet saying once back from the surgery, he wanted to read a particular book.

He got a reply from Dial-a-book, which not only sent him get-well-soon wishes, but also informed him that he could call them up to get the book delivered to him. Here is a classic example of how companies are using social media to reach out to their audience. What we see above is not an in-your-face promotional or an annoying telemarketing call, but an unobtrusive way of engaging a customer.

Social media in India is still in a nascent stage, but with the number of users estimated to be more than 19 million in December 2008 and growing at over 50 per cent (according to comScore, a digital marketing intelligence firm), things are changing fast. A company will allocate resources to hire a social media specialist only when it is convinced that it is beneficial from a return of investment (ROI) perspective. Mahesh Murthy, founder and CEO, Pinstorm, a search marketing firm, says that the social media revenue spend for Indian companies next year would be limited to about Rs 50 crore, but an equal opportunity exists for social media management from India for overseas clients.

Who is a social media management professional? Daksh Sharma, co-founder, Iffort Consulting, a Web strategy and social media consulting firm, says: “The beauty is that consumers on the Internet are looking to connect with real humans, thereby creating a big demand for professionals who can help companies manage the different aspects of the interactive Web.” That’s precisely the job of a social media management professional.

What is the demand? No data is available on the requirement of social media professionals in India. However, Murthy puts the figure at about 5,000 in the next 1-2 years. It might seem humble, but looking at how social media is finding relevance in our lives, it could just be the tip of the iceberg.

What are the job functions? For different job functions in this space, see The Guiding Lights. A social media programmer, though not part of the core social media management domain, has also an important role to play. Smaller firms and start-ups with limited budgets may have just one or two guys to manage their social media presence. Bigger firms would mostly outsource their work to an external agency with one or two internal people to supervise the proceedings, or, in some cases, have an internal team of their own.

Where can I expect to get hired? First, there would be companies who need someone internally, as part of their communications team, to handle social media aspects. Second, and probably the largest employers, would be social media firms whose job is to enable firms manage their social media presence. Then, there would be marketing services firms who would be setting up social media cells.

What skills do I require? “One needs to be social media savvy and have basic understanding of blogs, micro-blogs like Twitter, Facebook and other social networking sites,” says Sharma. Right now, there are no recognised courses in India that impart such skills, though they can be expected in a couple of years. However, a social media professional, in most cases, will build upon a core area of expertise. Mostly, it would be people with traditional marketing/communications experience who already have a deep understanding of brand building and customer relations.

How much will I get paid? Salaries depend on job profiles, skills set and experience. For a tracker, who has the most basic job, it could be Rs 1 lakh a year or so. With 3-4 years of experience behind him, a person would gradually move into other roles and can expect a salary of Rs 3 lakh-4 lakh per annum. The social media strategists, with substantial experience in their core area, earn the highest. “A person with expertise and, say, 10 years’ marketing communication experience can easily earn Rs 18 lakh or more,” says Murthy.

What is the job like? Kinshuk Sunil, manager (community and relations), OSSCube, an open source solutions firm, says, “The best thing about my job is that I get to interact with many people and that is also the challenging part of it. Building and nurturing human relations is one of the most important aspects of community management, and always being in the loop is both daunting and rewarding.”

I am not a social media specialist. Should I acquire social media skills?

Yes. “Social media skills are a multiplier to all sorts of conventional functions. A layer of social media skills over and above your core skills set can help you add value to yourself and your organisation,” says Gaurav Mishra, CEO, 2020 Social. And this specially applies to people in the PR and marketing domain, those who have a primary responsibility in engaging with an audience. Marketers can use it as a platform (video, text, audio) to engage in conversations and spread the word about their company’s brand. An example would be a laptop manufacturer giving a free laptop to a lucky user whose tweets contain the company hashtag (which makes the company name easily searchable on Twitter). HR professionals can use the social media as a recruitment tool to locate the right candidate based on skills and work profile.

Social media is certainly the next big thing. You can choose to bury your head in the sand like the ostrich, and look the other way. Or you can take the plunge.

anaghpal AT outlookindia DOT com

If you liked this post, you should check out some other posts like this:

How to Design a Reputation System: It’s All About Karma

gauravonomics@gmail.com (Gaurav Mishra) — Tue, 16 Mar 2010 11:53:21 PDT

Randy Farmer (@frandallfarmer) and Bryce Glass (@soldierant) share some insightful tips on designing web reputation, or karma, systems:

- Karma is user reputation within a context
- Karma is useful for building trust between users, and between a user and the site
- Karma can be an incentive for participation and contributions
- Karma is contextual and has limited utility globally. [A chessmaster is not a good eBay Seller]
- Karma comes in several flavors – Participation, Quality and Robust (combined)
- Karma should be complex and the result of indirect evaluations, and the formulation is often opaque
- Personal karma is displayed only to the owner, and is good for measuring progress
- Corporate karma is used by the site operator to find the very best and very worst users
- Public karma is displayed to other users, which is what makes it the hardest to get right
- Public karma should be used sparingly – it is hard to understand, isn’t expected, and is easily confused with content ratings
- Negative public karma should be avoided all together. In karma-math -1 is not the same magnitude as +1, and information loss is too expensive.
- Public karma often encourages competitive behavior in users, which may not be compatible with their motivations. This is most easily seen with leaderboards, but can happen any time karma scores are prominently displayed. [i.e.: Twitter follower count]

Their O’Reilly Media book Building Web Reputation Systems came out in March 2010.

If you liked this post, you should check out some other posts like this:

Seven Lessons For Social Interaction Design From Social Gaming

gauravonomics@gmail.com (Gaurav Mishra) — Tue, 16 Mar 2010 11:37:09 PDT

Neil Vidyarthi (@neilvidyarthi) lists the seven elements that should be included in every social game: real friends, gifting, leaderboards, challenges, messaging, teams and customization.

The most important feature of a social game is a user’s real-world friends list. So when I invite friends to play, or look at the leaderboard, I should be able to see my personal friends in my social network. This is one of the main aspects that make today’s “social games” different than social games of the past. It’s not like today’s social games are the first to use buddy lists and social features, but it used to be such that I was playing against random people that I had met within the game. That’s fun for certain players, but it’s hard to deny that being able to cooperate or compete with a real-world friend is a stronger social experience. This feature is activated by ensuring your game is a Facebook application or uses Facebook Connect, so players can import their real world friends.

Social interaction designers are increasingly acknowledging the role of game mechanics in creating compelling user experiences on all types of social platforms, not just social games. This is a good list to start with.

If you liked this post, you should check out some other posts like this:

Open Thread: Noteworthy Posts on Social Networks and Online Communities From India

gauravonomics@gmail.com (Gaurav Mishra) — Tue, 16 Mar 2010 04:31:11 PDT

You might have noticed that I’m linking out a lot from my blog, but not really to Indian authors, and I really want to.

So, if you have recently read an insightful post on social networks or online communities from an Indian author, share a link in the comments below. These posts can be about tips, ideas, analysis, case studies, or best practices, but I am not really looking for news release rehashes.

If I find the post insightful, I’ll link to it on my blog (3000+ subscribers), and tweet about it (5500+ followers) with a hat tip to you.

If you liked this post, you should check out some other posts like this:

The 2020 Social Engagement Architecture Framework For Designing Social Platforms

gauravonomics@gmail.com (Gaurav Mishra) — Mon, 15 Mar 2010 11:17:25 PDT

At 2020 Social, we use a simple Engagement Architecture framework for designing social platforms, including online communities. The framework has seven elements —

1. Three types of Social Objects: lifestyles, interests, causes.

2. Five types of Social Dynamics: consumer generated content, conversations, collaboration, community, collective intelligence.

3. Three elements of the Social Graph: profiles, activities, relationships.

4. Seven types of Social Roles (related to profiles): lurker, learner, connector, moderator, organizer, teacher, super-user.

5. Seven levels in the Ladder of Engagement (related to activities): consume content, curate content, create content, connect with others, collaborate with others, try offering, evangelize offering.

6. Four types of Social Contexts (related to relationships): alone, with others, with cohorts, with friends.

7. Three types of Social Intelligence Systems: reputation systems, recommendation systems, reward systems.

Each of these seven elements translate into a set of benchmark features and practices that can be modified to suit different types of users (employees, partners, or customers) and different business contexts (enterprise, business to business, business to consumer).

So far, we have been using the Engagement Architecture framework for designing communities, but haven’t really documented it.

In the next month, I’ll write about each of these seven elements in some detail, both to document the framework as a set of checklists and design references, and to share what we have learned with the social interaction design community. Stay tuned.

If you liked this post, you should check out some other posts like this:

Nine Themes in Enterprise 2.0

gauravonomics@gmail.com (Gaurav Mishra) — Mon, 15 Mar 2010 08:47:42 PDT

Susan Scrupski (@itsinsider) –

The 2.0 Adoption Council and MIT’s Center for Digital Business will be co-producing a series of case studies that explore the modern dynamics driving the 2.0 phenomenon in a sampling of large enterprises. We’ve identified the following themes that are present in most initiatives:

* Innovation: Leveraging collaboration and social activity to spur discovery, idea generation, and breakthroughs for the organization or customers
* Time-to-Market: Accelerating the time to bring products/services to market by collapsing artificial silos/boundaries and time zones
* Cultural Reinvention: Using the philosophies of 2.0 to reshape the organizational DNA, embracing transparency, collaboration, trust, and authenticity
* Visibility: To provide a real-time view into operations and business process by connecting people and ideas.
* Cost Reduction: Substituting more agile, lightweight tools for connecting and sharing that are easier to manage and significantly reduce operational cost.
* Knowledge-sharing: Harvesting institutional knowledge of the enterprise for the purposes of retaining it, exposing it and providing easy access to it.
* Expertise location: Indexing and surfacing hidden and known talent in the Enterprise.
* Productivity improvement: Providing socio-collaborative tools to the workforce for measurable gains in productivity.
* Talent Retention: Providing tools that add to workplace satisfaction and positive employee work experience, especially germane to retaining GenX and GenY talent.

If you liked this post, you should check out some other posts like this:

My Upcoming Full Day NASSCOM Workshop For B2B Marketers

gauravonomics@gmail.com (Gaurav Mishra) — Mon, 15 Mar 2010 06:45:06 PDT

On April 23, I’ll be leading a full day NASSCOM workshop For B2B marketers in New Delhi.

In the workshop, I’ll share hands-on tips on how B2B marketers can use social networks and standalone communities for brand building, lead generation, and customer support.

Here’s the program schedule:

9:00am to 9:30am: Registration
9:30am to 11:00am: Introduction to social media for B2B businesses
11:00am to 11:30am: Tea/ Coffee
11:30am to 1:00pm: Strategy, tactics, measurement
1:00pm to 2:00pm: Lunch
2:00pm to 3:30pm: Social media tools for advanced users (focus on Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter)
3:30pm to 4:00pm: Tea/ Coffee
4:00pm to 5:30pm: Tying it together: using social media for brand building, lead generation, and customer support.

The registration fees is INR 6000 for NASSCOM members and INR 7500 for non members.

For companies that send groups of 5 or more, I will also lead a 4 hour long customized workshop at their office (only in NCR).

Please confirm your participation to Ms. Ranjita Kamat at ranjita@nasscom.in along with the following details: Name, Company, Designation, Email and Phone.

If you liked this post, you should check out some other posts like this:

Gautam Ghosh in List of 100 Top Influencers in HR

gauravonomics@gmail.com (Gaurav Mishra) — Mon, 15 Mar 2010 06:03:05 PDT

John Sumser (@johnsumser) includes Gautam Ghosh (@gautamghosh) in his list of 100 top influencers in HR –

In my conversations with Ghosh, I’ve always noticed an undertone of something particularly HR-like in his approach to developing his vocation. “I was always looking for my place in the world,” he said in a recent phone call. This emphasis on ‘fit’ is at the heart of what social media makes possible.

That’s part of the reason that Ghosh joined the startup 2020 Social, where he heads the talent practice. The company’s clients are mostly in the marketing space. 2020 Social has Ghosh in its ranks because they understand that the difference between customers and employees is mostly theoretical.

Gautam Ghosh is a role model in his home country and around the world. A decade of demonstrating that alternate career paths work while focusing on big ideas and implementation gives him a platform for influence all over the world.

I really like, and fully agree with, the line: on online communities, “the difference between customers and employees is mostly theoretical.” Bravo Gautam!

If you liked this post, you should check out some other posts like this:

My Upcoming Guest Lecture on Social Media in India at ISB Hyderabad

gauravonomics@gmail.com (Gaurav Mishra) — Sun, 14 Mar 2010 22:38:55 PDT

Amit Klein (@amitklein) has invited me for a guest lecture on social media in India in his class on internet marketing at ISB Hyderabad.

I plan to cover the following case studies in the guest lecture –

- SEA-EAT blog and wiki
- Valentine’s Day Pink Chaddi Campaign
- Blank Noise Project
- Bell Bajao Campaign
- iJanaagraha (disclosure: I am a member of Janaagraha’s technology advisory group).
- #mumbai terrorist attack on Twitter
- NGOPost
- Vote Report India (disclosure: I am a co-founder of Vote Report India)

- Tata Tea Jaago Re
- Sunsilk Gang of Girls
- Aircel Save the Tigers (disclosure: Aircel is a 20:20 Media client)
- Royal Challengers Bangalore (disclosure: United Spirits is a 2020 Social client)
- Dell Go Green (disclosure: Dell is a 2020 Social client)
- OK Tata ByeBye
- Mitsubishi Cedia Great Driving Challenge
- Pepsi Youngistaan (disclosure: PepsiCo India is a 2020 Social client)
- NASSCOM

- L K Advani’s election campaign
- Shashi Tharoor on Twitter

- NDTV Social
- Talk To HT
- CNN-IBN Citizen Journalism

- Slideshare
- Lifeblob
- Deskaway
- Gizapage
- Uhuroo
- Remindo
- Kwippy

What am I missing? Do share your suggestions in the comments below.

I build and nurture online communities as CEO of 2020 Social. Read my bio, interview me for a media story, invite me to speak at a conference or ask me how I can help you build and nurture online communities. E-mail me at gauravonomics@gmail.com, call me at +91-9999856940, or connect with me on Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, YouTube, or Slideshare.

If you liked this post, you should check out some other posts like this:

The Importance of Storytelling in Spreading Social Innovation

gauravonomics@gmail.com (Gaurav Mishra) — Sun, 14 Mar 2010 14:23:04 PDT

Ken Banks (@kiwanja) on the importance of storytelling in spreading social innovation –

The ‘a-ha’ moment innovators-to-be hear about is rarely the discovery of a new metric, or a new business model, or a new way of presenting or collecting data. It’s the realisation that a problem can be solved, and solved in a new way. These answers often come by doing and experiencing, being out in the field, and there are almost always stories behind why the person was there, sometimes how they got there, and what they suddenly saw which gave them their big idea.

Innovation and entrepreneurship start with passion, so we ought to focus more on that. We can help by speaking about our own interests, passions and stories – which most of us have – and less on the mechanical stuff (some of which, incidentally, includes the actual technology we’ve invented).

I had earlier written a post on Three Reasons Why Storytelling is the Key to Social Media Marketing Success.

If you liked this post, you should check out some other posts like this:

From SXSW: The 5 Cs of Chinese Innovation

gauravonomics@gmail.com (Gaurav Mishra) — Sun, 14 Mar 2010 13:43:50 PDT

Jim Tobin (@jtobin) posts notes from the SXSW China panel with Jacqui Zhou (@jacquizhou) from Dell, Benjamin Joffee (@benjaminjoffe) from Plus Eight Star and Sam Flemming (@samflemming) from CIC –

The 5 Cs of Chinese Innovation –

1. Copy: We always start with something.
2. Combination: By combining two things (i.e., instant messaging and virtual goods), you can get a great idea.
3. Competition: As soon as there are two strong video sites, for example, they need to compete and differentiate, which leads to innovation.
4. Constraints: Because you can’t do everything, the constraints foster innovation, even new business models (because online advertising isn’t workable, for example).
5. China: It has to work for China, and the unique settings of the country, which might be different than for example a Japanese consumer.

If you liked this post, you should check out some other posts like this:

My Upcoming NASSCOM Foundation Workshop For Non-Profits: How To Scale Passion

gauravonomics@gmail.com (Gaurav Mishra) — Sun, 14 Mar 2010 13:24:37 PDT

On April 27, I’ll be leading a half-day workshop for NASSCOM Foundation in New Delhi to help non-profits leverage social technologies to connect their supporters and promote their causes.

10:00 – 11:00 Introduction to social media for non-profits
11:00 -11:30 Tea/ coffee break
11:30 – 12:30 Strategy, tactics, measurement
12:30 – 1:30 Lunch
1:30 – 2:30 Social media tools
2:30 – 3:00 Tea/ coffee break
3:00 – 4:00 Tying it together, using social media for raising awareness, fundraising and driving advocacy

The title of the workshop is ‘How To Scale Passion’, a question I have been trying to answer ever since my close friend and co-conspirator Jasmine Shah (@jasmine441) asked it some time back, in the context of iJanaagraha.

My working hypothesis is that you scale passion, as a business, non-profit, or government organization, by following three simple steps —

Step 1: Identify Passion — Select a BIG lifestyle, interest, or cause.

Step 2: Ignite Passion — Build a focused community around it.

Step 3: Scale Passion — Build scale by leveraging existing social platforms.

In the workshop, I’ll build upon these simple three steps and help the attendees build a step-by-step guide to igniting and scaling the passion of their supporters in their chosen domain.

If you are a non-profits, register for the workshop or ask for more information at +91 11 40755722/23/24/32 or komal@nasscomfoundation.org.

If you liked this post, you should check out some other posts like this:

How To Design Social Platforms Around User Competencies?

gauravonomics@gmail.com (Gaurav Mishra) — Sun, 14 Mar 2010 13:02:20 PDT

Adrian Chan (@gravity7) is as insightful as ever on Mashable –

In designing for social participation, we can consider user goals and needs — even interests, features, functionality, adoption and scaling issues. Best practices and popular ways of using social media guide us in our decisions. But there’s a basic concern we seem to often overlook: “What is the user good at?”

If we really take the user experience to heart, we ought to think about user competencies. Users have different competencies in social media applications, just as they have different social skills in the real world. In the case of social media, this is as much social and interpersonal as it is technical.

If you liked this post, you should check out some other posts like this:

Two Paradigms of Digital Activism: Empowering With Information Versus Engaging With Inspiration

gauravonomics@gmail.com (Gaurav Mishra) — Sun, 14 Mar 2010 11:40:34 PDT

At the recent e-STAS Symposium on Technologies for Social Action, it became evident to me that there are two dramatically different paradigms of digital activism: empowering with information and engaging with inspiration.

In the first paradigm of digital activism, you work with a disadvantaged group that suffers from limited access to even the most basic information and tools for self-expression. So, you use simple-to-use digital devices like Nokia mobile phones and Flip video cameras and simple-to-use digital technologies like text messages and online video to enable them to access basic information and share their own stories. Frontline SMS, Ushahidi, Freedom Fone and Video Volunteers are good examples of the ‘empowering with information’ paradigm of digital activism.

In the second paradigm of digital activism, you work with a group that is anything but disadvantaged. This group is at ease with using always on internet and mobile devices, both for instantaneous access to information and for self-expression and social interaction. Here, the digital activist isn’t trying to solve a crisis of capability, but a crisis of caring. Here, the aim is not to empower with information, but to engage with inspiration. Move On and iJanaagraha are examples of the ‘engaging with inspiration’ paradigm of digital activism.

Usually people associate the ‘empowering with information’ paradigm of digital activism with emerging Asia and Africa and the ‘engaging with inspiration’ paradigm of digital activism with affluent North America and Europe.

At e-STAS, it became evident to me that these two worlds coexist in India. First, Osama Manzar talked about empowering 1.2 billion Indians by giving them access to information and a voice to tell their own stories firsthand. In the next session, I talked about inspiring 50 million young, urban, educated, connected Indians to use their already influential voices as engaged citizens, not only as consumers.

At e-STAS, it also became evident to me that activists who look at the world through the ‘empowering with information’ lens often limit themselves to using digital technologies to create and share content, while activists who look at the world through the ‘engaging with inspiration’ lens use content as the starting point to leverage the conversation, collaboration, community and collective intelligence layers of digital (social) technologies. So, the video of the 21 year old widow in rural Africa becomes the starting point of a campaign to end war, or a community that helps her collect enough money to buy a cow.

The point here is not that one paradigm is more important than the other; the point is that both paradigms co-exist, in more contexts than we think they do.

So, if you are an activist, think about whether you operate from the ‘empowering with information’ or ‘engaging with inspiration’ paradigm and ask yourself how your cause can benefit from both.

If you liked this post, you should check out some other posts like this:

Business Standard Story on e-Book Readers

gauravonomics@gmail.com (Gaurav Mishra) — Sun, 14 Mar 2010 07:28:54 PDT

I was recently quoted in a Business Standard story on e-book readers where I shared my mostly good experience with Amazon Kindle.

Here the full text of the story –

Turning a digital page

Neha Bhatt, February 22

Bookworms warm up to the e-reader, but the device will take a few years to catch on in India.

When Gaurav Mishra, CEO of Delhi-based media consultancy 2020 Social, took a holiday to Miami last year, he spent seven days at the beach reading six paperless books. This was made possible by the Amazon’s e-reader Kindle.

“I bought the Kindle last year. When I returned from the US, I was willing to leave behind my collection of 2,000 books, since the e-reader could hold over 300 e-books,” says Mishra.

Should you buy an e-reader?

Mishra is just one among many consumers who are happy with their e-reader purchase. An e-reader is a handheld reading device that can store a large number of digital books. A recent survey conducted by market research agency NPD Group claims 93 per cent of e-reader owners are “somewhat” or “very” satisfied with the device.

“What I really like about my e-reader is the audio feature. I can just lie back, while a book is read out to me. The fact that the device is so light and easy to carry is also a great motivation. I didn’t mind the high cost,” confesses Mishra. According to the survey, 60 per cent users said they liked the wireless feature in e-readers, while 23 per cent liked the touchscreen feature.

So who’s buying the e-reader?

Telnet Ventures CEO Hemant Sharma, who has been watching the e-reader market closely, answers: “The device works for those who care about portability, or those who want to appear ‘chic’ to strangers or associates.” Sharma uses a Kindle DX, which serves him well in terms of portability, but he finds the choice of e-books too narrow. “I will shift to a new device the day there is one that supports night reading and Wi-Fi connectivity,” he says.

Thomas Abraham, managing director, Hachette India, has gone in for the first edition of the Sony e-reader. He is “quite surprised with its ease of use.” He likes the touchscreen feature and reasons: “What you have gained by losing the touch and feel of a book is the possibility of carrying 30 books at one time wherever you go. I am convinced that the young will take to digital books, but the question is by when? In India, I think the device will take a minimum of 10-15 years to catch on.”

Growing, but slowly

Compared with the US and UK, e-readers in India are a relatively new concept. Says Abraham: “There is hardly any growth in India as the device is too expensive, and reading is not a primary habit in India like, say, the way listening to music is. Right now, Hachette India e-books will be offered from the central digital department in the UK.”

Pricing is an issue too. Last month, Amazon and international publisher Macmillan were at odds over pricing of e-books, with MacMillan demanding a higher rate for its e-books. The two companies are still working out pricing arrangements.

Sara Lloyd, director of Digital Publishing for Pan Macmillan, comments: “We look to price e-books fairly, while ensuring we can continue to invest in writers and writing.”

Other Indian publishers are, however, looking to price e-books lower than print additions. Chiki Sarkar, editor-in-chief, Random House India, says: “We’re just creating a strategy for pricing. But, certainly, e-books will be lower priced than print editions.”

Abraham of Hachette India calculates that, for the e-book model to work, pricing has to be plus or minus 10 per cent from the printed book’s cost. Hachette India, which has 20 titles, is looking to convert its inventory into e-books.

Need magazines, games…

Says Sharma: “Indian readers will be better served if magazines that have a much wider reach than books are available on e-readers and if the device can serve more forms of entertainment, such as gaming and blogging.”

The recently-launched iPad from Apple, for example, will be one up on other e-readers. The iPad, which is a tablet PC, can be used for gaming and surfing, besides doubling up as an e-reader.

Vishal Gondal, CEO of Indiagames, which is already developing games for the iPad, says: “Take one look at Facebook and you will know that people love to play games. So, gaming is going to be a significant area for us and Apple.”

E-readers, for now, have their own set of drawbacks. Sharma of Telnet points out: “Acquiring new books for an e-reader in India is still not as easy as walking into a bookstore. Also, e-readers like Kindle are not back-lit and, thus, cannot be read in bed at night.”

Arguably, e-readers may take a few years to catch on in India, but as Macmillan’s Lloyd puts it: “Many publishers will begin to make all new titles available digitally as a matter of course, and will invest in digitising their backlists.”

It may be worth the wait, after all.

If you liked this post, you should check out some other posts like this:

My Empodera/ e-STAS Book Chapter — A New Approach to Citizen Activism: The 5Cs Framework

gauravonomics@gmail.com (Gaurav Mishra) — Sun, 14 Mar 2010 07:00:55 PDT

I recently wrote a book chapter for a book published by Empodera for the e-STAS Symposium on Technologies for Social Action. You can download the PDF version of the book here.

Here’s the full text of the book chapter is titled “A New Approach to Citizen Activism: The 5Cs Framework” –

Social Technologies and Power Structures

The debate on whether internet and mobile technologies are transforming traditional power structures is dominated by three divergent narratives.

According to the first, utopian, narrative, internet and mobile technologies enable individuals to publish and distribute content, self-organize into communities of interest and participate in collective action. As a result, they can create new types of media outlets, build new types of civil society organizations, and monitor, protest against and even bring down governments. Even though these new degrees of freedom are far from universal, they are fundamentally changing political power structures. The future has already arrived, this narrative insists, it’s just not evenly distributed yet.

According to the second, status quo, narrative, power structures are ingrained into our society’s institutions and internet and mobile technologies don’t really change these institutions, or create new ones. The case studies compiled by the utopians constitute anecdotal evidence, at best, and the influence of networked technologies will always be limited because of issues related to access or ability. So, internet and mobile technologies are a minor influence on political power structures, at best.

According to the third, dystopian, narrative, internet and mobile technologies are, in fact, enabling traditional institutions to further consolidate their power through censorship, surveillance and propaganda. So, even though they give us the illusion of greater power, they have, indeed, compromised our ability to protect our privacy, have access to diverse views, and build real institutions.
It’s not easy to conclusively argue for one narrative or the other, unless we outline the entire range of possibilities that social technologies open up for citizens and activists.

The 5Cs Framework

Social technologies encompass many different types of tools, such as blogging (Wordpress, http://wordpress.com), microblogging (Twitter, http://twitter.com), video-sharing (YouTube, http://youtube.com), photo-sharing (Flickr, http://flickr.com), podcasting (Blog Talk Radio, http://blogtalkradio.com), mapping (Google Maps, http://maps.google.com), social networking (Facebook, http://facebook.com), social voting (Digg, http://digg.com), social bookmarking (Delicious, http://delicious.com), lifestreaming (FriendFeed, http://friendfeed.com), wikis (Wikipedia, http://wikipedia.com), virtual worlds (Second Life http://secondlife.com), and several new and hybrid tools.

Cutting across these tools, there are five underlying dynamics in social technologies, the 5Cs of social media: Content, Conversation, Collaboration, Community and Collective Intelligence. Taken together, these five dynamics constitute the value system of social technologies. The tools are transient, the buzzwords will change, but the value system embedded in these 5Cs is here to stay.

If we wish to understand whether and how social technologies can empower citizens, it’s useful to explore how citizens and activists can leverage these five dynamics.

The First C: Content

The first C, Content, refers to the idea that social technologies allow everyone to become a creator, by making the publishing and distribution of multimedia content both free and easy, even for amateurs.
User generated content is the driver of the citizen journalism phenomenon, the notion that amateur users can perform journalist-like functions (accidentally or otherwise) by reporting and commenting on news. Citizen journalists have repeatedly emerged as critical in crisis reporting and several citizen journalist platforms like CNN iReport (http://ireport.com) Global Voices (http://globalvoicesonline.org), NowPublic (http://nowpublic.com) and AllVoices (http://allvoices.com) have emerged to harness their potential to report hyper-local news.

However, just because everyone can become a creator doesn’t mean that everyone does. Researchers have found support for the 1:9:90 rule in many different contexts. The 1:9:90 rule says that 90% of all users are consumers, 9% of all users are curators and only 1% of the users are creators.

At the Content level, the design challenge is to create or harness focused content creation platforms that scale even if only 1% of the users create content.

So far, most initiatives in India have struggled in this respect. Platforms like MeriNews (http://merinews.com) are too entertainment focused to be called citizen journalism platforms and individual or group blogs like Kafila (http://kafila.org) don’t have the scale to make a meaningful impact.

The Second C: Conversation

The second C, Conversation, refers to the idea that social technologies enable two-way dialogues between citizens that sometimes take the form of viral memes and tip into the mainstream consciousness.

One to one conversations tip into viral memes as consumers and curators congregate around compelling content. Natural disasters like the China earthquake and South East Asia tsunami and crisis situations like the Israel-Gaza war and the Mumbai terrorist attacks often lead to viral memes, sometimes misleading ones.

Sometimes, activism campaigns also tip into viral memes. The 2009 Valentine’s Day Pink Chaddi campaign (http://thepinkchaddicampaign.blogspot.com) that protested against the right wing political party Sri Ram Sena by sending them pink panties as Valentine’s Day gifts became viral when more than 50,000 people joined in on Facebook.

At the Conversation level, the design challenge is to create compelling content that demands to be shared and seed conversations around it that can tip into a viral meme.

Evidence suggests that the art of designing viral activism campaigns hasn’t been perfected yet and most campaigns that to go viral happen to tip and find it difficult to replicate their own success later.

The Third C: Collaboration

The third C, Collaboration, refers to the idea that social technologies facilitate the aggregation of small individual actions into meaningful collective results.

Collaboration can happen at two levels: co-creation and collective action.

In co-creation, the value lies as much in the curated aggregate as in the individual contributions. Wikis are a perfect example of co-creation. Open group blogs, photo pools, video collages and similar projects are also good examples of co-creation.

Collective action goes one step further and uses online engagement to initiate meaningful action. Collective action can take the form of signing online petitions, fundraising, tele-calling, or organizing an offline protest or event.

At the Collaboration level, the design challenge is to start with a big task, break it down into individual actions (modularity) that are really small (granularity), and then put them together into a whole without losing value (aggregating mechanism).

In 2009, I co-founded a crowdsourced election monitoring platform Vote Report India (http://votereport.in) that is a good example of a platform designed for co-creation. The Ushahidi (http://ushahidi.org) based platform presented an aggregated visual view of irregularities in the 2009 Indian elections by plotting text messages sent from polling booths on a Google Map. However, we realized that the platform couldn’t scale without tapping into an offline volunteer network. Kiirti (http://kiirti.org) is a more evolved co-creation platform that factors in the need for such an offline support ecosystem.

The Pink Chaddi campaign resulted in more than 2000 pink panties being sent to Sri Ram Sena and is a good example of collective action in India.

The Fourth C, Community

The fourth C, Community, refers to the idea that social technologies can facilitate sustained engagement around a shared idea, over time and often across space.

The notion of a community is really tricky because every web page is a latent community, waiting to be activated. A vibrant community has size and strength, and is built around a meaningful social object. Often, lifestyles, passions and causes make for more compelling social objects than people, organizations, or campaigns.

At the Community level, the design challenge is to identify a compelling social object and build a large and vibrant community around it.

I am currently working on iJanaagraha (http://ijanaagraha.org), a community platform built around the notion that real change begins in the neighborhood. It’s a new type of citizen platform, with strong location, community and activation layers, designed to promote proactive citizenship by providing citizens the information, tools and networks to drive real change in their neighborhoods and cities.

The Fifth C, Collective Intelligence

The fifth C, Collective Intelligence, refers to the idea that the social web enables us to not only aggregate individual actions, but also run sophisticated algorithms on them and extract meaning from them.

Collective intelligence can be based on both implicit and explicit actions and often takes the form of reputation and recommendation systems. Google (http://google.com) extracts the pagerank, a measure of how important a page is, from our (implicit) linking and clicking behavior. Amazon (http://amazon.com) and Netflix (http://netflix.com) are able to offer us recommendations based on our (implicit) browsing, (implicit) buying and (explicit) rating behavior and comparing it to the behavior of other people like us.

It becomes easier to extract meaning from a community as the size and strength of the community grow. If the collective intelligence is then shared back with the community, the members find more value in the community, and the community grows even more, leading to a virtuous cycle.

At the Collective Intelligence level, the design challenge is to aggregate our individual and collective actions in databases, and run sophisticated algorithms on them to build reputation and recommendation systems.

Barack Obama’s presidential campaign (http://my.barackobama.com) and some of the work done by the Sunlight Foundation (http://sunlightfoundation.com) are good examples of citizen initiatives that tap into collective intelligence. I haven’t seen any good examples of such initiatives in India, but we are building such capabilities in the iJanaagraha platform.

In Summary

So, the 5Cs form a hierarchy of what is possible with social technologies.

As we move from Content to Conversation to Collaboration to Community to Collective Intelligence, it becomes increasingly difficult to both observe these layers and activate them.

Each layer is often, but not always, a pre-requisite for the next layer. Compelling content is a pre-requisite for conversation memes and meaningful collaboration, which is a pre-requisite for a vibrant community, which, in turn, is a pre-requisite for collective intelligence.

The 5Cs framework can also be used to design and measure specific social technologies initiatives. The best social technologies initiatives leverage all these five layers, but most initiatives get stuck between the Collaboration and Community layers. Examples of social technologies initiatives that leverage the Community or Collective Intelligence layers are few and far between.

I want to emphasize that each layer is valuable in itself, and it’s OK to design an initiative to only exploit the Content or Conversation layers. It’s important to note, however, that institution-building kicks in only at the Collaboration and Community layers, and real change happens only when we build new institutions.

Finally, evidence has shown us that all these five underlying dynamics can be used for both good and evil. Misleading or inflammatory content can be used to drive propaganda and spread rumors. Communities can easily become cabals and collaboration and collective intelligence can be used to profile and persecute minorities and other disadvantaged groups.

Social technologies open up possibilities for new behaviors and new power structures. It’s up to us, as individuals and societies, to choose how we use these possibilities. The question is: how well will we choose?

If you liked this post, you should check out some other posts like this:

Why a Billion Indians Need to Tell Their Own Stories Firsthand

gauravonomics@gmail.com (Gaurav Mishra) — Sun, 14 Mar 2010 06:41:39 PDT

At the e-STAS Symposium on Technologies for Social Action, Osama Manzar (@osamamanzar) of Digital Empowerment Foundation talks about why a billion Indians need to tell their own stories firsthand –

If you liked this post, you should check out some other posts like this:

How to Design a Community to Reflect Your Relationship With Your Community Members?

Gaurav Mishra — Sun, 14 Mar 2010 00:29:18 PST

Earlier, I had shared my thoughts on the Social CRM use cases report from Jeremiah Owyang (@jowyang) and Ray Wang (@rwang0) and shared ten use cases for corporate online communities.

Now, Michael Specht (@mspecht) and my colleague Gautam Ghosh (@gautamghosh) have extended the same thinking to talent and employee communities across the “employee life cycle”.

Gautam’s post also has implications for how we think about designing communities in general. Basically, Gautam says that communities can be designed to enable four types of communication:

1. From few to many: Blogs
2. From many to few: Ideation platforms
3. Between few: Wikis
4. Between many: Forums and social networks

It’s easy to see that the relationship between the host company and the community members is dramatically different in these four contexts and the choice of a platform will define (and limit) the relationship. It is true for employee communities, but it is also true for customer and partner communities. Fascinating.

I build and nurture online communities as CEO of 2020 Social. Read my bio, interview me for a media story, invite me to speak at a conference or ask me how2020 Social can help you build and nurture online communities. E-mail me at gauravonomics@gmail.com, call me at +91-9999856940, or connect with me on Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, YouTube, or Slideshare.

If you liked this post, you should check out some other posts like this:

How To Balance Simplicity and Functionality in Designing Enterprise 2.0 Software?

Gaurav Mishra — Sat, 13 Mar 2010 23:51:34 PST

Larry Hawes (@lehawes) wonders what is the right balance between simplicity and functionality for enterprise micro-blogging tools:

Early adopters of web 2.0 software in the enterprise appear to value simplicity in software they use. However… that may not be true for later, mainstream adopters… Having adequate features to enable effective, efficient usage is also necessary to achieve significant adoption. Later adopters need to see that a tool can help them in a significant way before they will begin to use it.

Alan Cooper in ‘About Face: The Essentials of Interaction Design’ says that all users start as beginners, then become perpetual intermediates, while only a few become experts. So, software should be designed to quickly convert beginners into intermediates, but also provide for hidden-away high-end functionality for experts.

In the context of enterprise 2.0 software, it means that tools like Socialtext or Salesforce Chatter, which introduce users to collaborative software through easy-to-use activity stream features, but quickly move on to more advanced functionality, will win over Yammer, which is too simple, or traditional enterprise software, which is too complicated. Your thoughts?

If you liked this post, you should check out some other posts like this: