Buzz We Follow

Facebook has taken a leaf out of Google Plus' design notebook, and churned out this photo viewer

After enacting the mandatory move to its Timeline format, the latest design tweak given to the photo viewer is the most prominent change in the UI implemented. The cool guys at ZDNet quoted a Facebook spokesperson as saying ““We can confirm that the new photo viewer has been rolled out… Yes, to all users.” The PC Mag report quotes another Facebook official as saying, “from time to time [Facebook makes] updates to features and this one to the photo viewer primarily centers around making comments more visible by placing them next to [the] photo as opposed to having to scroll down to view.” We think there is more to it than just ‘highlighting the comments’.

This may just turn out be a very interesting & profitable development for digital marketers & brands promoting themselves on Facebook [which means everybody]. The prominence of the ads surfed with the image have gone up a few notches and with users spending more time looking & ‘checking out’ photos of their friends, the social ads served here are likely to be more in their line of sight, bridging the gap between impression and click ratio further.

What’s your take on this? Feel free to drop a line or many in the comments box

The Price Waterhouse Coopers’ report on the fate of digital media in the coming decade is out, and if one goes by the numbers stated in that meticulously compiled tome, digital marketers across the board are going to have their hands full in the coming year.

As of now, the Indian internet advertising market consists of revenues from displays, classifieds, paid searches, videos and other online formats. The PwC commissioned “Global entertainment and media outlook: 2010–2014” reveals that “over the next five years we will see digital technologies increase their dominance across all segments of Entertainment &Media, as digital transformation continues to expand and escalate.” In plain speak it means that developing technology, increasing broadband penetration levels and arrival of 3G are having direct ramifications on the digital-marketing budgets.

2010 also saw the phenomenon of convergence gain ground, biggest example of it was live streaming of the Indian Premier League matches on YouTube. The agreement gave Google exclusive online rights for IPL content for two years, with both parties sharing revenues from sponsorships and advertising, and set a precedent for such partnerships in the future.

The most remarkable aspect of this study remains the growth prospects in the internet ad-spend projected for the next five years. PwC predicts that the internet marketing budgets will grow at a phenomenal CAGR of  20%. But look closely, and you will realise with the small base, this rate suggests an improvement but not a paradigm shift. Mainstream media budget spends will keep on dwarfing the kitty of internet ad-spend in the foreseeable future and that is something we got to live with, for now.

A glance through the most surfed websites by Indian users tells us that people are a lot more active “socially” on the web than the marketers are giving them the due. They are lapping up well made online campaigns, sharing it on Facebook, talking about it on Twitter and few enterprising souls even going the whole way and blogging about it (bless them)! Also, here is sample of how Indian users have accessed their internet in the last decade. Unsurprisingly, it is done while slacking off at work!

The complete PwC report can be downloaded from here (pdf)

As another year comes to an end, this the time of the year when you go ahead and “analyse” as to what really happened this year that made so awesome/miserable/mundane etc etc. At our end – the Social media geeks – it was an interesting time to be us. Almost 600 million people on ‘Liked’ stuff of Facebook, a staggering 65 million tweets were written/RTed/peddled everyday of this year. And although people across the global broadband spectrum cribbed about not having enough time to eat their meals, they ensured that the YouTube server received request to serve up 2 billion videos EVERY DAMN DAY.

Whoa, it was pretty kick as to be a social media professional in 2010. Looking at this gigantic data pool, it is pretty easy to lose focus on the small but significant learning of the year, but we did learn a few lessons and here is our attempt to provide our two bits to the #Hindsight2010 hashtag!

In a nutshell, the few key learning for this year were fairly simple things, which sometimes the big boys of this playing field found hard to get right. But when they did, boy did they have some fun!

• The real social media of the future is people – not websites, application or widgets.

• Connect and engage…not every conversation is a sales pitch

• ROI is the new “profit after tax”

• Understand what the customer wants, the “strategies” for Facebook & Twitter will start formulating on its own thereafter

Vodafone was the first mover in social media space, but Airtel's response - even though late - is pretty smart and effective.

One small example can be given through examples of two telecom behemoths from India – Vodafone India and Bharati Airtel. Vodafone with its ZooZoo campaign were the first movers on the social media turf, they aligned it with TV ad campaigns and an active convergence plan worked wonders. The ads stopped earlier this year, but the Facebook pageis still alive and kicking with active participation from its almost 1 lakh fans. Convergence paid off!

Its closest pan-India rival Airtel moved in LATE. They always had splintered pages for services and brand presence but nothing ever came close to the fan base Vodafone served up. The marketing team there knew they can’t match up the ZooZoo campaign in popularity just yet, so they tweaked their communication strategy a bit; cater to the complaints of the young users through social media.

So you have Airtel Presence on Facebook and Twitter with the admins on both the pages in overdrive to provide immediate response/redressal to the users. It began less than a month ago so it is hard to measure its success so far, but from the look of it, they have begun to set the house in order the right way.

RockMelt is the latest technological contraption to enthral the social media junkies across various bulletin boards. It is already trending on Twitter and the major tech blogs and publications are gushing about it all over the place.

What we understand is that RockMelt is a conventional browser, which is trying to leverage its social media aggregating capabilities to woo the users. It doubles up as a platform for sharing content on user’s account on Facebook, Twitter etc besides functioning just like any other browser. Keeping very much in character the user can sign-in/sign-up for RockMelt only through their Facebook account; essentially it takes the concept of a social media aggregator one step further. Users can tweet, IM friends with Facebook Chat, make status updates or share items directly from the page using a rather slick drag and drop mechanism (as shown in the video embedded in the home-page of the site).

The RockMelt homepage that has gone live just a few hours back.

What this “browser” aims to achieve is give the user a more flexible browsing environment where history, bookmarks etc can be carried across machines [RockMelt works out of the clouds. It is cool that way.] Mashable tells us that RockMelt is built on Chromium, the open source project behind Google’s Chrome browser. The Rockmelt interface is also pretty similar to that of Chrome, only major difference being the list of user’s friends which is displayed in a sidebar on the left, and a list of favourite social sites on the right.

The man behind Netscape, Marc Andreessen, is funding a new browser targeted at heavy users of social media consumers, which by default is almost everybody. While the browser also claims to make search faster, the jury is still out on that one. Register on the site to get a early peek-a-boo and share your experiences with us.

The first major alarm bell for application developers on social networks has just started ringing in the courtrooms of California and Rhode Island. A Wall Street Journal investigation has blew the lid off the fact that Zynga, one of the biggest app/game developer on Facebook, is amongst the companies “transmitting identifying information—in effect, providing access to people’s names and, in some cases, their friends’ names—of Facebook users to dozens of advertising and Internet tracking companies”.

Farmville is one of the most popular games on Facebook

Breach of privacy is a Federal offence in most of the states in US, besides breaking the house rules of most social platforms including Facebook. Just a fortnight ago, Facebook co-founder Mark Zuckerberg announced from its Palo Alto office Facebook is planning to give its users more control and privacy through Facebook groups. But when one realizes that possibly the personal information of all the 59 million users of Farmville, Texas hold’em Poker and FrontierVille (games developed by Zynga) is with pesky marketers, these claims sound hollow to say the least.

After the lawsuits filed by a few US citizens, against Zynga but with far reaching impact on Facebook and other social networks, it is up to Facebook as to how it manages the information that its users trusts it with.

Facebook has become a unmatchable behemoth of our times was accepted the day it trounced its predecessor Google is search results volume for the first time earlier this year. Since then both the players are involved in a cat and mouse game to be the numero uno in the search engine market, but what gives Facebook an edge is its social media platform that has replaced (and super-ceded) the daily journal of the average user. All other social networks are lagging far behind when compared to Facebook’s 500 million strong and growing members who regard Facebook more as an extension to their personal lives, rather than just another online avatar.

LinkedIn's success lies in the fact that people still are willing to pay for its premium services.

In such a scenario, sites like Foursquare and LinkedIn have done a commendable job in not just making their presence felt but also in carving out there own niche. Especially LinkedIn, which has still kept its premium services paid; its success lies in the fact that people still are willing to pay for it as they know here the ‘chatter’ is very business-like, and nobody is going to ‘poke’ you and request, “please fertilize my farm”! The case of Canadian entrepreneur Joana Wiseberg is an interesting case study to vouch for this fact.

Ms Wiseberg started Red Scarf Equestrian, which makes handbags and other luxury goods for horse lovers – a niche product if there was one – right when the global recession was setting-in. While the top dogs were busy shutting shops and handing out pink slips across the globe, Ms Wiseberg (and indeed many others with self belief, and with an eye to make discreet investments) went about marketing herself on LinkedIn. She began joining groups related to her field and participating in discussions on them. “I had to go global, because the market in Canada is too small,” Ms. Wiseberg told the New York Times. The NYT points out that now she is a member in more than a dozen groups, including Luxury and Lifestyle Professionals, Luxury Addict Group, Woman 2 Woman Business, and Horse Lovers of the Business World.

The lady there surely had some fruitful conversation as she got invitations to showcase her goods at places full of potential buyers. Places like – the Cannes Film Festival, the Monaco Grand Prix and a luxury goods conference in China to name a few. Ms Wiseberg did not do anything special, she just used common sense.

With bloggers getting book deals from publishers, the days of knocking at the publishers doors for a dekko at their first draft might soon be gone. In every marketing seminar, we are told about the theory of push-pull. Push, when you have to peddle your product to attract the whimsy of your potential customers, and pull when the value of your product is such that it charms the pants off your customers, and they come to you instead. And what may I ask is this blogabook phenomena if not the evidence of the pull factor in the fickle world of the click-click? And what is wrong with turning blogs into books? After all, these blogs have a massive following and proves that there is a market for all kinds of writing. Without much ado, I present you the four blogging mavericks.

Take for example the greatbong, Arnab Sen, author of May I Hebb Your Attention Pliss. The greatbong has given considerable time and thought to, how do I put it, a cult hit, a reel of 70 mm which is so bad that its good or Prabhuji’s biggest cinematic offering, otherwise known as Gunda. In fact, his book has one entire section dedicated to this phenomena. And if the recent Chetan Bhagat-Gunda fans standoff on Facebook and Twitter is taken into account, nothing is too much for at the shrine of Gunda.

Then there is the bane of all po-faced readers, the chic-lit genre. Now, the chick-lit genre otherwise known as books which can be judged by its covers have received its share of negative publicity. But as we say in the business, no publicity is bad publicity. So we have a range of Bushnells and Kinsellas, but our favourite chich-lit writer is none other than Meenakshi Reddy Madhavan. Before Ms. Reddy donned the mantle of a published book author, she went by the name of The Compulsive Confessor. And a more sassy blog chronicling the life of a modern Indian girl you will be loathe to find. Of course, the hits started coming like no tomorrow. And Penguin India knows a good thing when they see it. Currently, Reddy’s second book has also seen the light of day, but with comparatively less sho-sha. And her blog, still thriving, thank you very much.

And now I come to my most favourite blogger, Scott Schuman, creator of The Sartoralist. Schuman’s blog actually looks like a coffe table book spread of scrumptious photographs with a difference, his subjects are ordinary people. As his blog simply states “Sharing pictures and comments on men’s and women’s fashion”. As Schuman said in an interview recently, “I think I hit it at the perfect time…text heavy blogs had already become a hit in areas like politics. But if you want to do something in fashion, it has to be visual. I hate reading about fashion, but I like looking at it.” Don’t we all? Post a book deal, Shuman is all set to storm into our TV screen with a video version of his blog.

Finally, the big daddy of them all, Amit Verma. And this man has his points. Head of cricinfo India, the mecca of all cricket fans, he left to become a full time blogger, and so India Uncut was born in 2004. And then the Tsunami happened. Verma toured the South of India and blogged live about the unforeseen calamity that had literally swept away millions. And that’s when his blog hit bigtime. National and international blogs picked up from his blog and the rest is history.

Since then he has published a book, My Friend Sancho (2009) which is in its third reprint. In true blogger style, even the book cover was selected from design submissions of readers on his blog. The man didn’t let go of his guerilla blogging tactics. During the 26/11 terrorist attack in Mumbai, Verma was near the Taj, and he continued blogging live events as it was unfolding. This led to his live telethon on Larry King Show on the attacks. A regular contributor to a number of online publishers, Verma’s initiative has given credibility to the proliteriat voices of the blogosphere.

A statement that might trigger doomsday nightmares amongst the stakeholders in mainstream media industry, Chairman and publisher of the New York Times, Arthur Sulzberger Jr has announced that the company will “stop printing the New York Times sometime in the future, date to be decided.” Speaking at the International Newsroom Summit, Sulzberger also confirmed that from 2011 NYT will join the ranks of paid content-wallahs where the readers will be allowed to access a certain number of articles free each month, then will be asked to pay and the paper will also work with Google to implement the First Click Free concept on the site.
While the industry insiders might squirm at Sulzberger’s idea of closure of the printed paper, the fact is that his idea of monetizing the news content shows that while he has understood that rather than knocking on the door, the future is more likely to drop in a mail, he hasn’t embraced the idea completely. 

It's a free world, Mr Sulzberger!

The newspaper circulations are falling, and so are the revenues across the board. Let’s make it clearer using Hard Stats – In 2009, newspapers in USA made $27.564 billion in total advertising revenue. As a whole, they generated $24.821 in print revenue, while the rest ($2.743 billion) came from online advertising. Big numbers, right? Well then compare them to the 2008 numbers and you realise that it’s a drop of 27.2% as the newspapers made $37.848 billion. The comparative figures for 2006 were $49.275 billion. So one can safely use the cliché that the writing is pretty much on the wall, in block and bold letters!
This doesn’t mean that ‘news’ as a commodity is not relevant as a commodity; rather it is more about the platform through which the user accesses it! By monetizing its news content all New York Times will do is drive users elsewhere. The web is an exceedingly democratic platform and anyone who will try to dictate rules to the populace here will face a rebellion, sooner than later.
The success behind the ideas which drive Facebook and Twitter is the ‘liberalising factor’ which the user associates with them. While creating and sharing a knowledge bank (let’s says news links/videos/podcasts) through these social media platforms, the consumer of the ‘news’ is becoming the publisher at same time. In such atmosphere, how on earth does Mr Sulzberger believes that he can “decide on pricing and the extent of” news content? Dear sir, it has already been decided!

Food always makes me happy and I must confess to spending quite a lot of time on food blogs as part of my daily surfing quota. And in the goodness of spreading more cheer, I am listing out my top five picks, enjoy:)

http://www.davidlebovitz.com/ (Unique visitor: 1,31,192)

This is the big daddy of food blogs especially for chocoholics like me. Celebrity chef and author of five cookbooks, David Lebovitz has had a slew of high profile jobs – he worked for 13 years at Chez Pannise. A media fave, Lebovitz’s work has been appreciated by varied publications, such as Condé Nast Traveler, The New York Times, People, Newsweek, Bon Appétit, Gourmet and more. Lebovitz’s specialties are chocolate, ice cream, breads, and the pastries of France.

Verdict: Go here if you want to catch some Paris chicness.

http://www.joythebaker.com/ (Unique visitor: 35,124)

Joy, a self taught baker won her cred the hard way – she learned her craft while working in various bakeries. This blog is high on multimedia content, videos and podcasts included, and was nominated for the 2010 Bloggies ‘Best Food Blog’. It has also been listed by London Times as one of Top Fifty Food Blogs in the World.  Joy now runs her own catering business and takes baking classes when time permits.

Verdict: Go here for feel good food, no calorie counts, thank you.

http://smittenkitchen.com/ (Unique visitor- 3, 60,827)

One look at her blog and you will know why the smittenkitchen lady – Deb Perelman – has a cult following. Non-fussy recipes, tutorials, witty posts and great photography make this blog a great stopover. The only thing I don’t like – the too tiny print, but then you can easily do control + for better viewing.

Verdict: Go here for summer cocktails, mango –mint slaws and bread & butter pickle.

http://cafefernando.com/ (Unique visitor: 86,972)

For a guy who couldn’t speak proper English till a few years ago, Cenk Sonmezsoy has certainly come a long way. Sonmezsoy’s posts are littered with reminisces about his life in San Francisco as a student, especially about the food. Voted as the top blog in Turkey, cafefernando is making its way as a top rated culinary travel blog. The blogger is currently busy writing, styling and designing his own cookbook to be released in Turkey.

Verdict: Go here for a California meets Bosporus spin.

http://purplefoodie.com/ (Data NA)

Purplefoodie may not have awesome stats to back it up, but this is one is a winner no doubt. Shaheen Peerbhai, the author of this blog chucked her daily job in an IT company to make her baking obsession into a full time catering profession. Her menu includes cookies, cupcakes, muffins, tarts, breads, quiches and sandwiches. Her blog also cites helpful reviews about where to find cooking ingredients + bakeware, as well as easy recipes.

Verdict: Go here for easy recipes and simple DIY stuff with stuff that is actually found in the market.

Note: all site data is taken from compete.com

For any enterprise, raising funds for the first project is perhaps the most difficult task that the people involved with it are ever going to do. But recently, smart Alecks from around the world have discovered an option to get around this ‘issue’; unsurprisingly filmmakers lead the way in this phenomenon that can roughly be defined as ‘Facebook finance’.

Onirban Dhar, better known as Onir amongst the tinsel town dwellers, was fed up of pandering to the whims and fancies of big studios who wanted their say in every little part of what essentially was Onir’s creative output. To circumnavigate this trifle he went to up to the fans.

He says in an interview with the Hindustan Times, “Yeah, the film is 50 per cent financed by my viewers. I put up a post on Facebook giving details about the film I wanted to make. If anyone believed in it and wanted to make it happen, they were free to contribute to it financially. I Am is probably the first crowd-sourced film in India. Over 400 people are involved. It’s an important experiment in independent filmmaking.” The outcome I AM is complete and is doing the rounds of the festival circuit across the world right now. Whatever maybe the outcome of the film in commercial terms, this is a giant leap in the independent cinema movement, while your social media guru stands in a corner, with a all knowing smile plastered across the face.

Onir's vision might just provide a template to struggling independent film-makers across the globe.

The fact this wasn’t an isolated event was proved when filmmakers across the world in Australia, Enzo Tedeschi’s The Tunnel started shooting from 21 July 2010. A film about the fate of news crew’s journey into Sydney’s underground disused rail tunnels might seem too local a subject to get any big studio’s nod for financial support, but the makers aren’t worried. Producer Tedeschi and Julian Harvey of Distracted Media have decided to distribute the film through controversial internet piracy networks in a bid to reach out to the increasingly dominant online audience.

They launched www.thetunnelmovie.net in June and plan to raise the movie’s budget of $135,000 by selling frames for $1 each, reports the Sydney-Central.

“We’ve been up for just on three weeks now and we’ve had about 35,000 page users on the website and we’ve sold about 8500 frames,” Harvey said.

Clearly, even Mark Zuckerberg wouldn’t have foreseen this!