Relationships as a Service

In today's world using the world Social has become the latest trend. Every company around the world has started putting social term in their advertisement. Some Indian companies have also started putting Twitter and Facebook logo in their roadside hoardings, what is to be done with it is not yet sure, do they expect people to park their vehicle on the roadside climb up 20 feet and click on them, is not yet confirm?

The Governments have woken up to the power of social media with Indian Government acting to censor the internet in name of anti-religious sentiments and American Government attempting to pass SOPA bill 2012 in name of piracy, they have clearly shown that the time is up for the government. People are self censoring themselves and they are relying on the government lesser and lesser. Obviously Government must be there but in this post social work, Governments will loose control over the information which they so dearly protect. But lets not get into politics of things, lets keep it simple.

Six to seven years ago if anyone would want to take his girlfriend out to a decent night dinner, he would have to rely on some traditional suggestions given by his friends to choose one. Today, Yelp is helping Americans find the restaurant for the evening and Zomato is doing the same job in India, and pretty cool job they are doing.

Two days ago, I bumped into a friend in a local watering hole, the place was a big one and in earlier days it would not be possible for us to meet, but that day we both had checked into Foursquare. We all are turning social, social is becoming part of who we are.

But this is not the first time humans have shared anything with each other, we did it all along. We already discussed the latest topic of discussion over a cup of coffee at the office local cooler. We used to discuss what happened during the day with our family over dinner. Those things changed as the relationships turned weak and electronic gadgets became the companions. Those were the days of texting, mobile phone and television.

The same social objects that were with us before social media now returned back. This time they were shared not with a bunch of people, but with everyone, everyone who subscribed to it. What had changed? This is a subscription based world, this time the social objects reached to anyone who was listening. Anyone who is listening.

We do not invest into a lot for social media, we invest in relationship. Facebook is leading the way in redefining relationships like never before. With the constant birthday reminders and life events reminders, now with Facebook Timeline and Friendship features. Still at this time, Facebook remains nascent with the complexity of relationships. No its not as easy as forming separate circles as designed by Google.

Understanding relationships is not as easy for a computer system as understood by our brain, yet Social Networks are reforging the relationships like never before. Tapping into them poses a great opportunity to corporation, no not up-selling opportunities to friends but understanding in detail about the customer.

In the end, the trick is not to trick the customer into buying things, it is to manufacture things, the customer actually will benefit from.

Can any corporation offer relationship as a service?

Happy Holidays.

Picture courtesy: Wikipedia.
Depiction: Pied Paper of Hamilton.

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The Missing Link in Social media

In India there is a famous saying, 'Not all fingers on your hands are of the same size.'  It simply suggests that no two human beings are same. We all think differently, we all have different aspirations. When it comes to social media sites, the world is roughly classified as the battle between Facebook, twitter and Google plus.

I have repeated this since beginning, Social media is not new, people were social like this before. If human being is nothing but only social. We used to gather around bonfire, gather near water cooler, people used to bond together in the rock concerts, they bonded in favorite bars. They did talk about brands and advertise there too. With the advent of computers, people have started channeling their energy on the computer. They do things online, why? For one, you can bond with freakishly high number of people that you can physically meet.

Every day some start-up does a special feature in some online tech magazine about what these social network are missing. Everyday someone writes what the current social network lacks and how it can be fixed. But I believe we all are making one big mistake, we are putting twitter, facebook on the same page, which infact is misleading.

A rough analysis of social activities indicates the following traits in social users.

1. People who use twitter are creators, active agents who like to broadcast things irrespective if someone reads them or no. They are not so keen on knowing what their friends are up-to and prefer living in the moment. The twitter crowd accepts everyone. At the same time, it does not stop for anyone.

2. People on Facebook are closed, they tend to form small comfort zone and prefer to stay in them.

There are different types of social users and they haunt different places in different social network. Bringing them all together can be fatal and disastrous. The point is not to hunt for flaws in the social network and go on and build one for yourself. Google tried that, I wonder how many people actually like it?

The creator won't like it because its too heavy to understand, to channel creativity there should be freedom from expression, this can be evident for the fact that many twitter users still are fine with old twitter with no fancy animated graphics and stuff.

The normal facebook users have already build their comfort zone and won't be comfortable for moving out until and unless their comfort zone moves out.

Instead of creating more and more social networks we should try understand each other. There is no point in creating a separate social networks for communities. You cannot make people from twitter join facebook unless of course you threaten to kill a puppy if they don't. You cannot make people from facebook use twitter, their twitter account will lie dormant even if they create.

The strategy you design for both these networks should not be same, while on twitter, updating a status once in a day may not be as effective on facebook regular updates can amount as spamming. Again, customers on facebook would want freebies and stuff but people on twitter would like to engage in conversations. You cannot stereotype people on twitter as your customers and use it as a advertising medium. You have to fold up your sleeve and get in the mud if you really wish to connect.

It is very impolite to intrude in the personal space of a person, before doing it, always and I repeat, always LISTEN to them first. Then you may make your move.

What do you think?

Toon Courtesy: www.theholycow.co.in

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The social aggregation of clunk and junk

Hello, and thank you for reading this letter. There is a starving little boy in XYZ who has no arms, no legs, no parents. This little boy's life could be saved, because for every time you pass this on, a dollar will be donated to the Little Starving Legless Armless Boy from XYZ Fund. Forward this to atleast 10 people so that we get enough money blah blah blah.

How many of us have received this email in the past? I believe it is safely to say all, it was prominent in the olden days of Yahoo when email was a private affair not the thing you would discuss with your friend over the wall. I do not know how effective the campaign was but people did hit forward to the mail. I mean how easy it is to just forward it? Who knows maybe there is a boy in it. We have forwarded many such emails in the past, some people still do.

Sometimes they contain blessing from some God who will curse you if you don't do things etc. But nowadays this forwards have stopped being funny and have turned into serious news forwards. Today morning, as I walked into office I received a email from friend about a very sensitive letter written to the prime minister of India by the editor of the times of India, Mumbai. The contents of the letter were sensitive and maybe true to the fact, they contained the sentiment of many people.

However the main concern was? Why choose the name of the tabloid and the editor? To give it credit. Any campaign needs credit and the name was a credit. So I simply Googled the name of the editor to see if the name held any credit.

This is a snap of what were the top results in the name of the editor. If we observe carefully most of them are  personal blogs and discussion forums carrying the same email forwards text. The news that was in the email is simply and mindlessly published on the forums as quickly as it spread. 

The letter is sensitive and the people will have a tendency to forward it, which is only fair. But this creates a aggregation of the fake news and a cloud of junk which may hide one single authentic link for the source. 

What can be done for it? Obviously there are moral obligations of checking what you post on the blog and forward emails but obviously if it was really to be done, we won't be where we are right now won't we?

What are your views.

P.s. The email circulated was with respect to corruption and India, are they any other email circulated in other regions?

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Internet Vandalism and Twitter Stupidity

There are some speculations growing on in the market about the advent of social media, Social CRM and the increase usage of social sites like Facebook and Twitter. There are quite some articles about controversies around twitter, the most recent one being about TheRednerGroup and Game publisher 2k.

A single tweet can spell disaster for a corporate if done wrongly. While this is going on, closer to home India, we have claims of cyber bullying and internet vandalism on celebrities like Barkha Dutt, IIPM.

In these events one fails to take in account the social, astrological changes in the millennium that gone by and the change in the way society progressed. We first began long time ago with colonies, a group of people living together. The western civilization progressed with the rise of rumors and threats into the free world while the eastern civilization flourished the kingdoms of those who control the information. This ideology was carried on my the colonies to control the information widely distributed and thus we entered the rise of nations.

We have come a long way from bargain days and the farther we are from the  apes, the more control we had on the distribution of information. A few centuries back, India was a land of fantasies to the west, while the west was a land of white good people for the Indians. Today, India and the west are just one flight apart from each other, we have interculturist on both end of the pacific who teach others cultures to us. The information has taken a flight through the satellites and airwaves.

However, the procedure of transmitting the information was costly and those who did it had to bend in front of those who wished to control the information. Its not bad actually, main stream media cannot be blamed, its not that you spend 20 billions for social work, its a job, they have to do it. Many people do not know astrologically the gone millennium was the age of pieces, an age where we need Shepard to guide the sheep.

Then we changed a millenia and we entered the age of Aquarius, the age where information was free flowing like water. No wonder, in just 10 years of new millennium we saw the rise of wikileaks, blogging and social networks where information was flowing freely without any control. Obviously the law of mutation simply states with the new species takes control the old one starts to become extinct. Those who earlier controlled the information will not go out in extinction without a fight. They will resist the change, giving to the rise of Internet vandalism. We will see more such cases coming up, specially governments (formed merely by controlling information), news rooms and educational institutes resisting change like all.

Then we come to twitter stupidity, people tend to look at a tweet with the perspective a tweet, however we should observe it as a thought. It is a medium that spreads thoughts easily, its a medium to have your say, that can be right or wrong the platform won't judge. If however you are using twitter as a medium for promotion, SCRM or for a institution keep in mind that there should also be a complete approval of everything you say before you say it. Also, in this new information age, honestly is always the best policy for in coming years we will see the rise in scandals and worries everywhere. There won't be conspiracy theories, there will be conspiracy allegations. We need to prepare for that.

Twitter doesn't make people stupid, it simply amplifies and exposes our personality. I should add, the inner personalty which we are trying to control and change for so many days. 

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The social media expert

"I am a social media expert" hea announced to no one in particular.

I tried hard to avoid him but as we were the only two people in the room it was hard to do so still I pretended to avoid him.

"I am going to start looking for clients now..." he said, "and teach them social Media."
It was hard to avoid him as he bobbled in front of me with too much agility, 'Social Media?' I looked at him, 'you know social Media?'
'Correction dude,' I am an expert on social Media. I today created two fan pages for my friends,' he beamed.

'Social Media is in dude, where are you?'
Clearly I was in an ancient Chinese torture chamber at the moment but he didn't know it... Yet.

'So what do you do in social Media?' I asked making a brave face.

'Its as simple as making bread butter toast...' he explained, I resisted reminding him that last time he burnt the toast and ate it pretending it to be brown bread, 'Open a twitter account and a Facebook page then keep following people and follow them back...Do you know there are 500 million active users...' he smiled wide.

'The 500 user count is as reassuring as well as discouraging dude... There are 140 crore billion people on the planet, no one actually bothered to listen to you except me...just because you see them does not mean they actually care about you. In fact a half of them actually are worried about you invading their privacy.' I corrected, 'Can you assure 500 million people that you are a good guy and make them trust you?' I asked simply.

'Err dude, even God has not managed to do that' he answered, 'What you say seems Impossible.'
'So making money from internet was impossible but Google became worlds largest company by selling keywords over the internet.'

'You mean...'
'Disturbing my peace can be hazardous to your mental health...' I replied coldly.

Can you think of how to turn likes into cash flow? Well I am no social media expert but considering the fact that minimum age for joining Facebook is 13, creating a Facebook page clearly is not a qualification to be one.

So what it? Do tell me before returns.

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The human social connection

When it comes to social media, people immediately jumped into conclusion about ROI, likes, facebook, metrices, IP address, sentiment analysis and many other 'keywords'. Ideally speaking, I believe all this is.... crap.

How can you measure a human thought? How can you stimulate the human thought? Social Media is all about passing a message through the human thought. Twitter, facebook or any other social network are just an extension to this thought.

Lets take two examples of the social connection,

My mother is a traditional house wife, who also has a facebook account. When it came to getting a bride for her son (sadly me) it took her exactly 24 hours to get in touch with 2 girls from distant Karnataka (my hometown)

In a social world this is fantastic, the social channels she used where simple telephone (that also a landline) and total 3 phone calls. The message spread like a wildfire. Here we need to note, getting a wife for her son is about her control over his destiny, which in term triggers a passion. The passion made her open the social channels. This passion is important. Another important example of Passion was the train robbery at Kakori. Ram Prasad Bismill and Ashfaqullah Khan planned to rob the train on Northern Railway lines near kakori. The message was passed to the revolutionaries and in the era where telephone was a privileged of only the white empire, this message was passed far and wide. Because, there was passion involved in it.

When it comes to business, we talk about system. A systematic approach of turning facebook 'Likes' into money. This systematic approach does not work on the social world. The social world is open, not hidden, where there are millions of judges, you cannot just enter the world blindly, because every 140 characters you speak are being judged by millions of people. The 140 characters are going to be modified, sarcastically commented and re-broadcasted.

We can take a great tip from the brilliant orator, Aristotle and his great teaching of 'The Art of Rhetoric', we can use the same principle in Social Media.

'The art of rhetoric' lies in 3 principles, called Ethos, pathos and logos.
1. Ethos is ethics, the reputation. Is your product or your message ethical? Do not mis-representing a fact? Ethos talks about you, the brand, the product. E.g., Google, Don't Be evil. They have great ethos.
2. Pathos is passion, appeal based on emotion. Does your message has passion in it? E.g., Apple, iPod made a big dent in the universe.
3. Logos is representation, the logical and systematic driven message. E.g., Microsoft Office, Software for people ready business.


The social channel exists even beyond facebook or twitter, it exist in office coffee machine, it exist on telephone, on SMS. Social Media is a way for the customer to contact you, not for you to contact the customer. Your message is the first way of contacting the customer, rest comes later.

Completely my view, what do you have to say?

Image source:
Img 1: http://elledecouture.com/2010/07/20/drinks-for-everyone/
Img 2: http://mssilveira.edublogs.org/2010/09/30/109/

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Social Media empowering human life.

Well they say India is a developing nation, but is it? Kudos to this brave taxi man.

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Let us reinvent the wheel

Reinventing the wheel is the biggest jargon used in business. It simply means doing the same thing again and again.

Whenever I go to any presentation on social media, everyone talks about numbers, so and so network has so and so people. You can use so and so medium to use them.
Very few people realize that social media is less about social tools and more about the people.
The social tools only provide an easy medium to measure the reach of your campaign. However social media requires faith, faith and passion in your product and your costumer.
If the customer believes in your product and you, you will never need any social media strategy to work on because the client will be doing the marketing for you.

Ofcourse by doing this we are again reinventing the wheel. This ideology is the oldest written ideology in the world. That's how the man who inventing the wheel sold his idea to the world.

Imagine asking people to balance on a wheel in a world that did not know how to stand properly. What strategy did he use is worth a find, no?

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