Change is coming

This is a re-run of a previous attempt at posting to a blog. The previous attempt involved a different blog, a different phone and a completely different post. Sadly that one didn’t go through. If this one does then its a change and a sign of the ever-increasing power of mobility over other forms of posting. Here’s more power to the BlackBerrys of this world!

Mobile becomes a social media lifeline?

Approaching the end of 2009 and looking back on all the progress that social media has made, one would say that it has been on predictable lines. With nothing significantly and spectacularly different being thrown up. Social media has gained ground, a very good sign. We have seen it gaining ground in specific industry segments, an even better sign. I have had the opportunity of working on social media initiatives in some varying segments this year and the approach and the acceptance levels in each has been different and to say the least, a learning experience in itself. The one learning that I have come out with from all this during this one year is this. There are some that get it. And some dont. Well, here’s power to those who do, and a hope and a prayer for those who dont – hope you DO get it at the earliest!

In a recent post titled Six Social Media Trends for 2010, David Armano, founder of Dachis Group, an Austin based consultancy delivering social business design services, has some observations that are quite insightful.

The one which stood out apart from the others, is the one that talked about the mobile becoming a strong social media lifeline. With a lot of Corporates shunning social networking and clamping down on access to them by shutting off every port possible in their firewalls, the mobile is going to be a strong access point to the various networks. People, like Armano says, are going to be taking less of cigarette breaks, and more of mobile breaks.

A brief summary of his other predictions are:

– Corporations will look at scaling up their social network marketing efforts and make it a lot more strategic.

– Social networking companies will move much more heavily into entertainment.

– Companies will have well defined social media policies which might actually be enforced. Companies will look at formalizing its views on social media and rules of engagement for employees.

– Mobile becomes a social media lifeline. Forget the cigarette break at work. In 2010 you will be taking social media breaks.

– e-mail will be rapidly replaced as a means of sharing information. All forwards to friends and colleagues will now be done using networks such as facebook and Twitter.

– Social media begins to look less social.

Does all this mean there is a definite move towards it becoming a more acceptable means of formal communication and dialogue? I doubt that, but it definitely will become a lot stronger as a collaborative and brand communication platform.

Search Wars

Today’s announcement of the Microsoft Yahoo! deal opens up another chapter in the search wars. With this deal going through Yahoo! will be throwing in the towel on its search engine and sticking to what it does best – managing its highly successful media properties. As per the deal, it is expected that Microsoft’s Bing search technology will power the search on the Yahoo! portal. Yahoo will continue to control the ads on its own sites and will sell ads for Microsoft – using Microsoft’s ad delivery platform. The revenue share between Microsoft and Yahoo will see a large share going to Yahoo in the first couple of years. A detailed report on the deal which analyses the various parts of the announcements can be found here. The main points of the deal can also be found summarized here.

So the big question now is – How does this impact Google? Not much at present one might say given that Google has a 65% market share in the search market. The deal gives Microsoft/Yahoo 30%. There is also the rapid strides that Bing is making in the market. This coupled with Yahoo taking on the combined sales for Microsoft and Yahoo along with using the Microsoft ads platform could start causing Google some concern in the days ahead.

Another angle to the deal is that the implementation just might be delayed due to reported speculation that Google may lobby the regulators as the previous deal between Google and Yahoo had been impacted by the lobbying of Microsoft at that time.

It will be interesting to see what exactly Google’s reaction will be to this announcement.

Looking Through The Right End Of The Telescope

A recently published report on the digital market scenario in India, “Digital Media Outlook 2009”published by Webchutney, detailed the current scenario of the digital marketplace, the current ad spends and the projected trends in usage and spends on advertising in the digital space. There are a few points that came out of the report that give clues to the Indian Marketer’s perception of the Internet as a medium for marketing communication and how that could be coming in the way of using the Internet effectively in marketing. This also clears a few questions I had earlier.

The main point that seems to come out from report is that Marketers in India still have a skewed perception of the Internet’s ability to provide a platformfor a strong and effective marketing communication program. The misconceptionarises from the way the Internet is perceived by the marketers who consider it primarily to be a platform for generating leads and sales. ‘Reaching TargetAudience’ is the single greatest driver in allocating budgets. In their effort in concentrating on ‘Reach’, the unique ability of the internet delivering ‘selective and targeted audience’ is ignored.

This expectation of the Internet being a vehicle for ‘Lead generation, quick response and conversion’ results in it being used as a direct marketing platform rather than a medium of marketing communication. Another observation is that although the objective of using the internet is “Lead Generation”, the perception is that it is more effective for “driving traffic”. This basic contradiction in the mind-set of the marketers does lead to the full potential of the Internet not being utilized.

One more contradiction which comes out is that even though the use of Social Media as a marketing initiative has a fairly high satisfaction level (above display ads and Networks). While this is the case, the share of digital ad spends for Ads (display and networks) still ranks high – second to the development and maintenance of websites. Social Media initiatives account for hardly 13%. So, despite satisfaction levels being high, the spends are low. This would point to to a lack of understanding of marketers for the use of the Internet medium and its measurability in general Social Media in particular.

 With the Total ad spend on Internet being around Rs. 435 Crores, the good news is that it is set to grow from the present 4% of all ad spends to around 8% of all ad spends making it a Rs. 525 Crores market in the coming year. Given the rate of increase in Internet users, the only way to further grow the size of the market would be for the Marketers to broaden their horizons beyond ‘reaching consumers’ and ‘generating leads’ and understanding that marketing communication is not about “Reaching Customers” but “Reaching Customers and Staying on Top of their Minds”. They need to appreciate the Cost effectiveness of reach and leverage the internet to build excellent consumer experiences and relationships.

They probably should figure out which is the right end of the telescope and start looking through it.

Social Media Ad spend on fast track!

Social Media Marketing is set to show rapid growth, according to a recently published report from Forrester. According to the report, the overall ad spend in the US alone for 2009 will touch 25 Billion USD (which is around 12% of the overall ad spend) and grow to almost 55 Billion USD (21% of overall ad spend) by 2014.

Looking at the components of the interactive ad spend projected for 2009, Search Marketing takes the lion’s share with around 15Billion USD, Display Advertising is next with around 8 Billion USD, then comes email marketing with a little over 1 Billion USD, followed by Social Media at around 700 Million USD and mobile marketing at 400 Million USD.

The interesting part of the report is the forecast made for the social media spend growth. It is projected to reach a little over 3 Billion USD, with a CAGR of 34%. Compare this with the growth projected for Search Marketing, which is projected to grow at a rate of 15%.

The two important points of the report are that Search will continue to lead interactive spend followed by display advertising and that owned social media assets (like internal blogs, community sites) are really the only emerging media getting traction in today’s economic climate.

OK. So where do we get these numbers for India? The surprising thing is that there is a dearth of authentic numbers and statistics that can be used. My search for this source continues…. and if there be any out there who can shed some light on this, please do so. Thanks in advance.

Blogged with the Flock Browser

Who will walk this path? Indian IT and Web 2.0 Strategy Consulting

Theres one question that’s been occupying my mind a lot of late. My interactions with people in the industry and the resulting responses thereof are leading me to it. And the question is this. Are the Indian IT Organizations ready to take on Web 2.0 Strategy Consulting as part of their portfolios?

My short answer to this is No. Giving it a more discussion/debate flavour I would say that I feel that the Indian Corporate sector is still very wary of using Social Media as an Internet channel for marketing, this could be the primary reason that the IT industry is reluctant to get into this area. I feel that this in itself presents a consulting business opportunity.

I have been doing a little bit of asking around and have got some feedback on this.

There is one view that that most ‘IT’ organisations, regardless of nationality, are very poorly equipped to provide web 2.0/social media strategy consultancy. What is required is a completely different skills set and background experience. The thought that leads from this view is that this is either missing or not being acknowledged in the industry.

There is another view which is similar with the additional input being that what is missing is the ability to think and act from the ‘outside in’ not just from the ‘inside out’. In other words, being ‘customer led’ and using Marketing as a two-way conversation with your customers; a conversation with your network. Talking ‘with’ rather than ‘at’ your customers.

Another quite blunt take is that it is very tricky for a lot of organizations and that it is very difficult to teach an old dog new tricks.

What I strongly feel is that its not because of a lack of skill sets in any organization or that they are poorly equipped to handle consultancy in this area. Its more to do with a mind-set, being able to tune into the whole “relationships” and “conversations” pheonomena and be able to find ways to leverage that. Any IT organization is bound to have the skills and the ability to learn new technologies, so that cannot be an obstacle – its just opening up to the idea that there is a definite business opportunity in this area.

A suggested approach would be to have a ‘new dog’ working with the ‘old dog’, someone with a relationship/conversation mindset together with someone with strong IT skills.

We are talking about developing training programmes to try and achieve these ‘hybrid’ skills, say taking marketing graduates and training them in social media technologies; taking IT graduates and training them in the softer skills necessary for success in web 2.0

Do we have the vision to go down this path? Which are IT companies/Digital agencies that do offer these services at present? Are likely to try developing these “hybrid” skills in the near future?

What is your take on this?

The largest social network – email !!

Which do you think is the largest social network in the world? Take a guess. The answer from the initiated and number followers would be “Facebook”, which has upwards of 200 million active users. Well, it would surprise you to know that that answer may not entirely be correct. What is today the world’s first and largest social network is – Email !

Jeremiah Owyang, the Forrester analyst of social technologies, has a very interesting take on this.

And to be sure, email does qualify as a social network – it has profiles just as social networks (the signatures in email can serve as profiles), they allow you to connect to people and exchange information which become conversations, and of course allow you to share things and collaborate with other groups.

In terms of numbers, just hotmail and yahoo between them have upwards of 650 million active users. The other means of social communication already has made inroads into email – we get notifications of all kinds regarding activities on social media platforms in our inboxes. So email already is part of the social sphere anyways.

More and more email Vendors are foraying into the social space
by adding “Share this” (called Social Pollination) type of features to direct email marketing pieces so friends can share emails with friends in social networks.

So what does the future of Email and Social Networks look like? J. Owyang thinks that they will probably the same. In the next few years, email and social networks will look the same and he expects email vendors like Google, Yahoo Mail, Microsoft Live to envelop the social experience. If you consider Facebook’s news stream or Friendfeed, these are starting to represent simlar content from emails –there is a definite merging happening.

Web 2.0: The Framework, Definitions and Technologies

Information overload results in an aching head. Which goes swimming. And battles strange hallucinatory creatures that don’t seem to go away. Is there a way around this? Maybe. But I cant think of any easy way. So embrace it and enjoy the ride.

Let me try and encapsulate information on Web 2.0, the wildly overwhelming beast that has versioned itself beyond its original presence.

The following is sourced from Web 2.0 Framework

The Framework:

If we divide this up into 3 components: Inputs, Mechanisms and Emergent Outcomes.

The inputs would be:
1. User generated content: which would comprise of Text, Images, Videos, Interactive media, Virtual architecture.
2. Opinions: By way of links, Tagging, Ratings, Social connections
3. Applications: Web applications, widgets

Mechanisms:
1. Technologies: XML, APIs, Ajax, Ruby on Rails etc.
2. Recombination: Mashups, Remixing, Aggregation, Embedding
3. Collaborative Filtering: Ranking, Profile correlation
4. Structures: Folksonomies, Tag clouds, virtual worlds
5. Syndication: RSS

Emergent Outcomes:
1. Most interesting gets most visibility
2. Personalized recommendations
3. Meaningful communities
4. Relevant content that could be easily found
5. Enhanced usability
6. collective intelligence

The Characteristics:

What essentially characterizes Web 2.0 is that it is driven by participation. If you consider the common platforms like blogging, social networks, video and photo sharing sites, you will see that they all exist due to the content that they offer that has been created and shared by the users. Standards play a big part in providing common interfaces for accessing content and applications and this makes for easy integration across various platforms. The applications and content is decentralized. Web 2.0 is decentralized in its architecture, participation, and usage. Distributing applications and content over many computers and systems, rather than maintaining them on centralized systems gives it the power and flexibility that would have been lost if they were to be confined to a single monolithic architecture. The openness and modularity of Web 2.0 contributes to creating a whole that is larger than the sum of its parts. The control that users have over the content they create and share and the ability to create and manage individual identities is a crucial part of the Web 2.0 ecosystem.

The Technologies:

Aggregation which is bringing multiple content sources together into one interface or application.

AJAX: (Asynchronous Javascript and XML) This is a combination of technologies that
enables highly interactive web applications.

API: (Application Programming Interface) This is a defined interface to a computer
application or database that allows access by other applications.

Embedding: Integrating content or an application into a web page, while the
original format is maintained.

Folksonomy: Rich categorization of information that is collectively created by users, through tagging and other actions.

Mashups: Combination of diff erent types of content or data, usually from diff erent sources, to create something new.

Remixing: Extracting and combining samples of content to create a new output. The term was originally used in music but is now also applied to video and other content.

RSS: (Really Simple Syndication) A group of formats to publish (syndicate) content on the internet so that users or applications automatically receive any updates.

Ruby on Rails: An open source web application framework that is frequently used in Web 2.0 website development.

Tag cloud: A visual depiction of tags that have been used to describe a piece of content, with higher frequency tags emphasized to assist content comprehension and navigation.

Tagging: Attaching descriptions to information or content.

Virtual architecture: The creation of avatars (alternative representations of people), buildings, objects, and other artefacts inside virtual spaces.

Widget: Small, portable web application that can be embedded into any web page.

XML: (eXtensible Markup Language) An open standard for describing data, which enables easy exchange of information between applications and organizations.

On Web 2.0 Adoption

I have been thinking about the relevance and the penetration of Web 2.0 usage in the industry in India – and what I have gathered so far is this: There is still a lot of apprehension about using it, there is uncertainty arising from not being able to see a realistic return on investment on it, a general wariness about approaching it – there are more, but this is enough to tell us that there is still a long way to go before corporates in India embrace the Web 2.0 technology and the advantages it offers and integrate it into their business processes – both for marketing and for applications.

In this context there was a recent article I read called “The Web 2.0 adoption curve” by Christopher Rollyson. In this article the author talks about an adoption curve for Web 2.0 and the different phases and the time-lines for those phases. He is of the opinion that this time around also there is a bubble pattern emerging just like there was with the Web 1.0, which ended with the dotcom bust – only this time around with the learning of the previous experience we are better placed to cash in on the opportunities provided. The disruptive technologies that drive these waves have to be dealt with a bit carefully as many times the mistakes made while adopting them end in disillusionment and failure. This is not so much due to the technology itself but due to the market’s perception of the technology, the perceived value and the perception of when it could deliver value.

The Web 2.0 adoption curve is very similar to Gartner’s Hype Cycle where the five phases described are Technology Trigger, Peak of Inflated Expectations, Trough of Disillusionment, Slope of Enlightenment and Plateau of Productivity. Similarly the Web 2.0 adoption curve also goes through the phases Initial Discovery, Hype and Expermentation, Failure and Disappointment, Triumph of Determination and Pervasive Adoption.

Initial Discovery: This is the phase of the cycle that lasted from 2006 – 2007. This was the time when new technologies drove applications that provided platforms for social networks and user-generated content to be created and shared. It provided a platform that became a three-way communication channel. This was largely ignored by corporates and executives as utilities for ‘kids’ and was embraced by the early adopters.

Hype and Experimentation: This is the current phase that the Web 2.0 adoption cycle is going through. This is the phase where there is a lot of buzz of these platforms and technologies and the market seems to be grasping the fundamentals but due to lack of experience in applying them, they still are viewing it with a significant degree of suspicion and there is resistance within organizations especially among the executive and middle management layers to adopting it. This is the current phase of the adoption curve of Web 2.0 and is likely to last till end of 2009. This leads to the next phase which is one of Failure and Disappointment.

Failure and Disappointment: Since the levels of learning and competence have not yet reached a level of maturity there will be a large number of failures and levels of disappointment will be high. This will largely be due to the lack of understanding of the application of the disruptive technologies. This is the phase where customer expectations that have not been managed properly will result in failures. This phase will span 2010.

Triumph of Determination: Those organizations that have not given up on the web 2.0 initiatives due to failures and have managed to set themselves realistic expectations will begin to see the benefits arising out of adopting this media. These are the ones that would have persevered, invested wisely, correctly and with the right expectations from the technologies that they had invested in. This phase will span 2011 – 2013.

Pervasive Adoption: This is the stage of maturity where both the platforms and the processes are understood on a large scale and mass adoption will take place. The Internet has been in this phase for some time now. This phase for Web 2.0 adoption is likely to be reached during the period 2014 – 2015.

The changes that disruptive technology brings about will be met with resistance by executives and middle management of corporates as they would be more given to staying with established processes and systems. This is understandable as the level of comfort with legacy systems which are mature are something which they can handle. They will not regard these media with the same rigor as they would the matured processes and systems that they are comfortable with. This will lead to a prolonged period in which Web 2.0 will struggle to gain acceptance. Disappointment and failure will occur as the expectations are not managed leading to unrealistic levels of perceived value which will arise due to the lack of learning and competence during the early stages. Web 2.0 communication will become the means of communication in the 21st century – the phone of the new age if you will.

Search through the ages

Can you imagine Google with a long white beard? Or a chapter in a history book? Not likely, but maybe you should start… search is starting to mean a little more than just Google.

There is a new face emerging as far the search experience online goes.
Whats new? The thin line between search and social media is getting thinner. Melting away. So says the blog post “What Social Media Means for Search“

Summarizing in the long what it says:

Search now is as much about whom it comes from as where you find it.

We now “search” the minds of a select group of people whom we trust.

What was: search engines focusing on pages and the content within them. A single keyword frequency decided rank.

And then GOOGLE happened: now the network was everything. The content, the links among them and the voices of authority was decided by such factors. Relevancy entered.

When wonderful things happen, wonderful people think better. It’s a good idea to know who’s linking to the content and why. What is valuable is what your friends are doing differently than the random others on the internet. Enter social media.

Relevance now is determined not just by what’s on a page and what surrounds that page but how that data relate to your personal network. With so many people connecting to each other through social networks, the resulting social graph is a powerful way of helping users filter the data coming at them.

Consider:

• YouTube today has become the de facto place people turn when they want to find video content on any subject imaginable.
• Twitter is morphing into a search engine that allows you to tap into the “now” — what’s going on now? What’s the groundswell of sentiment around a topic?
• Facebook has become a way for friends to share interests by becoming fans of brands and lifestyles and posting articles, opinions and information.

All of the above have begun to surpass Google for specific information searches.

So??

The so is that for brands, marketers and advertisers:

Version 1.0 made sure that information within individual pages of your site could be found

Version 2.0 made sure your site was optimized within a network of related sites

Now version 3.0 is going to be about finding ways to reach individuals by using their social graphs.

Means go fish where the fish are.

Means reaching people where they’re already sharing, linking, publishing and tagging.

Full-service search engines aren’t going to go away; they still serve a very important centralizing role. Traditional search will converge with social media and an understanding of social media will be a requirement of marketing in the Search 3.0 universe.