The surge of social media has significantly impacted the buying decisions of consumers. Whether it's Facebook, Twitter, or MySpace, each one has pocketed critical users strength to influence the business decisions of consumers. The peer pressure, group affiliations, and overall cumulative network ripple effect of Internet usage have been primary influencers to branding and consumer marketing over Web in these years. Digital marketing, what's a decade before hinged on only the e-commerce concept, is now in full steam to drive online retailing by engaging the collaborative potential of social media. The way the social collaboration is shaping up across broad-based social networking sites would decide tomorrow's business modeling and the success of online business.
According to Pew Research, social networking site usage grew 88 percent among Internet users aged 55-64 between April 2009 and May 2010. This indicates that not only the youth brigade, but the senior citizens as well have boarded the social media train. Nobody wants to miss the most exciting journey either as an observer or as an active participant. An NPD Group report reveals that in 2009, social gamers bought $2.2 billion in virtual goods, and this would increase to $6 billion by 2013.
On enterprise level, companies have also joined the social media bandwagon, at least in the form of a blog site. Almost all companies those have an online presence have striven to push their collaboration quotient a little higher either by joining a social media or engaging themselves in smart product evangelism by creating a blog site. According to comScore, 22 percent of Fortune 500 companies now have a public-facing blog that has at least one post in the past 12 months. Many product companies have gone a little further by engaging technology bloggers to promote their products.
According to a report published by Nielsen, “Three of the world’s most popular brands online are social-media related (Facebook, YouTube and Wikipedia) and the world now spends over 110 billion minutes on social networks and blog sites.” The same report states, “For the first time ever, social network or blog sites are visited by three quarters of global consumers who go online, after the numbers of people visiting these sites increased by 24% over last year. The average visitor spends 66% more time on these sites than a year ago, almost 6 hours in April 2010 versus 3 hours, 31 minutes last year.”
In fact, social media have a great future ahead. From mere relation building to surveys to cumulative network effect, social media will decide whether an online business will succeed or not.
Monday, February 28, 2011
A new order in acting excellence
Triggered by dollops of acclaims recently showered by one of the film award events to Ash and Hrithik for their film Guzaarish, I developed some facts checking inquisition to verify whether all those high decibel speech delivered then was any way relevant to the level that the anchors and award givers generated. With all curiosity I was just waiting for the moment as to when this movie will be premiered on television, and that day was yesterday. I watch that movie frame by frame. No great locales, no expensive attires, no gimmicks were there that one would expect from a typical Sanaj Leela Bhonshali film, but one thing that was there – the excellence of acting that Ash and Hrithik delivered through out the movie. They have set a new record not only for themselves, but also for the contemporary actors. In times to come, it will be imperative to live up to the standards that both these actors re-framed for the Indian film industry. And they certainly deserve a national award for their excellent acting skills, especially in this movie, that they have showcased to the world of cinema.
Thursday, February 24, 2011
The Adventurism of Social Media
“Social networking sites are bloody suckers for Internet users,” blasted one of my old school cronies. He may be right on his own context. And why shouldn't he retort that way when his wife, an ad professional in a reputed agency, dated her boss regularly in rendezvous decided well in advance in cryptic parlance over different social media. Then she, in all her resounding conscience, smarted up to the occasion in the pretext of certain professional engagements with her clients. Sounds quite banal and inappropriate. I felt pity for this poor chap when he narrated his sordid saga to me last week. I couldn't stop laughing for the simple reason that how immature was my poor friend in jumping to the conclusion and blaming his wife's escapade to the ill impact of social media in entirety. Well, that's another nondescript instance like a pesky item number in a well-packaged movie. But on a serious note, social media had nothing to do with the misfortune of my friend, it's another social aberration that may happen anywhere in any society. It could even have happened without the presence of social media.
The biggest gift of social media is collaboration and reach. A decade before when netizens started using email and chat as collaborative tools, the communication process was two-way – the sender and the receiver; however, with the surge of social media, the real collaboration or multi-way communication became possible. For example, someone twits on any issue, it reaches out to the entire community, and that's the beauty of social media which empowers its avid users with a platform to collaborate on anything and everything under the sun. This is another pillar representing the free speech in a democratic world. The impact can't be marginalized by justifying its effects on social dynamics. The entire world is opening, in a sense that the floodgates of information from billions of social media posts is reaching out to the empowered, decisive consumers in a big way. Imagine how the Wikileak's adventurous journey in digging out the gravel of bureaucratic red tapes and informing the facts hidden behind the sinister design of ruling class hegemony across the nations. This is just the beginning of a new age information war, the next episode would be more dramatic, powerful, and effusive to sweep away the entire human race to a point where the war of words could be more powerful than the impact of a nuclear bomb.
The biggest gift of social media is collaboration and reach. A decade before when netizens started using email and chat as collaborative tools, the communication process was two-way – the sender and the receiver; however, with the surge of social media, the real collaboration or multi-way communication became possible. For example, someone twits on any issue, it reaches out to the entire community, and that's the beauty of social media which empowers its avid users with a platform to collaborate on anything and everything under the sun. This is another pillar representing the free speech in a democratic world. The impact can't be marginalized by justifying its effects on social dynamics. The entire world is opening, in a sense that the floodgates of information from billions of social media posts is reaching out to the empowered, decisive consumers in a big way. Imagine how the Wikileak's adventurous journey in digging out the gravel of bureaucratic red tapes and informing the facts hidden behind the sinister design of ruling class hegemony across the nations. This is just the beginning of a new age information war, the next episode would be more dramatic, powerful, and effusive to sweep away the entire human race to a point where the war of words could be more powerful than the impact of a nuclear bomb.
Wednesday, February 23, 2011
Life without Adverbs
Why writers can't survive without the temptation of using a number of adverbs in whatever piece they write? The primary reason, maybe, the make-believe syntactic structure of sentence, that many writers think, can add better color, tone, tenor and empowerment to the narratives, and this, upfront, is a rubbish fad people are succumbed to for generations. No adverb however exciting may sound can't trigger a serious thinking process in readers' mind or engage them to the narratives; however, it only can reduce the weight of facts articulated throughout.
In fact, in journalistic stories where a writer is supposed to be objective by nature, often gets dragged to the fancy of adverbs, without any significant reason. Even in oral communication, people chase the adverbs, or you can say -ly suffixed words, such as exactly, absolutely, actually, literally, eventually and many of this cadre, like a ruthless bull, charmed to the red rags. Adverbs neither add any value to the structure of sentence nor provide any aesthetic push, rather they increase the verbosity and consume undeserved space, be it on print or web platform. So, then why writers dare to use adverbs without considering the consequences? This indicates imperfect writing style or inexperienced writing. Before writing any piece, first understand why do you need to use an adverb. In the context of grammar, an adverb modifies a verb. Why does a verb require a qualifier, if it's a strong verb? Thus, the thumb rule for removing unscrupulous use of adverb is to transform a weak verb to a strong verb. That resolves all your adverbial concerns.
Let's try out some examples:
Weak: Alex quickly entered the room.
Strong: Alex rushed into the room.
Weak: Alice ran swiftly to overtake Rosy.
Strong: Alice sprinted to overtake Rosy.
In fact, in journalistic stories where a writer is supposed to be objective by nature, often gets dragged to the fancy of adverbs, without any significant reason. Even in oral communication, people chase the adverbs, or you can say -ly suffixed words, such as exactly, absolutely, actually, literally, eventually and many of this cadre, like a ruthless bull, charmed to the red rags. Adverbs neither add any value to the structure of sentence nor provide any aesthetic push, rather they increase the verbosity and consume undeserved space, be it on print or web platform. So, then why writers dare to use adverbs without considering the consequences? This indicates imperfect writing style or inexperienced writing. Before writing any piece, first understand why do you need to use an adverb. In the context of grammar, an adverb modifies a verb. Why does a verb require a qualifier, if it's a strong verb? Thus, the thumb rule for removing unscrupulous use of adverb is to transform a weak verb to a strong verb. That resolves all your adverbial concerns.
Let's try out some examples:
Weak: Alex quickly entered the room.
Strong: Alex rushed into the room.
Weak: Alice ran swiftly to overtake Rosy.
Strong: Alice sprinted to overtake Rosy.
Tuesday, February 22, 2011
Wake up now
On February 21, 2011, the Bombay High Court on a serious remark confirmed the death penalty for Ajmal Kasab, the perpetrator behind 26/11 event. Post verdict, the media community went berserk on analysing the fate of Kasab in the coming days, whether he would move to SC to challenge the verdict, and what if the SC doesn't alter the decision of Bombay HC, all in a farcical manner, he can even try the President's clemency as the last straw, but the most sure-shot one, given the number of mercy petitions pending at the President's platter, Kasab can live another generation, and that too at the cost of the exchequer money or you can say the public money. And if the media reports are to be believed, the nation has already spent Rs. 45 crores on Kasab's security, health, and other maintenance expenses and still counting. What India has achieved by selling out such huge taxpayers' money? Has it got concrete information whether Pakistan's support on deliberation of a blatantly heinous crime like this was ascertained? Even though India receives such information from different sources and ensures their veracity, still the political class will never allow us to take some measurable stringent steps.
Imagine the amount of money spent on Kasab, if we could have slated this money for development purpose of nation, we could have created 45 primary health centres or built 100 primary schools, or on a more conservative note, we could have provided employment to 3750 people for a year at a consolidated Rs. 10,000 per month, which would have helped over 11,250 people (considering the fact that each earning member has two dependents) to get three meals a day for a year. However facts may sound sacrosanct, we will never ever try to weigh the pros and cons of anything and everything that hounds a developing nation like India where 50% of childhood deaths are attributed to malnutrition, but we will take pride in ensuring five star security to a terrorist and flaunt our humanitarian values. For God sake, forget all these nonsenses for a moment, and cogitate over millions of issues concerning to a billion-plus people nation that direly needs the basic amenities for citizens. Political masters, are you listening? Wake up now, and take action, lest the nation turns into a banana republic.
Imagine the amount of money spent on Kasab, if we could have slated this money for development purpose of nation, we could have created 45 primary health centres or built 100 primary schools, or on a more conservative note, we could have provided employment to 3750 people for a year at a consolidated Rs. 10,000 per month, which would have helped over 11,250 people (considering the fact that each earning member has two dependents) to get three meals a day for a year. However facts may sound sacrosanct, we will never ever try to weigh the pros and cons of anything and everything that hounds a developing nation like India where 50% of childhood deaths are attributed to malnutrition, but we will take pride in ensuring five star security to a terrorist and flaunt our humanitarian values. For God sake, forget all these nonsenses for a moment, and cogitate over millions of issues concerning to a billion-plus people nation that direly needs the basic amenities for citizens. Political masters, are you listening? Wake up now, and take action, lest the nation turns into a banana republic.
Monday, February 21, 2011
The Democracy Even Can Work
Irrespective of some political extremists' views on the flaws that a democratic system inherently nurtures, a serious introspection into the functionality of a democracy can suggest otherwise - the democracy can even work better than any any form of governance that has been existing for long in this world nations. So what really ails the democracy? A very recent press conference of our Prime Minister with leading editors of electronic media that went sobering last week reveals the dark areas that a democracy face while functioning. If Dr. Manmohan Singh's repetitive statement on coalition dharma has at all to be believed, it becomes quite conspicuous that whether a democracy is inherently incapacitate to handle the most difficult situation or it's mended by majority views that a wrong act can even be proved right, in a typical popular argument. Or more appropriately how a coalition government can tighten the noose of a fair governance. What's most astounding fact that emerged from this press conference was that in coalition politics corruption is an assured byproduct, whether you like it or not. Managing many splinter political parties with vested political interests is the most difficult task for any leadership.
While analysing the genesis of recent corruptions that have been erupted from the hob-nobbing of political masters with business class, the singular fact that hammers up one's conscience is how subtly the multi-nodal nexus between politicians, bureaucrats, and entrepreneurs works that nobody in the secondary systems like media and law enforcement body never gets a chance to expose it. Perhaps, that's the perennial beauty of a democratic governance process. At one end, the so called still frame, the bureaucracy, and at the extreme, people leaders, the political class, join the tandem to loot the nation in a sophisticated design, that often we connote it the democracy.
So, what if we change the process of governance in a democracy? Will it be actually easier to transform a rotten system into a truly efficient one? What does it take to achieve this eventually? There are many unanswered questions though at the outset; however, we can give it a try and make this happen. What exactly we need now is to build up a national consensus to drive this mission - expose corruption in whatever form, wherever it takes place, without reconsidering the fact that however powerful political or bureaucratic heavyweights are involved in that dirty transaction. Only then we would be able to bring the truth to the fore. And the primary stakeholder in this mission possible is obviously the media community, apart from the law enforcement department, as the latter is an indispensable part of the democratic system. In a powerful democratic setup, media plays a greater role. If it shrinks from the responsibilities, then achieving this mission would be an extremely difficult proposition.
Of late, it's also observed that media to some extent is a part of lobby mechanism, thanks to the of Nira Radia tapes, which ruthlessly expose the connection of top jurnos of India with ministers and the political class in helping bend the law like Becham. Though it sounds pathetic, but the major section of media, I wish, and everyone do so, is largely seeker of truth. That's the only hope that instills in the minds of people. Lest these octopuses suck the life and spirit of common people in this country, the media should rise above the occasion and start digging the system to unearth the corrupt practices of politicians, bureaucrats, and whoever involved therein. Only then we would say that democracy can even work.
While analysing the genesis of recent corruptions that have been erupted from the hob-nobbing of political masters with business class, the singular fact that hammers up one's conscience is how subtly the multi-nodal nexus between politicians, bureaucrats, and entrepreneurs works that nobody in the secondary systems like media and law enforcement body never gets a chance to expose it. Perhaps, that's the perennial beauty of a democratic governance process. At one end, the so called still frame, the bureaucracy, and at the extreme, people leaders, the political class, join the tandem to loot the nation in a sophisticated design, that often we connote it the democracy.
So, what if we change the process of governance in a democracy? Will it be actually easier to transform a rotten system into a truly efficient one? What does it take to achieve this eventually? There are many unanswered questions though at the outset; however, we can give it a try and make this happen. What exactly we need now is to build up a national consensus to drive this mission - expose corruption in whatever form, wherever it takes place, without reconsidering the fact that however powerful political or bureaucratic heavyweights are involved in that dirty transaction. Only then we would be able to bring the truth to the fore. And the primary stakeholder in this mission possible is obviously the media community, apart from the law enforcement department, as the latter is an indispensable part of the democratic system. In a powerful democratic setup, media plays a greater role. If it shrinks from the responsibilities, then achieving this mission would be an extremely difficult proposition.
Of late, it's also observed that media to some extent is a part of lobby mechanism, thanks to the of Nira Radia tapes, which ruthlessly expose the connection of top jurnos of India with ministers and the political class in helping bend the law like Becham. Though it sounds pathetic, but the major section of media, I wish, and everyone do so, is largely seeker of truth. That's the only hope that instills in the minds of people. Lest these octopuses suck the life and spirit of common people in this country, the media should rise above the occasion and start digging the system to unearth the corrupt practices of politicians, bureaucrats, and whoever involved therein. Only then we would say that democracy can even work.
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