An idea can change your life

Ideas are free; they're like strands of sperm lying idle in the scrotum of a man, absolutely inane until and unless they find a chance to unite with an ovule to chart out a subtle transformation into an embryo inside the womb of a woman, who in all probability promises to take every precaution to protect the fetus till it grows into a full-fledged baby, ready to be delivered in due course. The anecdote, on the surface, may sound bit queer and weird, but the fact remains every idea that gets germinated in the vacuum of somebody's mental space is even more trivial than the existence of a strand of sperm.

Any average literate person can suggest thousands of ideas, which many would find seriously exciting and of extreme significance with reference to their applicability in human society; nonetheless, if someone asks them whether they can realize the intended benefits at large, probably the respond would be unequivocally imbecilic. Why do then people anxiously accentuate on the formation or garnering of ideas, even quite sporadically, by harping on a false notion of changing this world for once and all? Aren't we really becoming too itching about an uncertainty that has a rare chance of occurrence with its projected impact until all the preconditions somehow converge or made to work in tandem as per the plan? Or are we seriously dwelling on a phenomenon that certainly has overreaching consequence?

Well, let's stick to the principle that any and every great idea can transform this world to even a much better place to live in, but the moot question here is whether that idea can be hatched by itself to deliver the desired benefits? Never. It certainly needs scores of other factors – time, effort, and money - which contribute to the incubation of a raw idea. Eventually when all preconditions are met, an idea converts to an exciting piece of product, which can provide profound benefits to the person who owns it.

So what it boils down to the fact that ideas are certainly exciting so long as there is somebody to metamorphose them into great products with continuous support, and for that someone needs the desired skill, scale, discipline, and devotion. That's why the top global institutes like MIT, Bell Labs, and NASA are not just idea givers, rather they are, to the core, staunch idea incubators, which in all possibility, have the desired caliber, capability and scale to transform an idea into a world-class technology. And they are doing it as well. Unfailingly.

Before winding up let me cite here one interesting example on how a weird idea for a nondescript technology start-up becomes a matter of exciting technological innovation for one of the best technology companies in which they could able to foresee the future of virtual teleportation. For that the company even didn't hesitate to invest to the tune of Rs. 1000 millions. Well, by now it's quite clear what it makes to hatch an idea that can change your life. Nevertheless, not just an idea alone can!

Social Media Trends

Every netizen has his or her bit of experience with social media. Some two years back when people were increasingly emphasizing on real-time search and information distribution, the marketing agencies and brand builders pitched in to optimize the benefits of social space and then started a much calibrated social media monitoring which proved that social media is not just a fad, rather it's a social technology revolution to understand the marketplace and consumers in an effective way. Time has changed. The same cynics who argued that social media is all fun and and no business have now taken a u-turn and are diehard proponents of social media integration with every business.

Well, social media dynamics are as nimble as social changes in a consumer world. Finally, the physical and virtual world of people have converged. The people who are more active in social space have turned to social media technologies to manifold the results. It's not too far from today when every democratic debate could emerge from aggressive social media discussions. With every new trend in social media, the community influence on businesses will be paramount. And the winners are certainly the ones who stay relevant to the social media trends. Well, let's have a look at some of those trends.

1. Privacy is a word of the past
With younger generations taking on to a non-hypocritical stand on personal choices, social media will enable this trend in a much bigger way. Increasingly people will accept personal exposes on social media. Beyond sharing likes, dislikes, wishes, opinions, and personal information, people will be tempted to share their most secret episode of their life. What it eventually would produce complex personal information that would help businesses personalize their products and services. For example, a survey on the length of a condom, which of course has a direct relationship with manhood, is still considered hush-hush in our society; however through social media the personal revelations would pour in, which in turn would help condom manufacturing companies to innovate better and more effective products.

2. Information portability
It will be a thing of past to view just Facebook trends on Facebook. What's more interesting would be to experience a composite trends across all social media. An OpenID would act as a passport to import all relevant information from various social media spaces and throw up to the expectations of viewers.

3. Real-time search
Gone are the days when we depended heavily on webcrawller logic to get stale search results indexed few days before. Today, Google's social search capability provides real-time information. With advance algorithms, Google can enable users to avail relevant yet timely information to enhance search experience.

4. Content aggregation
Content is king and still this statement is relevant today. Will upsurging social networks and exponentially increasing online profiles, the amount of online content is being generated at huge speed. Like content syndicates, the content aggregation will see a paradigm shift. And the most important fact is that how the content will be aggregated and how will it be presented to the end users will make or break the business.

5. Virtual reality
With platforms marrying each other at a breakneck speed, the end users will experience a more powerful applicability of social networking sites. Thanks to innovative technologies like 3-G, GPS mapping, mobile integration, all these will bring in an altogether new dimension not only to social relations but also to business relationships in long run. And the sad part is that your privacy is gone and you are exposed to million scrutiny.

6. Market influencer
TRP and ABC reports are a thing of the past. When advertising agencies claimed the number of eye balls directly influence the spend pattern of consumers, the social media has gone further to prove that viewership per se has really anything to do with sales, it's now the niche segmentation of viewership that really makes a significant differentiator. In fact, if we go by the market influential tactics, the feasibility of a sale only happens when the right customer receives the information. Advertising through TV or newspapers maybe as relevant today as was in past, but what really matters is that how the consumers internalize the facts propagated through advertising. The social media in turn has bring in breakthrough techniques to influence consumers in a larger way. The peer reviews, Google analytics, social trends, and various monitoring mechanisms have developed a sense of trust in consumers' mind.

7. Consumers' verdict
What's relevant today is how your peers perceive it. That has been a trend written on rock. Consumers now before buying any product take a deliberate preview of the product and its user ratings. If a product doesn't ferry well in user ratings, it's perceived that either the product is not worth purchasing or it's a sub-standard product. Imagine the verdict of consumers which will drive the business of tomorrow.

8. Social media as a service
So. what's next after SaaS, PaaS, and CaaS? Certainly, it's SmaaS or social media as a service that will define how SMEs which can't afford to full-range SM services of their own bank upon this new trend. Beyond fad, SmaaS will bring in new opportunity for businesses to expand their reach and brand positioning. And the SmaaS providers will see a complete new business opportunity along the evolution of social media technologies.

9. Crystal gazing
Everyone likes a bit of predictable future. What's relevant today might be hugely irrelevant tomorrow. Be it social trends, spending patterns, consumer behaviors, or marketing shenanigans, the future of social media largely depends on every aspect of consumer acceptance to change. Behind this lies innovative technologies to understand the implications of consumer reactions and bring about necessary logical changes in the usability of social technologies. That said, the gamut of social media will notice an array of visible changes on consumer usability and technology facilitation. Thus, the future will evolve from how consumers look at social media today and what they expect from the providers.

10. A marriage of social convenience
Social media and digital media will soon converge to open a newer platform for consumers. Digital divide will be dissolved sooner than latter. The elite technologies that specific sections of our society normally use will be available to all and sundry. Because social media will help reduce the class structure and evolve a paradigm shift in digital experiences that once was exclusive to top echelons of society. Thanks to the evolution of social media technologies that have brought people from all ranks and files to the same platform on a reasonably similar involvement.

Social Media and Tomorrow's Business

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.

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.