Masala Digital

The weekend has been pretty interesting. I saw rebounds regarding Google and its shenanigans all across social networks and the Internet in general, and then woke up this morning to read more in print. Led to some light thinking on the matter, and I tried breaking these thoughts into three distinct and debatable trends that I have noticed about the BigO.

One champion for your business

On Saturday, Steve Rubel interviewed Jeff Jarvis’ about his new book, What Would Google Do? In the book, Jarvis breaks down Google’s practices into 12 distinct rules and then applies them to aging industries like media and advertising. Denuo/Publicis’s Rishad Tobaccowala points out how Google served an entirely new population of advertisers who didn’t have agencies and that enabled it to set new rules. Google sells performance instead of scarcity (a lesson the rest of media must learn in this post-scarcity economy). Because it rewards relevance, it encourages better, more effective advertising.

One number in your life

I picked up today’s newspaper and there’s Google again with its mega plans to unify the masses. Launched on March 5th, Google Voice is all set to revolutionize telephones.It unifies your phone numbers, transcribes your voice mail, blocks telemarketers and elevates text messages to first-class communication citizens. And that’s just the warm-up. Google Voice began life in 2005 as something called GrandCentral. It was, in its own way, revolutionary. More on it here.

One fellow to help you out on the web

If search wiki wasn’t enough, Google now has made available the “preferred site” option to all its users. The service allows users to overweight certain web sites in the search engine result pages. Once you sign up, Google recommends pages from your history that you tend to visit when searching. You have the option to make these sites (or any other) a preferred destination.

Without even getting into the whole business/ SEO/ SEM discussion, I can only hope that you can turn it off - Half the fun about search is the fact that you can find the “unexpected” and stuff you haven’t seen before. I mean what is “search”, if you know what you’re gonna get?

One person who knows you better than you yourself!

So you worried just about how your search data was painting a DNA of who you are? Google  released 11 software applications for mobile phones that spell a fundamental change in our lives. Among the applications were functions such as text messaging, web browsing, a diary, Orkut - the company’s social networking offering - and Latitude, a GPS-based service that tracks you wherever you go. Innocent enough, perhaps. But combined they would allow Google to know what you are doing all of the time. A truly Orwellian development that has been described by privacy campaigners as “a catastrophic corruption of consent”.

Far-fetched? Not at all. The mobile phone industry has for years seen the potential for a rich market to develop in location-based services if only it could get its customers to agree. Google, on the other hand, has decided to take advantage of that market and it has sought to do so by appearing to be helpful. The rationale is simple - offer a service for free and the customer will not notice that they have given a company the right to know where they are at any time.

So now - considering the above, what do you think?

1. Google is well on its way to create the “Empire“
2. Google is doing what all enterprises should do - consistently better their offering
3. Google is retrograding the whole “Internet” story it fed on by killing basics like “free spirit”, “openness”, “surprises”, “sense of wonder” et al

Its painful to see just how some myopic online marketers in India have shortchanged the medium.

In India, its been an uphill, albeit fun journey to convince traditional marketers to realize the online potential. Why even debate the fact that its simpler for most marketing managers to go along with traditional - considering they grew up with it and hey, they are assessed internally for stuff they do for a billion Indians…not the extra 0.3 above that eh? Hmm. Sobering thought.

Now instead of building the online story, the charisma, the wow and really, capitalizing on its niche value as the preferred medium of the “classes” - the early onliners tried making a quick buck and rep by exploiting the ultimate clincher - performance - a bit early in the game. All because, no marketer was paying attention to their incessant whine otherwise, and maybe they weren’t too good any other which way.

So, the whole “only a person clicks” was misconstrued into this magical sounding “direct” and “personal” story and sold in the name of “CPL” - effectively screwing up not just the user experience that was now inundated with ads, but also leading to malpractices like click frauds that cheated the brands.

All this done to a medium that is truly personal, and in a space where humans actually spend time with themselves.

Why advertise when you can talk here? Why hurry when we can build relationships? For once we have the opportunity to truly realize terms like CRM, Loyalty, Preference and desires like love. Let’s not screw it up any further, shall we?

And to the CPL media planners - hell, they are shaking the Wii now..go measure that!

Welcome Mr. Obama…it has been a long wait!

Log on to IRCTC

Book a ticket.

Hit Print

Say Hi!

Nice!

Here’s the latest from our deal ol’ Delhi Transport Corporation, or more correctly, the Delhi Integrated Multi-Modal Transit System Ltd.:

After going the digital way with on-board GPS, the DIMTS fellows have now gone a step further by creating an Online Bus Information System that will help Delhi citizens plan their bus journeys, effectively cutting the wait-time at bus-stops to a minimal.

Citizens can now track buses on Delhi roads in real time though DIMTS’ “Online Bus Information System”. Both AC and Non-AC buses plying on selected BRT routes and all the AC buses on different routes in Delhi can be tracked using this system. Rest assured, it won’t be long before the system is extended to ALL the routes & buses!

Click here to View the Estimated Time of Arrival of Buses on the Bus Stops

Click here to View Route-wise Expected Time of Arrival of Buses on Delhi Map (Google Map Integration!)

Click here to View the location of Buses on GIS Map of Delhi (Roll-over mouse on each stop. Green pointers are buses (incl registration numbers for ID)

This is awesome stuff..and an example for others!

More info can be found on the DIMTS website!

Mumbai suffered one of its worst terror nightmares these last 3 days when armed terrorists took over strategic spots in Mumbai, leading to a bloodshed yet unparalleled in its gruesomeness.

While the terror attacks received worldwide media coverage, it was no less covered extensively by citizen journalists and common people who used a host of digital mediums to add to the story. Internet, and new media tools, came on the forefront as reliable tools to track the terror drama.

A wikipedia page was constantly updated by vigilant users, providing a single point of reference.

Many twitter feeds contributed to real-time reporting & status update, which were utilzed heavily by the administration, media as well as citizens to get regular updates as well as channelize real-time help.

Twitter feed for Mumbai

Twitter-fed list of useful local numbers

Post the attacks, these feeds have become the buzz-ground for discussions, opinions and to plan next steps to solve the problem at its roots.

A google maps page also became a ready reference guide, especially for people outside India to get a real-life perspective of where and how things were happening.

Vinu’s photostream was picked up by Fox News & CNN as well as multiple channels to provide real-time updates on all that was happening.

Over 2000 videos have flooded youtube post the attacks.

The MumbaiHelp blog has updated lists of all relevant helpline numbers as well.

via audiencematters

A TNS global survey entitled Digital
World, Digital Life, probing online behaviours and perspectives shows
that, on average, people across the 16 countries surveyed are spending
close to a third (30%) of their leisure time online.

It appears we like our 30% digital time regardless of how much free
time we have.

Digital World, Digital Life found that respondents with
up to 2 hours leisure time each week day, spent the same proportion of
their leisure time online as respondents who had between 7 and 8 hours
of leisure time on a week day.  This means there is no direct link
between the amount of leisure time we have and how much of it we spend
online.

What are the top 5 activities that people undertake while online?
TNS asked people to identify a range of activities in the month before
they took the survey.

A total of 81% had used a search engine to find
information; 76% had looked up the news; 74% had used online banking;
65% had looked up the weather; and 63% had researched a product or
service before buying it. These activities are all inherently very
practical.

The highest ranking classic leisure activity – “watching a
video clip” – only came in at number 8, with half (51%) saying they had
done this in the past month. Another leisure activity – “listening to
an audio clip” – came in at number 10 (44%).

Arno Hummerston, Managing Director, TNS Global Interactive, said:
“If our leisure time is so precious, then why do we on average spend
almost a third of it using the internet? We believe it is because we
are making more efficient use of our valuable time, specifically by
using the internet – thereby allowing us to fit more into our lives.
Being online helps people fulfil certain tasks and activities quickly
and efficiently. By spending productive time online, we are actually
making more time for leisure. With more social and entertainment
activities available online, it is also easy to understand why our
lives are becoming more digital.”

Who and where are the most avid onliners in the world? Younger
people under 25, as might be expected, are seriously engaged with
online life. The under 25s surveyed in the report say they spend well
over a third (36%) of their time online. On average, Chinese
respondents under 25 spend half (50%) of their leisure time online.

If the world is to take its lead from Japan and Korea – countries
that are seen as being innovative and pioneering in the online world –
then we can expect to spend even more time online. In those countries,
respondents say they currently spend on average around two-fifths of
their leisure time online.

There are particular groups of people that are more avid users of
the internet than others. For example, across the 16 countries
surveyed:

students spend 39% of their time online.

US Housewives spend 38% of
their leisure time online while in the UK, this was even more pronounced
with almost half (47%) of housewives spending their leisure
time online.This might be explained by the rapid expansion of online
food shopping, particularly in the UK where online shopping expenditure
in general now tops £1 billion per month (Source: Mintel 2008).

The Digital World, Digital Life survey also underlined that mobile
handsets are frequently used to connect to the internet.

Worldwide, 1
in 10 respondents surveyed say they connect to the internet once a day
via mobile handsets. But Asia’s adoption trends imply significant
growth prospects. Among the Japanese and Chinese respondents to the
survey, for example, over a quarter of people access the internet over
mobile connections at this once-a-day frequency.

Thanks to Sean, I just caught this on youtube..

Goes on as an attempt to say what money can’t buy…but halfway through the video, just what all it can really!

Great work Bill. You wont be missed much, however.

Courtesy: googlesystem blog

Google’s new experiment that lets you reorder and annotate search results is now live. Google SearchWiki should be available automatically if you are logged in to a Google account and it can be recognized by the visual clutter added to the search results.

Next to each result, you should see three new options: a way to promote a web page at the top of the results, an option to remove results from the page (they’re still visible at the bottom of the page) and a feature that lets you share public comments about a result. After promoting a result, Google shows some unnecessary information about the other people who promoted the result.

It’s important to remember that all the changes are saved to your Google account and they won’t affect the search results for everyone, at least not directly. If you want to see an aggregation of all promotions, demotions and comments, go to the bottom of the page and click on "See all notes for this SearchWiki". This is the real wiki built by Google and it’s easy to access by adding &swm=2 to the URL of a search results page: http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=google&swm=2.

Comments are not very useful, although you could find insights for some obscure queries. The absolute number of people who promoted a search result is not very useful either, especially when you’ll see big numbers like 314,159,265.

SearchWiki’s main idea is to give users the opportunity to manually customize the search results and make them more predictable. Since many people repeat common searches like [mail], [weather], [news] and Google’s results are constantly changing, it’s nice to pick your favorite results and display them at the top. If you can’t find a site you like, click on "Add a result" and manually add a page in the list of top results.

Good things about SearchWiki:

- you can now adjust Google’s results for your typical queries and save time when repeating the searches

- use Google instead of bookmarking web pages

- for unfamiliar queries, check the wiki to find a different ranking and potentially useful comments. Try to avoid the wiki for queries that are likely to be spammed.

Bad things about SearchWiki:

- visual clutter. The only way to remove the additional icons displayed next to each search result is to log out.

- your changes are available only when you repeat the query and, in some cases, for similar queries (e.g.: [google.com] in addition to [google]). That means you can’t remove a web page or a domain from all search results

- comments are public and there’s no option to write private notes (Google removed the option to annotate results in Google Notebook)

- an obvious feature would be to get a permalink for your edited results, but Google doesn’t offer this yet

- there’s no option to toggle between your edited results and the standard results (you’ll have to log out)

- it’s difficult to reorder results, since the only action allowed is to place a web page at the top, after all the other promoted pages. If you promote the page again, it will become the first result.

Google has always used people’s clicks to improve the quality of search results, so the new options could influence the ranking algorithms in different ways. "At this time we aren’t using SearchWiki to influence ranking but it is easy to see how that could happen in the future," said Marissa Mayer. "Search is adapting to the Internet as it becomes a more participatory medium. Now you have people telling us specific things about how they’d like to see their search results. You could imagine if we do see a particular site (about which) people have a unanimous opinion, that might trigger external things. Like maybe we should check out our spam control," suggested Cedric Dupont, product manager for SearchWiki and Google Knol.

All boys & men working from home rejoice…and welcome aboard Gharkamai!

Started by a couple of Delhi dotcommers, Gharkamai is in beta as we speak, and aims at connecting businesses with business professionals as per need.

So if you are looking at home-based work, have an unexplored expertise, need extra income, then log on & create a profile. Similarly, if you need freelancers and project-centric professionals, it makes sense to look some people up over here.

2 reasons why the resource pool should be good here:

1. Home-based workers strive to deliver better, as a sense of entrepreneurship comes in, leading to better results

2. In these recession-led times, pink slipped folks can find solace here!

The only glitch - registration process is a bit long, and you need to submit a CV…painful. Hope the owners do something about that!

Check it out & do post a comment upon your experience…