Digital Rape of Democracy in India
The recent elections in Karnataka, Bangalore proved to be another election where the Election Commision’s guidelines were not followed. This time around our political leaders got innovative with the digital media. They used Mobile Marketing or marketing through sending SMS to the prospective voters.
According to Election Commision’s guidelines the promotions should stop 2 days before the election dates. Till the last day of the elections there were SMSes floating on the purchased databases from Telecom providers. They kept promoting the candidatures till the last moment.
Isn’t it the “Digital Rape of Democracy”?
Showing posts with label mobile Marketing. Show all posts
Showing posts with label mobile Marketing. Show all posts
Monday, May 12, 2008
Thursday, May 01, 2008
Mobile Marketing: India Crosses US in telephony subscribers
According to latest release by TRAI (Telecom Regulatory authority of India), the total wireless subscribers base stood at 261.09 million at the end of March 2008, compared to 255 million subscribers in U.S. A total of 10.16 million wireless subscribers have been added in the month of March2008 as against 8.53 million wireless subscribers added in the month of February 2008.
Another landmark that march saw was reaching a total telephone connections to 300 million (wireline+wireless). The overall tele-density is pegged at 26.22% at the end of March 2008 as against 25.31% in February 2008.
Total of 96 million subscribers were added since March last year.
Comparatively, broadband connections have performed dismally with addition of only 1.56 million broadband subscribers since March 2007. The total broadband subscriber base stands at 3.90 million, far from 10 million subscribers that government had predicted by end of 2008.
Some time back I blogged about Why Mobile marketing will work in India. Here are more reasons now why Mobile Marketing will work in India. However, the sad part is the slow broadband growth. I think prices and lack of education are primary reasons for the same. Do share your opinion regarding the same.
Another landmark that march saw was reaching a total telephone connections to 300 million (wireline+wireless). The overall tele-density is pegged at 26.22% at the end of March 2008 as against 25.31% in February 2008.
Total of 96 million subscribers were added since March last year.
Comparatively, broadband connections have performed dismally with addition of only 1.56 million broadband subscribers since March 2007. The total broadband subscriber base stands at 3.90 million, far from 10 million subscribers that government had predicted by end of 2008.
Some time back I blogged about Why Mobile marketing will work in India. Here are more reasons now why Mobile Marketing will work in India. However, the sad part is the slow broadband growth. I think prices and lack of education are primary reasons for the same. Do share your opinion regarding the same.
Tuesday, February 05, 2008
IT product and services marketing 2.0 - Transforming Business with Web 2.0
In continuation to my Entrprise 2.0 entry earlier, here is the IT product and services marketing 2.0.
So what's happening?
“Our CRM software is the best. Our CRM software is the Cheapest. Our CRM software is easiest to integrate and gives you peace of mind”.
“We are leaders in managed IT services with over 120 clients. We cater to end-to-end demands of our clients. We have thousands of man-hours of experience”.
“Our product can do X and Y and Z and even a.1.1, b.2.alpha and so on. Our product was rated best by gamma magazine in zeta year as the best”.
If your company is also doing something similar and telling the customers “One New Terminology Every year" because the head of so and so department in your company had to meet his or her KRAs and developed a new term to be promoted for the next year then trust me your company is headed “no where”. And I am not kidding you here, it’s a simple test: just search for some articles online for the past 4 years and you would see the industry big weights all going for the same “New Word”, whether its services companies like HCL, Wipro, Infosys, TCS, Satyam, Accenture or product companies like IBM, HP, Cisco, Microsoft.
So, every year you see a new term like: Business Excellence, Execution Excellence, Business Transformation, Customer Orientation, Agile Business, Customer Centric, Scalable and Uptime so on and so forth. Trust me your organization is suffering from the favorite term taught in B-Schools: “Cognitive Inertia”. Anyways am not going to get into the details of the same, this is better left untold. (Consultants might give a smirk at it :) )
So obviously, you see, your company was growing at X%age, given the economic conditions and the certain investments in projected and confirmed in certain areas, you expanded your business and investment portfolios, what’s the big deal? You would have anyways reached that %age increase in business. DO NOT, for reality’s sake, attribute it to the management decision making or vision or marketing or whatever. If there was a term called “luck” put into the dictionary, someone rightly thought about the word or may be he also got lucky!
Anyways, coming back to the topic, in Today’s world the customer is intelligent enough to judge you and your organization in minutes. So do not try to Fake. Sooner or later it’s going to hit back on you. Do not try to be something or someone that your company is not.
So how to you market your IT product or Service in today’s Web 2.0 world? IT Service or product marketing Strategies:-
-Focus on existing customer’s satisfaction
-Re-visit your customer’s list and see your CSAT ratings (are you serious, do they mean anything?)
-Actually if you are, really serious about more business, refocus on existing customers, and provide them with that extra hand that you have been shirking away because you want that hand for new business.
-Most businesses grow based on the previous successes.
-Did you know WOMM (word of mouth marketing) is much stronger than a $10000 TV commercial?
-Let someone speak for you.
-Get satisfied customers to talk instead of parroting that you are best.
-If you are, someone will say that and if no one is ready to say that, then re-consider your stance.
-Let someone appreciate your work.
-Do not show the best quality , best practices and other related “Brags”
-If your work is good someone will tell you that.
-Encourage your customers to interact amongst themselves.
-Do not shy away in providing common interaction platforms to your customers.
-Let them communicate amongst themselves.
-You might see some feedback construing out of it.
-Or you might just see the best practices getting shared.
-Open your ears, nose, throats all possible holes to get feedback! They are doing a favor to you!
-Well you are helping yourself if you let the customers speak.
-Keep all possible channels of communication open for customers.
-DO NOT EVER IGNORE customer’s feedback.
-It’s one favor which will not get repeated if ignored.
-Do not miss a chance to appreciate the feedback and re-assure the customers.
-Thank the customer, appreciate and do whatever to make your customers happy about the feedback that they gave.
-Re-assure that you will take an action.
-Inform about the same.
-Respond with possible solutions.
If I was a sales guy reading this, I might just laugh on this entry. However, I myself being from sales background and having worked in multiple geographies in the world, the WOMM tactics work everywhere. Companies like Wipro, IBM, Accenture and Infosys have lost clients just because someone wanted to focus on the quarterly targets.
Customer centric approach just works brilliantly. In this Web 2.0 world, here are some Services and Products marketing strategies or IT 2.0 for Enterprise 2.0: -
Web, Email, Databse, Virtual Commnities
-Just provide a simple online interaction community to your existing customers. Let them self populate the content with best practices.
-See if you can include a blog in the online community, some regularly updated whitepapers, case studies, research reports, surveys etc. Or may be some expert articles or interviews etc.
-Run small contests, give out some creative branded merchandise, any football or cricket match LIVE tickets would be exciting!
-Learn about the customer’s online behavior by web analytics. See what the interest areas are and generate relevant content.
-Optimize your websites (it’s the first and most important impression). SEO and SEM for your website should work.
-Participate in online discussions. Stop being a mute spectator…Speak Up!
-Run a newsletter with content rich of information for the target audience based on their online behavior. Create optimized landing pages to compliment the content.
-Email marketing campaigns provide he highest ROI. Look forward to creating such mediums.
-Above all these things need databases and CRM systems to integrate and provide actual ROI. -So stop being that cheap old family business miser. Hire the right people and get your IT 2.0 marketing department up and running.
Online and Offline PR
Gone are the days when you could run a press release once in a quarter and be happy about your media coverage. Today it’s about Online PR presence.
How many times do you go looking for that 1 year old newspaper where you might have read about that company and blah…well in most probable circumstances, might just google that so an so company. Alas, your PR manager has been in company for 8 years and she didn’t study Online PR so unfortunately you do not have any online media presence. Well this is a WAKE up call.
Look into your annual marketing plan for god’s sake and see what your team is upto? Take some interest and start becoming active online and promote this in your entire company (or at least your department).
Strategic PR and Events is something you should look at very keenly. Do not blindly keep participating in random tradeshows and seminars. Look at the details on who, what and why and how much and what better can be done.
Ad-Agencies-Give a re-look
Your Ad-Agency will definitely promote Direct Mailers with the utmost creativity. Shut them up and think how many times in a day do you open your email and how many times do you read creative letters that come to you? You are not running your business to pay the creative guy’s salary working in that jazzy AD-agency, you are paying the agency to provide you with the cheapest and best channel to reach the largest audience with highest ROI.
It’s not rocket science, it’s just that the world has changed and the customers are empowered today with multiple sources of knowledge where you can’t fool them. So it’s better to tell the truth and let the customers be the final decision makers. Enable them with the right to information through various channels and hear from them. This conversational communication can do wonders for your business transformation in the web 2.0 world and this is what can be called as the IT Services and Products marketing 2.0.
So what's happening?
“Our CRM software is the best. Our CRM software is the Cheapest. Our CRM software is easiest to integrate and gives you peace of mind”.
“We are leaders in managed IT services with over 120 clients. We cater to end-to-end demands of our clients. We have thousands of man-hours of experience”.
“Our product can do X and Y and Z and even a.1.1, b.2.alpha and so on. Our product was rated best by gamma magazine in zeta year as the best”.
If your company is also doing something similar and telling the customers “One New Terminology Every year" because the head of so and so department in your company had to meet his or her KRAs and developed a new term to be promoted for the next year then trust me your company is headed “no where”. And I am not kidding you here, it’s a simple test: just search for some articles online for the past 4 years and you would see the industry big weights all going for the same “New Word”, whether its services companies like HCL, Wipro, Infosys, TCS, Satyam, Accenture or product companies like IBM, HP, Cisco, Microsoft.
So, every year you see a new term like: Business Excellence, Execution Excellence, Business Transformation, Customer Orientation, Agile Business, Customer Centric, Scalable and Uptime so on and so forth. Trust me your organization is suffering from the favorite term taught in B-Schools: “Cognitive Inertia”. Anyways am not going to get into the details of the same, this is better left untold. (Consultants might give a smirk at it :) )
So obviously, you see, your company was growing at X%age, given the economic conditions and the certain investments in projected and confirmed in certain areas, you expanded your business and investment portfolios, what’s the big deal? You would have anyways reached that %age increase in business. DO NOT, for reality’s sake, attribute it to the management decision making or vision or marketing or whatever. If there was a term called “luck” put into the dictionary, someone rightly thought about the word or may be he also got lucky!
Anyways, coming back to the topic, in Today’s world the customer is intelligent enough to judge you and your organization in minutes. So do not try to Fake. Sooner or later it’s going to hit back on you. Do not try to be something or someone that your company is not.
So how to you market your IT product or Service in today’s Web 2.0 world? IT Service or product marketing Strategies:-
-Focus on existing customer’s satisfaction
-Re-visit your customer’s list and see your CSAT ratings (are you serious, do they mean anything?)
-Actually if you are, really serious about more business, refocus on existing customers, and provide them with that extra hand that you have been shirking away because you want that hand for new business.
-Most businesses grow based on the previous successes.
-Did you know WOMM (word of mouth marketing) is much stronger than a $10000 TV commercial?
-Let someone speak for you.
-Get satisfied customers to talk instead of parroting that you are best.
-If you are, someone will say that and if no one is ready to say that, then re-consider your stance.
-Let someone appreciate your work.
-Do not show the best quality , best practices and other related “Brags”
-If your work is good someone will tell you that.
-Encourage your customers to interact amongst themselves.
-Do not shy away in providing common interaction platforms to your customers.
-Let them communicate amongst themselves.
-You might see some feedback construing out of it.
-Or you might just see the best practices getting shared.
-Open your ears, nose, throats all possible holes to get feedback! They are doing a favor to you!
-Well you are helping yourself if you let the customers speak.
-Keep all possible channels of communication open for customers.
-DO NOT EVER IGNORE customer’s feedback.
-It’s one favor which will not get repeated if ignored.
-Do not miss a chance to appreciate the feedback and re-assure the customers.
-Thank the customer, appreciate and do whatever to make your customers happy about the feedback that they gave.
-Re-assure that you will take an action.
-Inform about the same.
-Respond with possible solutions.
If I was a sales guy reading this, I might just laugh on this entry. However, I myself being from sales background and having worked in multiple geographies in the world, the WOMM tactics work everywhere. Companies like Wipro, IBM, Accenture and Infosys have lost clients just because someone wanted to focus on the quarterly targets.
Customer centric approach just works brilliantly. In this Web 2.0 world, here are some Services and Products marketing strategies or IT 2.0 for Enterprise 2.0: -
Web, Email, Databse, Virtual Commnities
-Just provide a simple online interaction community to your existing customers. Let them self populate the content with best practices.
-See if you can include a blog in the online community, some regularly updated whitepapers, case studies, research reports, surveys etc. Or may be some expert articles or interviews etc.
-Run small contests, give out some creative branded merchandise, any football or cricket match LIVE tickets would be exciting!
-Learn about the customer’s online behavior by web analytics. See what the interest areas are and generate relevant content.
-Optimize your websites (it’s the first and most important impression). SEO and SEM for your website should work.
-Participate in online discussions. Stop being a mute spectator…Speak Up!
-Run a newsletter with content rich of information for the target audience based on their online behavior. Create optimized landing pages to compliment the content.
-Email marketing campaigns provide he highest ROI. Look forward to creating such mediums.
-Above all these things need databases and CRM systems to integrate and provide actual ROI. -So stop being that cheap old family business miser. Hire the right people and get your IT 2.0 marketing department up and running.
Online and Offline PR
Gone are the days when you could run a press release once in a quarter and be happy about your media coverage. Today it’s about Online PR presence.
How many times do you go looking for that 1 year old newspaper where you might have read about that company and blah…well in most probable circumstances, might just google that so an so company. Alas, your PR manager has been in company for 8 years and she didn’t study Online PR so unfortunately you do not have any online media presence. Well this is a WAKE up call.
Look into your annual marketing plan for god’s sake and see what your team is upto? Take some interest and start becoming active online and promote this in your entire company (or at least your department).
Strategic PR and Events is something you should look at very keenly. Do not blindly keep participating in random tradeshows and seminars. Look at the details on who, what and why and how much and what better can be done.
Ad-Agencies-Give a re-look
Your Ad-Agency will definitely promote Direct Mailers with the utmost creativity. Shut them up and think how many times in a day do you open your email and how many times do you read creative letters that come to you? You are not running your business to pay the creative guy’s salary working in that jazzy AD-agency, you are paying the agency to provide you with the cheapest and best channel to reach the largest audience with highest ROI.
It’s not rocket science, it’s just that the world has changed and the customers are empowered today with multiple sources of knowledge where you can’t fool them. So it’s better to tell the truth and let the customers be the final decision makers. Enable them with the right to information through various channels and hear from them. This conversational communication can do wonders for your business transformation in the web 2.0 world and this is what can be called as the IT Services and Products marketing 2.0.
Friday, February 01, 2008
Enterprise 2.0 – Leveraging Web 2.0 for your Business Transformation
Enterprise 2.0 – Leveraging Web 2.0 for your Business Transformation
As per my previous post on Web 2.0 I tried explaining the various components of Web 2.0. This article talks about how Web 2.0 can be leveraged in the real-time scenarios for transformation of businesses from the regular way to a completely new way.
I have taken some examples of various industries and the marketing strategies which can be implemented to transform the regular way of doing business using Web 2.0 techniques.
Topics that I would be covering:
HR 2.0 – New recruitment methods, HR consultancies and agencies, Job Portals, Online Hiring, Peer hiring, Referral hiring, Professional networking
Travel and Tourism 2.0 – Online travel portals, online tourism portals, importance of blogs and reference communities, New MICE strategies.
IT Services and Products 2.0 – New marketing strategies for IT services using Web 2.0.
Finance 2.0 – Financial consultancies, Credit rating agencies, Credit Card companies, BFSI and Financial Services marketing
Definition Web 2.0:
“Web 2.0 is the advancement in Internet technology. It's like a group of financially viable, socially active, and technologically collaborative changes in behavior, attitudes, tools and applications that are allowing the Web to become the next platform for communication, collaboration, community, and cumulative learning. And off-course drive sales and generating revenues”
HR 2.0
Many online Job portals came into existence few years back. This was more or less a copy of what people did in US and the ideas were replicated well in India and we saw the emergence of online job portals like www.naukri.com , www.monster.com , www.timesjobs.com and many more…
Things are going very fine for these job portals but suddenly the disruptive technology of Web 2.0 is going to change the idea of focused Job portals soon.
So what has happened?
Emergence of Professional Networking websites like: www.linkedin.com, www.xing.com, www.spoke.com, www.ryze.com and many more similar ones.
Suddenly, people started finding the correct people on these websites than on job portals. If you survey the leading HR consultancies today you would realize that they are using multiple approaches in finding the right candidates. Off-course the Top choice will be still Job portals as the database sizes are humongous. However, are consultancies able to find the correct candidates from the job portals? May be you might but not always. With ever increasing demands from the clients to find a specific candidate with a very niche skill set etc it gets very difficult for them so what do they do?
More and more consultancies and specially the start-ups are moving on the newer techniques like searching in professional networking websites. Not only this, with the emergence of niche professional communities like www.toostep.com , www.tribe.com, www.notchup.com , www.theladders.com , www.babajaobs.com, www.whereismyboss.com and many more like this. They are referring to niche groups of premium colleges, yahoo groups and google groups for the same.
In short if you need to hire the right person and meet the demand of your internal audience you need to understand the profile and see what that person likes and where on earth would you find that person hanging out? {if not earth at least on net} Gel in with his / her behavior and offer that person the correct fit that he would want to have.
Why did this happen?
This specific behavior has many reasons, primarily:
-Proliferation of internet.
-People getting socially active.
-Innate need for communication with peers.
-Insatiable desire to learn more.
-Personal feelings to share knowledge.
In today’s world the customer is much more informed than he/ she was 20 years back when the kinship used to provide information on what to do with one’s career. In today’s world people are talking there own decisions based on the knowledge available on line. Today if I want to become a Pilot I can login to some online community and get in touch with some pilot and try to understand what does his job needs him to do on a day to day basis and this will help me take a decision.
Or can we call it “Socially Active” and “Collaborative” attitude using the Web 2.0 tools for the new age “HR 2.0”?
How can your business benefit?
So what should www.naukri.com be looking at in the coming times? They have already attempted a Blog. They run news-letters to distribute the relevant content to the audience, so what next? Well, just imagine, today anyone who is looking for a job, logs on to www.naukri.com and sees a personalized page where he can customize his job needs, manage his resume etc. What if, the candidate sees a small section where he sees some recommended jobs and some other people who are already working in that company can be available to share some more details? More like a social network inside a job portal?
Though people can argue that it might loose anonymity and privacy can be issue, however, constructing something which is just correct for a job portal can immediately boost the relevance of the content on naukri.com and people would love to come back. Not just a social network, if the people of the same caliber want to share the best practices etc? So now it’s not just about finding a job, it’s about learning and networking. “Enhancing Interaction” is the key and giving people a platform for being more “Socially Active” and collaborative. Does it make more sense?
Will be talking about Travel and Tourism 2.0, IT Services and Product marketing 2.0, Finance Marketing 2.0
As per my previous post on Web 2.0 I tried explaining the various components of Web 2.0. This article talks about how Web 2.0 can be leveraged in the real-time scenarios for transformation of businesses from the regular way to a completely new way.
I have taken some examples of various industries and the marketing strategies which can be implemented to transform the regular way of doing business using Web 2.0 techniques.
Topics that I would be covering:
HR 2.0 – New recruitment methods, HR consultancies and agencies, Job Portals, Online Hiring, Peer hiring, Referral hiring, Professional networking
Travel and Tourism 2.0 – Online travel portals, online tourism portals, importance of blogs and reference communities, New MICE strategies.
IT Services and Products 2.0 – New marketing strategies for IT services using Web 2.0.
Finance 2.0 – Financial consultancies, Credit rating agencies, Credit Card companies, BFSI and Financial Services marketing
Definition Web 2.0:
“Web 2.0 is the advancement in Internet technology. It's like a group of financially viable, socially active, and technologically collaborative changes in behavior, attitudes, tools and applications that are allowing the Web to become the next platform for communication, collaboration, community, and cumulative learning. And off-course drive sales and generating revenues”
HR 2.0
Many online Job portals came into existence few years back. This was more or less a copy of what people did in US and the ideas were replicated well in India and we saw the emergence of online job portals like www.naukri.com , www.monster.com , www.timesjobs.com and many more…
Things are going very fine for these job portals but suddenly the disruptive technology of Web 2.0 is going to change the idea of focused Job portals soon.
So what has happened?
Emergence of Professional Networking websites like: www.linkedin.com, www.xing.com, www.spoke.com, www.ryze.com and many more similar ones.
Suddenly, people started finding the correct people on these websites than on job portals. If you survey the leading HR consultancies today you would realize that they are using multiple approaches in finding the right candidates. Off-course the Top choice will be still Job portals as the database sizes are humongous. However, are consultancies able to find the correct candidates from the job portals? May be you might but not always. With ever increasing demands from the clients to find a specific candidate with a very niche skill set etc it gets very difficult for them so what do they do?
More and more consultancies and specially the start-ups are moving on the newer techniques like searching in professional networking websites. Not only this, with the emergence of niche professional communities like www.toostep.com , www.tribe.com, www.notchup.com , www.theladders.com , www.babajaobs.com, www.whereismyboss.com and many more like this. They are referring to niche groups of premium colleges, yahoo groups and google groups for the same.
In short if you need to hire the right person and meet the demand of your internal audience you need to understand the profile and see what that person likes and where on earth would you find that person hanging out? {if not earth at least on net} Gel in with his / her behavior and offer that person the correct fit that he would want to have.
Why did this happen?
This specific behavior has many reasons, primarily:
-Proliferation of internet.
-People getting socially active.
-Innate need for communication with peers.
-Insatiable desire to learn more.
-Personal feelings to share knowledge.
In today’s world the customer is much more informed than he/ she was 20 years back when the kinship used to provide information on what to do with one’s career. In today’s world people are talking there own decisions based on the knowledge available on line. Today if I want to become a Pilot I can login to some online community and get in touch with some pilot and try to understand what does his job needs him to do on a day to day basis and this will help me take a decision.
Or can we call it “Socially Active” and “Collaborative” attitude using the Web 2.0 tools for the new age “HR 2.0”?
How can your business benefit?
So what should www.naukri.com be looking at in the coming times? They have already attempted a Blog. They run news-letters to distribute the relevant content to the audience, so what next? Well, just imagine, today anyone who is looking for a job, logs on to www.naukri.com and sees a personalized page where he can customize his job needs, manage his resume etc. What if, the candidate sees a small section where he sees some recommended jobs and some other people who are already working in that company can be available to share some more details? More like a social network inside a job portal?
Though people can argue that it might loose anonymity and privacy can be issue, however, constructing something which is just correct for a job portal can immediately boost the relevance of the content on naukri.com and people would love to come back. Not just a social network, if the people of the same caliber want to share the best practices etc? So now it’s not just about finding a job, it’s about learning and networking. “Enhancing Interaction” is the key and giving people a platform for being more “Socially Active” and collaborative. Does it make more sense?
Will be talking about Travel and Tourism 2.0, IT Services and Product marketing 2.0, Finance Marketing 2.0
Tuesday, January 22, 2008
What's the Future Series - Web 2.0 Strategies for organizations
Even though I am late in writing this, still I wanted to write about this topic and wanted to share my point of view on how companies can leverage Web 2.0 to their advantage.
Part 1 - History and Definitions
Web 2.0 is an industry term that has received a great deal of attention. There has been a lot of debate around how to define it because it encapsulates a host of new (and some not so new) technologies.
The term was coined by O’Reilly Media to describe second-generation internet-based services. Wikipedia goes on to say that Web 2.0 is about using the web as a “platform” to provide an enhanced user experience via Rich Internet Applications (RIA), and extending the reach of your web content through syndication technologies such as Really Simple Syndication (RSS).
As appealing as these technologies may sound, simply adopting them doesn’t guarantee an improved visitor experience or more effective channels for reaching your customers.
In this entry I will try to capture the methodology on how you could use these technology advancements for revenue generation in your company. In my understanding:-
Definition Web 2.0:
“Web 2.0 is the advancement in Internet technology. It's like a group of financially viable, socially active, and technologically collaborative changes in behavior, attitudes, tools and applications that are allowing the Web to become the next platform for communication, collaboration, community, and cumulative learning. And off-course drive sales and generating revenues”
The following themes appear commonly in the various definitions of Web 2.0:
- Collaboration: the first theme is about people working together, collaborating, to create software, content, communities, art, music, literature, and a multitude of other things. Web 2.0 tools and applications support this type of interaction at their core.
- Conversation: There is a conversation happening and it’s not just happening in your corporate website forum. It is happening on blogs. It is a public conversation about politics, business, social issues, and anything else you can imagine, including your company.
- Community: We have had online communities now for at least fifteen years or more. But the tools for building online communities are now becoming more widespread and communities are forming around every imaginable (and unimaginable) subject, product, and industry. If you are looking for your “tribe”, they are probably out there somewhere.
- Connection: we are building messaging systems that now connect people to people, people to machines, and machines to machines. The names of these systems are not important but their function is.
Part 1 - History and Definitions
Web 2.0 is an industry term that has received a great deal of attention. There has been a lot of debate around how to define it because it encapsulates a host of new (and some not so new) technologies.
The term was coined by O’Reilly Media to describe second-generation internet-based services. Wikipedia goes on to say that Web 2.0 is about using the web as a “platform” to provide an enhanced user experience via Rich Internet Applications (RIA), and extending the reach of your web content through syndication technologies such as Really Simple Syndication (RSS).
As appealing as these technologies may sound, simply adopting them doesn’t guarantee an improved visitor experience or more effective channels for reaching your customers.
In this entry I will try to capture the methodology on how you could use these technology advancements for revenue generation in your company. In my understanding:-
Definition Web 2.0:
“Web 2.0 is the advancement in Internet technology. It's like a group of financially viable, socially active, and technologically collaborative changes in behavior, attitudes, tools and applications that are allowing the Web to become the next platform for communication, collaboration, community, and cumulative learning. And off-course drive sales and generating revenues”
The following themes appear commonly in the various definitions of Web 2.0:
- Collaboration: the first theme is about people working together, collaborating, to create software, content, communities, art, music, literature, and a multitude of other things. Web 2.0 tools and applications support this type of interaction at their core.
- Conversation: There is a conversation happening and it’s not just happening in your corporate website forum. It is happening on blogs. It is a public conversation about politics, business, social issues, and anything else you can imagine, including your company.
- Community: We have had online communities now for at least fifteen years or more. But the tools for building online communities are now becoming more widespread and communities are forming around every imaginable (and unimaginable) subject, product, and industry. If you are looking for your “tribe”, they are probably out there somewhere.
- Connection: we are building messaging systems that now connect people to people, people to machines, and machines to machines. The names of these systems are not important but their function is.
- Content Creation: It turns out that if you give people the tools to create “stuff”, they do just that. In fact, they create so much stuff that it quite frankly upsets our assumptions about who in our society are the creators and who are the consumers.
- Cumulative Learning: think of cumulative learning as peer reviewed journals for every person on the planet with internet access. People can now build on the knowledge of others (through the miracles of search and wikis) faster than at any time in history.
- Collective Intelligence: In certain conditions, it turns out that groups of people are smarter than individuals. This is counter-intuitive and odd but apparently true.
- Change of scale: Web 2.0 companies can scale up fast. Because of the spread of broadband internet and the sheer number of people on the internet, we are seeing key measures (number of users, time to market, time to exit) that are quite extraordinary.
- Core values: Openness, transparency, and a respect for users are three core values that seem to permeate Web 2.0 definitions and discussions.
- Cheap and Fast: A key quality of Web 2.0 is that developers and entrepreneurs can build, deploy and profit from applications for less money and in less time than ever before.
- Cumulative Learning: think of cumulative learning as peer reviewed journals for every person on the planet with internet access. People can now build on the knowledge of others (through the miracles of search and wikis) faster than at any time in history.
- Collective Intelligence: In certain conditions, it turns out that groups of people are smarter than individuals. This is counter-intuitive and odd but apparently true.
- Change of scale: Web 2.0 companies can scale up fast. Because of the spread of broadband internet and the sheer number of people on the internet, we are seeing key measures (number of users, time to market, time to exit) that are quite extraordinary.
- Core values: Openness, transparency, and a respect for users are three core values that seem to permeate Web 2.0 definitions and discussions.
- Cheap and Fast: A key quality of Web 2.0 is that developers and entrepreneurs can build, deploy and profit from applications for less money and in less time than ever before.
Is it REA L or is it all just HYPE?
Let’s take a quick tour of the landscape to see what has been happening in the past few years and then you can decide for yourself if this set ofchanges warrants the attention that it’s getting.
We now have more than a BILLION people on the Internet, a few hundred million of whom are online at any given moment.
-->Bloggers are now doing fact-checks on the media…and winning. Some bloggers now have MORE TRAFFIC and HIGHER SEARCH ENGINE RATINGS than media companies that have been around for years.
-->People said they would never buy a car over the Internet. In 2005, eBay sold $11 billion worth of automobiles.
-->Wikipedia, a web-based encyclopedia, became the world’s largest reference work in four years, surpassing the venerable Encyclopedia Britannica.
-->A startup in Europe built a little application called Skype, which lets people call each other across the Internet for free. 27 months later, eBay snapped up this company for $4.1 billion. The application is now disrupting the 100 year old telecom industry.
-->A Vancouver-based gaming company invented a neat little photo-sharing program and sold the company to Yahoo less than two years later for approximately $35 million. They had about 10 people on that team. Flickr currently hosts over 70 million photos and has over 2.5 million users.
-->People said they would never buy a car over the Internet. In 2005, eBay sold $11 billion worth of automobiles.
-->Wikipedia, a web-based encyclopedia, became the world’s largest reference work in four years, surpassing the venerable Encyclopedia Britannica.
-->A startup in Europe built a little application called Skype, which lets people call each other across the Internet for free. 27 months later, eBay snapped up this company for $4.1 billion. The application is now disrupting the 100 year old telecom industry.
-->A Vancouver-based gaming company invented a neat little photo-sharing program and sold the company to Yahoo less than two years later for approximately $35 million. They had about 10 people on that team. Flickr currently hosts over 70 million photos and has over 2.5 million users.
-->In October 2005, Microsoft issued a company-wide email telling the troops to embrace “the services wave” [Web 2.0]. Then, in May 2006, CEO Steve Ballmer stated that Microsoft is focusing over $6 billion of R&D towards ‘software as a service’ in 2006. Software as a service is one of the patterns of Web 2.0.
-->A small team of programmers started a website in 2003 that would help them build their social network. Rupert Murdoch’s News Corp. bought MySpace in August 2005 for $580 million, less than 2½ years after it was formed. He bought it because social websites like this are massive revenue generation engines.
-->Half a million people MAKE A LIVING on eBay.
-->Nineteen people run a small site called Craigslist which is now the seventh largest website in the world. This little operation is DECIMATING the North American classified advertising industry which can’t compete against FREE listings.
-->Content is exploding. Technorati, a service that tracks the number of blogs on the internet, listed effectively zero in March 2003 and reached 20 million blogs in October 2005. This means that the number of blogs doubled every five months for 36 months in a row.k Between October 2005 and the time this Manifesto was July 2006 when this Manifesto went to ‘print’, that number went from 20 million blogs to 49.8 million blogs.
I will be covering the details on how to leverage this for your organization in the next entry...
Friday, January 18, 2008
Now Just Swipe Your Mobile - atom "the" new way to pay
Future is mobile and Atom has just made it easier.
Everyday, when I see Google Alerts on what's new in Mobile Technology, I see my belief in Mobile technology and advancement getting much stronger, day after day. And with this tiny little thing that people hold in there hands everyday and take along with them almost everywhere they go (oh I heard people take their mobiles even to rest rooms) you can pretty much think of marketing them even in those moments.
Even though the Telecom Operators like Bharti, RCom, Vodafone would be interested in providing such mobile commerce solutions, however, RBI hasn't yet approved the same. So you might see certain delay in this to become reality for you.
Mumbai, India, based technology company Atom technologies has come up with a new Mobile Payment option which is just similar to paying by your credit card, however, it doesn't involve a plastic card. So next time instead of swiping a credit card you might just hear "swipe your mobile". With atom "the" new way of payment, you are set to see the rise in M-Commerce and electronic transactions getting boosted and its bound to bring more secured, convinient transactions to its customers.
So how does this work?
There are two ways how this thing works.
Method 1 - Optical reading -You get something called Atom Card, which with the help of software will store the Credit Card information in a 2D barcode format and can be read by a simple webcam. This is a convinient method and something very similar to swiping your credit card. This would work more in cases of retail outlets, where there is an optical reader and you can show your mobile to the reader and authorize a payment. However, there is another method where you dont even need to show your mobile.
Method 2 - Wireless Transfer - In this you would need a JAVA MIDP 2.0 based mobile phone. You need a GPRS connection and a small software which will run on your mobile. So the next time you are in a shopping mall buying a favourite suit or dining in your favourite restaurant with your family you would have to just provide your mobile number and you would recieve a sales payment request on your mobile which you can authorize from any of your bank account which is confiured on your mobile and enter your PIN and authorize the payment.
How Secure is it?
Usage of PIN number makes the entire process secure, in case of loss of mobile phone, no body can use your mobile to make any purchases as its PIN protected.
Though, one question which any average user would ask is how secure is this transaction going to be. In case, someone infects the fone via some trojan/virus which captures the PIN number and sends it to someone else, you are exposed to the world. So the step of introducing mobile payments etc. should also be coupled with Mobile Phone security options. Also, I would reccommend ATOM to tie up with Mobile Antivirus providers or may be come up with some protection suite themselves to secure the mobile phones.
In 3 simple steps the process is going to be like this:
- Merchant sends payment request
o So lets say I am enjoying my dinner at Punjabi By Nature, restaurant, after finishing my lavish dinner, I ask for the bill and the attendant brings a paper to me and I write my mobile number on it. Then the person managing this enters his customer ID and amount and enters ATOM PIN and sends this payment request to me. - Customer confirms the payment
o While I am sitting and talking to my friends and I get a message on my mobile to authorize a payment request. I choose which bank or credit / debit account I want to pay from and then I enter my PIN number and make the payment. Yes, that’s it, it’s Done. - Payment receipts
o Now both the merchant and the customer get a confirmation message saying that payment is authorized and transaction is complete.
Everyday, when I see Google Alerts on what's new in Mobile Technology, I see my belief in Mobile technology and advancement getting much stronger, day after day. And with this tiny little thing that people hold in there hands everyday and take along with them almost everywhere they go (oh I heard people take their mobiles even to rest rooms) you can pretty much think of marketing them even in those moments.
Even though the Telecom Operators like Bharti, RCom, Vodafone would be interested in providing such mobile commerce solutions, however, RBI hasn't yet approved the same. So you might see certain delay in this to become reality for you.
Wednesday, January 16, 2008
I Just iMobiled it! - ICICI Mobile Banking
Wife: “Sachinnnnnnnn, did you transfer the money to your parents’ account that I asked you to do? And the bill payment?”
Sachin: “Yes I did”
Wife: “Don’t lie to me, you didn’t even move an inch from your place for past one hour. And stop watching this stupid TV.”
Sachin: “I am not lying I just iMobiled”
Wife: “iMobiled? What’s that? Some new trick of yours?”
Sachin: “Oh common, you don’t know about the new iMobile service from ICICI Bank? ICICI bank has launched its amazing Mobile Banking Services, iMobile. Through this you can do transactions through your mobile. I can do a Balance Enquiry, I can do Cheque Book Request, View my Credit Card, Demat, Loan Account Transaction details, I can even pay bills, recharge my mobile phone and all this just sitting in my place without moving an inch, while watching India Business hour on CNBC TV18.”
Thanks to ICICI iMobile, I just iMobiled and it has made my life easy!
You might see some similar TV commercial running on air soon promoting ICICI bank’s mobile banking service iMobile. Here is the link to FAQs. With launch of this mobile banking service ICICI has become India’s first bank to launch Mobile Banking. However, this is not the 1st time in world when someone has launched mobile banking. Previously, in 1996 and 2000, Bank of America, Citibank, HSBC and some others have already burnt their fingers. The previous launches of similar services were unsuccessful because of the bad mobile phone handsets and the poor networks available.
However, now the networks are much better as well as the handsets have better capabilities, which makes the outlook more positive. I am a strong supporter of Online and Mobile methods of reaching out to customers. And I strongly support the move of Mobile Banking. I would say 2008 -2010 is the right time to get into the Mobile Marketing and service arena and take the early mover’s advantage. Establish your brand name and brand recall and star building your company’s association with the mobile services. Oh by the way did I say Mobile Marketing will work in India?
With mobile payment options now available, I guess it’s just got a little more easier to promote M-Commerce as well as promoting ads on mobiles as the purchase media vehicle is ready to carry the money. I see by 2010 onwards the company revenues will shoot up with revenues from Mobile purchases coming through higher ad conversions. However, it would be necessary that the brands start attaching themselves with the most modern “Mobile” identity.
Looking for more action in 2008 in the Mobile Front!
Sachin: “Yes I did”
Wife: “Don’t lie to me, you didn’t even move an inch from your place for past one hour. And stop watching this stupid TV.”
Sachin: “I am not lying I just iMobiled”
Wife: “iMobiled? What’s that? Some new trick of yours?”
Sachin: “Oh common, you don’t know about the new iMobile service from ICICI Bank? ICICI bank has launched its amazing Mobile Banking Services, iMobile. Through this you can do transactions through your mobile. I can do a Balance Enquiry, I can do Cheque Book Request, View my Credit Card, Demat, Loan Account Transaction details, I can even pay bills, recharge my mobile phone and all this just sitting in my place without moving an inch, while watching India Business hour on CNBC TV18.”
Thanks to ICICI iMobile, I just iMobiled and it has made my life easy!
You might see some similar TV commercial running on air soon promoting ICICI bank’s mobile banking service iMobile. Here is the link to FAQs. With launch of this mobile banking service ICICI has become India’s first bank to launch Mobile Banking. However, this is not the 1st time in world when someone has launched mobile banking. Previously, in 1996 and 2000, Bank of America, Citibank, HSBC and some others have already burnt their fingers. The previous launches of similar services were unsuccessful because of the bad mobile phone handsets and the poor networks available.
However, now the networks are much better as well as the handsets have better capabilities, which makes the outlook more positive. I am a strong supporter of Online and Mobile methods of reaching out to customers. And I strongly support the move of Mobile Banking. I would say 2008 -2010 is the right time to get into the Mobile Marketing and service arena and take the early mover’s advantage. Establish your brand name and brand recall and star building your company’s association with the mobile services. Oh by the way did I say Mobile Marketing will work in India?
With mobile payment options now available, I guess it’s just got a little more easier to promote M-Commerce as well as promoting ads on mobiles as the purchase media vehicle is ready to carry the money. I see by 2010 onwards the company revenues will shoot up with revenues from Mobile purchases coming through higher ad conversions. However, it would be necessary that the brands start attaching themselves with the most modern “Mobile” identity.
Looking for more action in 2008 in the Mobile Front!
Sunday, January 13, 2008
Will Telephony Calls be free in India? - Atleast for someone!
Will telephony become Free in India? Will telephony just become Internet telephony? Will 4G networks and IPV6 track the entire world with 300 Billion IP adresses? Will VOIP calls be much better than analogue calls? Will your thumb recognition become your worldwide biometric identity? Read to know more...
If we were to go by the growing clout of telecom operators in India and the fierce fight among them for Bandwidth, it's a rare chance that the telephony would become free. However, based on my previous post on how the TSPs might just turn into ISPs, this might just become true. Even the government of India through their BSNL and MTNL services is planning to launch 2MBPs free broadband internet connection by 2009.
At-least for Youth it might be...
There have been not so old instances of free service providers like Tiger etc which failed to attempt such a concept. Though, I guess it was too early for Indian markets. However, looking at how wireless telephony has expanded in India and why mobile marketing should work in India. I do see a large Youth market out there (Youth Ages 10-24, by 2025 is estimated at 349,200,000 by Population reference bureau) who would not mind listening to a 5 sec ad after every 15 minutes that they spent on phone; if there phone calls were free of charge. (Or probably the premium telephony for business users where they don’t get ads, but they pay higher rental charges.) Also they are given an option of a unique single online mobile wallet for multiple purchases in which they need to buy a monthly recharge wallet card varying anywhere between Rs 99 - Rs 1000.
So, what I am essentially saying is, having an online mobile wallet which gets recharged by a payment of Rs. X/month, like from a recharge coupon which can be bought from a local shop. (Even this will get eliminated when we will have 4G network and IPV6 so that every device will have an IP address and just a Biometric thumb recognition would be your worldwide identity.) Now, they get to talk free and have to listen to some Voice / Video Ads and probably text messages. What they just need to do is probably use the mobile wallet to buy the services being offered to them through promotions on their mobile.
Why should I buy from my Mobile Wallet?
Well anyways, wouldn’t you be buying your monthly required items like a deo or a Movie DVD (after watching the trailers on mobile) or may be a grocery or something similar? And if you get to buy the same through a Mobile phone through a special promotion being run and it gets delivered to your doorstep…obviously an hassle free shopping experience (oh did I say that Oil prices are always rising and travelling has become a challenge, specially if you have stayed in places like bangalore, mumbai, dubai etc). You can browse through the online store on your mobile and choose and pay directly through your mobile wallet safely by your biometric signature check on your mobile phone.
What’s in it for the Supplier?
Cheapest media to connect and advertise directly in the hands of the consumer. No large real estate investment, no large set-up required, no middle men’s commission, just pure B2C delivery of products.
How can you implement this?
Initially promotion of the Mobile Commerce or M-Commerce can be supported through certain specific low cost campaign launches from advertisers like contests, freebies etc. and over a period of 2 years when we see M-Commerce becoming popular, the TSPs (or WiISPs), would start charging the advertisers for the AD time which will again be contextual content ads targeted according to the buying or other behavior of the audience.
Is this model sustainable?
This is the question which we have to answer and will get answered only by looking at the response to the mobile advertising’s success in India. Would Indians accept the technology and would prefer to buy on Mobile or would still want to visit the store to buy? Would the telephone calls be completely free or the companies like Skype or Google charge the consumers to call? Would internet broadband become a reality on mobile phones or would it still be marred by the technology?
I see the light of positive hope and this approach of Mobile driven sales and marketing catching up in next 2 years time.
If we were to go by the growing clout of telecom operators in India and the fierce fight among them for Bandwidth, it's a rare chance that the telephony would become free. However, based on my previous post on how the TSPs might just turn into ISPs, this might just become true. Even the government of India through their BSNL and MTNL services is planning to launch 2MBPs free broadband internet connection by 2009.
At-least for Youth it might be...
There have been not so old instances of free service providers like Tiger etc which failed to attempt such a concept. Though, I guess it was too early for Indian markets. However, looking at how wireless telephony has expanded in India and why mobile marketing should work in India. I do see a large Youth market out there (Youth Ages 10-24, by 2025 is estimated at 349,200,000 by Population reference bureau) who would not mind listening to a 5 sec ad after every 15 minutes that they spent on phone; if there phone calls were free of charge. (Or probably the premium telephony for business users where they don’t get ads, but they pay higher rental charges.) Also they are given an option of a unique single online mobile wallet for multiple purchases in which they need to buy a monthly recharge wallet card varying anywhere between Rs 99 - Rs 1000.
So, what I am essentially saying is, having an online mobile wallet which gets recharged by a payment of Rs. X/month, like from a recharge coupon which can be bought from a local shop. (Even this will get eliminated when we will have 4G network and IPV6 so that every device will have an IP address and just a Biometric thumb recognition would be your worldwide identity.) Now, they get to talk free and have to listen to some Voice / Video Ads and probably text messages. What they just need to do is probably use the mobile wallet to buy the services being offered to them through promotions on their mobile.
Why should I buy from my Mobile Wallet?
Well anyways, wouldn’t you be buying your monthly required items like a deo or a Movie DVD (after watching the trailers on mobile) or may be a grocery or something similar? And if you get to buy the same through a Mobile phone through a special promotion being run and it gets delivered to your doorstep…obviously an hassle free shopping experience (oh did I say that Oil prices are always rising and travelling has become a challenge, specially if you have stayed in places like bangalore, mumbai, dubai etc). You can browse through the online store on your mobile and choose and pay directly through your mobile wallet safely by your biometric signature check on your mobile phone.
What’s in it for the Supplier?
Cheapest media to connect and advertise directly in the hands of the consumer. No large real estate investment, no large set-up required, no middle men’s commission, just pure B2C delivery of products.
How can you implement this?
Initially promotion of the Mobile Commerce or M-Commerce can be supported through certain specific low cost campaign launches from advertisers like contests, freebies etc. and over a period of 2 years when we see M-Commerce becoming popular, the TSPs (or WiISPs), would start charging the advertisers for the AD time which will again be contextual content ads targeted according to the buying or other behavior of the audience.
Is this model sustainable?
This is the question which we have to answer and will get answered only by looking at the response to the mobile advertising’s success in India. Would Indians accept the technology and would prefer to buy on Mobile or would still want to visit the store to buy? Would the telephone calls be completely free or the companies like Skype or Google charge the consumers to call? Would internet broadband become a reality on mobile phones or would it still be marred by the technology?
I see the light of positive hope and this approach of Mobile driven sales and marketing catching up in next 2 years time.
Saturday, January 12, 2008
Will Telecom Network Operators finally become Internet Service Providers only?
Will Telecom Network Operators finally become Internet Service Providers only? Future of Telecom service providers? Would ISP and TSPs become one? A walk back from Future...
2015. AT&T today announced their Internet Services expansion to India. “We see India is the largest Mobile Communication devices’ consumer population worldwide followed by China and our high speed, reliable mobile Internet Services would help the regular Indian consumer to enjoy most advanced telephony and Value Added Services on their ARM Mobile 1.28 GHz processor driven, Google Android / Microsoft / Symbian based, mobile communicators.” said their SVP Worldwide Marketing and Product strategy at the launch function in New Delhi.
2010. Discussing the future of Telecom business at the Worldwide Telecom Forum, the heads of Top 10 worldwide telecom network operators conclusively shared a vision, with open mobile platforms like Google Android or Yahoo Open Mobile, telecom operations have virtually came to a halt with ever decreasing revenues from Mobile Phone networks consecutively for past 2 years while VAS and mobile ads revenues are increasing. There was a consensus that the TSPs would now concentrate on their newly launched Open Mobile VAS services along with the high speed 1GBPs wireless networks. Profitability will be driven by the Ads and VAS services and the telephony will be free of charge for the consumers. This will be on a revenue sharing model with the VAS operators.
If the above claims look strange, you may want to think about what’s conspiring in the world, on the mobile scenario, again!
With Apple’s iPhone, the mobile industry has seen a completely different face of information and communication. And with Google Android’s open mobile platform, you can imagine running a mobile software, which will be capable of Voice and Data communication processing in an ARM processor, and then transmission and reception over XG (3G, 4G, 5G…) internet services. Which means, the thing in your hand, is a PC which can run something like Google Talk or Skype and you can communicate (call someone, share a song, a video or probably send a vibe(vibrator ring)), with someone who has Google Talk or Skype running on a similar mobile communication device. And with IPV6 standards this mobile phone or communication wireless device will be having an IP address too. (You can track it for contextual or behavioral marketing – Did I say Push marketing was dead?)
So what is left for the TSPs? Probably a carrier…for Internet and not for telephony. And off course 2 important things Contextual Content, Contextual Ads (in various formats like Video, Text, Audio, probably Vibration or Touch Colors etc.).
Why companies like NTT DoCoMo, Digiweb, Reliance, Vodafone, AT&T, Bharti Airtel, Tata, BT, Etisalat, Du and similar ones should now focus on a long term growth strategy of acquisition of VAS providers, content management systems and mobile application development on open devices seems obvious. Companies which can help provide Mobile Advertising solutions, Mobile Content delivery or High speed mobile internet are the real companies to look for in future. Companies which can challenge Google in creating a mobile Google checkout to purchase online and start building an online purchase history and complete behavior of browsing and purchase will become very lucrative and growth businesses.
I might be knaive and may not understand the internal dynamics, though, I do see such trends which will bring Telecom network providers to become ISPs and VAS providers and contextual content delivery in various media on a mobile communication device over Internet 4G networks would rule.
*This entry is based on my imagination and analysis and is more of an observant speculation.
2015. AT&T today announced their Internet Services expansion to India. “We see India is the largest Mobile Communication devices’ consumer population worldwide followed by China and our high speed, reliable mobile Internet Services would help the regular Indian consumer to enjoy most advanced telephony and Value Added Services on their ARM Mobile 1.28 GHz processor driven, Google Android / Microsoft / Symbian based, mobile communicators.” said their SVP Worldwide Marketing and Product strategy at the launch function in New Delhi.
2010. Discussing the future of Telecom business at the Worldwide Telecom Forum, the heads of Top 10 worldwide telecom network operators conclusively shared a vision, with open mobile platforms like Google Android or Yahoo Open Mobile, telecom operations have virtually came to a halt with ever decreasing revenues from Mobile Phone networks consecutively for past 2 years while VAS and mobile ads revenues are increasing. There was a consensus that the TSPs would now concentrate on their newly launched Open Mobile VAS services along with the high speed 1GBPs wireless networks. Profitability will be driven by the Ads and VAS services and the telephony will be free of charge for the consumers. This will be on a revenue sharing model with the VAS operators.
If the above claims look strange, you may want to think about what’s conspiring in the world, on the mobile scenario, again!
With Apple’s iPhone, the mobile industry has seen a completely different face of information and communication. And with Google Android’s open mobile platform, you can imagine running a mobile software, which will be capable of Voice and Data communication processing in an ARM processor, and then transmission and reception over XG (3G, 4G, 5G…) internet services. Which means, the thing in your hand, is a PC which can run something like Google Talk or Skype and you can communicate (call someone, share a song, a video or probably send a vibe(vibrator ring)), with someone who has Google Talk or Skype running on a similar mobile communication device. And with IPV6 standards this mobile phone or communication wireless device will be having an IP address too. (You can track it for contextual or behavioral marketing – Did I say Push marketing was dead?)
So what is left for the TSPs? Probably a carrier…for Internet and not for telephony. And off course 2 important things Contextual Content, Contextual Ads (in various formats like Video, Text, Audio, probably Vibration or Touch Colors etc.).
Why companies like NTT DoCoMo, Digiweb, Reliance, Vodafone, AT&T, Bharti Airtel, Tata, BT, Etisalat, Du and similar ones should now focus on a long term growth strategy of acquisition of VAS providers, content management systems and mobile application development on open devices seems obvious. Companies which can help provide Mobile Advertising solutions, Mobile Content delivery or High speed mobile internet are the real companies to look for in future. Companies which can challenge Google in creating a mobile Google checkout to purchase online and start building an online purchase history and complete behavior of browsing and purchase will become very lucrative and growth businesses.
I might be knaive and may not understand the internal dynamics, though, I do see such trends which will bring Telecom network providers to become ISPs and VAS providers and contextual content delivery in various media on a mobile communication device over Internet 4G networks would rule.
*This entry is based on my imagination and analysis and is more of an observant speculation.
Friday, January 04, 2008
Why Mobile Marketing will work in India? – Top Reasons (Statistics and Figures)
Why Mobile Marketing will work in India? – Top Reasons (Statistics and Figures) to notice. India is quick to join the Mobile bandwagon. Some statistics and figures that talk for themselves. A very clear indication on how India is adopting the wireless communication channel. And they say in marketing, FISH where the FISH is (FISH is in the Hands, show the worms on Mobiles). In the recent report from TRAI released on Jan 1 2008, the following are key points to notice:
- Wireless market in India grows by 13% with addition of 24.15 million subscribers in quarter ending September 2007. Meaning – More mobile phone users across India.
- Internet subscribers increased to 9.63 million at the end of September 2007. Meaning -higher proliferation of Internet across India.
- Broadband subscriber base touched 2.67 million at the end of September 2007. People are looking for higher speeds. (More online content and ads)
- The subscriber base for wireless services has increased from 184.92 million in June 2007 to 209.07 million in September 2007, whereas subscriber base of Wireline service has decreased from 40.09 million in June 2007 to 39.58 million in September 2007. -- Clear indication of decreasing wire line usage and proliferation of mobile value added services. (Alarm bells for Mobile Ads Companies and VAS Service Providers and carriers)
Wireless Growth in Rural India
Rural Wireline subscriber base has decreased from 12.27 million in June 2007 to 11.99 million in September 2007, thus showing a negative growth of 2.28%. The rural wireless subscriber base has increased from 37.40 million for the quarter ending June 2007 to 43.98, registering a growth of 17.59%.
Making sense out of - ARPU - Though the average ARPU declined ~7% at Rs. 275 for the Q3 ending Sep 07, though the overall average ARPU revenue increased as there was an addition of more subscribers.
- As well as I see, that Q3 is always the low spending quarter because most of the Big Indian festivals happen in Q4 including the Diwali, Christmas, BhaiDooj and New Year’s spending.
It’s a great opportunity out there to be tapped by the content and service providers and I am very positive that the Mobile Marketing should work in India.
Thursday, January 03, 2008
Web 2.0 Jargon for 2008, New terminology for 2008
2007 2008
Open Api’s --> More open widgets
Widgetization of the Web --> Virtual Worlds
Personalization of the Web --> Enterprise 2.0
The Web is the New Desktop --> Mobile 2.0 and Google Android
Social Networking --> Niche Social Networking
Blogging --> Corporate Blogging
MultiMedia Sharing --> Employee Community -Various media sharing
Behavioural Marketing --> Customer centric targetting
Open Api’s --> More open widgets
Widgetization of the Web --> Virtual Worlds
Personalization of the Web --> Enterprise 2.0
The Web is the New Desktop --> Mobile 2.0 and Google Android
Social Networking --> Niche Social Networking
Blogging --> Corporate Blogging
MultiMedia Sharing --> Employee Community -Various media sharing
Behavioural Marketing --> Customer centric targetting
India's First Mobile Phone Ads provider - Future Predictions ALIVE
Indians are hurrying to lead the race in 2008. Grabing that extra share in mobile Marketing Pie, is showing some early signs of rapid footsteps.
An early breakthrough attempt, which needs to sustain itself for atleast couple of years before their balance sheets would post break-evens or profits. With ZestADZ (www.zestadz.com) a pioneer in mobile advertising space in India, announcing that hey will now sell ads on facebook mobile platform allowing facebook developers to integrate mobile ads with their facebook mobile apps.
ZestADZ will be the first mobile ad platform from India to offer such service for Indian mobile developers.
Using this service, facebook mobile developers can monetize their mobile applications by embedding ads from leading advertisers from India. Through this development mobile developers can now tap into the Indian mobile market which currently has more than 200 million users, many of them moving upward using mobile Internet. The facebook India network has hundreds of thousands of users from India and it is expected that just like Orkut, facebook’s popularity will soar in India especially on their mobile sites.
It is evident, both sections of people are extremely optimistic, “Mobile Social Marketing is extremely important space for us to be in and we’re getting started with facebook which is very popular in India”, said Asif Ali, CTO mobile-worx adding that “We hope that this launch enable both advertisers and publishers to capitalize of the phenomenal growth of mobile Internet in India”.
Terry Uppal, President, Mobile-worx said “Advertisers in India will now have the perfect media platform to reach a large target audience on facebook with relevant and contextual ads to generate increase their brand awareness and revenues”.
About ZestADZ
ZestADZ - India's leading mobile advertising marketplace. ZestADZ is a multi-format (WAP, SMS and mobile-video) advertising platform. ZestADZ inserts highly targeted and relevant ads and delivers compelling value to users, publishers and advertisers. ZestADZ embodies the core tenets of Seth Godin’s permission based marketing.
For more information on ZestADZ visit http://www.zestadz.com
About mobile-worx
mobile-worx is a leading provider of mobility solutions with offices in US, India and Malaysia. Mobile-worx has offices in Chennai, Mumbai (Bombay), Los Angeles and Kuala Lumpur.
For more information on mobile-worx, please visit http://www.mobile-worx.com Contact Details: Shereen Begum, mobile-worx, +91 (044) 4257 6183 Or Email
An early breakthrough attempt, which needs to sustain itself for atleast couple of years before their balance sheets would post break-evens or profits. With ZestADZ (www.zestadz.com) a pioneer in mobile advertising space in India, announcing that hey will now sell ads on facebook mobile platform allowing facebook developers to integrate mobile ads with their facebook mobile apps.
ZestADZ will be the first mobile ad platform from India to offer such service for Indian mobile developers.
Using this service, facebook mobile developers can monetize their mobile applications by embedding ads from leading advertisers from India. Through this development mobile developers can now tap into the Indian mobile market which currently has more than 200 million users, many of them moving upward using mobile Internet. The facebook India network has hundreds of thousands of users from India and it is expected that just like Orkut, facebook’s popularity will soar in India especially on their mobile sites.
It is evident, both sections of people are extremely optimistic, “Mobile Social Marketing is extremely important space for us to be in and we’re getting started with facebook which is very popular in India”, said Asif Ali, CTO mobile-worx adding that “We hope that this launch enable both advertisers and publishers to capitalize of the phenomenal growth of mobile Internet in India”.
Terry Uppal, President, Mobile-worx said “Advertisers in India will now have the perfect media platform to reach a large target audience on facebook with relevant and contextual ads to generate increase their brand awareness and revenues”.
About ZestADZ
ZestADZ - India's leading mobile advertising marketplace. ZestADZ is a multi-format (WAP, SMS and mobile-video) advertising platform. ZestADZ inserts highly targeted and relevant ads and delivers compelling value to users, publishers and advertisers. ZestADZ embodies the core tenets of Seth Godin’s permission based marketing.
For more information on ZestADZ visit http://www.zestadz.com
About mobile-worx
mobile-worx is a leading provider of mobility solutions with offices in US, India and Malaysia. Mobile-worx has offices in Chennai, Mumbai (Bombay), Los Angeles and Kuala Lumpur.
For more information on mobile-worx, please visit http://www.mobile-worx.com Contact Details: Shereen Begum, mobile-worx, +91 (044) 4257 6183 Or Email
Monday, December 31, 2007
Is there a need for Mobile Information Company, like Alexa.com?
In my previous post on Mobile Devices, I mentioned about Static IP addresses for all mobile, hand held or electronic devices, talking to each other over wireless networks.
So a question crossed my mind, is there a need for Mobile Information companies like Alexa.com (web information company).
Not just that, in today's world, when there are so many email service providers like ExactTarget, VerticalResponse, SubscriberMail, vTrenz, Bronto, Silverpop, Strongmail and many more...we are headed for mobile mail delivery providers as well as mobile content delivery providers.
In Email delivery, one of the key challenge is ensuring the mail doesn't go to the SPAM box, which depends on a lot of things, most importantly the reputation of the service provider. Websites like http://www.senderscore.org/ provide email vendor's reputation with various ISPs and give a score which says how well recepted a specific IP address of a specific vendor is.
With Mobile Marketing Association getting more and more active in recent times, they have now laid down the guidelines for Mobile marketing in various regions. I see a need for a mobile information companies which will be monitoring the Mobile Carriers and Mobile VAS operators for delivering the content on the mobile phones and will give a credibility rating suggesting if the incoming messages are being blocked by a user.
Well, till now call barring is what I am aware of. However, as we go forward, with more and more marketers tending to leverage mobile media for marketing, there need to be some controlling guidelines put into place. Does this gives rise to Mobile Information Company?
Do share your comments about the same...
So a question crossed my mind, is there a need for Mobile Information companies like Alexa.com (web information company).
Not just that, in today's world, when there are so many email service providers like ExactTarget, VerticalResponse, SubscriberMail, vTrenz, Bronto, Silverpop, Strongmail and many more...we are headed for mobile mail delivery providers as well as mobile content delivery providers.
In Email delivery, one of the key challenge is ensuring the mail doesn't go to the SPAM box, which depends on a lot of things, most importantly the reputation of the service provider. Websites like http://www.senderscore.org/ provide email vendor's reputation with various ISPs and give a score which says how well recepted a specific IP address of a specific vendor is.
With Mobile Marketing Association getting more and more active in recent times, they have now laid down the guidelines for Mobile marketing in various regions. I see a need for a mobile information companies which will be monitoring the Mobile Carriers and Mobile VAS operators for delivering the content on the mobile phones and will give a credibility rating suggesting if the incoming messages are being blocked by a user.
Well, till now call barring is what I am aware of. However, as we go forward, with more and more marketers tending to leverage mobile media for marketing, there need to be some controlling guidelines put into place. Does this gives rise to Mobile Information Company?
Do share your comments about the same...
Friday, December 28, 2007
What's the Future Series Part 3 - Mobile Devices
Last week, I was sitting with my ex-colleagues from National Instruments when we started discussing where the world is headed to in terms of new business opportunities in IT and Web technologies and more...
Interestingly hand-held, wireless devices and online portals became the key discussion topics. Though, we discussed more about how computing is moving online and how just a TCP/IP enabled platform will become a single standard for information, computing and sales (this was under the light that IPV6 standards will provide over 300 Billion static IP addresses to any mobile, wireless, wired and electronic instruments). This should be enough to take care of the 6 billion population of the world for coming 50 years, I guess.
During this discussion, I was thinking about how our behaviour changes towards technology and I recollected some memories from my college days. There was a time when I presented 2 techhnical papers on M-Commerce and Holographic storage devices. M-Commerce basically mean purchasing things on mobiles and holographic storage means storing Terra Bytes of data on 3D holograms. 7-years back the audience was more amused and intrigued on my papers. Though they might be buying their next movie ticket on mobiles today. Anyways, I am happy that my thinking 7-years back is tied well with reality today.
Now, the Future of marketing, which I see is definitely going to be Marketing through the Mobile Channel or the “Mobile Marketing”. With Blackberry's becoming more and more common and Nokia standardizing its business phone, E-series, with Mobile content management and Mobile Value Added Services companies growing over 200% annually, with email marketing providers thrusting on the mobile friendly content, it's not going to be long when revenue source for companies start showing "through Mobile" as a constant field in their reporting.
Mobile marketing (MM) consists of a unique, complex, mix of technologies, business skills, and marketing expertise. It is a child born of the Internet revolution, and it is critical that today’s marketers grasp its significance. It is one of the first new channels to arise in over 50 years, and will quickly become a primary means of reaching out to our customers.
The reliance on mobile phones is increasing rapidly, and considering the Indian markets which has shown enormous growth, for consumption of these services, it's obvious that some of the world's largest players are investing heavily in India. In fact, there are now more mobile phone subscribers in the world (2.4 billion)*, than there are landline phones subscribers. The mobile phone is becoming a primary means of communication, not only for voice but also for digital services, email, digital photos, navigation, etc. Worldwide over 350 billion text messages, also known as “SMS Messages,” are exchanged across the world’s mobile networks every month, with over 15% of these messages, according to the Yankee Group, being classified as commercial, or marketing, messages.
*GSM Association, http://www.gsmworld.com/
An interesting mobile marketing ecosystem has emerged according to MMA, aptly depicted by the image below:-
Interestingly hand-held, wireless devices and online portals became the key discussion topics. Though, we discussed more about how computing is moving online and how just a TCP/IP enabled platform will become a single standard for information, computing and sales (this was under the light that IPV6 standards will provide over 300 Billion static IP addresses to any mobile, wireless, wired and electronic instruments). This should be enough to take care of the 6 billion population of the world for coming 50 years, I guess.
During this discussion, I was thinking about how our behaviour changes towards technology and I recollected some memories from my college days. There was a time when I presented 2 techhnical papers on M-Commerce and Holographic storage devices. M-Commerce basically mean purchasing things on mobiles and holographic storage means storing Terra Bytes of data on 3D holograms. 7-years back the audience was more amused and intrigued on my papers. Though they might be buying their next movie ticket on mobiles today. Anyways, I am happy that my thinking 7-years back is tied well with reality today.
Now, the Future of marketing, which I see is definitely going to be Marketing through the Mobile Channel or the “Mobile Marketing”. With Blackberry's becoming more and more common and Nokia standardizing its business phone, E-series, with Mobile content management and Mobile Value Added Services companies growing over 200% annually, with email marketing providers thrusting on the mobile friendly content, it's not going to be long when revenue source for companies start showing "through Mobile" as a constant field in their reporting.
Mobile marketing (MM) consists of a unique, complex, mix of technologies, business skills, and marketing expertise. It is a child born of the Internet revolution, and it is critical that today’s marketers grasp its significance. It is one of the first new channels to arise in over 50 years, and will quickly become a primary means of reaching out to our customers.
The reliance on mobile phones is increasing rapidly, and considering the Indian markets which has shown enormous growth, for consumption of these services, it's obvious that some of the world's largest players are investing heavily in India. In fact, there are now more mobile phone subscribers in the world (2.4 billion)*, than there are landline phones subscribers. The mobile phone is becoming a primary means of communication, not only for voice but also for digital services, email, digital photos, navigation, etc. Worldwide over 350 billion text messages, also known as “SMS Messages,” are exchanged across the world’s mobile networks every month, with over 15% of these messages, according to the Yankee Group, being classified as commercial, or marketing, messages.
*GSM Association, http://www.gsmworld.com/
An interesting mobile marketing ecosystem has emerged according to MMA, aptly depicted by the image below:-
The Mobile Marketing Ecosystem is comprised of 4 interconnecting strategic spheres–Product & Services (brands, content owners and marketing agencies), Applications (discrete application providers and mobile ASPs), Connection (aggregators and wireless operators), and Media and Retail (media properties, “brick ‘n’ mortar” and virtual retail stores). Various enablers provide the foundation for each particular sphere. Players within these spheres work in concert to deliver a rich experience to consumers. The Mobile Channel Value Chain is the path by which the actual mobile communication and interactivity takes place between the Product & Services Sphere and mobile subscribers (consumers), however, consumer demand must first be established. To create this demand, products, services, events, and content programs are promoted through the Media and Retail Sphere’s various traditional channels.
An interesting report in 2005, Unfolding of the Mobile Marketing Ecosystem: A Growing Strategic Network, by Micheal Becker, CTO, iLoop Mobile explains this ecosystem very well.
Another interesting thing which you might be thinking of is how these SMS campaigns are managed? How companies like Yellow Pages is able to send instant SMSes to you with the information you requested or how while Voting for your popular candidates on a Indian Idol show gets collected by the marketeers? Or may be how your SMSes for Contests on your favourite FM channel makes you win that hamper? Well this is because of the rise of mobile Value Added Service providers eg. On Mobile, IMIMobile, One97 to name a few in India.
With competition starting to take-off in this category, more and more marketeers will be moving to these channels. Also, these VAS providers would need to gear-up for the futue of customer centric services. They will have to look much ahead of a demand to be created and will have to be Agile enough to get such demands fulfilled even before the customers ask for it. So essentially, the strategy would be to create a Think Tank or Pool of Ideas on proactive basis, to keep differentiating the offerings before the competition does.
A WIDE-OPEN eye along with a keen tap on the market movement, will help them to remain ahead in competition. With companies like Reliance, who would want to have the entire ecosystem under their nose, it would only become more and more challenging for these VAS operators to sustain. With sustenance based on VCs, its always a continuous sword on the head, to overperform and post more and more profits. Though innovation and proactive behaviour might ask for diverging away from profits in certain business quarters. Also, this can even spur another consolidation wave where we can see some more mergers and acquisitions.
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