Gadget Tips 2012: Oktober 2007

Rabu, 31 Oktober 2007

Marriages to be made on Mobile

Nokia today announced a tie-up with BharatMatrimony that will allow Nokia device owners in India to use their services through Nokia Catalogs, a mobile ‘shopping mall’ that offers a wide variety of content, applications and services on Nokia devices.

Murugavel Janakiraman, CEO, BharatMatrimony Group says "We at BharatMatrimony firmly believe in the power of technology and have been continuously innovating features to simplify the process of match making.

Through this collaboration with Nokia and Mobile2Win, we are happy to take our matrimony services into a new platform, thus benefiting customers on the move. This will also help us reach out to a wider audience."

For complete news go to ciol.com

Marriages to be made on Mobile

Manage-Mentally 5

Hi,

I had this interesting image forwarded to me. In Management paralence, I would say -" Blowing your air too much might put you in an akward position"

Enjoyyy!!

Santosh

Manage-Mentally 5

Hi,

I had this interesting image forwarded to me. In Management paralence, I would say -" Blowing your air too much might put you in an akward position"

Enjoyyy!!

Santosh

Manage-Mentally 5

Hi,

I had this interesting image forwarded to me. In Management paralence, I would say -" Blowing your air too much might put you in an akward position"

Enjoyyy!!

Santosh

Senin, 29 Oktober 2007

SMS 2.0

People are so gung-ho about the Internet and the miniscule revenues it generates -2.5 Billion INR. Mobile on the other hand is having a phenomenal run in terms of their revenues apart from the core activities. VAS is pegged around 20 Billion INR.

There are about 32 Million Handsets in India that are GPRS/WAP enabled. About 1 Billion Page views happen through the mobile sets. The number of SMSes received for the Indian Idol Final is rumored around 40 Million.

But then, why is mobile advertising not taking off in India?

Is it because of TRAI regulation that you cannot push advertising? Or is it because the service providers feel that there are more monies in VAS for which the customer is willing to pay.

I am not aware of any campaign done through Mobile, in India, that has been effective or a case study spoken about in the industry circle.

At the most Mobile advertising has been stuck to things like Shortcode, SMS (taken from some unrelated database)… and yeah, couple of banner ads on Airtel Live.

I also read an article which mentioned that the mobile advertising will overtake internet advertising in India by 2010. Hmm, I guess not.

My reasons:-

The Mobile service providers are now concentrating on the rural markets – which mean basic telephones, and basic services. Hence the usage and number of connections might increase, but the ARPU will decrease.

Well, main reason is that the people mindset. For me Mobile is very personal, almost like a part of me. I hate when I get SMSs from some stupid marketer offering something I do not want, In fact most of the time I feel angry..

But when on the Internet, I know for sure, that most of the things I access are for free… hence I do not mind a few ads, here and there, as long as the purpose of my browsing is served.

I mean, I know that my Gmail or Hotmail are free services, and as long as I am not paying for it… I have no complaints (to be more honest – I CANNOT complain) on the ads that are served in my inbox.
But when it comes to Mobile – I am paying for each and every service they offer… and hence any thing that I feel intrusive, I would react strongly.

Tip: I guess if the service provider comes out with a program, wherein I can send free SMS upto 75 Characters, and the remaining stuff is used for Advertising… then there would be a line of advertisers wanting to fill in the remaining 75 odd characters … to make it more interesting the program should read the text and place contextual ads…

Say for example, I send a SMS to my friend – Shall we meet up for Lunch? I am at MG Rd 2day aftrn.

A Pizza Hut or some other Restaurant can advertise on the remaining space – Drop in at Pizza Hut, MG Rd, show this msg and get 10% off.

I guess until the mobile service providers and the mobile aggregators come up with something out of the box solutions to reach out in a non-intrusive way to the mobile users… Proper advertising would not be possible on the Mobile… except in terms of paid VAS

Cheers

Santosh

SMS 2.0

Kamis, 25 Oktober 2007

The Online World

The brilliance of online marketing is not the new technology developments that happens. It is the way you can go about doing the conventional things in a digital world. I mean look at all the marketing tools you had been using earlier... the same is adapted into the online sphere.

A marketing catalog - it became a website;
Mailers - EDMs
Retail shop - Online store
Display ads - banner ads
Telecalling - online chat

The best thing is the simplicity at which you can adapt it online. Who would have thought that Internet - what was considered a technology advancement would soon become a marketing advancement. Strange, but true.

I was reading an interesting article on the mini series on MySpace in imediaconnection:

"Roommates," an original web series designed to engage fans with the characters online and involve them in plot development, launches today on MySpaceTV, the video wing of the online community network. Ford Motor's 2008 Focus is sponsoring the content, which will run in three-minute segments, Monday through Friday.

"Roommates" will track the lives of four women in their twenties who have recently graduated from college and are living together in Los Angeles.

According to Reuters, MySpace will use a real-time "polling tool" in which viewers' opinions on character and plot development will be sought. Fans can chat online, as well as post comments on the characters' individual web profiles. The information will be scrutinized and the plot changed accordingly.

"There is an opportunity to interact with a show in different ways than have been done before," Jeff Berman, general manager of MySpaceTV, told Reuters.

MySpaceTV is planning 45 episodes to run through Dec. 21.

The Online World

Rabu, 24 Oktober 2007

Paid Content in India

A recent IAMAI-IMRB survey on e-commerce in India reveals that in 2006-07, the online paid content subscription market was worth a mere Rs 20 crore, a fragment of the Rs 7,080 crore e-commerce market, which is made up of online travel, e-tailing, paid content subscription and digital download sites.

In a paid content or subscription model, a content owner provides consumers access to content for a subscription fee. In India, paid content subscriptions are offered across various categories like news, legal or financial information, online games, audio books or research reports.

For example, Indian Petro Group (IPG) is one such company that offers information related to the oil, gas, power and fertiliser sectors to its clients – ONGC, Lehman Brothers, KPMG and ABN Amro, among others – for a monthly subscription fee of $500 per month. Indian Petro Group owns sites such as Indianpetro.com, Energylineindia.com and Indianfertilizer.com.

Says Santanu Saikia, executive editor, IPG: “Paid content sites offer more and in-depth information than free content sites and such sites usually go through a long gestation period of at least two years before subscription starts.” Saikia says, “The size of the paid content or subscription market in India is not more than Rs 20-25 crore, but it will grow in the future if it is nurtured properly.”

In the financial domain, Poweryourtrade.com (from the Network18 Group) provides stock market-related news, advice and analysis to individual investors and traders on a subscription basis. Neeraj Sanan, marketing head, Web 18, thinks that the “paid content or subscription market in India is more than Rs 20 crore”. Sanan believes that “customers will pay for content which will help them to make money”.

There are websites in the legal domain as well which offer paid content to subscribers. Taxindiaonline.com offers its paid subscribers access to an online library of case laws, notifications and circulars apart from tax related information like Supreme Court rulings on income tax.

In the B2C category, a few portals in the news publishing and online gaming domain are experimenting with the subscription model. As far as news goes, there’s a broad consensus that a paid model does not work. ‘The New York Times’ TimesSelect service was discontinued recently, and there’s talk that Rupert Murdoch plans to go the same way for ‘The Wall Street Journal’s successful paid content model.

In India, ‘Business Standard’ has sought to buck the trend, offering free as well as paid content on its site. A reader can pay Rs 149 annually to get complete access to the archives and special supplements of the newspaper. All other major newspaper sites offer free content. Arun Natesh, general manager, ‘Business Standard’, explains the divergent view: “Serious users or information seekers are open to paying for relevant and credible content, especially if the price is right. In the long run, subscription revenues will be far more stable.”

Though online games in India are almost always free, Indiagames.com allows gamers to download games only after they purchase a subscription package. The fee is between Rs 100-200 based on the download size of the game. Vishal Gondal, founder, Indiagames.com, says, “Worldwide, the online gaming industry works on subscription model and subscription provides more revenue than in-game advertising.”

In 2007-08, the paid content subscription market is expected to reach Rs 30 crore. But obviously, the market size of paid content subscriptions remains small. “The paid content subscription market is very fragmented. In general, Indian consumers do not like paying for content,” says Balendu Shrivastava, research director, IMRB International. Also, with the free availability of content via blogs, podcasts and video/ photo sharing sites, it does seem tough for publishers to monetise their regular content even in the future.

But it is not as if publishers are completely overlooking the model. As Sanjay Trehan, CEO, NDTV.com, says, “Consumers are willing to pay for content that is original, exclusive and provides them with value addition.” The ‘original content’ could work particularly for categories like financial, legal and real estate information, where customised and exclusive information can be created. But clearly, it’s a long slog ahead to get Indian netizens to pay up for content.

(News as appeared in Agencyfaqs.com)

Paid Content in India

Senin, 22 Oktober 2007

Small towns drive Internet boom in India

Internet usage in India has grown more than 11 times over the last seven years. The boom is being driven not by metros, but by smaller and non-metro towns, where the number of users has risen by a whopping 69 times and 33 times respectively since 2000.

The number of users has grown in all socio-economic categories, as well as in all metros and non-metro towns. In absolute terms, the top eight metros still have the largest numbers. However, the growth has been the fastest in the smaller and non-metro towns. In fact, small towns have the second largest number of total users after the top eight metros put together, where the total number has grown by just over five times.

These are the findings of an internet usage survey, done by the e-technology group of IMRB International. The I-Cube 2007 survey was conducted across 30 cities and towns covering 65,000 people.

The usage profile was prepared by studying active internet users, defined as those who accessed the internet at least once in the past one month.

Where do people access the net? Using the internet in schools and colleges is the fastest growth category — 22 times what it was in 2000 — indicating increasing computerisation of educational institutions. This is followed by internet access from home computers — a segment that has grown over 15 times. However in absolute numbers, cybercafes have the largest numbers accessing the internet, about 57 lakh, followed by those logging on from home. Surprisingly, accessing the net at office comes in only third.

In terms of activities on the net, email and information search are still the biggest drivers of internet use. More than 78.5 lakh people use the net for email compared with less than half that number, nearly 37 lakh, for information search. With the highest jump of 27 times in the number of users since 2000, the entertainment segment comprising games, ring tones, music and video downloads has caught up with the chat segment. Both have about 15.4 lakh users followed by e-commerce — including online travel, share trading, banking and buying products — which has grown nearly 25 times since 2000.

More than 60% of information seekers look for general information on the net and 45% look for educational information. About 27% search job sites and 17% seek financial information. Interestingly, at 8%, the number of people looking for astrological information is double that of those searching online matrimonial sites, a mere 4%.

The article appeared in Times of India

Small towns drive Internet boom in India

Kamis, 18 Oktober 2007

13 reasons why your facebook account will be disabled

Hi,

Thought I would share with you something I had read couple of days back.

I saw these 13 reasons your Facebook account will be disabled and
thought I'd share them with you for your consideration:

1. You didn't use your real name
2. You joined too many groups
3. You posted too many messages on a wall or in a group
4. You posted in too many groups, too many user's walls
5. You friended too many people
6. Your school/organization affiliation is doubtful
7. You're poking too many people
8. For advertising your app on wall posts
9. Using duplicate text in multiple messages
10. You are a cow, dog, or library
11. You are under eighteen years old
12. You wrote offensive content
13. You scraped information off Facebook

More details about the 13 reasons can be found on the original site, here:

Facebook
Santosh

13 reasons why your facebook account will be disabled

Rabu, 17 Oktober 2007

On Indian Railways

It has been more than a year since I traveled by Indian Railways. Most of my travels now-a-days are on road (if I happen to go from Bangalore to my native place in Kerala) or by flight in case I need to travel far.

Couple of weeks back, I had one off work in Chennai. I had taken the same day return ticket for the Shatabdi Express from Bangalore-Chennai-Bangalore.

The train was scheduled to leave at 6.30 AM; and dot on time it left the platform 6 of Bangalore City Station. The Chair car was comfortable – the AC not too cold, soft carnatic music being played through the pipes.

The attendant was well dressed and presentable, something I never related to Indian Railways – where cleanliness is only for slogan purpose. Along with the welcome drink, I had the option to choose from 3 English Dailies. There was a public announcement mentioning the travel distance, the travel time, and the important stations in between; reminded me of the pilot in a plane giving out the temperature and altitude, and flying over which city details.

The best part was that the attendant was ever helpful, and always had something to offer every 30-45 minutes. There were also messages in between the journey, mentioning if the train was running on schedule or late.

Over all it was a great experience. I loved this train travel after a very long time.

Hmm, What I could see in the train in future – Internet access, Television, maybe all the compartments are interconnected and there will be a dining coaches, observation coaches etc…

The idea is not to build faster trains and better railroad tracks to make people travel fast… the idea is to make the people enjoy their travel. As someone said, it is not the destination that matter, but the Journey.

Cheers

Santosh

On Indian Railways

Senin, 15 Oktober 2007

The Moving Target

The customer is no longer a sitting duck. He is a moving target. In fact in today's digital world he is the hunter...

http://www.slideshare.net/guest379ed7/moving-target/1

Have a gllimpse in a day in the life of the Moving target

Cheers

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The Moving Target

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The Moving Target

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Kamis, 11 Oktober 2007

Why lie to Fly?

Hi...

Couple of days back, I had a bad experience on Flying in Jet Airways (Bangalore to Delhi)... It reminded me about another incident that happened to me about a year earlier with another Airlines - Kingfisher.

I had reached the Jet Airways counter at Bangalore Airport, and asked the customer service lady there to give me a window seat, as I wanted to take a quick nap during the flight. The lady mentioned that I was kind of late and there were no Window seats available and the only option was middle seats... Well, I cursed my luck and took the middle seat...

Once I boarded the flight, and saw there was a vacant window seat available next to me, I wondered how is it possible that the lady at the counter mentioned that there were no window seats available... when there was one next to me...(of all the rows in the plane:)

The other incident was with Kingfisher... I needed to reach Bangalore urgently. I went to the Hyderabad Airport, and asked at the Kingfisher counter, if there were tickets available to Bangalore... I also asked for Check fare.. and if I could get a discount on the fare... The cute lady at the counter mentioned that the flight was almost full and that there were only 3-4 vacant seats available... and hence she would not be able to give me a discount. I bought the ticket for full amount, and boarded the flight.

On boarding I found that more than 50% of the plane was empty!!

On both these incidents I would not be sad, if the people were truthful and told that they cannot give me what I had asked for. There was no need for them to LIE... I mean, I will be on the flight any case and can see for sure the reasons they have mentioned is true or not...

I regret, that the people who work for service industry need to be above all truthful... and unfortunately, the airlines do not teach/train them on that.

Sorry Kingfisher / Jet Airways... why Lie.... to make me Fly?

Santosh

Why lie to Fly?

Rabu, 03 Oktober 2007

Digital Agencies in big Demand in India

This article appeared in exchange4media.com

Global media holding companies are making many statements on their plans for India. And what emerges from these statements is the serious intent to acquire digital agencies in India. The only problem is that even as media agencies are bullish about this, the hunt isn’t turning out to be as simple as it sounds.
Some of the recent international heads, who have unveiled their digital objectives in national and international interviews, include WPP’s Global Strategy Director Mark Read; Havas CEO Fernando Rodes Vila; Publicis Worldwide COO Robert Pinder; Aegis Media Asia CEO Richard Halmarick; IPG’s Steve Gatfield (CEO, Lowe Worldwide); and Omnicom Vice Chairman Michael Birkin.
Some of the recent initiatives seen on the digital front in India include Aegis Media announcing the launch of its digital arm, Isobar, in India by the year-end; Dentsu and ConnecTurf launching interactive joint venture ‘Clickstreamers’ that would provide Dentsu’s Indian client base a complete range of interactive and digital media services; 141Sercon, the newly-formed activation brand from BatesAsia, launching 1010, the group’s first ever digital initiative; and Zenith Optimedia launching Zed Digital India, its full service interactive and digital unit.
WPP holding its second Asia strategy meeting at Bangalore in July 2007, where the theme was digital focus, is just one of the other indicators of this digital frenzy. Starcom let it known far and wide when General Motors appointed Starcom MediaVest Group’s Starcom IP to drive digital marketing in the Asia Pacific.
Now let’s take the top digital agencies in India such as Quasar Media, Webchutney, Pinstorm, BCWebwise, ConnecTurf, Interactive Avenues, Media Turf, etc, 80 per cent of them don’t belong to any media network or holding company. All media holding companies have spoken to these agencies. In addition to these, other companies like Network18 are also trying to build digital capabilities and lure these companies. Needless to say, private equity firms are also in this chase.
Perhaps one of the biggest challenges that the ‘buyers’ face here is that when it comes to buying a digital agency, the decision is not based on revenues but on valuation, and the game then is more expensive than expected.
Advertising networks in India have not been able to build digital capabilities that they can boast of or would keep them away from this rush for digital agencies. Industry experts believe that the reason for this is that the Indian advertising and media industry per se is young, and in developing the traditional skills, digital medium was not a priority, until now.
What the industry has to sayLodestar Universal’s CEO, Shashi Sinha, remarked, “Two key reasons for this digital interest are the digital footprints in the international markets, and the fact that global investors are seeing what their agencies are doing in India, and in the new media in India. In the US, digital is almost 8-10 per cent of the ad industry. There is a genuine belief that digital will take off in India soon and if you are not in it already, then you will miss the bus.”
R Gowthaman, MD, MindShare West and South, observed, “The platforms for distribution will converge, and soon you can watch TV on mobile or the Internet. At a time when content can be viewed in different forms, the digital agencies are better poised to cater to consumer needs, which is why agencies have to enhance their digital capabilities soon. As we speak today, India’s digital population is roughly around one-third of Australia’s population – this just indicates the scale India can offer.”
Aegis Media’s Country Head, Charles Berley Jenarius, said, “India is a young country demographically and digital is where the next generation is headed. As a country, India has leapfrogged in technology – hardly had we seen dial-up, when broadband arrived. So, when digital takes off, it would be very fast. In order to be future ready, you need to move into the digital arena now. Also, today we are working on global brands, who expect their key markets to be in sync. Digital is a strong tool to integrate with the rest of the world, and be on the same wavelength. Acquisition can give you specialised skill sets with scale, but for Isobar we are exploring both training people internally and acquisitions.”
Starcom Mediavest Group’s South Asia CEO, Ravi Kiran, said, “My frustration with this subject is why is digital still at 2 per cent. Advertisers are not growing in digital the way the consumers are. Look at everything around you – when bomb blasts were covered on news, the channel also aired the pictures that people put on the channel’s websites; our music is digitised; our work is digitised; there are 120 million mobile handsets in India. Look at the people who are going digital, and the influence they have on other people. This is the medium where opinion leaders go to. Ad agencies and advertisers should run in the digital space like there is no tomorrow if they want to keep up with the consumers.”
Agreeing with Kiran, Harish Shriyan, Managing Partner, OMD, added, “Media is fragmented and everyone is talking about integrated solutions, and digital is one of the mediums to attain that. It may appear too early, but advertisers have started looking at the medium seriously, and it is only a matter of time before it becomes one of the most important components of communication. The young generation is multitasking and you have to run to keep pace with the consumer. Acquisition is the fastest route to get the digital capabilities.”
Media experts see the digital medium divided in three parts – one of media buying, where most agencies have some capabilities in buying media on digital platforms. The second part is content building, where the independent digital agencies seem to be dominating the market to the extent of even providing services to mainline ad agencies. The third part is of digital strategy and consulting, where no agencies seem to score. When things are seen in this league, the competition suddenly includes names like Google and Microsoft, and then the media industry is no longer what we knew it as.