The buzz on these mediums was so high  that people wanted to measure the impact of these mediums as a marketing tool. With the exponential growing power of this media, the next logical step was to see it as reflection for all that a brand did on its other marketing mediums. The question was how? It was time for the good old Analytic tools to evolve and a new round of innovation to measure this medium.

There had been the concept of clicks, goals and conversions right from the beginning. It was time to see a major change in the clickstream. It was not only the Google Ads which gave the hits and in turn the conversions but also the tweets and the Facebook updates doing the job for you. But, we all wanted more and yes, we got it.

We wanted to know which particular user from among the millions was proving influential and a URL shortening service, Bit.ly came out with a dashboard which measured exactly the same. Bit.ly came out with a service where we could measure exactly whose update/tweet was clicked how many times and now we found a way to find the influencer. This influencer was not always a celebrity. It was sometimes another guy who tweeted a lot of random stuff which people enjoyed. The story of quantifying the medium goes on.

Here, we realised that we had found a completely new way to measure all our campaigns on all platforms. Everytime, a music video, an advertisement or new paper ad flashed, we saw the shadows and more precisely the reflections on the social web. Brands as well as celebrities wanted to trend on twitter, as that meant instant publicity for their new ads which released on the TV as well as Youtube. The number of views on Youtube  was a good enough indicator of your campaign was doing.

The nature of this new social medium was however very different. It was two way communication and the people had a say. A positive or a negative impact of the new multi-million dollar campaign which the brand had recently taken up was easily found in the form of tweets and updates of the higly opinionated user. The Social Web had become the Publishing Service 2.0 for everyone and the brands had to listen and absorb it all, be it good or bad. The former audience was now your marketer and critic and the brand had to pay respect. This massive audience, however, didn’t mean that it was difficult to segment. There is  the  option to segment this impact of your campaign by age-group, sex, city and much more. You can find out exactly which section of the society had disliked which portion of your campaign and then mending your way was up to you. All this was flamed even more with the evolution of smartphone market in the form of IPhones and Androids. You were found tweeting in the loo.

It was not the ease of measurement that led to the social web becoming such a beautiful ROI calculation tool but the large size of the audience which excited the developers like never before to deep dive into the peta-bytes of data and make sense out of it. There is still a lot of scope out there, with the evolution of sentiment analysis and semantic web tools but the medium already is much more a measure of the Brands’ ROI than any other traditional mediums.  With the instant ROI revelation of the social media, the other traditional mediums have started feeling the heat. Newspapers have gone social. Televisions might have a huge evolution this fall with the entry of Google TV and in turn Apple TV. Televisions will stream YouTube and Hulu and you would have all the smartphone applications running on your TV and the viewership will again be as simple to calculate as impressions. Brands have realised the importance of this media and are looking at the Silicon valley to come out with good social media monitoring tools as the present ones are still in an evolving state.

Game 2.0 is simply an integration of simple games made on some server side scripts, action scripts like JS or ajax, Flash and implemented on Web 2.0 (aka social networking).

For the newbies, let me tell you that social games are web based games which you can play with friends, mostly on social networking sites like Facebook, Orkut, Myspace etc. In this post I will give a brief about the biggest players in development of social games, and compare them in terms of market share, funding, revenue and business model.

We are already familiar with the popularity of the first generation social networking startups like Facebook, Myspace, Orkut etc. Now a new generation of application developers have taken center stage, who are based mostly on these gen1 social networking sites, and are making big money. The top 3 in my list are:

1. Company: Zynga (www.zynga.com)
   Funding: $219M
   Major Apps: Farmville- 61M Players, Mafia Wars- 25.8M , Yoville- 19.8M, Texas Hold Em’ Poker- 18.3M
   Revenue: Estimated $200M
   Zynga is a srong candidate for 2010 IPO.
2. Company: Playfish (www.playfish.com)
   Acquired: by Electronic Arts (EA Sports) for $400M
   Major Apps: Pet Society- 20.5M, Restaurant City-17.3M, Country Story- 8M
   Revenue: Estimated $135M
3. Company: Playdom (www.playdom.com)
   Funding: $47M
   Major Apps: Mobsters -14M, Bumper Stickers-11.7M, Own Your Friends-10.1M, Sorority Life-7.1M, Mobsters 2-3.5M, Poker Palace- 1.5M
   Revenue: Estimated $60M

Let me just remind you that these companies are startups and have existed for not more than three years. So, how are they making this much of BIG money? All of them have two revenue models, and these two models are like the necessary practices for companies in this domain.

• The first model is very simple and straight forward. It begins when you start playing any of these games. Initially everything is free in the game. But as you move ahead in the game you will need a lot of virtual stuff – like seeds for your farm or guns for your gang – which you would have to buy from an online store using a credit card, PayPal etc. The idea is very simple here – get addicted to the free version, then start spending real money for virtual stuff. Playdom has gone a step ahead and even opened offlinestores for virtual goods.
• The second model is the traditional online revenue model using ad clicks, lead generation and toolbar installation, but in an entirely new fashion. If you do not have a credit card or a PayPal account, then you sign up on some other website to get virtual money, which you can use to buy some virtual stuff. The cache here is that when you sign up for that website you are actually generating leads for them. When you signed up on the other website, the gaming company gets real money for the lead generation. You can call this SGL (Social Game Lead), and this lead to companies is a guaranteed lead, as the user needs the virtual stuff, which means he is willing to pay if you can sell him the virtual stuff, i.e. if you can do some SGM (Social Game Marketing).
• Toolbar installation revenue model is more interesting. When you install a toolbar, it will make Ask.com (say) the default search engine on your browser. Ask.com makes money from search ads and pays money to gaming company or the toolbar developer for every installation of the toolbar. Ask.com pays about $1-$2 for every installation. Just imagine how the money is flowing back to the game developer. Ask –> Toolbar developer –>Zynga –> Facebook (for ads) –> Zynga. This is an endless circle. Hats off to this revenue model.

In the beginning of this post I had quoted a tagline - …why play akele (i.e. why play alone)? This tagline is being used by an upcoming Indian social gaming website -Ibibo.com. The tagline suggests how new players are trying to capture the potentially large Indian market. The reason I wrote ‘potentially’ large market was that though the Indian market is very large, but the revenue models might not work out here that easily. You will find less than 5% of the Indian gamers buying online stuff. So, your game might be a very big hit here, but you might not be making any money out of it.

If you were not able to make money out of this market, then this potentially big market could turn out into a potential risky market. Another reason why I say so is that these game developers are not paying any attention to localization, rather Indian-ization, of the games. The big developers have simply imported their international versions to India, and the local developers are merely copying the international games. They have not even cared to give Indian names. For instance, Ibibo has a game called Teen Patti, which is a card game. They have explained the rules using names like Aces and Jacks, which most of the Indian audience would not understand. Had they cared to mentioned that Ace means ‘Ekka’ and Jack means ‘Gulaam’ the public out here would have simply loved it.

Zynga and Playdom have opened up their Indian development centers in Bangalore, and they are planning to develop games purely for the Indian audience. I hope they keep their promise, and also hope that the Indian developers like Ibibo give some genuine thought rather than simply copying ideas. The competition is going to become more fierce as biggies like EA are soon going to join the race.

We still have a few unanswered questions to ponder over - will the potentially big Indian market grow into a real market for the developers, and what new things can be integrated with social networks to make more money out of this seemingly big market?

Your views and comments are welcome.

Reblogged from GeekonNet.com

• More than two-thirds of U.S. and Australian travelers, and 90% of British
Tourists, consider active protection of the environment and support of local
communities to be part of a hotel’s responsibility.
• In Germany, 65% (39 million) of travelers expect environmental quality; 42% (25 million) think that it is particularly important to find environmentally-friendly accommodation.
• Nearly half of those surveyed in Britain said they would be more likely to go with a “company that had a written code to guarantee good working conditions, protect the environment and support local charities in the tourist destination.
• A survey of U.S., British, and Australian travelers revealed that 70% would pay up to $150 more for a two-week stay in a hotel with a “responsible environmental attitude.
• In a U.K. survey, 87% of travelers said their holiday should not damage the environment; 39% said they were prepared to pay 5% extra for ethical guarantees.
• 53% of American travelers say their travel experience is enhanced when they learn as much as possible about local customs and culture.
• 95% of Swiss tourists consider respect for local culture to be highly important when choosing a holiday.

Eco Tourism is one industry surely set for a boom. We will sure keep a look at the industry and keep you all updated on how it does in India.

So, what is the future of Twitter and Facebook?

Stop making these comparisons, i would say. Twitter will always have its position as a marketing tool, as people are more addicted to Twitter than anything else. With a super cool API and the zillion of applications made with the help of Twitter, it remains the new age digital press.

Facebook is the new age social network, and with so many applications to play with. With a flurry of developers making so much money through facebook application development, Facebook  isn’t dying too. Facebook is a fun place, where people play  fun games and and join causes and try to create the so called online buzz on “Social Causes.”

What does Google Buzz do then?

• There are a number of these very close friends on my gmail contact list and I forgot to read their blog updates and lost track of what they are doing. Now with their blogs updated directly to the Buzz(through Google Reader), I started going through them again.
• Google Buzz is what i expected from Twitter a while back when they released their retweet feature. Commenting on twitter statuses was cool for me.
• It pushes your updates to people who matter the most, because in you Gmail contacts you add people who are really necessary for you to get stuff done.
• If Google is able to control spam, the click through rates may just be much higher than a twitter or a facebook.
• Buzz already has a list system, and a way to push updates only to a list . No one else provides that to me as yet. This feature can be immensely useful to me and many others.

Who looses out the most?

I see Google Buzz getting integrated to Google apps and then a lot of companies who were giving out this social intranet thing, notably Salesforce’s chatter are  completely destroyed.

What I expect from Buzz next?

• A clean way to search the public Buzz updates.
• A cleaner way to search people on Buzz inside Gmail interface only.
• A good API for us developers to play around with.
• Buzz for Google Apps gives immense power to start-ups. It almost solves all their intranet problems.

With mashable and techcrunch already up with their buzz it buttons, I need to start writing one quickly. My verdict, Buzz is not Google Wave or Google Knol, it just works.

Images are courtsey: buzz.google.com

I tried to do a little bit of search here and there and have come up with this list. I may miss out a few important people, so please feel free to tell me through your comments.

• Gaurav Mishra : Better known for his social media blog http://www.gauravonomics.com/ ,Gaurav is the best known and most followed Indian as far as social media goes. He is now the CEO of 2020social which helps clients leverage social technologies to achieve strategic business objectives .
• Rajesh Lalwani : Founder at Blogworks.in, he has been the brain behind many successful social media campaigns. His company also provides online reputation management services as well as social media workshops.
• Kiruba Shankar: CEO at Business Blogging private limited, his company provides A to Z of what social media has to offer. Following him on twitter will give you a good idea about the various social media assignments being taken up by him.
• Nimesh Shah : CEO at Windchimes India, Nimesh is well known for his humour. He has even written a social media e book available for free download on the Windchimes website. His company also provides Online Reputation Managment as well as Social Media marketing services.
• Rajiv Dingra : Founder of one of India’s most followed blogs,WatBlog, Rajiv also runs his social media operations under the hood of WATConsult. The services of WATConsult can be seen here.
• Mahesh Murthy : India’s only representative in the 140 conference, Mahesh is the CEO of Pinstorm. Pinstorm is now one of India’s fastest growing Digital Media firm. Please have a look at their blog here.
• Dave Evans : Author of Social Media Marketing: An Hour a Day, Dave Evans is an American living in India and working for 2020social with Gaurav and Gautam Ghosh.
• Dina Mehta : Co founder at Mosoci, Dina’s firm boasts of some very big clients and you can always ask her a question or two on twitter.
• Puja Madan: Founder at Sulmoz, her blog posts are a pleasure to read. She is very good at posting a question or two through her twitter updates and getting crowd-sourced answers.
• Amit Klein : A product manager at Directi, Amit is more into Web Analytics than social media. However, having talked to him about social media, I would say, his understanding of social media is much more balanced than most others.Amit is also the visiting faculty on Social Media at Indian School of Business, SPJain and NMIMS.

Update1(Feb 3rd 2010):

On the recommendation of Puja, I am adding two more people to this exciting list.

• Sanjay Mehta : CEO of Social Wavelength, Sanjay’s social media insights are very well appreciated in the social media circles in India.  His company provides social media consulting, training and monitoring services.
• Sampad Swain : Runs the very well known Interactive Marketing blog, Sampad’s views on the Internet are damn interesting.

Here is a list of some people you can  follow/contact (They may not be too social media savvy themselves) to get your social media/Web 2.0 applications ( Facebook Fan pages(FBML), Facebook applications, Twitter Based Application, Other complex web applications) done at very good rates.

• Vikash Kumar: Specially focussed on facebook applications, Vikash is also giving out some good facebook application ideas. You can mail him here.
• Niraj Nawanit: Focussed on the more complex web applications, Niraj is well versed in doing data mining based applications. You wont find him on the social mediums that easily. Mail him here.
• Swapnil Kumar: Focussed majorly on Drupal, WordPress based websites and beautiful facebook fanpages  Swapnil has a full team of developers doing a great job at decorating social media in India. Contact him here.
• Mitesh Ashar : A twitter-holic, Mitesh is very good at getting some brilliant UI designs and WordPress themes done. His company, is currently working on a whole array of twitter-based products. Mail him here.

This was  just a quick list of some of the best known social media champions in India and of some of the good web/social media application developers, I know. Please let me know about other social media influencers and Social Media based application developers in India.

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It came as no surprise to me when India’s top movie stars like Shahrukh Khan, Priyanka Chopra, Abhishek Bachchan etc. joined Twitter to market their movies.

But, the fact that Bollywood’s highest earning movie, 3 Idiots releases on Youtube just three months after its Global release does signal Bollywood’s new found love in Youtube.

Congress embraced this new age media  by creating fan pages for Rahul Gandhi and the Indian Prime Minister, Dr. Manmohan Singh. Shashi Tharoor has over 600,000 followers on twitter and his ‘human’ tweets make sure, he is in the news at all times.

Last but not the least, IPL 3.0 will be telecast live on Youtube. This can be considered the ultimate tribute of  the IPL to the new age Indian who loves youtube as much as he loves cricket.

So, What is next? We will wait ,watch and see the inevitable coming . And, yes we will keep you updated.

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So First let us have a look at who amongst our mobile service provides is being searched the most.[inline] [/inline] The major insight which given by Google Search insight here is the fact that, in-spite of Vodafone being a Global Brand, Reliance being present on so many sectors other than telecommunication and Tata Docomo running various campaigns, India still searches for Airtel the most. The next thing which we wanted to have a look at was, what is it that people are searching to come and find these telecom majors. [inline] [/inline] [inline][/inline] A look at a couple of these and we are sure, people are trying to find about the Broadband services of the service providers on the Internet more than anything. To have a complete look at the search insights we found out, click here.

These were some small but interesting findings about the Telecom secor in India. We have more coming up.

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Is Social Media actually working in India? Is Social Media Marketing the only facet of social media? Can you help your business through social media in India ? What should you be doing if you want to market yourself , or your brand for that matter, on social media? These are my views on what you need to be doing to undertake a successful social media campaign in India . Please add on to the list by way of comments.

• Facebook fan page: A Facebook fan page is something we all have seen. Once a person becomes a fan on your fan page, your updates appear on his profile. Obviously, until he decides to remove himself from the fan page. A number of custom applications can be built on the fan page. Companies have even started using the fan page for e-commerce and competitions for promoting their brands. This can be done very easily using the static-FBML application and writing some very simple mark up. By the way, Facebook now is the 4^th most popular site in India, overtaking Orkut. Check out the facebook fan page of Coca Cola to see how the brand has used it beautifully.

• Facebook applications: A facebook application can be viral. Some companies in India have already started using the facebook applications to brand themselves. The Complete the zoo-zoo story application by Vodafone is a case in point.

• Orkut : Although, Orkut(5^th most popular site in India) is a dying social medium, it still remains a major social network as far as India is concerned. It still has the highest number of user accounts for a social network in India. Make sure you monitor the discussions going on about your brand. If you really think your brand could leverage Orkut, you can even go for Orkut applications.

• Twitter: Everybody seems to have a twitter account these days. Companies like Dell have used twitter to do some good business. Yahoo India seems to be running huge contests on Twitter to get the word of mouth going for them.

  

  India is number 2 as far as twitter usage goes

  However, there are still a lot of small companies which are trying to figure out how this thing works. My advice to them would be just try it out first. The only way to learn what is happening on twitter is to get busy using it. The small businesses using twitter have to understand that twitter's reach is truly global. Find out twitter audience in your vicinity using services like Nearby Tweets and target them. Also make sure you have information going out continuously on twitter, or else your tweet will be nowhere to be seen on your follower’s wall. As a matter of fact, i read somewhere that Indian companies have still not deciphered Twitter. I must say that it's high time they start understanding the concept of two-way communication on Twitter. Twitter is now the 12^th most popular site in India. India, now is at number 2 as far as number of twitter users is concerned. US has 37% presence on twitter,India has 8% and I bet Indians will out number Americans very soon. No wonder every time the Indian cricket team is playing, one of the Indian cricket players is a trending topic.

• Blog: Try to understand the focus of your blog. Some companies try to put up quality information about the industry they are in. This gives them an edge and leaves the audience thinking that your brand understands what it is doing. Other companies however, have used their blogs to show the human side of the company. With a number of their own employee’s blogging about the fun they are having working in your company helps the audience relate to your brand in a human way. Companies like Zappos have done this very well. Although, a tougher medium to use, the ROI is very high. I don’t see any Indian company showing off their consumer-sensitive side through a blog. The microsite of pampers which is covered in one of our previous posts can be good example to look at.

• LinkedIn: LinkedIn is more of a professional social networking platform. To embrace LinkedIn, create an account and try to see how everyone else is getting involved in it. LinkedIn already has 3.4 million users in India and now the Mumbai office.

  

  LinkedIn has opened its office at Bandra Kurla Complex, Mumbai

  LinkedIn, in the years to come can be a major replacement for the job finding and posting sites. You even have facilities to upload your resumes, create groups and polls. Most of the alumni meets these days happen through LinkedIn. For business networking, LinkedIn is the way to go. Now that your twitter account can also be integrated with your LinkedIn account, there is a little bit of conversation going on there too. Make sure your LinkedIn account is very neat, whether you are a company or an individual. Outlook 2010 will have LinkedIn integration.

• Wikipedia: Wikipedia may not seem a social medium but it is in fact one of the most important mediums to monitor. Make sure the information out there is correct and try to edit if you feel the information has been tampered with.

• Leave comments on other people’s blogs: This is one part of social media which most people, even the so called *social media evangelists* miss out. This however is the most important thing, if you are trying to establish yourself as an expert in a field. It doesn’t happen overnight but after certain amount of time, people in your field start knowing you and can even go on to refer business to you. People don’t even mind a small back link to your blog.

• The Q & A sites and forums: There are a lot of Q and A sites on the internet. Yahoo Answers and Wiki Answers being the major ones. Make sure you answer all the queries people have about your brand in the various Q & A sites. There are also some Q & A sites which are specific to your sector. Make sure you take a look at them. The forums are also a major source of Buzz about a brands positivity or negetivity. Forums like Indiabroadbandforum, consumercomplaints etc. ,must be monitored very closely to monitor your brand. Answer people if they have any queries about your brand at such places.

• Mobile Social Networks: Mobile social networks haven’t yet taken off in India but they will soon. Networks like Foursquare have been doing very well in the United States. I personally believe mobile Internet will do better in India than normal broadband has. Mobile users in India outnumber broadband users by a huge margin. Mobile Social Network, Mozat, formerly Morange has reported over 10 million registered users (mostly in Asia). The number of mobile internet users in China is more than the population of United States. Indian brands need to understand that Mobile Phone is the future and at least register their names out there. Whether mobile social networks work for you completely depend on the nature of your business. A real estate agent would benefit immensely from this media.

• Monitor: Start listening. It would do you a good deal of help to understand what is being said about you or your brand. For a small brand, there a set of basic things which they can do are: A) Set up Google alerts ; so that whenever your name gets mentioned in any of the searches or on blogs, you get to know about them. B) Use twitter search once a day and see what people have to say about you. C) Even Facebook has the search facility these days and should be monitored periodically. If you are a big brand, however, and really want to invest a good amount of money, you can go for professional services which monitor your brand. You can even use freebies like Social Mention, Trendrr etc. For a comprehensive list of some of the free services click here . Services like Radian6, Trackur etc. are okay and there are some very good upcoming services which we will let you know shortly. For a good list, check here.

• Video and Photo Sharing sites: Remember the video “Where the hell is Matt”?. YouTube and Flickr are surely a part of the social media revolution which has taken place over the years. A simple video says what a long blog cannot and it says it all in a much more effective way. A look at the youtube channel of dell shows how effectively youtube is being used by Dell. Also, make it a point to check the beautiful photo sharing profile of Dell called Digital Nomads. Before you go for a channel like youtube(it is costly to make videos) make a check if your target audience is there on youtube. Picasa photo sharing may return more to you if you are targeting the Indian audience.

• Combining your social media campaign with some social cause: Some of the companies in India who have taken up social media campaigns have been pretty much throwing their brands information on the users. Tata Docomo almost reached levels of hash tagging where people started feeling spammed by their social media campaign. Indian brands can learn from the way Jimmy choos has taken up their social media campaign with the name jimmychoo72 . The money they make from this campaign goes to the Elton John AIDS Foundation. In this way, Jimmy choos is able to combine its Social media campaign with CSR activities and hence create beautiful branding around itself. I would dearly love to see an Indian brand doing some similar work.

One of the most important thing, however, is that your social media campaigns in different mediums must go on in a synchronised manner. If you want to know what I mean by a synchronised manner, check out a previous post on microreviews here. All your social medium should connect to each other. The facebook profile must be able to update your twitter feed. The twitter feed in turn can update your LinkedIn profile if it has a #in attached. Your website must have a place where all your social media activities are listed the way dell has done at http://www.dell.com/twitter and http://www.dell.com/facebook

• Try using Social Media as your first level of feedback.

• Listen to people and answer them.

• Show the human face of your brand through social media.

• Donot over do it, the way Tata Docomo did for a while and pissed of many people completely.

• If you are extremely clueless about Social Media take professional help. I know some people who do it extremely well. Contact them here.

Most of the stuff you see above(except for the youtube videos or facebook applications) comes for free and can be taken up by small brands themselves. Also, a decent facebook application costs you in the range Rs. 40,000 to Rs. 200,000 ( unless you are looking for a Farmville or Mafia Wars). I have come across a decent set of guys who do some cool facebook application development. Get in touch with them here.

These were some of the basic things which can be undertaken by small/big brands to leverage social media in India.Make sure your brand's name is not already taken on the social mediums at http://knowem.com/ or http://namechk.com/ and register them as soon as possible. I can assure you social media in India will be bigger than it has been in the United States. India, after all is the biggest democracy in the world.

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