But post the Internet era, a vital part of their viral Marketing campaign featured Social Media and its tools. By the time Social Media gained its grounds, Wal-Mart was already big -  big enough to have generated a lot of resentment,hate and criticism(particularly for its labor practices). Wal-Mart thought of clearing the air through the two-way platform that Social Media is. But Wal-Mart’s efforts hardly bore any fruits, infact backfired, generally due to their lack of research (on the medium) and specifically due to their overall attitude.

So where did Wal-Mart go wrong :

• Facebook fiasco : Wal-Mart tried to resurrect its Corporate reputation via its Facebook page. But the people who handled the campaign didnt seem prepared to face the the full dialogue there. They didnt put up a discussion board and limited all comments and feedback to the wall posts.Generally the attitude was non-responsive. Result -- Wall posts were flooded with negative comments and hate communities.
• Tryst with Twitter : Wal-Mart got this partially right. They integrated their Twitter page within their Website, listing their entire badge of official twitterers, thereby preventing the fake Twitter profiles. They also set the customer expectation through their Discussion Guidelines page. But just setting the profiles cannot be enough.Their official twitters have only of late started to become active but still a lot  more promptness is desired. But the primary point of concern is : no follow back from the Wal-Mart team, thereby defeating the very purpose of Social Media as a two-way platform.
• Blogging blunders : Wal-Mart ran into much criticism for staging their blog, that turned out to be a PR stunt. Also Wal-Mart have a bunch of Mommy bloggers. Only God would know how genuine they are.

For a company [Wal-Mart] that thrives on the LOGO of “Save Money Live Better” , one would have definitely expected a little more in their efforts on customer engagement.

While Wal-Mart committed mistakes galore on all Social Media platforms, Target‘s efforts were lauded. Target unlike WalMart, made a study of the underlying idea of engaging with its customers, did their background research and so in spite of joining the race late, came out with good results (read customer engagement). Target Corp. in principle believed in a two-way dialogue, were positive in their intent and the results were there to see.

Target made the right moves :

• An Engaging Facebook page : Target have a more engaging Facebook presence in the sense that (apart from the usual Wall) there is a discussion forum, a Reviews board, Events etc and this is clearly reflected in the no of its fans which is way more than WalMart’s. This is a classic case of one party [Target] engaging is a dialogue as opposed to the other party’s [WalMart] engaging in monologue. Target’s charity initiative on Facebook sometime back was much appreciated.
• Target company profile page : Target have a separate portal wherein they showcase all the relevant information that a customer/investor/marketer would need. Here at this page one gets all the press news/carrer info and the like.
• Blogs : Target unlike WalMart’s Mommy Bloggers do not run any paid blogging programes. Instead there are users who have  a dedicated blog for their favorite store.
• Twitter Presence :  This is one area where Target could have done better. There is no official list of its Twitterers [like WalMart]. Instead there are a bunch of Twitterers that use the Target logo/store name. Target need to get this act right.
• Unofficial community : This is a Twitter like unofficial support setup -- Get Satisfaction, that came across as a surprise to us. This platforms lets users/customers to ask questions/share ideas. There is a bold message at the top that declares “Target is not affiliated with Get Satisfaction“. If that is the case, it just goes to show the extent to which customers are attached to their favorite retail chain.

To conclude things, in this Web 2.0 world, its imperative for brands to engage in Social Media Marketing but this should perhaps be said with a caution caption : ‘If one cannot ensure a two way customer engagement with positive intent, its better to stay away from it‘.

For social media help, I would recommend people to get in touch with Aditya Prakash and Prasaad K S. You can also email them here and here.

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Team Microreviews as always solicits reader’s opinion.

MS [and for that matter Google too] have made their respective failed attempts to buy out both Twitter and Facebook. While both Twitter and Facebook decided to thrive on their own then, they didn’t mind the cash inflow this time around by making available the vast real time updates they have at their disposal. Even as Twitter CEO Evans Williams humorously downplayed questions regarding this deal (a day earlier at the Web 2.0 summit), Microsoft’s online services group President Qi Lu went on to explain the deal, a deal that MS likes to call “Bing Wave 2″.  Lu said the deal with their other prospective partner, Facebook, will come in at a later point. Excerpts from his interview here and a conversation with ‘O Reilly here.

The official Bing-Twitter Integration is up and live at http://www.bing.com/twitter, for the US only (so change your country preference to US  to check it out). It has a tag cloud showing the hottest topics on twitter (similar to Twitter’s trending topics) and also sample tweets on each of them.When we actually make a particular query, we get the tweets in two categories ‘Most recent’ and ‘Best match’. The Tweets corresponding to the search tag are supposedly updated in real time (but when we checked it out, didn’t quite find it to be so!!). This is just a basic setup live and should get more compact/trendy and feature laden with time. A snapshot :

The deal in itself is huge (and we are not talking in just financial terms here, infact Qi Lu passed the question when asked about the Financial terms of the deal), taking ‘Search’ on to the real time corridors.The deal gives MS, the access to full (public) Twitter data feed. This, for sure, is a formidable blow to its arch-rival Google. Twitter too has been looking at options recently for some revenue generation. This deal (and the upcoming one with Google) should suffice for some time now. The other options (read ads) is a scary one in itself.!! If the deal with Twitter is big, that with Facebook is going to be bigger, what with the 45 million status updates per day from 30 million unique visitors.

While all this does sound great, the question to be asked is : “Isnt this at some point the invasion of  user privacy?“. The question holds less of a significance with respect to Twitter (considering that its user’s tweets are more in the public domain), but gets pretty significant in the context of Facebook (whose users want to share those updates only amongst their friends). News has it that Facebook is going to provide its users with options in this regard. Wonder how this entire deal looks  in the light of Twitter’s user friendly TOS (Terms of Service) that says -- users very much own their Tweets. So what if MS starts Archiving these tweet streams. Facebook have anyways a non-friendly TOS (as per which, Facebook can use/modify/publish  your status updates and that too even after you terminate your account!!). Probably the Bing-Facebook integration will further fuel the issue. So are the users ready to let these giants invade their privacy (read status updates) for the sake of a perfect real time search? Readers’ opinion solicited.

So What is DropBox?

Its way too simple for me to be reviewing it. It is a file syncing system with a desktop  as well as web interface available. Download dropbox and create an user account on it. You get a folder and put your files in it. Now dropbox syncs it online. If you were on Linux in India as I am right now and you want to access the files in UK  in another computer on a MAC Book..Just download dropbox..connect your account and the files are there in the dropbox folder. ..Easier use the web interface…And How much… Its 2 GB for free dude.. Its too much for simple people like me…

And on what platforms is it available?

I guess the cartoon says it all. It is available everywhere,on every damn platform. All my important computer files are available on my fingertips on my Iphone (i.e. When I do own an iphone).

So Can we share?

Yes sure. Just share  the folder you want to use with other dropbox email IDs. And the other person receives desktop notifications for the same.

So What is real utility?

When Dell sells laptops ,it gives some online back up along with it. What the hell. Just donot give me the Online Backup and get me my money back. I have DropBox.

Is there something like and Undo or Undelete ..The Real Web 2.0 ?

Yes,…O yes..that is there too. Even on a free 2.0 GB account you have an undo and undelete for 1 Month.

What does it replace?

I will leave that one for you guys. Its worth downloading dropbox and using it. And please forget Megaupload…Rapidshare and…..many others please..

Some other hidden usaages of dropbox which I found extremely helpful.

• You have a public folder inside your dropbox folder. Inside that whenever you right click, on the contextual menu you get a “copy public URL” option. So you get a public URL of the file you want.You can use( if these are images) these along with firebug to replace images on your live website and test how it looks.
• In dropbox, in the public URL… after the initial URL  which is constant for any user ID the other part is same as your folder structure. Interesting stuff..Aint it. Some people can sense how helpful that can be .
• Yes ..Yes ..yes..beleive me you can use Dropbox like a CDN(Content Delivery Network) at times. If you are on a shared server, just use the public url instead of uploading the image to your host. Its faster in most cases. But just for small sites.
• The Web Interface is as good as the desktop folder system. Perfect Web 2.0. So if you are on a computer for 15 minutes , just use the web interface. Its cool and sober to say the least.

I will keep adding new features as i discover them.

Anyways I guess I donot have one damn negative thing to say about DropBox And i give it a 10/10.

Used Images strait from the dropbox site.

Wakoopa.com is this innovative service which tracks which software applications you are using. Also tells you about the applications getting used by other people who are using this Wakoopa tracking utility.User Interface  as well as the usability rock big time. Seamless is the word which I need to use here. You have widgets about the software being used by you. Small things like giving each person a tag like enthusiast or fanatic work big time. You get a very nice idea what stuff people are using and how twitter has grown.A nice idea about what you are yourself addicted to.Overall a thumbs up from me for the application. Each one of us can give this a try.