Social media is the fastest growing category on the web with traffic doubling over the last year. Facebook has over 500 million users, Twitter over 110 million, LinkedIn 60 million with more then half of them outside US, Youtube receives over 2 million viewers a day, Blogger has over 181 million blogs and I just started another one.
When compared to 2009 once can see the tremendous and fat growth in terms of penetration, participation, user-ability, business and so on. With over 500 million users, if Facebook were a country, it would be the 3rd largest in the world. As average Facebook user spends 55 minutes daily and creates 90 pieces of content each month and is connected to 80 community pages, groups and events. Every second a new user joins LinkedIn, which has executives from all Fortune 500 companies. The Ollie (Twitter bird) can boast of 50 million tweets in 2010. Every minute 24 hours of video is uploaded to Youtube with the most popular video - Justin Bieber, Baby Ft. Ludacris has had over 374, 403, 983 views.
The mobile internet has pushed it further. Together, social media and rapid response mobile messaging are blazing a trail in fast, real-time interaction leading to site conversion opportunities.
There is a visible shift in the power to define and control brands from corporations and institutions to individuals and communities.
Avinash Joshi
This is Creative Tsunami, a weblog by Avinash Joshi about design, usability, social media, marketing communication, business, experience, simplicity, the web, culture, and more.
Thursday, December 2, 2010
Social Media - India is relatively virgin - Part 1
For two months now I have been regularly reading posts here about how, what, what not, when, why and so on about social media. More than 99% of posts coming from the west/developed countries. It only shows that the social media market is growing on their terrain.
Caught by surprise is the Indian market still trying to figure out the best strategy to use it. Every marketer will tell you how to use social media to market a clients' brands. Any success stories...? None that Google could lead me to.
Demographics of India: India is the 2nd most populas country in the world, with over 1.18 billion people (April 2010 estimate, the census is still on), more than a sixth of the world's population. Already containing 17.31% of the world's population, India is projected to be number 1 in population by 2025.
TV and Radio still lead from the forefront. Bollywood (Indian Hindi Film industry) is catching up and eating into their pie. Growing internet users and explosion in mobile phone users has resulted in a blazing trail of activities on social media sites. Facebook is preferred to Orkut now, Twitter is famous for celebrity chit chats.
Imagine the possibilities. Business leaders still look for ROI. COI (Centers of Influence) is still not debated (all networkers with big fan and follower lists - its time to make money). The people here as a habit would ask their friends/relatives/neighbors before anything is bought (product or service).
It would happen happen too quickly and the early entrants reaping huge profits. This is the time to invest and hire the cream before theres a crunch.
Collecting stats pointing to a revolution in Socia Media Marketing. Will be soon back with the latest. Till then I would share a very small experience I had with my Washing Machine. Purposely withholding the brand right now... but the washer has served me well and has lasted me 12 years. Nov 2010 swa the 1st breakdown and a technician was called in to repair it. He was unable to source the parts of a washer manufactured 12 years back or rather imported (it is ne of the few pieces from the 1st lot sold in India). I started chatting with him and he showed me the current sorry state of his company's products. Now, coming to think of it, while going to buy a new one I would have never thought of consulting a washing machine technician for his suggestions. Now the question... do we have a community that lets me on on stuff like this? NO.
Just an example on the possibilities.....
Caught by surprise is the Indian market still trying to figure out the best strategy to use it. Every marketer will tell you how to use social media to market a clients' brands. Any success stories...? None that Google could lead me to.
Demographics of India: India is the 2nd most populas country in the world, with over 1.18 billion people (April 2010 estimate, the census is still on), more than a sixth of the world's population. Already containing 17.31% of the world's population, India is projected to be number 1 in population by 2025.
TV and Radio still lead from the forefront. Bollywood (Indian Hindi Film industry) is catching up and eating into their pie. Growing internet users and explosion in mobile phone users has resulted in a blazing trail of activities on social media sites. Facebook is preferred to Orkut now, Twitter is famous for celebrity chit chats.
Imagine the possibilities. Business leaders still look for ROI. COI (Centers of Influence) is still not debated (all networkers with big fan and follower lists - its time to make money). The people here as a habit would ask their friends/relatives/neighbors before anything is bought (product or service).
It would happen happen too quickly and the early entrants reaping huge profits. This is the time to invest and hire the cream before theres a crunch.
Collecting stats pointing to a revolution in Socia Media Marketing. Will be soon back with the latest. Till then I would share a very small experience I had with my Washing Machine. Purposely withholding the brand right now... but the washer has served me well and has lasted me 12 years. Nov 2010 swa the 1st breakdown and a technician was called in to repair it. He was unable to source the parts of a washer manufactured 12 years back or rather imported (it is ne of the few pieces from the 1st lot sold in India). I started chatting with him and he showed me the current sorry state of his company's products. Now, coming to think of it, while going to buy a new one I would have never thought of consulting a washing machine technician for his suggestions. Now the question... do we have a community that lets me on on stuff like this? NO.
Just an example on the possibilities.....
Avinash Joshi
Thursday, November 25, 2010
Don't disable right click
Protecting your content and code is important. After working hard on a design, image or article you may want to protect it by using JavaScript that disables right-click while optionally warning a visitor that the content is copyrighted.
It might sound okay, but this isn’t generally a good idea. Let me tell you 'Why not?'
It’s Annoying
You don’t realize just how much you use right-click until you can’t use it! There a lot of useful features in the short menu that it opens up. Although almost all are available in the main browser menu, but it’s often much quicker to use the right-click menu – usually the closest menu you have available.
It’s Pointless
Think again! - Will disabling right-click will protect your source code or images? Anyone who’s determined to copy your content or code will do so regardless of his or her ability to bring up a browser context menu. If they want your source code then it’s as simple as selecting ‘view source’ from the main menu. Article text can be highlighted and copied, images and media presentations can be retrieved from the cache, and streaming media recorded.
Disabling right-click will only make people more determined to learn exactly what it is you’re hiding. And this could end up being counter-productive, as your images and source code attract unwanted attention. Not only that, on browsers that have JavaScript enabled: a visitor only has to turn off JavaScript in their browser’s options to be able to ignore the script altogether.
It’s Disabling
I tend to open any links from a page in a new window from the right-click menu, so that I can read and compare both the pages and return without having to use the back button. While you can open a link in a new window by holding on shift while clicking on it, many find it easy to use the option from the right-click menu. Disable right-click and you will alienate users like me pretty quickly.
It’s Unprofessional
Ask yourself this: would you buy something from a site that reminds you that it’s images are protected by copyright every time you go to use the right-click (even when your pointer is nowhere near an image)? I thought not! Disabling right-click suggests a lack of professionalism to users.
Of course, if you are still stuck on to the idea, there is a much easier way to protect your content from would-be thieves without ever having to disable any browser functions. Want to protect something that badly, don’t put it on the Web in the first place!
Avinash Joshi
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