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Blogs & Blogging

Blogs & Blogging, Brand 2.0, Social Software Social Networks, Uncategorized
User-Generated Content - Just more ‘Us vs Them’?
06.29.07 | Conversations with Dina | Permalink | Comments Off

Bloggy thought three. Something I was mulling over for a while, even shared in a completely inarticulate manner with Rajesh yesterday, who by the way awarded me with the Thinking Blogger Award. He shared with me some links that report on the recent IAMAI Web2.0 conference, with the comment - “am getting a bit restless with marketers”! Then I got a call from a journalist, who wanted to discuss ‘unconferences’ - and I took off on her a little and told her how I dislike the term - any activity that is prefaced with an ‘un’ makes me feel not-so-nice about it. Anyways, it also reminded me about another phrase or term in the social media realm that I generally dislike —- user-generated content and I started my rant on her!

I particularly dislike it when I hear mainstream media and corporate organizations get a high on the phrase ‘user-generated content’. In India, many times, its shortened to UGC (the only UGC I know of is the University Grants Commission!) and it bugs me no end.

I dislike it, especially when, in the background, I hear their minds ticking away the rupees they can generate, behind all this buzz and excitement around the term. When they have not really embraced it themselves.

I dislike it when they distance themselves from it - it’s something other people — oops users do. How many of them have actually generated content themselves?

I am happy with adopting the term when I am talking about content that is created by users of a service - so there is user-generated content on Youtube, or on blogging platforms, or on wikis. But I dislike it when marketers, PR agencies talk about the ‘potential’ in harnessing user-generated content for their brands, products and services through advertising messages on the user-generated content spaces or sites, and then believe they are really using social media in their strategies. Am not knocking advertising based strategies - I just feel they are skimming the surface of the true potential in participating in the conversations, co-creation, community and collaboration that occurs when there is user-generated content.

I think they have it wrong, when they feel that getting onto the user-generated content bandwagon is a quick-fix for their social media strategies. Inherent in the phrase is a division, the notion or assumption of ‘us vs them’. They have got to see themselves as co-participants and partners rather than marketers or advertisers who are ‘using’ user-generated content as another media opportunity.

I simply loved Toby Bloomberg’s rant at Unilever which so well illustrates what I am trying so hard to articulate!

“So I really want to see that ad. I really Need to see that ad. What do I do? Do I search for Lux? Do I go to the Unilever website? Nope. I head for YouTube and sure enough here it is! It’s a must watch. Oh and the Unilever Lux site?
Good I didn’t head that way, my coffee would have turned cold looking
for any mention of the campaign. Anyone for integrated marketing?

Questions To Ponder
Does a marketing campaign have to be “social” to be successful?
Is traditional advertising dead?
Is there room in the proverbial marketing mix for the good old 60 second TV spot?

Diva Marketing Thoughts
Marketing 101 tells us to hang where our customers hang. For some the “tube” means television and for others it means YouTube. And for many people it means Both.

While there were quite a few Neon Girl videos on YouTube, I didn’t notice a Unilever Neo Girl YouTube Channel.
Unilever you missed an opportunity. Actually you missed several. Never
too late to get into the game. Would be a good idea to consider
especially if a sequel is in the works. Work it right and you might
have the next Lonely Girl.”

Bonus link: Here’s Jon Udell on why he dislikes the term per se.
Blogs & Blogging, Business & Opportunities, Qualitative Research Perspectives, Social Software Social Networks, Uncategorized
Does your company have a social media strategy?
06.29.07 | Conversations with Dina | Permalink | Comments Off

I was driving back from a meeting when I had a few bloggy thoughts … long drives in traffic and beating rain tend to do that to me! It was a good meeting - regular (I actually said that!!!) qualitative research project among IT students and professionals to understand motivations that drive them to join certain sorts of organizations in a highly competitive field, to figure out a strategy to draw them to my Client’s organization. As we were discussing the research, I suddenly felt - wow - this is the perfect case for a social media / new media strategy —- you have young professionals, in the IT industry, probably heavy users of the internet, a captive target audience that must be familiar with blogs, social networking sites, youtube and the like! When you think of motivations and drivers for this segment, how can you not think of The Influentials, who help them frame their opinions. Am waiting eagerly for my copy which is winging its way here currently. It would be neat to figure out who or what they are in the project I am doing. So somewhere midway in discussing sample definitions, I broke away and asked my client - do you have a social media or blogging strategy - you need one! She was interested I think, particularly since one of her marketing objectives is to build a powerful corporate identity in order to attract the best talent.

Now am hoping it’s a qualitative research +++ project!! Am beginning to believe any organization or brand that is targeting an audience that is ‘online’ must have a social media strategy. Social media is in-your-face today, no web user or surfer can really escape it.
Blogs & Blogging, Internet And Computing, Social Software Social Networks, Uncategorized
Google has my past - and my future
06.04.07 | Conversations with Dina | Permalink | Comments Off

Google is not merely moving towards “owning” the internet, its also beginning to “own” me.I had a friend over this weekend, and I was setting up a blog for her on Blogger. I had to sign out of my Blogger account to set her up. During the process, I wanted to check my mail, and clicked on my Gmail tab in my browser - and I was shocked to see that it opened up her Gmail account instead. Should have expected it - its logical - but it disturbed me. It’s convenient, it’s quick - but I want the controls and the ability to decide which ones I want auto signins for and which ones not.

Say, if I have Google Reader running - and I have signed out of Gmail — if someone else tries to log into their Gmail account - they can read my mail. Or if they want to check their scraps on Orkut - they get to see mine instead. Google Maps can show pictures of your front door and look through your window
- very cool - yes - but it makes me uncomfortable too. Although I need
not worry as I live in a city where its going to be very difficult to
get everything ‘on a map’ as there is so much chaos in the planning.
They have my presence info (limited tho) through Gmail
and Gtalk, they have my social network on Orkut, they dish up ads in my Gmail which make me feel a little
uneasy about privacy. I have been doing many studies recently with youth, and when I ask them how they use the internet - the response is Googling, Orkutting (note - not search and social networking) and chatting - Gtalk hasn’t yet managed to become a verb!

In countries like India however, where for the large part, computers are shared at work and home - this could become a problem. Not everyone has the know-how or the presence of mind to set up different logins and user accounts at boot up.

Look at Google’s acquisition over the years - they are buying up the best really. And our lives are enriched and simpler as a result. I love using many of these and it makes my life better. But yesterday’s experience with setting up my friend’s blog got me thinking in the longer term - and I kept pondering over - what cost?

Eric Schmidt , Google’s CEO was quoted in FT. Do I really want my computer to tell me what I should do tomorrow, or what job I should take?

“Asked how Google might look in five years’ time, Mr Schmidt said: “We
are very early in the total information we have within Google. The
algorithms will get better and we will get better at personalisation. The goal is to enable Google users to be able to ask the question such
as ‘What shall I do tomorrow?’ and ‘What job shall I take?’”

See this video, although a little dated - it looks forward to a Google world in 2014 - EPIC. Robin Good has a transcript:

“On Sunday, March 9 2014, Googlezon unleashes EPIC.

Welcome to our world.

The ‘Evolving Personalized Information Construct’ is the
system by which our sprawling, chaotic mediascape is filtered, ordered
and delivered. Everyone contributes now - from blog entries, to
phone-cam images, to video reports, to full investigations. Many people
get paid too - a tiny cut of Googlezon’s immense advertising revenue,
proportional to the popularity of their contributions.

EPIC produces a custom contents package for each user, using his choices, his consumption habits, his interests, his demographics, his social network - to shape the product. A new generation of freelance editors has sprung up, people who sell their ability to connect, filter and prioritize the contents of EPIC.

We all subscribe to many Editors; EPIC allows us to mix and match
their choices however we like. At its best, edited for the savviest
readers, EPIC is a summary of the world - deeper, broader and more
nuanced than anything ever available before.”

With the recent acquisition of Feedburner, Google just bought over access to not just us, but our readers as well. They even acquire the internet in year 2017!!

Google has my past, and it’s rapidly ‘taking over’ my future. My actions today, in the present, are building the tracks for that future. A dystopian Brave New World, or Utopia?

Should I really care? Does it bother you at all?
Blogs & Blogging, Social Software Social Networks, Uncategorized
What’s the future for youth on Facebook?
05.30.07 | Conversations with Dina | Permalink | Comments Off

So everyone is talking of Facebook. My Twitter is abuzz with it. My aggregator is bursting with blog posts around it. The social media blogworld is freaking out in it. Even my 79 year old aunt who sent me an add as friend invite! Reminds me of the old days when we all moved from one social networking site to another. This one’s different of course - its more than small pieces loosely joined and the potential is immense with the opening up of their platform. Widgets and plugins around VOIP, presence, twitter, music, video being created with a frenzy. A great platform play. I like this play - although I haven’t done much with it yet.

Still, I can’t help wondering, with all the attention it’s getting and with this invasion of geeks, social media analysts and older folk like me, how the youth on Facebook are going to react! Ironically, they are the ‘older’ Facebook users - we are the newbies. Will they see us as an intrusion? Will they build their own walls now that it’s less of a gated community? What might those walls be? Will they revolt, as they did last September when they felt their privacy was compromised by the addition of new features? Their definitions of what’s public and what’s private is different from ours. Will the more geeky among them, who would like to build on the platform read the fine print and get put off? Will the opportunity for marketing and advertising that it’s going to encourage put them off? Or will they embrace this change and build their own worlds on the platform? Will there be a massive shift from Orkut and MySpace into Facebook?

Hmmmm. Interesting to see how this one progresses.
Blogs & Blogging, Uncategorized
What is a blog?
04.30.07 | Conversations with Dina | Permalink | Comments Off

a publication? a tool? a social tool? a conversation? a community space? guess again —- it’s a person! Jeremy Wagstaff makes a simple statement on blogs:

“A blog isn’t a publication. It’s a person”
Blogs & Blogging, Internet And Computing, Social Software Social Networks, Uncategorized
Special on Youth and the Internet
04.27.07 | Conversations with Dina | Permalink | Comments Off

Here’s an excerpt from an article I did for Tehelka’s special on youth and the internet, on much urging from Shivam, who put an apt title to it - The Mirror of Change - This is Who We are Becoming.

“For those completely
immersed in virtual worlds such as Second Life, the seduction of intimacy
combined with anonymity does not mean they do not share the joys and
sorrows of their real worlds. My bet is that they do. “Pet”,
a very close friend and a colleague who worked with a team of online
volunteers when the tsunami struck in December 2004, got me looking
at Second Life with new eyes. He had been feeling trapped in his body
for a long time, and when he got onto Second Life, it helped him become
more comfortable with his feelings that he was a woman trapped in a
man’s body. The beauty is that Second Life was a tool for “Pet”to figure out who she really is and how to work it out for real. Today,
she has friends not only in Second Life, but also in her physical world
with whom she can be herself. “Pet” has shared so much of
her period of transition and angst with me, that I feel I know her intimately.
Being a geek, she also helps me with my websites. I trust her as she
trusts me. I know she is very real - there is nothing ‘virtual’
about her, even though I have never met her.

While I may never
have seen or met “Pet”, there is depth in our friendship,
and solidity. I know, for some people, that is hard to accept. I’m
often asked questions like, how can you feel connected to someone you’ve
never met? How can you trust someone you’ve never seen? These
concerns are understandable given the newness of this medium and the
flow that determines these sorts of relationships. Oh there are dangers
too - the pretence borne out of anonymity, the addictions, the
spam and scams, the paedophiles, the pornography. And still, when I
meet up with blog buddies all over the world, how can I explain the
amazing level of comfort I feel!

I single out blogs
here as throwing up a whole different social system than do virtual
worlds and social networking sites. Detractors say, online you can be
whoever you want to be and nobody cares. That may be correct, yet, if
you try and fake things too hard, you most always are found out, and
can be verbally beaten. My belief is that people tend to act more like
themselves online than they like to admit. It is much more difficult
to hide away who you are when you are blogging. I’ve found myself
revealing things on my blog about myself that I would find difficult
to talk about face-to-face. Ugly things too.

And yet, I found
myself trusting myself as I began trusting people I met through this
medium. There is a fine line between the public, private and secret
self, and the boundaries blur sometimes. At others there is a conscious
effort to keep them apart. In a physical world, our lives are compartmentalized,
you have different sets of friends for different needs, and meet in
different physical spaces as a result. My blog is one space where
I connect with friends, potential clients, strangers, acquaintances,
even spammers and trolls. It is entirely up to me what I want to share
of me and when, at my blog. And, I have found, the more I share,
the more others do. It’s just an extension of basic human needs
for connection and community.”

This issue is carrying a special on youth and the internet. I see some bloggers I know like Dilip, Rashmi, Neha, Patrix and Shivam of course, who have made some neat contributions there - and as I glanced through the articles, I felt Shivam’s done a good job of getting a mix that does not perpetuate stereotypes the media usually portrays netizens to be.
Blogs & Blogging, Social Software Social Networks, Uncategorized
Bloggers Code of Conduct - Please NO!
04.01.07 | Conversations with Dina | Permalink | Comments Off

Heh .. Johnnie .. I’m with you in feeling ranty! As a response to this, a stopcyberbullying community is nice, comments policies and guidelines are ok if you believe you need them, but a Bloggers Code of Conduct???

What will it achieve - perhaps nothing. What will you do if someone violates the bloggers code of conduct
- delete their comments, report them - that’s something you can do
without such a formal code isn’t it? Who will enforce this Code of
Conduct across blogs? Will bloggers that do not share this ‘code of
conduct’ be
ostracized? Will not this ‘moral’ responsibility grow to have legal
ramifications?
Will spammers and trolls and death threat issuers from non-US countries
be prosecuted? Will you be able to stop them? Will you only encourage
people to look for different and more sophisticated ways of piling on
their vile - it
is after all a human condition, and not a blog condition.

It seems to me, culturally, it is a very North-American thing to think up.
Don’t get me wrong, I absolutely love some aspects of North America and
have met some of the finest folks there - but this operating out of ‘fear’
is
one aspect I have written about earlier, that I find goes beyond
protection. Perhaps it’s the phrasing of it that gets to me - ‘Code of
Conduct’ implies rules and regulations, implicit in this is that there
is only one way ahead. I don’t like that. It will make us guard our words. It will give credence
to the power games played out in the blogworld by providing yet another
weapon to divide those who have it and those who don’t. It will foster
a culture of fear. In the worst case, it will breed litigation,
insurance, liability.

Why
formalize something we’re doing anyways - if you’re proud of your space
(your blog in this case) you’ll protect it the way you feel best.
Banning anonymous comments for instance, is a personal choice - in my
case, I have deleted comments that are vulgar, lewd and allude to
physical threats. The others, I prefer to debate with. If others do not
wish to, ignore them or take the ‘fight’ to your space, or theirs.
There is a strong self-regulating aspect to this medium, and the recent
events are proof, with different angles and facets to the story emerging.

My
biggest fear in having a ‘formal’ code of conduct is it will take some
of the ‘human’ out of the blog. It will raise entry barriers to
participate in blog conversations, where few exist. It may even force
more bloggers to shut down all conversations in comments, because a few
are violating their freedom to comment. It will defeat the
self-regulatory and self-correcting nature of this medium. One of the
delights of blogging is it so reflects human behaviour - it gives us
the space to share freely our humility, our pride and our
infallibilities, our opinions and counterpoints, our failures and
successes, our rituals and dreams, our conflicts and resolutions. It
lets us debate and converse with others freely and intuitively. It may
reflect our professional views, but it is as far from
‘corporatization’ as any medium is today. Will not shared standards
and practice bring about ‘corporatization’ in some form or other?

There’s my long rant! Unlike Johnnie’s pithy post.

Bloggers code of conduct, freedom of speech
Blogs & Blogging, Qualitative Research Perspectives, Uncategorized
Shubhangi
03.28.07 | Conversations with Dina | Permalink | Comments Off

I’ve known Shubhangi for almost 15 years. We worked in the same company then. We still do. She’s been my mainstay at Explore Research and Consultancy, ever since she came on board way back in 1999. I’ve never known her to panic, feel out of control and never once has she met any of my requests (however absurd they may seem) with anything less than a smile and a “we can do it”. She makes my life so easy really.

Tremendously talented and always looking out for something new to do - yeah - she does yoga, is a full-time mum, rides bikes, paints Tanjore paintings, is an expert in Japanese - and now a fantastic photographer. Match that with her deep understanding of humanity, her strong sense of what’s right and not, her ability to question life and you find a precious gem. She has her feet firmly on the ground - and a heart of gold.

Recently, she discovered Flickr - go check out her awesome pictures there - each one has such depth and tells a story. The image in this post is by her - and one that I feel reflects who she is perfectly. She’s also discovering the joys in sharing herself as she has so quickly built a community around her images. And now she’s blogging and learning the ropes - I am so thrilled about this - welcome huggggggs Shubs. For long, I have felt she hides herself away - not anymore I hope