• Global Voices Online » A Global Look at Anti-Corruption Day | cool initiative. Reminded me of Shaffi Mather's TEDTalk
  This reminded me of Shaffi Mather's TEDTalk on a new way to fight corruption – a for-profit BPO kinda service to battle corruption, one bribe at a time! Here's the link – http://www.ted.com/talks/shaffi_mather_a_new_way_to_fight_corruption.html. CLIP from Global Voices post: "On January 18 Global Voices will launch the Technology for Transparency Network, a collaborative research mapping of internet projects that promote greater transparency, government accountability, and civic engagement. This is the first in a series of posts that will explore related issues through the eyes of bloggers worldwide."
  (tags: technology transparency globalvoicesonline shaffimather)

• The Children of Cyberspace A New World | this is vintage @robpatrob !
  CLIP: "I got my first computer in 1981 a Mac11 – at 31, I was early. My son got his first computer when he was 9. He was early. My grand daughter aged 14 months routinely is on Skype.

  She is part of the first generation that will know the connected world of the web from birth.

  Like an immigrant to a new world, she will truly be a citizen of the web."

  (tags: computing robpaterson future connectedworld)

• Social Media in India: 7 Findings from 2009, 7 Wishes for 2010 | S.M.A.R.T objectives @sm63
  CLIPS: "# We are very pleased to see a big shift from our agency friends. I mean, the advertising, PR and media buying agency partners. We have seen hesitation, threat, doubt and fear in the early days, but we are now seeing an increasing confidence in the Social Media space, from many. They have become open to new ideas, and to some extent, they are putting these up to clients, and many are getting through as well. This is going to be the most exciting part of 2010, I believe.
  # We are also happy to see companies looking at Social Media Monitoring as a part of the Social Media activities. Although still a pariah amongst all of the Social Media methods (in India), a few companies have started seeing the potential of “listening” and we are seeing this number go up. Businesses which are more sensitive to customer feedback, are especially concerned about managing their online reputations, and monitoring becomes an integral component here."
  (tags: socialmedia india socialmediamarketing socialmediameasurement)

• "Do you See What I See?: Visibility of Practices through Social Media" from @zephoria
  danah boyd discusses different dimensions of visibility in her paper presented at Supernova and Le Web. San Francisco and Paris, 1 and 10 December 2009. CLIPS: " …. what you see is a world that you've constructed. These are YOUR "Friends", the people you've chosen to follow. Or at least the people you've been guilted into following. These people shape your experiences of social media. They speak about things that matter to you, either because you know them personally or because you like the way they think. They speak like you. Or, more accurately, you speak like them. Cuz even though you might think you're speaking to your "audience," your sense of norms is based on the content you read……… You aren't speaking to your "audience" but to the people who you like to watch. Your sense of what people do with social media is highly dependent on what you consume, how you consume it, and why you're there in the first place. So is mine … "
  (tags: danahboyd socialmedia privacy psychology web2.0 socialnetworking internet socialsoftware visibility)
• Spotlight | Parmesh's ViewFinder – Parmesh shares his experiences of TEDIndia.
  CLIPS: "Each of the other Fellows I met in Mysore was equally awe-inspiring – whether it was Olympic sailor Rohini Rau, 18-year-old inventor Ashutosh Patra, Ambulance Access for All founder Shafi Mather or Nigerian lawyer-activist Peace Anyiam-Osigwe. The work they do is changing the world. Their spirit energised mine. Our bonding experiences include loud songs till 4 a.m. on the Infosys campus; memories that will soon become legend via Facebook reminiscing and real world meet-ups whenever we visit each other’s cities". ….. "TED India was all about this kind of celebratory sharing. When one shares, one feels immense joy. There were many joyful spontaneous outbursts at TED. In my memory, Sunitha’s standing ovation blurs into the audience members singing ‘We are the world’ with Usha Utup on day one, which in turn blurs into everyone taking to the floor for coordinated Bollywood dancing alongside choreographer Longinus at the palace party on day two…."
  (tags: verve tedindia parmeshshahani)
• Mobile Trends 2020 | mTrends – mobile media lifestyle trends – @mtrends what a wonderful idea!
  A super New Year post from @mtrends. Make sure you click through the slideshare presentation where he has some remarkable people sharing their top five mobile trends. CLIP: To this end I have been writing down my predictions in mobile & wireless for a couple of years now. This year I thought it was the time to move on and do something different, so I asked some of my personal heroes in mobile to write down their five most significant trends for the coming decade.

  All of them have been of great inspiration to me during this decade: for their ideas, visions, talent, the capabilities to adapt and the perseverance to succeed whatever the situation. While I didn’t know any one of these great people 10 years ago, I’m glad to have met most of them and proud that some I can call them real friends.

  (tags: mobile trends innovation research future 2010 blog communication 2020)
• 6 reasons to encourage enterprise conversations with collaborative platforms « Heavy Mental
  A nice compilation of links and thoughts on knowledge sharing within an organization from @ceciiil. CLIP: Bertrand Duperrin explains in a quite remarkable post the risk of backslash when using standard web 2.0 key words while presenting social networks to a new audience. The reason is : there could be some misunderstanding from the audience.

  Among these key words : Conversation. Bertrand exposes the issue :

  Try to tell a manager, who’s been fighting againtst chattings that are synonymous with wasted time and bad productivity for years, that his staff now need to have conversations, and, even worse, that his role is to stimulate these conversations….and look at the manager’s face

  6 reasons to bring management and the enterprise conversation back together. And to use collaborative platforms to foster the latter.

  (tags: enterprise2.0 collaboration km conversations knowledgemanagement knowledge knowledgesharing)
• Katie Raynes-Goldie explores the notion of privacy among young Facebook users
  Here's the Abstract. CLIP: Abstract
  This paper explores how 20–something Facebook users understand and navigate privacy concerns. Based on a year–long ethnographic study in Toronto, Canada, this paper looks at how — contrary to many mainstream accounts — younger users do indeed care about protecting and controlling their personal information. However, their concerns revolve around what I call social privacy, rather than the more conventional institutional privacy. This paper also examines the somewhat subversive practices which users engaged in to enhance their own social privacy, and in some cases, violate that of others. Finally, this paper examines some of the reasons that users may continue using the site, despite privacy concerns.
  (tags: facebook privacy 2010 socialnetworks socialmedia firstmonday ethnography)

• The Facebookisation of the enterprise | a well-written thought piece from @jobsworth
  JP is on fire! Stuart and I were just yesterday discussing how organizations that block social networks are really silly, given that employees now access social networks on their mobiles!! CLIP: "Imagine an “enterprise” world where:

  * You chose your own phone
  * You chose your own portable computing device (which may be your phone)
  * You chose your own desktop computing device (which may be your television)
  * You chose the operating systems you put on these devices

  In other words, the IT department had “lost control of the device”.

  Imagine an “enterprise” world where:

  * Your identity was actually yours and independent of the company you worked for
  * Your network of relationships actually described the people you spoke to, spent time with, worked with
  * Your “company” profile looked the same as your web “profile”

  In other words, the HR department had “lost control of the profile”.

  Imagine an “enterprise” world where:

  (tags: business enterprise2.0 facebook jobsworth confusedofcalcutta jprangaswami)

• Logic+Emotion: Do You Live Social? | a great question to ask managers engaging in social media activities
  This is so imperative for any brand custodian – so much so that Stuart and I had designed a postcard with a brand manager’s toolkit as a visiting card when we set up Mosoci.  They MUST participate themselves, and live social!!!

CLIP: “An organization which bans the use of social networks of its employees may have perfectly good reason to do so, but then turning around and hiring an ad agency, PR firm or business consultancy to go out and “be social” for them will limit potential success. One of the beautiful (or perhaps frustrating, if you’re in marketing) aspects of social media is its ability to detect and look askance at posers. If you’re not genuinely, honestly engaged in the social network, you’re not going to get far with those who are.  It’s not easy for organizations to adopt a social mindset, after decades of command-and-control marketing and PR. I believe that starting small is the way to go. Pilot initiatives that demonstrate success by being more open, collaborative … “

(tags: socialmedia socialmediamarketing davidarmano)

• 5 Forecasts and 7 Predictions For 2010-2020 That Shape Innovation And Economic Growth – BusinessWeek
  What lies ahead, now that America’s Lost Decade and Asia’s Best Decade are behind us? I just returned from a month in Singapore, China and Korea and, for the first time in a dozen years, I’m not going to the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland. So you can tell what frame of mind I am in.

  I believe 5 Big Trends will shape the future decade. The 5 trends are:

  1- Rise and Fall of Nations (US and Europe falling, Asia rising).

  2- Rise and Fall of Generations (Boomers falling, Gen Y rising).

  3- Behavioral Modification of Organizations (social media-ization of businesse, health, education, politics).

  4- Urbanization of world’s population.

  5- Global warming (winners and losers in the restructuring of the global economy).

  Within this context of 5 Big Trends, here are 7 specific forecasts…….

  (tags: trends 2010 innovation businessweek brucenussbaum)
• What you can learn from consumers' digital decade | sez marketers are the slowest to move!
  But what you can learn from this decade is that consumers move quickly, models move slowly, and marketing moves conservatively. When you see a technology shifting, that's the time to begin close observation of the models behind it. It will take years for those models to take hold, and in those years, you get the chance to learn. That's when you need to experiment and figure out how things work, because that's when it's cheap and the competition is hanging back. The objective is not to make money right off, but to learn the ropes. Because when the transformation happens — and it will — then you will have the advantage of knowledge.

  The twenty-oh's were the digital decade for consumers. The twenty-teens will be the digital decade for marketers. Time to get cracking.

  (tags: trends web2.0 statistics internet forrester joshbernoff research)

• "Streams of Content, Limited Attention: The Flow of Information through Social Media" | @zephoria
  As we continue to move from a broadcast model of information to a networked one, we will continue to see reworkings of the information landscape. Some of what is unfolding is exciting, some is terrifying. The key is not be all utopian or dystopian about it, but to recognize what changes and what stays the same. The future of Web2.0 is about information flow and if you want to help people, help them reach that state. Y'all are setting the tone of the future of information. Keep it exciting and, please, recognize the power that you have!
  (tags: socialmedia attention danahboyd web2.0 research media social internet web flow information)

• Gartner – From Wow to Shallow Thinking on Mobile Futures | @stuarthenshall i like the Wow thinking
  CLIP: Gartner has produced a list to suggest where is mobile going “Gartner Identifies the Top 10 Consumer Mobile Applications for 2012” I’ve cut down the details – left some of their comments and added some of my own thoughts. There are a few additional predictions in their summary writeup. I’ve also added my own “areas”at the bottom of the list that I don’t think they have covered or perhaps simply take for granted. Then maybe my adds are the area’s represented by “killer applications” and real opportunity? I started reading it and thinking “wow list” and finished thinking “shallow list”.
  (tags: 2012 futures marketresearch mobile trends gartner stuarthenshall mosoci)
• The War For the Web – O'Reilly Radar | a good read from @timoreilly
  Some interesting observations around open systems – not so sure about the Prediction at the end!!! CLIP: "But I'm betting that things are going to get ugly. We're heading into a war for control of the web. And in the end, it's more than that, it's a war against the web as an interoperable platform. Instead, we're facing the prospect of Facebook as the platform, Apple as the platform, Google as the platform, Amazon as the platform, where big companies slug it out until one is king of the hill.

  And it's time for developers to take a stand. If you don't want a repeat of the PC era, place your bets now on open systems. Don't wait till it's too late.

  P.S. One prediction: Microsoft will emerge as a champion of the open web platform, supporting interoperable web services from many independent players, much as IBM emerged as the leading enterprise backer of Linux. "

  (tags: internet google web web2.0 facebook future oreilly trends)

• BSNL, EnableM & OnMobile Launch Learn English: The Opportunity | MediaNama – thanks for the pointer @nixxin
  CLIP: "BSNL has launched an spoken English mobile learning program called “Learn English” powered by EnableM in association with OnMobile Global, looking to address opportunity in learning spoken English. EnableM also powers the same module on SMS for Nokia Life Tools, and OnMobile Global would have brought in the IVR and speech recognition technology." "EnableM: BSNL users can subscribe to the program by dialing 1255537; Learn English is priced at Rs. 20 subscription, and a surprisingly low Rs. 0.30 per minute for the call. The content is available for Basic and Advanced English, and is available for users proficient with nine Indian languages – Hindi, Tamil, Kannada, Marathi, Bengali, Gujarati, Punjabi, Telugu and Malayalam. Daily SMSs and practice tests are a part of the learning package.

  English Seekho: developed by IL&FS Education and Technology Services Limited, the company has tied up with Tata Indicom (dial 129222) for powering English Learning through voice services.

  (tags: medianama enableM onmobile bsnl nokia nokialifetools learnenglish)
• Marketing and How Social Software Aligns | good reminder from @chrisbrogan
  What’s exciting about how social media and social software aligns with marketing is that there are new opportunities that far surpass the old methods for marketing, and that’s where the magic truly hides. Marketers do have to understand the tools, but more so, here’s a quick list of what else needs to be understood:

  * From bullhorn to phone – Your message is no longer to be shouted, but to be socialized.
  * From theater on the stage to theater in the round – Marketing is human again. Don’t stay “on message.” Stay connected to people.
  * From millions, to the right 10,000 – Mass never worked well. It just did well enough. Find relationships that yield.
  * From campaign to community – You’re in it for the long haul. Build awareness, reputation, and trust by being there.
  * From exclusion to “one of us” – Your customers (b2b or otherwise) want to be included in the whole experience, not just to buy.

  (tags: marketing strategy social web2.0 socialmedia tips 4p chrisbrogan)
• Free! Why $0.00 Is the Future of Business – Chris Anderson | or is it? makes me think!
  CLIPS: "But free is not quite as simple — or as stupid — as it sounds. Just because products are free doesn't mean that someone, somewhere, isn't making huge gobs of money. Google is the prime example of this. The monetary benefits of craigslist are enormous as well, but they're distributed among its tens of thousands of users rather than funneled straight to Craig Newmark Inc. To follow the money, you have to shift from a basic view of a market as a matching of two parties — buyers and sellers — to a broader sense of an ecosystem with many parties, only some of which exchange cash."

  "In a sense, what the Web represents is the extension of the media business model to industries of all sorts. This is not simply the notion that advertising will pay for everything……. Now an entire ecosystem of Web companies is growing up around the same set of models."

  (tags: business marketing wired trends strategy internet web2.0 future economics free)
• The Good Enough Revolution: When Cheap and Simple Is Just Fine | via @pree
  CLIP: "So what happened? Well, in short, technology happened.The world has sped up, become more connected & a whole lot busier. As a result, what consumers want from the products and services they buy is fundamentally changing. We now favor flexibility over high fidelity, convenience over features, quick and dirty over slow and polished. Having it here and now is more important than having it perfect. These changes run so deep and wide, they're actually altering what we mean when we describe a product as "high-quality."

  And it's happening everywhere. As more sectors connect to the digital world, from medicine to the military, they too are seeing the rise of Good Enough tools like the Flip. Suddenly what seemed perfect is anything but, and products that appear mediocre at first glance are often the perfect fit. The good news is that this trend is ideally suited to the times. As the worst recession in 75 years rolls on, it's the light and nimble products that are having all the impact"

  (tags: technology design business wired culture trends marketing innovation)

• An Increasingly Affluent Middle India Is Harder to Ignore – India Knowledge@Wharton
  Slightly dated but interesting article on Small Towns in India,based on two studies that attempt to look beyond the numbers: "The Bunty Syndrome," by advertising agency Euro RSCG India in October 2007, and "The Dhoni Effect: Rise of Small Town India," by Ernst & Young in March 2008. CLIP: "Somewhere between these extremes is the real Indian market. It does not lie in the metros or the villages. "The Indian urban growth story until now has been driven largely by metros," says Ashok Rajgopal, a partner in the media and entertainment practice at Ernst & Young, a global assurance, tax, transaction and advisory-services firm. "This is now moving beyond metros into smaller towns." Several recent studies bolster the case for the rise of Middle India. According to the 2008 edition of the RK Swamy BBDO Guide to Market Planning, 51 districts in India have at least one town with a population of more than 500,000. Together, they have twice the market potential of the four metros combined"
  (tags: india smalltowns marketanalytics research middleclass)

• Storylistening for Consumer Insight – AMSRS
  CLIPS: "A recent poll stated that women spend 52 minutes a day gossiping – and before the men start sniggering, apparently they spend an average of 76 minutes daily spinning yarns with their mates. We tell stories to each other compulsively – to make sense of our experiences, to persuade others, or even just to entertain ourselves." "This article suggests a third way of using stories – working with the stories that consumers tell each other to understand their experiences. This approach has been primarily developed by the Cognitive Edge" "The approach shares many similarities with ethnography and projective techniques – but also some important differences. There are two parts to the method: collecting stories and interpreting stories. However we should first clarify what a story means in this context."
  (tags: storytelling, storylistening, cognitive edge, ethnography, qualitative research)

• My Impressions of TED India | @amitvarma's impressions of TEDIndia
  Here's a Clip from Amit Varma's impressions of TEDIndia. I can't agree with him more despite our different approaches to life . I absolutely loved being there, loved the people i met, loved how it was organized, and like Amit, was disappointed with many of the Talks and Speakers. The Fellows had many more interesting stories to tell!! Clip from Amit's post "2: How Firangs View India. My really big grouse about TED India was that it catered to Western stereotypes of India. There was much exotica, and much mysticism served up that says nothing at all about the country we are today. The average foreign attendee would have gone away with his stereotypes about India reinforced, not shattered. That’s an opportunity missed.

  One talk that was truly WTF was by this ludicrous godman named Sadguru Jaggi Vasudev. He is an excellent, endearing showman and has a great sense of humour, which I guess are the qualities you need in the godman business, but he spoke mystical nonsense."

  (tags: amitvarma, indiauncut, tedindia, ted, tedfellows)

• HOW TO: Measure Social Media ROI – a guide from @mashable
  CLIP: "Companies and executives are finally beginning to really jump on the social media bandwagon, and that’s fantastic. However, for social media to fully work (for everyone), businesses and brands need to be able to evaluate the impact their social media use is having, both positive and negative. Measuring social media ROI isn’t impossible, but it can be difficult because many of the pieces that need to be evaluated are difficult to track. This guide is designed to help you track down those pieces and determine the ROI you’re getting on social media."
  (tags: socialmedia roi analytics marketing metrics social howto mashable)
• Insights Qualitativos 2.0: New study from Forrester: Market Research Online Communities
  CLIP: "A new study from Forrester has found that a third of market researchers are using or planning to use online communities in the next 12 months – but a similar number have never even heard of them.

  Forrester’s study, written by Tamara Barber, found growing experimentation with online communities, but warned that most buyers need service, support and encouragement, not just software.

  Forrester surveyed 78 researchers and interviewed nine vendor companies, including Communispace, Vision Critical, Vovici, Globalpark and MarketTools.

  “Researchers want to partner with trusted providers that can bring a flexible offering, methodological expertise, a superior service to the table,” writes Barber. “Given the number of new entrants into the MROC vendor space, expect to see more choices in service model options, better integration of community research with quantitative projects, and focus on insights from clientside market researchers.”

  (tags: Communispace, Forrester Research, Market research online communities, social media insights, Tamara Barber)
• New China Mobiles available in Indian Market – Reviews
  More on China Phones – some of them look quite neat – can understand appeal for them!!
  (tags: china phones, chinese india mobile market, india, phones)
• Global Voices Online » Mobile-empowered to serve you better
  Aparna Ray is writing a great series of posts on the future of ICTs for development at Global Voices Online. Here's a clip from her post on Mobile phone empowerment – "Apart from imparting business/market information, the impact of the cell phones can be felt when increasing cell phone usage helps to improve distribution efficiency and reduction in search-of-information costs as well as tackling price dispersions across local markets, as was seen in this study conducted in Niger.

  In all of this, the end-consumer is also a beneficiary. We get the benefit of convenience–from the basic facility of having an on-call service provider to ordering the fresh catch of the day from the fish-monger on his mobile, right up to using the virtual marketplace on our cell phones to buy fresh produce directly from the local farmer–in addition to enjoying competitively priced goods and products and services in the long run."

  (tags: Ideas, Business, Development, Internet & Telecoms, Technology, Agriculture, Mobile Phones, Mobility, Global voices online, Aparna Ray)
• Are chinese mobiles worth buying?
  Am looking at the Chinese Phone Market – going to bookmark a few things here. CLIP:
  "I think chinese mobiles are worth buying as they are cheap and more over i dont think that they would have problmes that much soon and also if a $100 handset stops working after 7-8 month i think it would be okay."
  (tags: chinese phones, china india, mobile phones)
• Design and Innovation Education – BusinessWeek
  How best to educate the design thinkers and innovators of the future? BusinessWeek's list features promising programs from design and business schools from around the world
  (tags: design innovation education business businessweek design_thinking)