Economy of Social - Social Media Tips, Marketing and Business

There have been a lot of discussions around sentiment analysis and metrics about brands on the internet. To address this area, there are a lot of companies that have designed software that help brands figure out sentiment and other related things in real time. With fancy interfaces that look no less like a NASA control panel, these packages aggregate what people are talking in real time, process it and make sense out of it. All this enables brands to figure out their online sentiment and the profile of engaged netizens. What it does not tell brands is the culture. The big problem with a sentiment metric is that it takes the social out of social media.

Is Shahrukh Khan (SRK) the greatest marketer in the film industry? The air you've taken in you lungs before the release of the movie contains particles of Ra.One. Ra.One is on news channels, game shows, TV serials, bus hoardings, newspapers, and on top of it you have all shows at major theatres simply screening Ra.One. With the power of money, a promotional budget of 50 Crores, collusion with others in the industry, Ra.One has managed to create a madness - a monopoly. I also have a feeling that even the critics have been bought to put good reviews. People don't have a choice. Is this what artists are meant to do? Is Shahrukh Khan the greatest artist we would like to remember? Or the greatest dictator of art Or the greatest monopolist of art Or simply a money making machine ? Is he the one promoting art or is he the one monopolizing art? Businesses would like to remember Ra.One as the greatest promotional campaign in the history of movies. It spend a lot of money to make mo...

The dark man riding the lime buggy, his life, his ambitions and the traveller. It does not take much for him to make people frown and it takes even less for him to give a reason for them to smile. His meter, which is much like an antiquity in the buggy, with the red lines make strange numbers that will never transform into reality. A lemon coloured canopy and green metal frame form a community, unique to its existence that run through the arteries of India’s capital, Delhi. The auto driver of Delhi is a person who is known for charging abnormally high fares, rash driving and CNG. For a distance that is a stone’s throw away, they would charge you for hiring their Auto for the whole day. They leave no stone unturned in frustrating, harassing and causing delay to the commuter. This is the story of Raman Chatterjee who came from Kolkatta for getting a room on rent as he had taken admission in a B-school in Delhi. Staying at his brother’s house in Laxmi Nagar, a trans Yamuna area, the strug...

Although Dilli-6 may have not got the box office collections or the critics acclaim, the changing trend of the "message" in the current breed of Indian movies is clearly visible. The concept of poor boy rich girl has been long blabbered in the Hindi cinema, and finally after the slamming by audiences of such movies, a new trend of giving a more realistic message is emerging. Slumdog millionaire was criticized for being a westerner's view of poverty in India, the Indian view of problems (not alone poverty) have been better but with a poor execution. The origin of communal riots showed in Dilli-6 and the focus on the roots was particularly good, but over dramatization and a slow story (very slow) killed the movie. Movies should be like whirlpool- even after you watch the movie it should still suck you in, a feature found in Ghajini . Another movie, which caught my attention was Aloo Chaat starring Aftab Sivdasani, Kulbhushan Kharbandha and Aamna Shariff. The movie talks a...

On 3rd April I boarded the Amritsar-Dadar Express and set off for the journey to the place of Sai Baba- Shirdi . It was a last minute decision as my tickets for the return journey were through 'Tatkal' quota and could be booked only five days in advance of the journey. Tatkal is a system, which gives last minute travellers the chance to get a confirmed ticket. The journey to Manmad (one of the nearest stations near Shirdi) was not a comfortable ride as the weather was hot and my train was the dirtiest place I've ever stayed in for a day. My train as expected reached on time and I was comfortably sleeping in a hotel on the night of 4th April. The morning of 5th had a journey hangover but the day proceeded fairly smoothly with my first Darshan of Sai Baba at around 9:15 PM after the Abhishek Pooja . The number of devotees for Pooja and Darshan were fairly large because of the weekend. After the Satyanarayana Pooja at 10:30, I along with my family went to Shingnapur . Shingna...