Economy of Social - Social Media Tips, Marketing and Business

Instagram started as a iOS only application and quickly became a huge social networking website with a presence on Android and the web. An active and rapidly growing user base has made marketing on Instagram important for brands, small businesses and startups. Instagram has more than 75 million daily active users, with a total user base of over 400 million. Instagram users in 2015 were sharing over 70 million photos per day.  Given its growing importance we'll explore some easy tips that can help you with Instagram marketing.

Follow @Sushant_KM Choosing an appropriate hashtag for your social media campaign can prove to be a tricky exercise. At times it can also determine success or failure of your campaign. A bad choice can result in negative conversations about your. How can you differentiate and make your campaign stand out? How can you make sure that the message reaches your audience?

Social Media to a great extent has become a reflection of our offline lives. Although most of us are curating an identity on the social web, its elements contain a shade of our real self. Our expressions on social media are shaped to a good extent by our offline experiences. One of these experiences is our rendezvous with Television.

Sachin Tendulkar's retirement was a very emotional moment. But, Sachin Tendulkar's retirement have made quite a few fans looking for a new job.

Facebook released its first ever transparency report . Colin Stretch, the Facebook general counsel said, " We scrutinise each request for legal sufficiency under our terms and the strict letter of the law, and require a detailed description of the legal and factual bases for each request. We fight many of these requests, pushing back when we find legal deficiencies and narrowing the scope of overly broad or vague requests. When we are required to comply with a particular request, we frequently share only basic user information, such as name. " The top 5 countries included U.S., India, U.K., Germany and Italy (below). Surprisingly among these five countries, India had the least amount of requests per million users on Facebook. Germany was the highest with 73 requests per million Facebook users. United States was also significantly high considering they have over 180 million Facebook users.

I recently was part of an offline meet called D-ART initiated by my organization that intended to bring together artists on one platform. This chat made me come across the " Delhi Food Walks ", an initiative to give an experience of Delhi Street Food by bringing them together for a walk.

Computer games always had a negative correlation with my grades. Although I have never been an addict, I've had phases where I spent long hours playing Age of Empires, Counter Strike and Cricket 97. The answer to the reasons behind the phases of playing them in excess has been found by some recent research. Bowman and Tamborini in their recent research published in the New Media and Society argue that a computer game play has the potential to intervene in noxious mood states. It is due to the fact that it is simply a more demanding task.

A troll is someone who posts inflammatory messages in an online community or a discussion with the primary intent of provoking readers into an emotional response or disrupting the discussion. Cyber-bullying and internet trolling are big cause of concern since they can have a very bad emotional impact on the recipient. While in the name of humor or fun, they might mock certain issues at their own level, it can lead to dangerous consequences such as igniting religious sentiments. The problem today is about defining the boundaries of free speech. A message with a high inflammatory potential is not good for the society and right now determining the right or the wrong rests in the hands of corporations controlling digital media. More so the culturally boundaries that exists offline are not particularly well understood.

I was reading a very interesting article by Henry Blodget on Facebook's stock price decline and the role of near-term financial focus on a company's future. It mentioned the case of Amazon that I'd like to share.  Amazon had a period of hyper growth in its stock price between 1998-2000 after which its stock price crashed to pre-1998 levels. For around seven years the stock price of Amazon traded side-ways before Amazon's extensive focus on customer service started paying off. Their stock gradually rose and it became the e-commerce behemoth that it is now. The lesson is simple. In 1997-98 Amazon's focus was on quarterly financial reports. It had its advantage in the short run but kicked back soon. Their focus on customer service took time but was necessary in the long term success of the company. 

Science fiction movies are not all fiction. Naomi Wolf  reports that in the race for making a country secure, popular tourists spots like Disney are using facial recognition technology developed by the United States military to track unaware tourists.  She further reports that after the infamous occupy crackdown movement which witnessed brutalities against reporters of the occupy wall street movement and the protesters, she noticed " bizarre camera/lights had been installed not only all around Union Square but also around Washington Square Park " On taking a pic of them and asking she says, " Commentators who had lived in China said that they were the same camera/streetlight combinations that are mounted around public places in China. These are enabled for facial recognition technology, which allows police to watch video that is tagged to individuals, in real time ". I can see the Bourne series coming to life. But this is shit scary. The only missing piec...

E-commerce companies have got substantial investment and consolidation in the Indian E-commerce industry has already begun. With Amazon entering India with Junglee.com, and FlipKart armed with million dollar investments, there is a huge pressure on getting figures. Can the Indian market provide sales to justify this investment. There are two factors that can give rise to a bubble - The Sunday factor and the Enemy at the gates. The Sunday Factor The first factor is the Sunday Factor. The Indian consumer, especially the one that is responsible for majority of e-commerce sales is city based and earning decent money. Cities are equipped with huge malls that give the consumer a holistic shopping experience. Majority of shoppers are under the age of 35. This represents a population that is young, with many who have recently got married (late 20s). Young guys and girls would like to spend time with friends, partners in a place that can give them a restaurant, pub, coffee-shop, brande...

The debate about SOPA & PIPA has oscillated between a pro-piracy/anti-piracy debate and a pro-censorship/anti-censorship debate, with the media companies choosing the former battle ground and the tech companies opting for the latter. Although it is not merely a propaganda war there is much at stake including the impact of emerging online activism in countries where internet is beginning to spread. The present Indian government has been in the habit of censoring public voice especially since the voice of public did not go down too well with it's governance mechanisms that included high a degree of corruption. These are a few thoughts I had about SOPA & PIPA with respect to emerging economies. 1. Correlation with Speech Censorship tools SOPA,PIPA use the same tools for censorship used by countries like China, known for violating human rights to suppress speech 2. Impact on Internet Transparency in Emerging Economies India, which seems to be a successful democracy rank...

2007: Advertising on digital media grew by 155% to $1.2 billion but consumer interest in these sites dipped by 14%.  2008: Google's $1.65 bn purchase of YouTube wasn't giving returns. I possibly have an explanation

We know about the Self Help Groups and Micro-finance institutions that take advantage of collective buying power. Groupon (groupon.com) brings the same concept to web by offering a sales promotion offer (Coupon) everyday in every city it operates. Before I talk more about groupon.com here are some facts. Its founder Andrew Mason turned down a $6 billion offer by Google (Google's highest offer, almost double of its highest acquisition in history) - Dec'10 It took two years to reach this status and Groupon had net revenues of around $350 million in 2010 ( Founded in Nov'2008 ) Andrew Mason (Founder of Groupon) used to work in web design with another serial chicago entrepreneur ( Eric Lefkosky ) When Andrew Mason Left Lefkosky to go to high school and started working on a project " The Point ", Lefkosky got the word. He went to Mason and told him to draw the outline for "The Point". Lefkosky instantly gave Mason $1 million in seed money and Maso...

Indian Railway Catering and Tourism Corporation (IRCTC) is a subsidiary of the Indian Railways that handles the catering, tourism and online ticketing operations of the railways. Economist is now using this huge database of IRCTC to promote their magazine. In the huge clutter that is present on the internet, millions of sites, Facebook pages, ads (which people don't even look at), this is a smart move by IRCTC and the Economist. IRCTC gets additional revenues for the database and Economist finds a subscription. Or lets rewind a bit. Do you remember signing up for additional promotional offers? We already pay a service charge for using the website and now IRCTC is sending up promotional offers through my email. It is a blatant violation of privacy . There is a lesson to learn here. To get quick and easy money it is better to not resort to such cheap gimmicks. Startups face this dilemma when the cash flows aren't strong. But its better to not cheat your customer. Some stupids mi...

You did well in your exams. That makes for a case of hardwork. You helped your friend in his difficult times - That makes a case of good friendship. You did not take a lucrative risk-less bribe - That makes a case of good upbringing. Google as an organization is no different. Its decision to not censor search results in China despite legal and political restrictions, and keeping Google China at stake is case of good upbringing. The sixth point in its 10 point philosophy says - "You can make money without doing evil". It has stuck to its philosophy and the implications are loosing a lot of money. This makes a case for the new generation entrepreneurs - Give your organization a good upbringing. Loss of Business This move has huge implications for Google's business in China including the roll out of Android with the help of China Mobile . Similarly China Unicom, the second largest telecom operator in China is no longer partnering with Google for search. Communist vs...

These days I've been spending some time doing a survey finding out the buying habits of females online.My objective was to find the buying online buying habits of females below 25 years of age. To my surprise, very few access access internet and those who do have a lot of apprehensions about buying online. Their apprehensions are justified considering spam mails that overflow the mail boxes every day. Pop up ads were a strict no-no. Out of 25 people I surveyed, only 2 said that they would click on pop up ads. They had doubts on the trustworthiness of the websites because of bad first experiences. My personal experience of buying sunglasses from a popular website wasn't very good too. In my opinion, these websites have created a mistrust of the apprehensive online buyer on genuine online sellers. The reinforcement theory states that behavior is a function of consequences. Hence the first-timer with a bad experience is bound to show a negative online buying behavior. TV still ...

The easiest (and the evilest) way to defame a guy who is your enemy or competitor is to have an anonymous id and start writing negative about him/her. A similar case happened with Ashish Mehta, a cardiologist in Mumbai who was the victim of defamatory posts on a blog hosted on blogger.com. The challenges for Google giving this service are many fold.It is practically not possible to discredit or credit an opinion. As a blogger, I may have my reservations on certain issues and may write about it, but it could be 'defamatory' for the guy in the line of fire. The big question that arises out of this debate is " Can Google be held responsible ? " I'd say no. But,certainly yes if the company looking at the case did not take action swiftly and do damage control, which I'm sure Google would have done. In future looking at the preventive actions, it would be advisable to periodiclly Google your name/business or name/business + review to keep a tap on unwarranted harmfu...

Microsoft Bing : Microsoft will be coming up with Bing , a decision engine that will challenge the dominance of the god of search - "Google". It is a move that could either give the web a new era of search or could reiterate the fact that Google is the best. The search war has heated up as finally a competitor to Google's search will finally be out in the open. Google, the world's top brand with a brand value exceeding $100 billion is gearing up for its first fight in the search arena. There have been critics (whom I admire) who have tried to be (as always) Google disciples and have rejected Bing. The part that impresses me is that Microsoft has shown up the courage to stand up to the search behemoth and say " Hey Beware!!! We are coming ".Not many can do that. The second and the most important thing will be what they are offering. Looking at the initial presentation, Microsoft Bing looks impressive. The decision engine i.e. Microsoft's Bing is evolvin...

web 2.0 to 3.0 might have just taken place with many companies using the free and effective medium of web to promote their product globally. Banner ads, TV ads and couple of other sources including radio might give an edge but a stiffer competition to these rather costly sources comes from the free media of web. The recent Tata Nano web site is such an example where the team of Tata Nano will connect through the interactive 2 way media of social networking. According to wikipedia of web 2.0 Web 2.0 concepts have led to the development and evolution of web-based communities, hosted services, and applications; such as social-networking sites, video-sharing sites, wikis, blogs, and folksonomies. I'd say the third generation of web has just arrived where corporates are spreading their brand through practically free media of web 2.0. Tata Nano updates through orkut, facebook or email is an indicator of how an iconic product already popular because of its uniqueness can turn into a revol...