ZooZoos Facebook Fans crosses 1 Million!

The team handling Facebook strategy should be given huge kudos – They have crossed 1 Million Facebook likes for their Facebook Page. In the process they also become the first Indian brand to reach this milestone [Top Indian Brands on Social Media].

Yes, they had a hugely popular brand of Zoozoos to start with, but that is not the only reason why Zoozoos has reached this milestone. Once look at their Facebook page and you will know that the people behind the scenes are very active and respond to their fans on regular basis. Not only that, they have kept the community active by constantly coming up with New Contests.

Although, memories of common people is short when it comes to brands like Zoozoo’s, they have done an admirable job of ensuring that people are reminded of ZooZoos brand though various channels. Online as well as offline.

It all started with their ads, but they have capitalized on the brand which was build – I am sure Vodafone would not have imagined that ZooZoo’s would be so big and so popular.

Facebook- “Don’t be Evil”? [Media Monday]

The growth of Facebook has taken whole of the world by storm- Any Doubt?

To me it seems like a giant growing fast, feeding on what people give him as he promises to entertain them, but may eventually turn out a real giant who will feed on these people! I say so because the hunger of Facebook is increasing by the day (or feature-by-feature you can say). Being a private company, they grew from $700 Mn revenues (2009) to $2 Bn in just one year (ridiculous isn’t?).

I’m also worried about the monopoly thing now, the much talked about Google Me’s launch isgetting delayed and I wonder whether they will launch it at the first place or not (fear of failing)!

So many things are being said against Facebook that we have a full wiki page for same (LOL isn’t?).

Enough said, let me confess- “I’m a big FAN of Facebook :)!”

Facebook was actually able to pull the effect of social media by enabling brands/people to advertise and engage users by launching the amazing concept- “Page” and also by opening up API’s so that millions of people can waste their time building “villes” and buying fake currencies in exchange of real one’s. 
Before this everyone was plainly talking about monetizing social media but no one got even sightliest closer to what Facebook has been able to do!

But still, I would love to see Facebook not getting Evil…

My concerns are because of some recent developments, I have analyzed personally-

Very recently, Facebook said they will share user’s personal data with App Developers just to give them better reasons to use Facebook API. This would mean sharing your contact details, i.e. mobile number and address with every developer whose App you are using.

This news created a backlash (obviously) and Facebook first said there is no need to fear as developers could only access information when users explicitly give them permission, but later on suspended this activity temporarily.

Facebook has this notorious habit of enabling things first and then backing out seeing the backlash.

The other thing which I realized lately, analysing our own page on Facebook is that it’s going to create a web-link for every status in world which is worth selling.

Here is why- when we put a status message on a page there are various actions which can be taken viz. like, comment, share and PROMOTE. I have analyzed that depending on whether the status update is supported by a link / image / video or not Facebook populates either “Share” or “Promote”.

I didn’t realize it until I tried to figure out why my plain status messages (without any links/images) were getting less impressions than those with links/images. 
What I understood was that for any status message without links/images there is no option to “share” but only to “promote”.

When I clicked on “promote” it opened the “Create an Ad” page, which simply created my page’s ad with my status message as the content. This should be an early indicator of what they have in mind- To sell every darn status possible!

In other news Facebook said they are going to launch new ad-platform “sponsored stories using users’ data”. It said “The social networking site is debuting Sponsored Stories, a new advertising format that will use your friends’ actions and turn them into advertised material.” Can u deduce anything by this. Well it took me 2-3 reads and then a status update from a friend to actually connect what they are trying to do.

Here is an excerpt of same –

FB has partnered with companies like Bing, Trip Advisor, Levi’s, Coke etc and they are doing “Instant personalization” for them. What this means is that yours and your friends’ data is by default shared with these companies so that they can make their advertisements more effective ‘automatically’. This may not affect any personal data directly, but in an indirect and confusing way.

Tip: If you don’t want this you will need to manually “disable” it by going to Accounts-> Privacy Settings-> Edit settings for Apps and Website (bottom of the page)-> Edit Settings for Instant Personalization-> Uncheck the check box.. [woof... you’d ram your head hundred times before finding this]

Crux of the matter- “Facebook is making privacy settings and personalization so complex that it will go beyond the understanding of normal human beings like me and you”. Or, possibly there will be a course in B-Schools to just understand what FB Privacy settings are?

Indian Prime Minister on Facebook, curious about twitter !

Prime Minister of India, Mr. Manmohan Singh is not Net-savvy, he does not use cell phone, unlike Obama, who uses a Blackberry.

But he is on Facebook – Thats the news that has been recently published in couple of places.

I searched for Manmohan Singh on Facebook out of curiosity, and there were 4-5 different profiles in his name all carrying his photo as avatar. One account actually had close to 9000 followers.

Could this be the real profile Indian Prime Minister – My guess is as good as yours – I dont know.

The News published in here mentions:

In the course of a discussion on NDTV, Singh’s former media advisor Sanjaya Baru said though the Prime Minister is not net savvy, there is a Facebook site which is regularly updated, so he is on Facebook.

But he had no idea as to who was updating the site.

What the heck does he mean that out PM does not have an idea who is updating the site. Is he saying that it is not an official account, or is he saying that it is official, but our leader does not know who from the Government is updating that account ?

Now, most of us Tweeple’s (people of Twitter) follow Shashi Tharoor on Twitter and his twitter stream is updated regularly.

Interestingly, Mr. Tharoor told NDTV that many Politicians have come to him enquiring abouttwitter . Infact not only did Politicians from both sides of aisle have to come to him, but also Mr. Prime Minister

"In fact the Prime Minister asked me what this is all about… He wanted to know what Twitter was. So there is a lot of curiosity,"

Free Facebook for Bharti Airtel users? what’s the catch ?

Bharti Airtel today announced that it will be offering Facebook for its 130 million mobile subscribers free of cost for next 2 months until August 31st 2010.

I am not sure why there is so much of noise about this whole thing, as Facebook had already announced this few months back itself. It is not Airtel, but Facebook’s initiative to have tie-ups with Mobile Operators in India and across the world.

In the blog post made in early May Facebook had announced that its stripped down version0.facebook.com will be available to mobile customers of over 50 mobile carriers (across the world) without incurring any data charges.

 

This is not really a surprising move, as most of the telecom operators are now looking at data services to not only attract customers, but also push data usage of mobile subscribers.

However, there is a small difference between Airtel’s offering and what Facebook had announced earlier. Facebook had announced its access to facebook through 0.facebook.com, a stripped down version where viewing / uploading of images would incur costs. Whereas, Airtel will offer free Facebook access through m.facebook.com which allows viewing / uploading images without incurring costs.

The catch however, is the limited period of 2 months – They want subscribers to get hooked on to full Facebook mobile experience. Airtel expects that after using it for couple of months, majority of subscribers would continue with it even with data charges. I see this as an excellent move by Airtel.

So if you are one of the Airtel users, go ahead and activate your free Facebook access on Airtel.

How to access Facebook on Airtel: 
• SMS ‘FACEBOOK’ to 54321 
• Feed your email address and password 
• Connect and share with your friends on the move – with no data cost on m.facebook.com until August 31st, 2010

However, if you are Tat DOCOMO customer, you are much better off – As they get full free access to Social Networking sites & chat (Twitter, facebook, Orkut, LinkedIn and all Instant Messengers) through Buddynet feature.

Facebook recruiting IITians via Skype – Bumper placements back again…

Another round of placements has begun at engineering colleges across the country. Another opportunity for the likes of TCS, Wipro, Infosys and other Indian technology majors to hire in droves. Another instance when more than 60%-70% of the batch despite having no idea of computers will move to the IT sector. You must be thinking all this and more right? But then some things don’t remain the same always.

At for the IITs, beginning from IIT Madras, the placement season promises to be something different. Facebook has come to the campus for the first time to recruit students not for its operations in Hyderabad but the USA. And interestingly the 13 shortlisted students have to face their final interviews via Skype. The HR managers are sitting in the US and interviewing the candidates.

At IIT Chennai, there are so many companies and the fact that companies are taking in higher numbers this year, has made them wonder whether if there would be enough students remaining for recruitment later on.

And this isn’t just limited to IITs. At the other campuses like SRM, the story is also turning out to be similar with TCS and Wipro themselves recruiting more than 1500 students.

So what’s the difference in placements this year?

• There are more number of companies at campuses across the nation this year (though obviously at many places the placements are yet to start)
• Many companies are giving much higher packages than previous years.
• The companies are also slowly but surely reaching the massive recruitment numbers one saw in 2008 and before.
• A large number of new recruiters like FMCG giants like ITC, Britannia, Facebook and others are coming to various engineering colleges for the first time (Both IITs and non – IITs).

How has such a difference been possible?

The economy is finally looking good almost back to normal with a growth nearing 8.5% (Last quarter growth registered 8.9 percent, more than expected). This has thereby helped improve the situation of a large number of companies which were in the red for a long while.

The FII inflows have crossed more than US $ 20 billion which has led the stock market reach 21000 points (a figure seen a long while back).

A large number of companies have been able to strike the right kind of deals with various clients (international and local), thereby requiring greater manpower. This has also led to the need for a large workforce and thus higher requirement for people.

The ensuing growth has led to recruiters raise their compensation packages. Various new recruiters like Facebook have finally realized that one can ignore the Indian market at his / her own peril. This has prompted them to not only set up shop in the country but also recruit for their international operations. Not only they are recruiting, but are doing it with help of Technology.

Facebook is Passé [Point.1] Friends ≠ Social Networks

Ok, so that was a cheap trick to make you read the article!

But it is tempting to get carried away with the brilliant success of Facebook and the equally brilliant movie by David Fincher. The F word in Facebook’s success as  “The Social Network” is after all, Friends.

But in the real as well as the virtual world, is our social ecosystem only comprised of friends?

Let’s just take two examples of social networks of a different kind.

LinkedIn

If you are a working professional, chances are very high you are part of LinkedIn. With around 90 million users it has nowhere near the mass of Facebook’s 675 million plus.

• But if you were Stephen Covey, which network would you be more interested in?
• Who’s  gotten people more jobs? LinkedIn or Facebook?
• Where are you more likely to meet a High Net Worth Individual? LinkedIn or Facebook?

Purely from a numbers perspective do you have more friends or more colleagues and ex-colleagues? I have more of the latter.

eBay

Are buyers and sellers not a social network? Especially when they generate billions of dollars in transactions from non-advertising sources. The fun thing is they consider themselves one of the pioneers of social networks as well!

eBay was and is the original C2C network, with a high degree of loyalty among  its member base – something yet to be truly tested at Facebook.

It also has PayPal, an established payments mechanism at a time when Facebook is just experimenting with Facebook Credits. And it has launched micro – communities like Neighbourhoods – a snapshot of which is below.

Hold on, what do you have to say to this, you say:

1. Facebook is all about the social graph

And the X- factor of interactions between friends.  It has user generated content. Comparing it to an eBay or Amazon is doing an apples vs. oranges. And LinkedIn may be useful but it is boring!

Counterpoint: X-factors are inherently short lived and consumers can be very fickle about the next cool social phenomenon. To rely primarily on eyeballs and look to monetize them through an ad-centric revenue model has high risk.

Also, eBay (which also has user generated content!) and Amazon’s revenue streams have been sustained over a long period of time. Let’s wait and watch on Facebook’s longevity on the social graph.

2. Facebook is an Ecosystem.

Developers like Zynga create engaging content for the platform so Facebook’s risk is spread among various developers.

Simultaneously Facebook benefits from any innovation that these folks bring out. LinkedIn is a closed system.

Counterpoint: Zynga, – its games feature consistently in the Top 5 of Facebook Apps – may decide that Facebook Credits and/or privacy controls are too restrictive to its growth as a social game publisher. Take away 200 odd million MAUs all of a sudden and Facebook will have a problem. The risk is not that well spread.

eBay and Amazon have very developed ecosystems as well and in some cases built larger barriers to entry for competition. LinkedIn is getting there with third party apps – it only takes one killer app to get the gold rush going.

Still not convinced? Still think it is apples vs. oranges? Facebook is by far the Big Boss of the friend-centric social network!

Fair enough, I’ll cover nest week in Part 2 why Facebook may soon be passé – one, the advent of the mobile network and two, the other F word of the Internet, which is actually a Gword = Google.

Top Facebook & Twitter Trends for 2009

We have now at the fag end of the year. You will be seeing quite a few “popular” , “top”,  “trends” kind of list in coming days through out the web. We will also be publishing some of the interesting lists that would make an interesting read for all our readers.

As we all know Twitter and Facebook have taken the world by storm (especially twitter in 2009), Millions of users have shared billions of updates through-out the year using these 2 platforms. Based on these updates both the companies have mined, collated and analyzed the data to find out most popular and trending topics for this year.

Facebook has come out with what it calls – Facebook Memology and Twitter has come out with –Top twitter trends of 2009.

Here is what was popular in 2009 on these two uber popular platforms:

Facebook Memology

Given these are updates from Facebook – “Facebook Application”  was most talked about status update. Think about how many times you must have shared update or asked your friend to join a particular Facebook Application, or even shared your triumphs and successes on a particular FB app. Farmville was one of the most popular apps that was talked about frequently in people’s status updates.

FML, which stands for “F*** my life” is now become a routine synonym which is used to display frustrations. BTW, if you have not already visited FML site, you should do it now – one of the most addictive and hilarious user generated updates you will ever read. I knew FML was popular, but never knew it was so popular that it got ranked on number 2 position.

Other status updates are very much in line with what we share generally with our friends on a platform like FB – Family, movies, sports, religion etc.

If you wondering how “Yard” figured in the list, it is because of the popularity of “Farmville” FB app. At least that’s what I think :) – is that right?

Top Twitter Trends of 2009

  (click one image to see clearly)

Among all the News events, Iran Election was the most talked about status update amongst the Twitter users. Out of top 5 keywords 4 of them were related to Iran Elections event – Gaza, Iran, Tehran and Iran Election. While Swine Flu was 2nd most talked about News event

Amongst the people, Michael Jackson’s death was most talked about in Twitterati, while singing sensation Susan Boyle came in as the second most talked about person. Adam Lambert, Kobe Bryant and Chris Brown completed the list of top 5 most talked about people on Twitter. If you are thinking about Tiger Woods, yes – he also figures on the list at number 8 !

Amongst the movies, Harry Potter was the most talked about, followed by New Moon, District 9, Paranormal Activity and Star Trek finishing the top 5 slots. I am sure “Avatar” will dominate the list for next year !

Amongst the Technology, Google Wave, Snow Leopard, Tweetdeck, Windows 7 and CESwere the most popular and frequently used words on twitter !

Please note that Facebook and Twitter are extremely popular and widely used in U.S and hence majority of the trends are related to U.S.