Social Media Ad spend on fast track!

Social Media Marketing is set to show rapid growth, according to a recently published report from Forrester. According to the report, the overall ad spend in the US alone for 2009 will touch 25 Billion USD (which is around 12% of the overall ad spend) and grow to almost 55 Billion USD (21% of overall ad spend) by 2014.

Looking at the components of the interactive ad spend projected for 2009, Search Marketing takes the lion's share with around 15Billion USD, Display Advertising is next with around 8 Billion USD, then comes email marketing with a little over 1 Billion USD, followed by Social Media at around 700 Million USD and mobile marketing at 400 Million USD.

The interesting part of the report is the forecast made for the social media spend growth. It is projected to reach a little over 3 Billion USD, with a CAGR of 34%. Compare this with the growth projected for Search Marketing, which is projected to grow at a rate of 15%.

The two important points of the report are that Search will continue to lead interactive spend followed by display advertising and that owned social media assets (like internal blogs, community sites) are really the only emerging media getting traction in today's economic climate.

OK. So where do we get these numbers for India? The surprising thing is that there is a dearth of authentic numbers and statistics that can be used. My search for this source continues.... and if there be any out there who can shed some light on this, please do so. Thanks in advance.

Blogged with the Flock Browser

As I wandered down these strange lanes....

Wandering down the dark alleyways of Cyberspace it is easy to get caught up and overwhelmed by the sheer amounts of information swirling around. A whopping percentage of which is meaningless tripe, the remaining lays claim to the interesting, the useful, the immensely boring to the wonderfully inspiring. And whatever else I forgot to mention in the previous line. Given the marvelously wet weather outside, I went wandering down such alleyways and what did I see? Of course I was reminded of the "Where have you been my blue-eyed son" line from the 'A Hard Rain's a-gonna fall' song by Bob Dylan and all the wonderful things the blue-eyed boy saw, heard and met when he had been wherever he had been. I didnt see, hear or meet any of those, but I did see, hear and meet some interesting characters.


Like this weird, wacky world of the platypus. This strange looking mammal is a rare kind and is one of five mammals that lays eggs. The males have poison sacs that hold venom for disabling foes, the females secrete milk that collects in pouches which the young lap up. It looks like a beaver with duck's feet and bill - hence also called a duck-billed platypus!


Or this one which explains why Jamaican rum is like scotch. Nice. Actually, doesnt matter if it is like scotch or not. Scotch is nice. Rum is cool. One is fine things in life. The other is life. One has got class and finesse. The other - those and a cut above! And if one is similar to the other, well so much power to them.


Then theres this huge big migration that happens every year on the plains of the Serengeti and the Masai Mara. The migration of the wilderbeest. A phenomenon like no other. Its amazing. They spend part of the year moving from the plains of the Serengeti to the Masai Mara and once having got there make the entire trip all the way back. By which time I guess it would be time to go back again. The great big wandering show!


And wow! - this fascinatingly wondefully wonderful artist whose work one can go on spending hours with. I used to have posters stuck on my walls a long time ago. Those magical loops -defying logic yet perfectly possible. The waterfall, the ever-ascending and ever-descending stairs, the lines of people - its not possible logically yet follow the loops and it all becomes one free flowing uninterrupted loop! M.C. Escher.


And rounding it off - a round of funny umbrellas! Its raining its pouring - so make the most of it and step out with one of these wonderfully innovative creations. Let your soul float up and take a look down at yourself walking around and it should brighten up the bleak day a bit. If you cant find a way to detach, dont worry, the others around you will give you enough looks to convince you that you are standing out in all that gloom.

Who will walk this path? Indian IT and Web 2.0 Strategy Consulting

Theres one question that’s been occupying my mind a lot of late. My interactions with people in the industry and the resulting responses thereof are leading me to it. And the question is this. Are the Indian IT Organizations ready to take on Web 2.0 Strategy Consulting as part of their portfolios?

My short answer to this is No. Giving it a more discussion/debate flavour I would say that I feel that the Indian Corporate sector is still very wary of using Social Media as an Internet channel for marketing, this could be the primary reason that the IT industry is reluctant to get into this area. I feel that this in itself presents a consulting business opportunity.

I have been doing a little bit of asking around and have got some feedback on this.

There is one view that that most 'IT' organisations, regardless of nationality, are very poorly equipped to provide web 2.0/social media strategy consultancy. What is required is a completely different skills set and background experience. The thought that leads from this view is that this is either missing or not being acknowledged in the industry.

There is another view which is similar with the additional input being that what is missing is the ability to think and act from the 'outside in' not just from the 'inside out'. In other words, being 'customer led' and using Marketing as a two-way conversation with your customers; a conversation with your network. Talking 'with' rather than 'at' your customers.

Another quite blunt take is that it is very tricky for a lot of organizations and that it is very difficult to teach an old dog new tricks.

What I strongly feel is that its not because of a lack of skill sets in any organization or that they are poorly equipped to handle consultancy in this area. Its more to do with a mind-set, being able to tune into the whole "relationships" and "conversations" pheonomena and be able to find ways to leverage that. Any IT organization is bound to have the skills and the ability to learn new technologies, so that cannot be an obstacle - its just opening up to the idea that there is a definite business opportunity in this area.

A suggested approach would be to have a 'new dog' working with the 'old dog', someone with a relationship/conversation mindset together with someone with strong IT skills.

We are talking about developing training programmes to try and achieve these 'hybrid' skills, say taking marketing graduates and training them in social media technologies; taking IT graduates and training them in the softer skills necessary for success in web 2.0

Do we have the vision to go down this path? Which are IT companies/Digital agencies that do offer these services at present? Are likely to try developing these “hybrid” skills in the near future?

What is your take on this?

The largest social network – email !!

Which do you think is the largest social network in the world? Take a guess. The answer from the initiated and number followers would be “Facebook”, which has upwards of 200 million active users. Well, it would surprise you to know that that answer may not entirely be correct. What is today the world’s first and largest social network is – Email !

Jeremiah Owyang, the Forrester analyst of social technologies, has a very interesting take on this.

And to be sure, email does qualify as a social network – it has profiles just as social networks (the signatures in email can serve as profiles), they allow you to connect to people and exchange information which become conversations, and of course allow you to share things and collaborate with other groups.

In terms of numbers, just hotmail and yahoo between them have upwards of 650 million active users. The other means of social communication already has made inroads into email – we get notifications of all kinds regarding activities on social media platforms in our inboxes. So email already is part of the social sphere anyways.

More and more email Vendors are foraying into the social space
by adding “Share this” (called Social Pollination) type of features to direct email marketing pieces so friends can share emails with friends in social networks.

So what does the future of Email and Social Networks look like? J. Owyang thinks that they will probably the same. In the next few years, email and social networks will look the same and he expects email vendors like Google, Yahoo Mail, Microsoft Live to envelop the social experience. If you consider Facebook’s news stream or Friendfeed, these are starting to represent simlar content from emails –there is a definite merging happening

Web 2.0: The Framework, Definitions and Technologies

Information overload results in an aching head. Which goes swimming. And battles strange hallucinatory creatures that don’t seem to go away. Is there a way around this? Maybe. But I cant think of any easy way. So embrace it and enjoy the ride.

Let me try and encapsulate information on Web 2.0, the wildly overwhelming beast that has versioned itself beyond its original presence.

The following is sourced from Web 2.0 Framework.

The Framework:

If we divide this up into 3 components: Inputs, Mechanisms and Emergent Outcomes.

The inputs would be:
1. User generated content: which would comprise of Text, Images, Videos, Interactive media, Virtual architecture.
2. Opinions: By way of links, Tagging, Ratings, Social connections
3. Applications: Web applications, widgets

Mechanisms:
1. Technologies: XML, APIs, Ajax, Ruby on Rails etc.
2. Recombination: Mashups, Remixing, Aggregation, Embedding
3. Collaborative Filtering: Ranking, Profile correlation
4. Structures: Folksonomies, Tag clouds, virtual worlds
5. Syndication: RSS

Emergent Outcomes:
1. Most interesting gets most visibility
2. Personalized recommendations
3. Meaningful communities
4. Relevant content that could be easily found
5. Enhanced usability
6. collective intelligence


The Characteristics:

What essentially characterizes Web 2.0 is that it is driven by participation. If you consider the common platforms like blogging, social networks, video and photo sharing sites, you will see that they all exist due to the content that they offer that has been created and shared by the users. Standards play a big part in providing common interfaces for accessing content and applications and this makes for easy integration across various platforms. The applications and content is decentralized. Web 2.0 is decentralized in its architecture, participation, and usage. Distributing applications and content over many computers and systems, rather than maintaining them on centralized systems gives it the power and flexibility that would have been lost if they were to be confined to a single monolithic architecture. The openness and modularity of Web 2.0 contributes to creating a whole that is larger than the sum of its parts. The control that users have over the content they create and share and the ability to create and manage individual identities is a crucial part of the Web 2.0 ecosystem.

The Technologies:

Aggregation which is bringing multiple content sources together into one interface or application.

AJAX: (Asynchronous Javascript and XML) This is a combination of technologies that
enables highly interactive web applications.

API: (Application Programming Interface) This is a defined interface to a computer
application or database that allows access by other applications.

Embedding: Integrating content or an application into a web page, while the
original format is maintained.

Folksonomy: Rich categorization of information that is collectively created by users, through tagging and other actions.

Mashups: Combination of diff erent types of content or data, usually from diff erent sources, to create something new.

Remixing: Extracting and combining samples of content to create a new output. The term was originally used in music but is now also applied to video and other content.

RSS: (Really Simple Syndication) A group of formats to publish (syndicate) content on the internet so that users or applications automatically receive any updates.

Ruby on Rails: An open source web application framework that is frequently used in Web 2.0 website development.

Tag cloud: A visual depiction of tags that have been used to describe a piece of content, with higher frequency tags emphasized to assist content comprehension and navigation.

Tagging: Attaching descriptions to information or content.

Virtual architecture: The creation of avatars (alternative representations of people), buildings, objects, and other artefacts inside virtual spaces.

Widget: Small, portable web application that can be embedded into any web page.

XML: (eXtensible Markup Language) An open standard for describing data, which enables easy exchange of information between applications and organizations

Here comes the rain !!

Once, when I expressed a complete lack of enthusiasm for the first rains that poured down on our heads, a friend had told me that I had no soul. How could you not like the rains - that getting wet in the first shower, that stomping around in the squelchy mud, that splattering of amounts of rain water mixed with what else etc. etc... how could I not like it...? Sad shake of head indicating that a soul challenged soul like me had a bleak future..(as bleak as the surroundings I had muttered to myself then). Well, its simply that... the onset of the monsoon does not exactly send me into raptures cartwheeling with joy through the wading pools forming on every street corner. So that makes me one against the rest of the world. OK. Dont get me wrong, I understand the importance of the need for the timely appearance of said rains. I understand the dire consequences that could follow if they decided to take a vacation on a whim. The absolute threat to the continued existence of man on this planet. And so I convince myself that this is the way that nature intended things to be - and so for the next few months, like I have been doing all these years, I will just put up with the rains, the mud, the squelch, the filth, the traffic jams, the wading pools and all.

Divine Manifestations