e Magus

Today is the age of personal media ownership. According to a recent news release from Twitter (http://blog.twitter.com/2011/03/numbers.html) on an average around 4 Billion tweets are sent out every month. From individual point of views, re-tweets, status updates, what’s happening?, and direct messages….Twitter has become the favourite platform for self-expression for many Every Twitter account can be measured on the following parameters – Popularity – The number of people following a twitter profile Pursuit – The number of people whom a twitter profile is following..either for information or interaction Publishing – The volume of tweets (original) and re-tweets being done by the profile Basis the above 3 P’s mentioned, we can organize the twitter users into different groups…and each group fit into the classical Archetype. The Twitter grouping: On the X- axis is broadly the values of Popularity/Pursuit (for ease of grouping have grouped into 3 categories – less than 1, equal to 1, and...

  The corruption and con-stories related to Telecom sector in India is not just related to the higher levels and during the time of license and spectrum allocation… It is everywhere in the system right from the business practices to customer service, to sundry services offered by hole-in-the-wall business, and including the customer themselves… the 3 recent experiences that make me say so… Con story #1: I've been trying to get my enterprise email service activated on my blackberry. It has been about 1.5 years of futile exercise of follow-up with the Vodafone and Matrix customer services… Long discussions on the phone, boot – reboot, change password, set password, etc has been of no use… Now-a-days the customer service people when contacted over email/social media are asking me to call them… rather than other way round… the end result after such long wait and innumerable follow-ups I still do not have my enterprise email service active Con story #2: My Blackberry (Storm) display w...

Well, after long delay and many missed deadlines mobile number portability (MNP) has come to effect. It is almost 2 months since MNP is in effect and there has been some traction in terms of people shifting from one service provider to another. Some of the obvious impact of Mobile Number Portability are: - The customer service and network offering would become better; - Parity on the cost / packages On other hand, I think there could be far more subtle impact on the current mobile marketing environment. 5 changes that i foresee are:- - There could be increase in network locked phone schemes (Handset + Connection)...where-in high end phones are offered for lower prices - Increased Value added services. Companies would offer access to exclusive content so as to keep the customer engaged with content and thus create higher exit barrier - Annual subscription packages, in form of widgets and data which would get discontinued when people shift the service provider - Common denominators acro...

Couple of things that happened recently, made me think… Has the growth of technology (esp. Internet) actually diminished the value of information? 2 reasons that got me thinking were - 1) I was planning to make a Goan dish – Vindaloo... I logged on to the Internet to check the recipe. I read it, used it to make the dish. All throughout, I never made an effort to remember the recipe and process of making it…One reason could be - In case I need the same information in the future, I could get it at the click of a button… 2) In the past few weeks… the (scam) news sequence could be summed up as follows – IPL scam>CWG scam>2G scam>Adarsh>Media Tapes. While each of the news is important in terms of the freshness and context…the value we attach to the previous incident diminishes drastically with each passing day. The News today has a short shelf life About 20 years back, (access to) information was scarce. The only known and popular sources of information were – the books, Newspap...

Ok. I know it is a very uncomfortable question, especially in emerging markets where Internet advertising is just about finding its place, and is also one of the fastest growing - in terms of advertising revenue growth. It becomes all the more uncomfortable when you are talking about it online :) Some weeks back, I overheard someone say that compared to other traditional mediums of advertising Online Advertising as a medium need not to be considered seriously (at-least for now). India, for example, still is a market driven by TVC and Print ads. True? True, but partially True, because most of the online advertising is limited to online banners (a replication of the mainline creative/message) with a campaign website that is informative in nature. True, because in most ad agencies, the creative think about the message in terms of TVC, Print, Radio, etc…. and then decide to do something ‘cool’ in the online space. “Let’s have something cool on Facebook” is the latest mantra. True again, be...

The online would have enough and more dope on Brand Positioning; So, I'd not go into the detailing of what is positioning, and how it can be achieved? I will also not talk about the Importance of Positioning but would try and give some examples of some brand names you are familiar with and interact on day to day basis in the online space. Couple of days back, I was talking to a brand manager who was mentioning how the online platforms are only best suited for tactical purposes. He went onto mention that maybe in future "positioning" would not be a marketing focus, and "being tactical" would be the marketing strategy of the day. I argued, on the importance of positioning, and had taken couple of examples from the Internet space and said if online companies are focusing on positioning, then 'positioning' is and will be crucial aspect of marketing. While there is a grain of truth in saying that in future "being tactical" would be important…since n...

I've never tried this feature before… one reason could be that I'm not an avid blogger and hence the reason for me to use Desktop applications to blog never occurred. I'm of the belief that communication through technology is not more of context but of accessibility. I would have never thought about publishing my random thoughts for others to read had there been no Internet. Leave alone publish; I would not have even maintained a personal diary. A reason why the twitter population is increasing day by day could be because of the accessibility to micro-blogging through mobile phones… Under the above presumption, I've decided to use a desktop application and write down my random thoughts as they come along. And since I have access to the MS Word feature anytime… maybe…maybe I would then begin to blog regularly J So far, the feature looks cool… except for the fact, I still haven't got to know how to insert pictures and to create labels. I'm sure these features ...