e Magus

Experts have been talking about how technology is innovated based on human behaviour, and the cultural behaviour of the people…. But this is no one way street. The use of technology is changing the human behaviour too. Remember the days of POTS (Plain Old Telephone Systems)…where in you had to actually rotate and dial a number…(I can still remember the kit-kit.kit…tone you get to hear when you release the wheel).. I’m sure like everyone else you would have been using the index finger to dial the number. In case you don’t belong to the POTS generation, ask your parents about the big black telephone covered with the white cloth placed in the corner of a living room…with the bulky telephone directory under it. It was an era when the index finger ruled. Then came the push-button dial pad telephones….It was usually gifted to you by your rich uncle or cousin coming from ‘Gulf’ on their annual holidays. The late 80’s saw the govt. owned company Bharat Electronics producing the same for mass m...

A few weeks back, I was working on a proposal for marketing of an e-commerce portal. One look at the stats showed that the e-tailing in India never took off. While categories like travel (led by IRCTC, and the OTAs) and Hotel bookings has taken of in a big way…it has been a dismal performance, when it comes to e-tailing. e-tailing can be defined as a business to consumer transaction through direct sale of limited quantity of goods or services.. The industry experts have been talking about the rise of e-commerce in India, but what is being missed out is that most of these e-com transactions are done on the B2B space. The data shows that the B2C industry size of ecommerce in India is around INR 11,000 crores*. About 80%* of the B2C e-com transaction is from the Online Travel Industry, followed by online classifieds The e-tailing pie is only about 9%*. While the numbers and growth might be encouraging, it is nothing great to make a big noise about (* Guesstimates by classical extrapolati...

An interesting news article that came out a few weeks back has got me thinking…. Facebook has overtaken Google to become the most popular website in the United States for the first time, according to new data from Hitwise, which measures Internet traffic. For the week ending March 13, the social networking juggernaut registered 7.07% market share, beating the search giant's 7.03% market share. See full article from DailyFinance: http://srph.it/8XVAKZ What got me thinking was how could Facebook in such a short span of time overtake Google -the default destination for millions of internet users globally? The data shows dramatic rise of Facebook- this can be attributed to the fact that people are spending more time on the net socializing, and an average user visits more pages on Facebook (not sure though if the Facebook Chat window refreshes are counted as part of the Hitwise data as the chart shows a phenomenal increase since April 2009). On a different note, a person usually visits ...

I saw this new stuff that Google Labs is working on… FollowFinder it made me curious to know what exactly does this feature do, and how will it help the users and also how will it help Google as a company. Followfinder is basically a search engine that will help you find people (nay, tweeps) and expand your twitter network. While I’m not sure why would people go to a Google feature to search for Tweeps, while I have this function on Twitter page… in terms of finding people. In fact looking at the growth of twitter access through mobile apps (I guess in the last count it was close to 45%) Google is looking at only half the twitter user universe through this feature… Another reason and I find this most stupid is the fact that if I am following say 2 publication tweets…what inference makes Google believe that I might be interested in other publication tweets too.. I mean, I do not subscribe to all the newspapers or magazines.. I stick to 1 or 2… and I’m sure most people also would be hap...

2010 has started off with a lot of promise when it comes to digital marketing. I have seen a sea shift in terms of the clients pro-actively seeking digital marketing ideas and solutions from the agencies. Some reasons for the same could be: - The user base of internet has grown to an extent, it can be called as a mass media. Reports say that the Internet users in the country is over 71 Million - The traditional news mediums (TV and Print) are quoting from twitters and blogs that has increased the awareness of these platforms. Quotes (nay tweets) from popular personalities (nay tweeps) are the source of information and content for many of the newspapers and TV channels… What iamsrk is saying, or the recent tweets from iplt20 (Lalit Modi) and shashitharoor has made twitter a household name.. - A phenomenon called Facebook has spread like a pandemic. In today’s world – People have started taking up professions which most will never plan to do in their real life – Farming, Cooking, Mob…et...

3 incidents. 3 clients. Same condition. Client #1 had to get a website done… their campaign was about to launch in 1 weeks time and they haven’t decided on what their website should contain and how it would look. Now they wanted a website FAST. Client #2 wants to do an online advertising… a lead generation campaign… The creative haven’t been cracked; the landing page not yet ready; and the database (lead capturing) haven’t been thought about. But they wanted to go live FAST. Client #3 just got an approval for doing some social media marketing. They want to do ‘something’ in SM space… why, what and how…they are not sure of… But they want to create a Facebook page, and they want it FAST. When it comes to Digital Marketing every client wants things done FAST. I’m curious to know who had sold the idea to the world that every thing about Digital Marketing is FAST. Looking back at my own experience, I realize that during the early days of internet marketing… there was resource time available...

A few days back I was reading an article on how the titles of the IPL franchisees are basis words related to royalty – Kings (2), Royals, Knights, and Chargers - Words from the medieval world. The more I think about the co-incidence of the titles to royalty, I realize that the similarity to royalty is more than just in the name The IPL setup: A typical ‘empire’ style model…. With BCCI as the head of the empire, and the franchisees as the ‘jagirs’…. Every jagirdar (franchisee owner) has to pay a standard sum to the emperor every year… whether they make that much money or not… Each Franchisee has its own flag; and war cry… similar to the medieval times… where the kings had their own flag and the army rallied around it…. Like the kings and their ministers… you have the business/entertainment Czars with their Durbar sitting in the Franchisee enclosures watching the matches… The kings also are seen showing off their spoils (especially the trophies from the fairer sex)….and as in the King’s ...