Hell freezes over. Etisalat gets onto Twitter and Facebook. We think. [Updated]

Posted by Bhavishya Kanjhan on Apr 12, 2010 in Default | 0 comments

Anyone who has spent time in the UAE knows its leading telco Etisalat isn’t the most forward or  consumer-centric type of company.
Infamous for overcharging and underdelivering, Etisalat hasn’t quite been the case study in Customer service either. That’s why when a company whose public ‘relations’ strategy to most crises is to stay silent gets on to Social Media platforms, one can’t help rub their eyes in disbelief. And then some more.

A World with Location enabled Facebook

Posted by Bhavishya Kanjhan on Apr 10, 2010 in Default | 2 comments

Geo Social Networking and Location based services and applications are all the buzz these days. Not only do we have applications like FourSquare and Gowalla and the many others battling it out for the top spot in this category, Twitter and Firefox also enabled the ability to determine the location of a user. The future of Social Networking has started to look increasingly ‘local’. But what is the biggest social player doing about it?

Facebook, right now, doesn’t have any location features but there has been an increase in chatter about it unveiling something at it’s developer conference – F8 – that takes place at the end of April.

So what can a world with a location enabled Facebook look like?

The idea of ‘Relevant’ Social networks

Posted by Bhavishya Kanjhan on Apr 2, 2010 in Default | 0 comments

Geo-Networking as the next step in Social Networks

Posted by Bhavishya Kanjhan on Mar 29, 2010 in Default | 1 comment

I discuss Geo-Networking, Location Based Networking and FourSquare in an Opinion Piece in Emirates Business 24/7

“…’social’ networks were making us anything but social, at least in the traditional definition of the word. However, the advent of geo-networking or location-based networking looks to change that with services that let users interact based on their physical location at a given time.”

Read the entire article on the Emirates Business 24/7 website

Yet another post on Twitter: Fad v/s Revolution

Posted by Bhavishya Kanjhan on Jul 23, 2009 in Default | 2 comments

You don’t need to look far to find critics of Twitter. There’s as many opponents of the service as there are proponents. The former argue that Twitter is just a ‘fad’. An April 2009 report by Nielsen online says that Twitter has a retention rate of less than 40%, which means more than 60% of the users who sign up and try the service do not become regular users of it. So it may be. But the debate on whether Twitter is a ‘Revolution’ or not will last for some more time.

Let’s change tracks and look at something that was a revolution, Napster, which I doubt I need to give you the history of. Napster brought a revolution in the music industry, changing forever the way people acquired and consumed music. While Napster (in its original form) may now be defunct, the spirit behind is still alive, in the various copycat software that followed it, in the technology that was – in part – inspired by it (Bittorrent) , but most importantly in the attitude and behaviour of the people today. A report by Morgan Stanley’s, now hotshot, teen intern says teens are “very reluctant” to pay for music and spend more time streaming it off websites. But the more important change was in the way we acquire music. Music purchased these days is now accessible everywhere on and on each of the multiple devices a user owns. Unlike in the past where a buyer would pay full price for a crappy album with one acceptable track, he can now choose to purchase just that one track and he now has a playlist full of hits. iTunes is the biggest music store in the world today, having beat all other brick and mortar music stores, distributing DRM free music in a similar manner to what Napster did; digitally.

The point I’m desperately trying to make is it doesn’t matter if Twitter, or for that matter any of the other popular Social Networking Sites, die out in a few years. The web has seen its social meter rise through the years – first with forums, then reviews, ratings, wiki, social websites etc – and will certainly continue on that trend. The people (and businesses) that are social today, will continue to be social then. Brands that did not directly engage their consumers till yesterday, are doing so today and will do so tomorrow. Companies that didn’t see social websites as a source of revenue/lead generation till yesterday, are doing so today and will do so tomorrow. Researchers who did not see the social interaction as a source of first hand knowledge till yesterday, are doing so today and will do so tomorrow. The one to one and one to many channels of communication that we’ll now be used will become an important element of an individual/businesses’ communication strategy.

All the activities I mentioned above will continue even in the absence of Twitter, albeit on a newer and more evolved platform. After all, Facebook and Twitter are also evolutionary products of others (and themselves) before them. So maybe it’s okay if Twitter isn’t a revolution because it’s evolution into the product it is today has brought to center the importance of the Social element of the web which will persist when/if Twitter is superseded by something newer.

Image Credit : Tegan

Tags: evolution, facebook, revolution, social networks, twitter
Read More