January 2010
27 posts
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Apple cracking Social Media
I’ve never been much of an Apple fan.
I don’t have a Mac Book and don’t intend on having one till I start my own co. (The Mac Book is the perfect companion on a sales pitch.)
I never harboured the thoughts of getting an iPod, till someone graciously gifted me one of those tiny shuffles - which of course I rarely use.
The iPhone is something which did tickle my fancy…but...
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LetsCrack.com - Episode 5 →
Stuff discussed in this episode:
Google.co.in celebrates India’s 60th Republic Day (screen shot of logo below)
Google Nexus One vs. Apple iPhone We squabble about which one is better (iPhone duh). Did you know that Apple patented multi-touch, so the Nexus’ default apps can’t have multi-touch.
Trippy Tetris Game Try it out!
IPL 2010 matches will be live-streaming on YouTube – History &...
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Dhongibaba Ki Bhavishyavani
Sometime back I saw someone on my FB timeline publish a bhavishyavani from Dhongibaba! Finally on 15th January I checked out the application.
It had around 90K MAU (Monthly Active Users) at that time. Its just been another 5 days and the application has managed to more than just double its numbers! Its at 213K+ active users as of now.
Nice to see a desi app get such figures. I’ve worked...
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How Politicians are Fucking our Country up.
A friend of mine: Born in Pune. 3rd Generation Doctor and now pursuing an MD in Pune. Speaks fluent Marathi and loves Mahrashtra. Voted for MNS in both the State and Union elections. Last Sunday he’d gone to Sinhagad Fort on a drive with a rather attractive girl. No they were not dating but who knows they could have soon been.
They were walking up the fort when a group of rowdy men...
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Some gyaan on Valuations
Was reading an article on WSJ - How should I value my company? (Questions for Alok Mittal)
There is a particular comment in the thread by Mahesh Murthy and he puts forth some really valid points.
1. A valuation is determined by the amount written on the cheque on the table - when banked and cleared. That’s it. There is no science to it, no “fair” valuation, no consultants, no nothing. It’s all...
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Advertising within Social Games
About time we saw an advertising campaign integrated into one of those immensely popular social games on Facebook.
Public Enemies used Mafia Wars to promote their DVD release.
What’d they do? An entire loot event.
You can get the details of that HERE.
Cool stuff eh? Well now here’s an excerpt from the PR note which talks about KPI’s of this campaign…
The campaign...
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Gangster City!
Playfish’s latest release in the social gaming sphere is Gangster City!
In short this a Flash execution of the classic mafia (Read: Zynga’s Mafia Wars) game. Though this game takes a role-playing social game to dizzying heights of quality in terms of execution.
It has around 500 active users by now, but I expect this number to hit at least 5 million by the first week of February.
In...
Conversations about Facebook →
I had this link open on my browser since last week and finally managed to find some time to read it. Worth a read!
Highlights:
Tracking of clicks - user behaviour and best friends mapping.
200+ million active users
The ever changing privacy policy.
Each image is stored in 6 variations / versions.
4 data centers around the world - Santa Clara, SF, NY, London
Largest photo distributor in the...
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Bhabhi!
A year back when I was working at my previous company, we decided to spoof Savita Bhabhi on April Fool’s Day.
Why? Well Savita Bhabhi happened to be India’s online queen! Well she managed to get herself banned in India and has now found refuge in France!
Why am I writing this post? Well a friend asked me to google ‘bhabhi’ on Google India and asked me to check the first...
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Chance Pe Dance
A mediocre movie to say the least. Your life will definitely not change its course if you see this or manage to miss it.
But if you think about it… There is this deep-seated message in the movie which says - Bollywood is like a closed network. More like a large family run business and the only way you can get in is by either getting lucky (i.e. win a talent show) or by getting lucky with...
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Endurance Biking!
So I biked down to Pune all bandaged up on Saturday morning only to discover that I’ve actually got a crack in one of the carpals in my wrist! And everyone was shouting at me for biking in this condition!
Well got the bike repaired and actually biked back too :-)
Long bike rides are awesome. They give you time to actually think and chalk out stuff. I’ve actually seen myself mature...
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LetsCrack.com - Episode 4 →
Just uploaded the 4th episode of LetsCrack.
In this episode we talk about:
Live Blogging and coverage of events.
Girls update their bra colours on Facebook to promote Breast Cancer Awareness.
Terrorists use Social Networks for communication purposes.
Google in China
ROI on Social Media
Pepsi and Coke campaigns on Social Media Accurate ROI on Online Campaigns in India?
What is more...
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Interesting developments in Google China →
Google have posted this on their official blog…
We have decided we are no longer willing to continue censoring our results on Google.cn, and so over the next few weeks we will be discussing with the Chinese government the basis on which we could operate an unfiltered search engine within the law, if at all. We recognize that this may well mean having to shut down Google.cn, and potentially...
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Google Chrome - Default Search
I really like the fact that Chrome asks you whether you want to continue with Google as the default search engine in the process of installation.
I mean we all know that Google is the most preferred Search Engine but I just like their arrogance that they actually give you the option to change your default search engine. I bet except for Yahoo and MS employees, no one changes it!
I hate the fact...
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Bike Crash!
The only time I prefer cars over bikes is when I’ve just had a bike crash!
Managed to have a bike crash 2 days back. Stupid gujju party boy first parked in a No Parking Zone and opens his door and gets out of the car like his grandfather owns Bandra. Tried to avoid him…ended up skidding and crashing.
Yet to assess the damage done to the bike since it is at a friends place. I think...
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Online Shopping in India
There are broadly 2 forms of buyers in the India digital scene:
The Evolved Buyer This chap has absolutely no sense of site-loyalty. He’ll scan all over the web for the best deal. If you are running an online shopping site and you offer an 8GB Pen Drive for Rs 850 and there is another site which is selling it at Rs 820…be rest assured 80% of the evolved buyers will find the other...
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Why is Mobile Gaming Fkd in India?
A couple of days back I tweeted ‘Mobile gaming is so fkd in our country’. Someone asked me why?
Here are some reasons:
Tata and Reliance charge you 2.5 Lakhs / month to host a game on their networks.
Vodafone and Airtel won’t host a free game on-deck so you have to take the off-deck route.
Now imagine you take the off-deck route and have a very successful cricket game and its...
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Why does a Brand Manager want his Brand on Social...
As a Social Media agency or someone who is selling Social Media you need to know the main reasons why a Brand Manager wants to be on Social Media (at least in India as of January, 2010)…
Because everyone is talking about Facebook, Twitter, Orkut etc. Celebs are blogging, Politicians are tweeting, Terrorists are using Orkut. People can’t stop talking about Facebook.
His competitors...
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Facebook Viral - Breast Cancer Awareness
This is pretty cool and the viral is peaking as I’m writing this.
Was suddenly noticing a lot of ‘colour’ status updates from the fairer sex on Facebook. Found out a minute later that…
The womenfolk on Facebook are putting up their bra colours as status messages for Breast Cancer Awareness.
And its spreading!
I can see black, white, red, blue, nothing (lol), peach,...
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Social Media Measurement = Brand Measurement
Mentioned the Pepsi Social Media campaign a couple of days back…
So how is Pepsi going to measure the success of this $20 million expenditure?
Here is an excerpt from a post on Forrester’s Blog:
Do you think Pepsi is going to measure the effectiveness of this program merely by how many fans or page views they get? They may count retweets, but what are the chances the $20M...
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Virat Kohli
There have been a couple of Indian cricketers whom I’ve watched in their first games and have wanted them to do well.
The list till date has been: Dravid, Kaif, Gambhir and Kohli.
While Dravid has pretty much become a legend and Gambhir is on his way to becoming one, its been sad to see Kaif simply wither away. It will be interesting to see if Kohli can survive in the higly competitive...
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Pepsi and Coke on Social Media
Pepsi to spend big on Social Media:
This year for the first time in 23 years, Pepsi will not have ads in the Super Bowl telecast. Instead it is redirecting the millions it has spent annually to the Internet. Pepsi has chosen to give away over $20 million in a social media play it is calling The Pepsi Refresh Project, debuting in 2010.
Meanwhile Coke is doing this fantastic project via which 3...
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The Petville Update
A month back I’d put up a prediction on this post ‘Social Gaming War! Zynga vs Playfish’
The prediction was:
PetSociety currently has 21.4 million users.
By January 5, 2010 - I expect PetSociety to be around 23 million and Zynga’s PetVille to be at 23 million + active users.
So as of 5th January:
PetSociety: 21,013,931 (So they’ve actually fallen) PetVille:...
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A 360 degree Marketing plan culminating on the Web
Well I’ve mentioned this already in a dozen episodes and the 3 epsiodes of LetsCrack (Wait, I think we decided to re-record episode 3 since it sucked. So well, the first 2 episodes of LetsCrack) that 5 years down the line every campaign in this world will have digital/web at its core.
So was working/ideating on this 360 degree campaign where I realised a problem which will have to be sorted...
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Happy New Year!
Tried using Tumblr on my phone yesterday via Opera Mini and it didn’t work so fine. Apparently they don’t have m.tumblr.com and do they have a tumblr.com/mobile? Cos’ it didn’t seem to work! I think its more of an Opera Mini problem cos’ a friend said one could access a mobile version of tumblr on a normal phone browser?
Wait let me check if thats true on the default...