I came across several instances in the recent times, where social networks and blogs are being used as a tool by dissonant voices. With press and television, the ability to publish literature was limited. With social networks, it has gone a step further in giving a very dynamic and volatile space to publish. It threatens to destabilize the status quo.

The angst of the discontent youth in Egypt is visible in their feeds on various social networking platforms. Trendrr, the social media measurement tool, shows that when on Friday internet was restored in Egypt, there was a huge spike on Twitter. According to an article in Adage day before yesterday, even when internet was down, tweets on Egypt had not entirely died down. People from outside Egypt displayed solidarity in the cause.

In the past 24 hours, according to Trendrr, the term ‘Egypt’ (including the hashtag ‘#egypt’) has been mentioned on an average of 15,000 tweets an hour, with a peak of 30,123 posts in the hour that embattled President Hosni Mubarak gave his big speech. During the past seven days, there have been an average of 250,000 Egypt-mentioning posts a day, with a one-day peak of 574,765 tweets on Friday alone. Keep in mind that that’s just for English-language tweets that explicitly include ‘Egypt’ or ‘#egypt.’

Early Friday ‘Tunisia’ was trending in San Francisco with thousands of tweets about the protests. The real-time relay on Twitter amplifies the human experience by providing it a momentum. Just to read through the messages, makes the experience – touch and feel. On the other hand, positive changes in Tunisia have emboldened revolutionary spirits, across the globe. The protests in Jordan are a consequence of the anti-government unrest in Tunisia, Egypt, and Yemen. More than 3000 videos on Youtube have been tagged with ‘Sidi Bouzid’ (city where protests have culminated).

The knowledge and information goes beyond the precincts of the point of incidence, to reach the outside world. The nature of information ranges from propaganda to reportage or what can be termed as citizen journalism. Social media has become the battleground between the government and natives.

The threat has spread beyond Egypt and Tunisia and is finding meaning and consequence elsewhere as well. According to a story in The Indian Express, the Army is beginning to get anxious about the social networking sites being used by ‘anti-national elements’ to agitate against security forces in the Kashmir valley.

The uprisings in the middle-east has re-instated the power of  media as the watchdog. Please share your thoughts.

The latest news doing rounds in the industry is that Aircel announced a tie-up with Facebook, which allows users to update their status by simply recording their voice over phone. This allows users to update their status messages on Facebook, without having to use internet (Refer to the press release for more).

View the demonstration for more clarity.

Markets like India have a fairly low smart-phone adoption. Statistics taken from Neilsen’s whitepaper ‘Mobile Youth Around the World’ reflect that India tends to skew feature phone with 90% penetration, while smart-phone adoption lingers at a meager 10%.

However, this is not entirely a novel phenomenon and mobile social networks like Bubble motion have endeavoured to bring these services to people long time back. Bubble motion calls itself ‘Twitter with voice’. It allows users to get voice messages from people they follow. The technology of ‘voice SMS’ dates back to as early as 2002. Bubbly had gained traction in India owing to the fact that they had signed on many celebrities to broadcast their messages to the followers.

SpinVox, another speech recognition service, launched a few years back, gripped the European markets. It converts voice to text and allowed users to send updates on networks like Twitter, Facebook and Jaiku.

There have been several applications available in the market, like the Vlingo iPhone app which has speech recognition with intelligence to listen in to conversations and translate them into plain text. Mobile podcasting apps like Cinch allow people to record and transmit messages on Twitter/ Facebook  and other social networks.

However, services like Bubbly and Aircel allow users to update messages without having to download any external application or without having to subscribe to GPRS, which is a deal-breaker for a lot of users in India.

We will keep you posted on more news over Voice updates. Do let us know your know thoughts.

1. Seamless integration
2. Informal
3. Immediate
4. Personal
5. Simple
6. Minimal
7. Short messages

Is email becoming history?

Generation today considers emailing cumbersome. Emailing consists of a laborious subject line, greetings and regards. We all know from experience, that typing an appropriate subject line and formal greetings are quite a task. One line mails are becoming more of a norm. No one waits to open their personal computers to answer mails. Instant messaging and replying mails on the go is the trend. It is not uncommon to see people closing business deals over messages. Facebook messaging includes no cc, bcc or a subject line.

Under such circumstances, the modern messaging system can be a breather. But one cannot conclusively say that it will it replace the old emailing system.

Addressing the question, Mark Zukerberg said,

“This is not an email killer. This is a messaging experience that includes email as one part of it… It’s not e-mail.”

It is a combination of e-mail, instant messaging (IM) and short-messaging-service (SMS). The modern messaging system is an attempt at marrying text and email.

The social inbox

The social inbox aggregates all messages from your friend in one single place. The messages are not arranged according to the subject line. They are arranged basis the names of your friends. Privacy settings disallow receiving messages from those not categorized as “friends”. One can create a “do not email list”. It filters the messages that you want to see.

“Every row is a conversation with somebody I care about…the problem with e-mail or phone number is once it’s given out, it’s “lost” — you can’t control who sends you messages at that point.”

The video summarises the behaviour of the ‘social inbox’

Stay keyed in for more development and insights.

In a press release shared by Webchutney, they revealed that the survey results indicate that with 76% of existing durable owners online harboring intent to purchase another durable good, their demand remains strong across all product categories.

85% durable intenders online prefer internet over all other information sources for durables’ research, indicating a marked shift in the traditionally popular referral model of influencing purchase decisions.

The report highlights a large chunk of consumers who share durables’ related views, opinions and experiences across a cross section of online platforms including consumer review websites, blogs, social networking websites and company websites.  Internet’s potent ability to offer in-depth, incisive and easy access to information from multiple sources, has given rise to a new consumer-to-consumer model of information dissemination, vastly influencing their choices for durable brands.

Speaking on the release, Sidharth Rao, CEO and Co-Founder, Webchutney, says

“Internet access and use is no longer a privilege of the elite or limited to research in the academia alone. Today an average Indian is actively using it to compare one TV brand against another to ensure greater value for money and make an informed purchase decision. ‘Inside The Mind of the Wired Consumer Durables’ Buyer’ captures this tectonic shift in consumer behavior and aims to make marketers realize that as competition in the category increases, the range and scale of their executions must move beyond traditional media, particularly, to pursue today’s immensely mobile and innately evolving consumers.”

Stay tuned in for a detailed overview.

For more information, the report is freely available for download at:

Scribd: http://www.scribd.com/doc/40811091/Webchutney-Digital-Consumer-Durables-Report-2010

Informate

In a press release by Rocketalk, they claims to have reached upto 7.8 percent Indians on mobile, gaining highest reach in the mobile social networking segment. Rocketalk receives over 350 million page views per month. The company registered 3.2 million Indian users to its network. It is followed by Orkut and is way ahead of Facebook and Twitter.  The report has come out at  a very interesting time when Airtel has announced that only 21% of mobile internet usage on its network comes from metros, where both  Facebook and Twitter are popular.

Qwerty and non-qwerty phones exhibit different social networking trends, according to the report. Top five social networking sites on qwerty phones  are Facebook and Orkut with a reach of 38.3%  and 20.8% respectively. Twitter, Cellufun and Mygamma lag behind with tardy figures. In the non-qwerty phones segment, Orkut leads, followed by Facebook.

Social networking apps show a steep rise after February 2010. The graphic below captures a six month trend. Penetration of social networking apps has increased by 16%.

Research report is available on smartmobi.

ViziSense

Tug of war between Facebook vs Orkut – top three trends

1. It is not unknown Facebook has seen an exponential growth that set all the eye-balls rolling. It has grown two fold over the past seven months.The new study reveals that Facebook has the highest reach and approximately 2.21 crore people accessed Facebook in July 2010. Orkut followed suit with 1.85 crore users. Together Orkut and Facebook forms 90% of the social media populace.  Rest of the players are at a lagging distance. Ibibo stands at the third position with 35.6 lakh users and has been increasing losing customers to other networks. It is not surprising to see Twitter make a fast leap to become the fourth most popular site.
2. There has been a significant change in the photosharing and video sharing behaviour of the users. Even professional photographers, who used photo sharing sites like Flickr, have shown a shift towards the social networking sites. According to the report, ‘Home page’, ‘Applications’ and ‘Photos’ comes across as the most visited features on Facebook while on Orkut  ‘Home Page’, ‘Scraps’ and ‘Photos’ were the most visited features.
3. More than 90% of users visiting social media sites visit Orkut and Facebook. 50-60% users on Facebook and Orkut visit both sites. Moving ahead, we expect this number to fall in favor of Facebook as users find their complete circle of friends on a single, more dominant network. Other networks in comparison have around 90% of their users on Facebook and Orkut.

Top three trends amongst various age brackets

1. Highest number of users range between 15-24 years of age with the exception of Linkedin, which because of its inherent nature, has a higher number of users within the age bracket 25-34.
2. Social networks being primarily driven by the youth, have maximum number of users in the less than 2 lakhs income category
3. Since majority LinkedIn users are in their middle ages, they earn an income above 5 lakhs. Other sites in comparison have 20-25% of their users earning over 5 lakhs.

Impact of education on the use of social networks

Graduates and those pursuing graduation seem to the most ardent followers of the social networks, which explains the huge segment of users between the ages 18-24.

Top three trends in the activity levels

1. Activity steps up post noon, spiking between 6 – 10 p.m.
2. The age group 25-35, increases its usage of social networks around 3 p.m. which clearly indicates that working professionals mostly begin to ease out at the workplace. Users in the 15-24 age bracket are most active between 7 to 9 pm, which shows that they are using home computers more than the mobile, as popularly believed.
3. Encouraging news is that, more than 50% users return to the social networking portals more than once a day. The frequency of usage seems have to gone up, with Facebook showing the most amount of loyalty amongst users with more than three visits on a single day.

“Facebook is the most engaging site with the highest time spent by users as well as the highest incidence of users who return to the site on the same day.”

Applications

The application economy shows a lot of promise. The following summary gives you a peek into the key insights -

1. Taking Facebook as a case in point, applications show rampant usage, when compared to other commonly used features like photos and home page.
2. Demographically, boys between the ages 15-24 spend 52% of their time on Facebook applications.  However, the overall  share for this age bracket on Facebook, is just over 40% which is an encouraging news for small business with budget constraints. Application developers should get a hint where to invest their monies.
3. FarmVille, Mafia Wars, Café World and RYBirthday rule the roost on Facebook, with both men and women playing FarmVille the most.  RYBirthday is used most by the 45+ age group.

“Interestingly, women have shown a huge liking and following of the Café World application contributing to a substantial 37% usage of this application.”

This study serves as an important pool of information for marketing managers to understand women better (Jan to April 2010). It provides significant insight into their online behaviour which will also be an important tool for social media marketers. The report tries to capture the demographic attributes such as age, occupation and geography while analysing women’s behaviour across top categories. Encouraging news is, that out of the 5 crore active Indian internet universe, 22% are women.

The top three online activities for Indian women are social networking, email and search. However, social networking interestingly gets higher page views than e-mail, indicating more engagement and online conversations.

Unique users in millions

Social networking

• Women tend to be active on social networks across all times in the day but activity levels peak at 9:00 p.m.Social Networking sites witness a high usage from women between the ages of 15 – 24 years.
• Different education profiles make a significant impact on social networking.  Graduates are use social networking sites more(most Page Views consumed by this profile).
• There was a variation recorded over the usage patterns across the geography. Online usage is skewed in the ratio of 61% in favour of South Indian women, however, when it comes to social networking, their counterparts in North India are way more active.In fact, it was seen that out of the total unique users of social networking, 55% belong to North India and 45% belong to South India.
• 80% women from India prefer Facebook over Orkut.
• The study gives an insight into the applications being used on Facebook. Farmville is the most popular application for Indian women.

E-mailing

• Email websites are accessed more frequently by Indian women than any other form of online activity.
• Gmail and Yahoo came across as the most popular email sites.
• Peak in usage – 11 a.m. to 12 p.m.

Search

• Indian women still stick to the traditional forms of shopping. They still like to touch and feel before they make their decision. Shopping does not figure amongst the top 7 categories which is a clear indicator of their preferences.
• News has been seen as a category more visited by men. The study, however, reveals that news, music, jobs and celebrities are the top searched categories by Indian women. It clearly reflects, the kind of content women are consuming and speaks of their lifestyle and awareness levels.
• Students show high activity on search and music sites.
• Peak in usage – 3:00 p.m. to 4:00 p.m.

TNS

What does the Digital Life Report analyse?

• Photo sharing
• Engagement quotient
• Blogging patterns
• Average number of friends on the social networking forums

Photo Sharing

Photo and video sharing have become the most engaging activities. People are shedding their earlier inhibitions and becoming more exhibitionists in their attitudes. Most of us spend our time looking at photographs. The study states that India is one of the top five countries in the world in terms of photo sharing. When asked, how many users upload photographs at least several times a week, 35% Indians responded in the affirmative. Turkey tops this list with every second person uploading photographs several times a week.
The survey tried to also capture responses from online consumers who have uploaded photos to social networks ever. Developed markets are more conservative in this respect. The table captures the responses from top five countries:

Engagement quotient

Indians apparently have a higher internet consumption than North Americans despite the gaps in infrastructure. Indians exhibit high level activity in terms of blogging and social networking, according to the report. Indians have higher proportions of ‘engaged’ users (43%) when compared to other developing markets. However China leads the pack with over 50% ‘engaged’ consumers.

Blogging patterns

There is a momentous growth in blogging and social networking amongst the developing nations. More than one fourth of the respondents in India, update their blog/forum several times which when compared to a lot of developed nations is quite much higher. It is double the percentage than the responses gathered from North America. Four out of every five netizens in China (approximates to 88%) and over half of respondents in China have written their own blog or entries. While U.S. showed a meek response of 32%.

Average number of friends on the social networking forums

India seems to be overtaking mature markets such as Japan, Denmark and Finland in terms of online engagement despite the demerits on grounds of infrastructure.