From myCrowd to iCloud- 5 Things iLearn from The Steve Jobs journey

There is so much out in the media about Steve Jobs, his iConic presence in the world of computing, music, movies, mobiles ever since he announced his decision to step down from his position of CEO of Apple Inc, that I thought I’d take a different take and write about what really inspires me about the man and the impact he leaves on lives of many across the globe.

1. Nothing is ever wasted: An insight shared by Steve, about a summer term he spent learning calligraphy before he dropped out of college. Steve, in a later interview stated that the reason that he introduced a number of fonts and templates into Apple Mac’s was that experience.

2. Down is Up: Something that most folks referred to as the -Steve-less years- at Apple when he was ousted from his CEO job, and found alternate plays in NeXT computing and Pixar studios. I believe, those years in the skunk works were Steve’s most creative, where he discovered the convergence of computing, music, entertainment in a completely new Avatar- animated movies.

3. Make things that people want- every one of the products that came out of Apple, were based on real people insights ( even if the people in the room were the 2 steve’s ) Graphic User Interface, Mouse, multiple windows based computing, iPod Trackwheel, multi-touch iPhone, and now, a new category product- the iPad.

4. Make People want what you make- Build powerful niche communities and listen to them, so hard, that even if you turn out duds and work-in-progress buggy products, they still love you and believe that the next release fixing the bugs were their personal contribution.

4A. And Pay a Premium for- remember price is a positioning tool always, and keep the play at the level of the die-hard fan, so that the rest of the marketing is done word – of -mouth ( in the world of social media- on steroids) BTW, Apple doesn’t have a FaceBook Page or a Twitter account, their fans do it for them.

5. Leave when you’re winning- What a way to go! Steve steps down days after having taken the company from a niche player, also-ran of the 80′s to the dizzying heights of becoming the company with the world’s highest market cap on Aug 5, 2011.

Here’s another post from a friend who shared his journey in time, do you have a story to tell?

Co- creating with the Community- Satish Magar, Draft Land Acquisition Bill and farmers of Bhatta – Parsaul

“Can you help us make townships with our land?” asks Ajay Pal Singh, a farmer who has lost 300 bighas of land to Builders facilitated by the Greater Noida Development Authority in Bhatta-Parsaul. Lost? Says Singh, the Government (yes! The land acquisition agency is a government department) acquired his multi-crop trans-yamuna land to convert into housing colonies and office buildings, as part of an urbanization program in Western UP, which outlines the Delhi- Taj Mahal express way as an urban corridor. Incidentally, this is also fertile farm land with irrigation, rainfall, with a river running through it.

Singh’s land was acquired at INR 800 per sq.m, and then re-sold by GNIDA at INR 15000 per sq.m, to builders and developers who in turn went ahead and have developed a concrete jungle selling properties at INR 50,000 per sq.m and above to consumers promising proximity to a Formula 1 race track, golf courses, possibly an airport, and of course, global lifestyles.

So what happens with the farmers?
First, they party! most land holdings are in the 100 acre spread so an average farm sells for Crores, buying expensive cars, houses, next, some of them get into politics, and then finally, blow up the money from selling inherited land, to find they have nothing left, while the developers have been laughing all the way to the bank. This story has repeated itself, ad infinitum, ad nauseam, across North India, one of my rural education projects are in the village of Carterpuri, which is a posh Gurgaon suburb, the conditions of farmers, who sold land in the 80′s for the colony to come up, are simply put, appalling. Most don’t work, some have become call center cab drivers ( explains some road rage, does it?), and others are living off their wives incomes, who work as household help. And these are communities which believe in keeping women indoors.

Satish Magar, now CMD, Magarpatta City, saw this happening in the late 80′s in and around Pune. He and his community, who held 430 acres of land, in the outskirts of Pune, realized that they would be fighting a losing battle against urbanization. The city municipal authorities had already notified their land as part of the city development plans and were allowing each farmer to sell their plots to  real estate developers. Magar, then thought the unthinkable, How about pooling in the land of 85 – odd families, and creating a township for the next millennium. No Government, no real estate sharks, we’ll do it ourselves. The year was 1993!

Yesterday, I met Satish Magar, Ajay Pal Singh, and Ajit Tikait ( son of Mahendra Singh Tikait- the man who brought tractors with the promise to start ploughing Delhi’s boat club lawns, if the government didn’t listen- but that’s another story) among many other luminaries, at the Annual Lecture of BCF ( Business Community Foundation- a non-profit which creates a CSR connect between corporates and community causes). I have been associated with BCF in various capacities, for over 7 years now, and their executive director, Amita Joseph, never fails to invite me for the lecture, remind me and berate me when I miss, or arrive late J.

Satish Magar, started the session sharing the Magar Patta story in PowerPoint. A practiced play, which encapsulates the journey from getting the farmers together to sign on a blank piece of paper, allotting equity on the basis of land holdings, and then going ahead and building a New Millenium Township which gave the farmers over 10X return on investment, created 250 entrepreneurs from the farmers families to support the skill and services required in building and maintaining the facility , and today is being replicated by the company they floated, in two more projects around Pune, sounds like the stuff of Bollywood and dreams.

Implementing that vision, got Satish Magar, several awards in India, and global recognition. An articulate graduate from the Pune agricultural university, his conviction and drive also made him a darling of the media. But, that’s not what I found interesting! What really got me interested was how he

1. Managed to keep an entire community engaged with his dream for seven long years, before the Pune authorities gave him permission to turn agricultural land into a real estate development,

2. How he managed to market and sell his vision to IT/ BPO companies ranging from IBM to Aviva to come and lease office spaces, which in turn drove demand for housing and services in his city.

Co-creating with the community
The first point is the crux of this process of co-creation. Magar said, “we have a local slang word for folks who sold their single plots- one yard minister!” That and the cultural impact of pooling farm produce, the Magars were sugarcane planters, who had collective memories of pooling and exposure into the value- add earnings in the sugar production chain. And as he told me, “The Amul example, was there for all of us to see”. What he did underplay was the change of paradigm, that got farmers to pool resources and then become shareholders in a real estate company, and then become entrepreneurs in the real estate space, learning new skills, managing new cash flows, and then scaling, some of them independent of the project and beyond. While, the outliers were strong- the factors that made it possible for the community to come together and face the challenge created by urbanization, what really got me thinking was the detailing of the journey through the seven-year wait before a single brick could be laid. “We realized urbanization is here to stay, more and more people will migrate to places and jobs which are more complex and with higher pay. The other factor, was that magic word, Liberalisation! Most of the bureaucrats of the time, didn’t know what to expect and so were willing to allow new experiments to happen,” says Magar. I agree! If one looks at unraveling the real story of India’s Liberalisation it will not just be Dr. Manmohan Singh’s Dream Team, but folks like N. Vittal, who championed the cause of telecom de-regulation and IT outsourcing, and the Pune district commissioner, among countless others, who made the story of Satish Magar possible.

Contrast that with the farmers’ agitation in Bhatta- Parsaul, some holding lands 3-5 times the size of the Magarpatta city, but without the leadership, zest or the community spirit which could have changed the way the story of urbanization worked in India’s liberal economy.

Marketing the vision- This was of obvious interest to me, not just because marketing and communications have been of interest to me since my print media journalism days. But, in the world that went and rose up via social media and networking to support Anna Hazare, and the Greater Noida farmers, how was the Magarpatta story told and sold before any of the above- print journalists, TV, online, or social media came in to support or discredit the story. Magar smiles, “I went everywhere that big builders go, and soon enough realized, they were sending agents and employees to sell their story, it just doesn’t have the conviction of being a farmer and investor.” Plus, because they were new in the game, they listened and listened hard. MagarPatta city generates power out of its waste, has solar water heating built-in, Cat 5 cabling built-in for internet and TV and every eco-friendly building practice in use today, planned and implemented in 2001. Where did that come from? From listening to visionaries who would become their customers, and advocates. Here then are the basics of social media communications, as practiced to perfection by Satish Magar.

1. It’s not about tools, it’s about people
2. It’s about listening, and listening hard enough to get important and valuable inputs and insights
3. Making each constituent a co-creator in the process

In life, social media is not about leaders and followers, it’s about co-creation. Small wonder, that the Magars are now into two more projects, having been invited by farmers in Nanded, and Riverside, Pune, to replicate the experiment there.

EndNote:
while I was mulling about whether to blog about this, (there are two more posts, am still working on) I noted that the government had placed a NEW draft to replace the British colonial-era Land Acquisition Act, 1894, on their website. Jairam Ramesh, India’s rural development minister, announced the bill, earlier yesterday (Friday 29 July, 2011) building a possible case for land owners to get more money for the land they are dispossessed of, and some restrictions around multi-crop land sale, but no word on co-ownership, or co-creation. Looks like the expert committee didn’t look hard at the Magarpatta story, else Satish Magar would have told them, what he shared at the BCF Lecture.

1. Land is not an infinite asset- they aren’t making any more of it these days- so it will go on appreciating
2. For a farmer, land is inheritance, no one likes to part with family silver
3. By pooling in land, the Magars made sure, they got an annuity income, in perpetuity from the land- their inheritance
4. And created new livelihoods, which they chose, are profiting from, and are proud of

Finally, “It is not the government’s job to do business with land. Government’s job is to govern!” says Magar. I looked at the news reports on the draft, and didn’t see a single line which even hints at a model for creating land co-operatives of land owners, who can then work with realtors and corporate. Clearly, there’s more controversy awaiting!

Here’s the recorded webcast of Satish Magar’s  presentation ! look forward to your comments and views!!

OMG! Social Media is EXPENSIVE!!

Time to do some myth busting!

Myth 1: Social Media is CHEAP – for almost ZERO media cost and effort you can build massive Brand presence

Myth 2: If people are talking about your brand on Twitter or LIKE ing your FaceBook page, you should be getting great sales, right?

Myth 3: Anyone can build businesses with Social Media

Here’s why! eMarketer projects social media advertising at $3.08 billion or roughly 10 percent of the $31.3 billion total online advertising spend for 2011.

According to a survey by Brandon Hall Group-Covario- As businesses use more Social Media, their social media marketing investment increases.

But, it’s not just the media costs! Closer examination of the major business expenses associated with social media programs shows the largest increases are in

staff, advertising spend, influencer/blogger programs, custom technology, and social customer relationship management (CRM), according to an Altimeter survey shared by eMarketer.

Intuitively, this makes sense since the more involved a firm is in social media, the more resources you need, more supporting marketing and more technology support required to ensure the firm’s systems integrate with social media, especially for tracking customers and sales.

BEYOND THE FREE  LUNCH - here’s how to develop a SOCIAL MEDIA MARKETING BUDGET

To truly understand and evangelise social media marketing inside your corporate, you need to know which parts of the sales cycle your program, campaign, process will impact most. Most likely, you will involve Corporate Communications, Online marketing , some sections in IT, pre-sales, and most definitely, customer care. You might also need budget support ,management time and creative talent. So, it’s a good idea to look at the holistic picture, look at your marketplace, your customer, key stakeholders – internal and external, your organization, its current orientation, preparedness and then, incorporate social media as part of a larger corporate plan.

Here’s a look at five budget categories, but there would definitely more, depending on your business vertical, cause organization, consumer segment:

1. Head count. Social media needs real-time responses from real people. Try manning a live Twitter account for a few days, you’ll know what I mean. For businesses, this often translates to more than just a Social Media Manager. I believe a mix of social media expertise and subject matter excellence is a better for organizations which operate in the Knowledge Economy.
   

   Staff involved in social media marketing and execution could include the following:
   

   1. Social media specialists. These employees/ outsource talent represent the firm on a variety of social media platforms.
      
   2. Marketing/PR Resource. Because social media is integrated into marketing strategy, it’s critical to have one or more people actively participating and managing your firm’s participation.
      
   3. Creative Talent. These resources may be internal or outsourced in terms of consultants or agencies. They’re responsible for creating content, internal marketing, and social media-related marketing.
      
   4. Subject Matter Specialist. Depending on your offering, it may be important to have a product specialist who can interact with your customers and the public.
      
   5. Technology. Includes resources to set up social media platforms and keep them going. Further, they make sure that social media platforms integrate into established company systems and provide sufficient bandwidth.
      
   6. Analysts. Examine the information collected including the brand monitoring and assess the company’s position and progress.
      
   7. Customer Service. Due to the fact that social media creates another customer communication channel, involve customer service reps who can write and chat on Twitter/ FaceBook, and other forums.
      
   8. Legal/compliance. With social media’s ability to stir up a variety of issues, have dedicated legal resources who can give answers quickly and not wait weeks or months for an answer.
      
2. Content development. While its optimal to have internal resources create your content, you may need more head count and/or editorial support.
   
   1. Editorial support. Develops an editorial calendar and provides guidance on the social media content.
      
   2. Content creation. If employees aren’t able to handle content development, then outsource this function. You can use employees, passionate customers, and freelance content creators.
      
   3. Copy editing. Regardless of who creates your content, use professional copy editors to make sure your content is well-written and is consistent with the Brand Tone of voice (ToV).
      
3. Marketing support. Marketing plug-in helps your social media execution to meet branding, traffic, and sales targets.
   
   1. Social media branding. Depending on the platform, you may need more creative and support to represent your brand effectively.
      
   2. Advertising. To drive people to social media executions, options include traditional media, online advertising, social network advertising, and search.
      
   3. Support marketing. This includes internal marketing such as the website, emailing, and offline promotion as well as landing pages and other internal media.
      

1. Technology. Technology is the glue that ensures that your firm’s website and systems connect with the RIGHT social media platforms.
   
   1. Social media platforms. Some networks may need additional fees or technical support. More over, some tweaking may be needed to workproduct delivery and related tracking into the platform, if you are planning for Social Commerce.
   2. Content management systems or blogging software. Depending on your business’ social media execution, you may need specialized systems to manage your content.
      
   3. Website integration. It’s critical to make sure that social media participants can seamlessly reach your website homepage. No! Am NOT a fan of businesses who are doing away with this VIRTUAL estate and relying totally on FaceBook Fanpages- remember Geocities?
      
   4. Systems integration. As with any technology project, getting the different pieces to work together is challenging, especially with legacy systems.
      
   5. Server support. You need to handle traffic spikes when there’s a promotion or event. Think Cloud Servers!
      
2. Analytics. What’s the RoI on Social Media? you do need to go beyond LIKE’s, RT’s, Followers and Comments. Management likes to think in terms of funnels, and believe you me, even Google Analytics doesn’t reach the Board Room unless there is a strong sales/ conversion story.
   
   1. Brand monitoring. You must track what’s being said about your company, your brands, your senior executives, and your competitors. But, before the fire, you need Online Reputation Management cover ready, ready in case you uncover early indicators of a problem.
      
   2. Ongoing analysis. At a minimum, ensure that your current tracking and systems can accommodate your social media activity.
      
   3. Social CRM. Depending on your customer tracking, you may consider incorporating your social media touch points
      

Regardless of what you expect to spend on social media marketing, it’s likely to be higher. As a marketer, the benefit is that there’s a good likelihood that your social media expense will be spread across several departments.

Are there any other expenses you’d add to this list? If so, what are they?

Read similar posts here

F@$% FACEBOOK- BUILD your brands in NICHE Social Networks

Time to go beyond FaceBook- for Social Media Marketing

I generally don’t use FOUR-letter words in my blogs, but this one is straight from one of the brand managers, I spoke with following FACEBOOK’s “taking down (of) the official India pages of fashion house French Connection UK and chocolate giant Cadbury’s Bournville for violating the codes governing hosting of such pages and halting the social media promotion blitz that these brands have been riding on”. Read Srividya Iyer’s excellent report for more details.

My Point is that marketers need to wake up to using Social Media more effectively.

How? 3 years back, on a similar discussion with the India head of Nike, world’s largest sports brand, I had advised that social networks such as Facebook, Orkut, Friendfeed, and the like are passing phenomena, but Social Media isn’t!

My proposition, which comes from having been a player and observer in the digital Space since Craigslist started as a usenet group is as follows:

1. People want content
   
2. Content they want to share with other people relatively easily
   
3. Which in term creates higher engagement between people
   

The whole phenomena of ‘likes’ and ‘fans’ mean nothing if people aren’t interacting with each other on a common platform- provided by the brand, NOT facebook, and on common or divergent interests. Look at the number of posts and likes on your own FaceBook posts and then visit a Brand Fanpage and you’ll notice the difference. Your posts get you more comments than likes, its JUST REVERSE for Brand fanpages.

So, while the hype and hoopla around FaceBook corporate pages went North, I with my Social Media Conversations Startup, Cloud9Media, advised brands to go Deep.

The result: 3 Niche social networks, which are now, interaction zones for people who are interested in following their interests in these areas, meeting with people of similar interests and creating Brand engagement beyond the social/online/digital play.

1. www.epl4india.com, is a Global Soccer community, where followers of clubs as diverse as deportivo,and Manchester United, exchange notes, set dates for joint viewing, as well as chat about the latest team movements, along with the usual ‘play’ dates.
   
   
2. www.highstreetperk.com, is a Fashionista hangout, where women mostly, share and connect with each other on latest fashion trends and styles, as they roll off the lines in Paris, Milan, and Tokyo, as well as the best deals for last season’s timeless classics, along with a coffee date, for joint shopping expeditions or even ringside passes for the upcoming India Fashion Week.

1. www.eatoutdelhi.com, is a Foodies social network, where people discover new chefs, new cuisines, restaurants, and share via blogs and videos, and also set up dates and trips to explore new culinary experiences in and around Delhi.

All the above have Facebook pages, some have twitter handles, but the important thing here is that it’s not about the number of likes and fans per page, its about the engagement which these niche social networks provide for the users and their interests, as well as the platform they provide for their brands.

What’s more, this approach, which I should have patented J is now playing out among brands, and brand managers are slowly realizing its not about the reach and visibility that the digital audience, is supposedly providing.

What the social media space actually allows brands to do is to build a positive experience zone that can bring more and more like- minded, People with similar interests onto a positive BUZZ and sales spiral. My experiences in the last 3 years, suggest that for every brand that we have built niche social networks for,  sales have spiraled across all channels.

The Reason? Social Media is WORD OF MOUTH on Steroids. You share something on social media- be it on a network like FaceBook, or an Innocuous tweet, and the whole world of people like you, and who like you, gets to know. It doesn’t matter if you’re announcing a new romance, or sharing your heartache, or even stating common cause with the young and the elderly, people in your brand target group know each other, within seven degrees of separation, and therefore they know. When that happens, you see demonstrated behavior from across all categories, i.e. the trend we called in 2009 on Gladiator shoes in Highstreetperk, quickly became such a rage, that the brand which we were advocating told us that they were all sold out.

The Lesson? Build your own garden, use the fundamental truths of Social Networking, and allow your users to bring in more people like them because you provide a common platform which becomes shorthand for excellent lifestyle experiences around your brand.

And, of course, read The Economic Times report again on FaceBook rules and regulations, and ask your eager beaver social media agency to provide you documentary evidence that they know what damage  you might have to bear, before you spend millions of dollars just to be where you think your brand might get visibility.

Remember, visibility and interaction are at different stages of the sales cycle. On social Media, its all about discovery and bonding with who or what you discover.

Last word: Many years back, at a meeting in SFO, a colleague who had flown in from Washington DC to meet me had said, “am here, because you cant fax a handshake!” I believe, social networks do fill in some of the interactions, but you still need that physical connect.

I am Anti- Anti: Building a Case for going Pro-

Sri Sri RaviShankar breaks Ramdev Fast

Mother Teresa is supposed to have said, ”  I will walk with you if you change the name of the rally you are holding.  I don’t walk for anti-war protests, I walk for Pro-Peace“.

I might have re-phrased it a bit. But   as far as I’m concerned this whole protest culture, streaming across from the Gulf of Mexico’s BP Oil spill, to wikileaks- inspired Arab Spring revolutions, and now in India as Anti-Corruption movement and soon to erupt across South China is supposedly brewed up by access to social media and social networking, and definitely attributed as popular and mass appeal by traditional media, is fast losing appeal. (sorry, got carried away in that long sentence!!)

As it should! It’s like this. The more you shout and scream of stuff you dont like, the larger in life, the stuff you protest against gets. And that keeps people, society, economies from fulfilling their destiny. Am assuming that most people would like a better life style, and societies feel safer and secure, and economies less risky and more wealth- generating.

Am sorry, I really dont get how being anti- something, actually stops it from getting bigger and more loathsome. I would rather be pro- the opposite. And I don’t believe am mis-representing Gandhi, who is attributed with creating most innovative styles of peaceful and non-violent protests. I believe the core principle of non-violent protest is Satyagraha- quest for Truth. And that I don’t think comes from stopping the wheels of progress. I would rather posit that, it comes from changing the intent by holding firm on the steering wheel and changing direction.

and that unfortunately, isn’t happening!

The opportunity then is to consider the opposite! Is it better to have leader-less revolutions as in Tunisia, Egypt, soon Bahrain, Syria and Libya, and civil society, along with judiciary and media activism going against the grain of democracy in India, or rather bring in the change from inside?  To Quote Gandhi, “Be the Change, you want to see in the world”. Gandhi’s world vision,  based on frugality and thrift, clashed against the world, which then and now, is hurtling along the path of human aspiration – an ancient Athenian motto, now adopted by the International Olympic Committee-

Citius, Altius, Fortius- Faster, Higher, Stronger.

Herein lies the rub! It starts by assuming that all resources are finite, the sun will die out, fossil fuels run out, not enough food to eat, so on and so forth. What if, we actually pondered and realized that Human Aspiration works better with being Pro-.

Green revolutions have kept millions in india from starving because it made good economic sense to fertilize farms with ammonium nitrate, use better seeds, pesticides, and get better yields. The energy paradigm has already shifted three times in the last 200 years- from brake horse power to steam torque to internal combustion and jet propulsion.

And its already on its way beyond. That doesn’t happen when you say NO! to horses, or coal and steam, but say YES! To gasoline, and then safe nuclear fuel, rocket fuel, now to Hydro-fuel, and solar.

Same story with the issue of bringing “Black Money” Indian for undeclared wealth, back from Swiss banks to India. One guru says that will equate the lowly Indian Rupee to the Mighty Dollar. The man doesn’t realize, its exactly the current exchange rate, which brings cash into his devotees’ wallets and his donations.

Its all about the mindset! If we flipped the original assumption- from scarcity to abundance, from competition to creativity, the whole basis of the Anti- movements would disappear, IMHO.

Interestingly, the flip would probably be that the folks who are currently siphoning off, would invest more in the effort to spur more creativity, which in turn would give them better returns for their undeclared stash, while creating more fulfilling lives, safer societies, and stronger economies.

Think about it!   Am thinking of going PRO- the opposite of all ANTI- as in Anti- corruption becomes Pro-Efficient, inclusive governance. Can think of a million other causes which would benefit if only we went PRO-!!

What’s so social about WikiLeaks? Is Julian Assange the poster boy of traditional media?

WikiLeaks! so what is it? Here’s what Wikipedia (still the community driven knowledge source on the web) says about it.

WikiLeaks is an international non-profit organisation that publishes submissions of private, secret, and classified media from anonymous news sources, news leaks, and whistleblowers. Its website, launched in 2006 under The Sunshine Press^[5] organisation,^[6] claimed a database of more than 1.2 million documents within a year of its launch.^[7] WikiLeaks describes its founders as a mix of Chinese dissidents, journalists, mathematicians, and start-up company technologists from the United States, Taiwan, Europe, Australia, and South Africa.^[8]Julian Assange, an Australian Internet activist, is generally described as its director.^[9] The site was originally launched as a user-editable wiki, but has progressively moved towards a more traditional publication model and no longer accepts either user comments or edits.

In April 2010, WikiLeaks published gunsight footage from the 12 July 2007 Baghdad airstrike in which Iraqi civilians and journalists were killed by an Apache helicopter, as the Collateral Murder video. In July of the same year, WikiLeaks released Afghan War Diary, a compilation of more than 76,900 documents about the War in Afghanistan not previously available for public review.^[10] In October 2010, the group released a package of almost 400,000 documents called the Iraq War Logs in coordination with major commercial media organisations. This allowed every death in Iraq, and across the border in Iran, to be mapped.^[11] In November 2010, WikiLeaks began releasing U.S. State department diplomatic cables.

See the highlighted text above. Wikileaks violates the fundamental truth of user-generated content. What it is now known for, is selective leaks of high- profile government documents. Some of the cables mentioned above are credited to gave brought down successive regimes across the Mid- East, stirred up anti-corruption people’s movement in India, sent the military junta to retirement in Myanmar ( albeit within the ambit of allegedly rigged puppet government).

So, its NOT a wiki, its NOT people’s documentation, it doesn’t allow you to add, or comment, so how come people put so much faith by it, and are willing to take on oppressive regimes, and corrupt governments?

Herein, lies the fundamental truth of the role of media (traditional), role of news breaks in media, and the power of proliferation in social media. And the corollary, whoever thought that half a billion people on FaceBook, and/or Twitter is changing the way the world decides, clearly doesn’t understand the ascendancy of messages, their advocates, and the context.

It’s REALLY all about people!
And people like to be told fundamental truths, and its fairly easy to create a gospel and band together a bunch of followers. An old trick we used to play as school children is stand at a busy street corner and point up, and the whoever got the highest number of gawkers gathering around won. The trick, then, to influence the outcome was to take a few random people into confidence, so that it would appear that they also saw what you were seeing, and at random points of time, created the Gawkability!

This technique is still used in gathering flash mobs, whether at Cairo’s Tahrir Square or at Delhi’s Jantar Mantar. And the people who do it most successfully , taking nothing away from the causes, and the social media advocates, is STILL traditional MAINLINE MEDIA!

Cut back to Friend Julian! Here’s what Wikipedia says of him- On 28 November 2010, WikiLeaks and its five international print media partners (Der Spiegel, The New York Times, Le Monde, The Guardianand El País) began publishing US diplomatic cables.^[13]

PRINT MEDIA PARTNERS? In a world of wiki, blogs, tweets, like and comments?
So what was all that hoopla about the dis-intermediation of traditional media. The Cables, the reactions, the political fallout and finally the uprising, as well as the TV-friendly battle in Libya is allowing traditional media- print and TV rake it in faster than anything before. Ad rates are up! And marketing brains, spend money where the crowd is and it is not on the wikileaks site.

Interestingly, wikileaks doesn’t even have an ad-friendly design. So Julian Assange, more than an internet technologist is perhaps a better practitioner of social media marketing. i.e. use the fundamentals of crowd behavior and build his model ( revenue, power, pelf) around it. If there is a revenue share between wikileaks and its international print media partners, is not known.

In fact, the response of governments most affected ( including, US) is understandably flat-footed. Think about it! If traditional media picks up stuff from wikis, they cant be sued. Bloggers, the world over, seem to have immunity, from traditional laws of libel, all most have to do is pull the offending stuff off. Newspapers and TV can always attribute their source, in this case, a blog, a tweet, a wiki and bypass laws applicable to them. And you can’t blame them from 24/7 coverage when the crowd comes out in protest.

Asserting the cables are fake, puts most governments under the onus of proving what’s REAL. So, you are guilty, till proven innocent. And let’s face facts, every society whether equitable or not, has things to say about their government.

Which brings back the moot point! Julian Assange is perhaps, the poster boy of traditional media, because of him and his ilk, readership, viewership and revenues have gone up dramatically instead of making print and TV irrelevant in the times of FaceBook and Twitter. And finally there’s nothing remotely social about Wikileaks, if anything its perhaps, traditional media’s best solution to thrive and flourish.

All pictures sourced from Google search- there I hope that covers the copyright laws J

Social Shifts power Social Media: 7 reasons I got from the Mid-East

protestor-kisses-police-egypt-protests: source-http://www.prosebeforehos.com/author/alec/

“Amma, why do 17 of us have to live in this room? why don’t we ask the sheikh next door, if he’ll let us use his pool?”

Ok! I made that up. Rather, someone who I was discussing the tectonic shifts in Mid-East and North Africa which is making the entire Arab- Islamic world resemble the Pacific ring of fire with earth shaking events shaping the politics of the region and in turn the world in a way never witnessed before.

So, I asked, what in your opinion, is driving the well- educated, and the semi-literate rub shoulders? And bring down regime after regime from Tunisia, to Egypt, with Libya ( in civil war), and engulfing Yemen, Bahrain, and maybe soon, Syria.

And while the answer contained just seven factors, it would be presumptuously to say – It’s Social Media, My Friend.

Reason One: My Name is Hussain!

Barack Obama, President, USA

Barack Hussain Obama, the one man who stunned US and the World by successfully using social media to win the 2008 US elections, and won a Nobel Prize doing so, is more than just an American Icon. My interlocutor has a telling statement! “you know, ever since Barack Obama won the elections and went to Cairo to address the Islamic world (video link here), the Google search on his name shot through the roof.” The next step in the waterfall reasoning was stereotypical, “If the most powerful nation in the world, which is routinely labeled as the monster ( Capitalist infidels)  in his part of the world, can choose a man with Hussain as his middle name, with a Muslim father, why does my country , which is an Islamic country, designed to promote True Believers of Islam, like me,  never give me a chance to live my dream.”

Reason Two: He has 3 pools and 27 cars

Nope! That’s not about Obama. Though, I wouldn’t doubt that the mushrooming cyber cafes across North Africa and Mid-East serve up bandwidth to zoom in upto 200 m’s height onto the White House ( never tried that one though!), my friend mentioned that hours of surfing Google Earth, especially in the region, was not to find directions to go wadi-bashing in LandCruisers or find camel trails of ancient times. It was to fulfil the voyeuristic instinct in man answering the basic question, “so what happens behind those high walls?”. So the palaces and the lifestyles of the true haves vs the ones shared by the true believers, became a jarring note, which soon translated to ‘equal or rather more opportunity than I have now!’

Reason Three: I have Mobile Internet

That’s right! And high speed data networks in the cities, and with Gmail, Yahoo,  and BlackBerry Messenger I can be in touch with almost anyone I want without anyone stopping me for sedition, or suspicious conduct. These same devices, beat the ban on media and took the story right out from Tahrir Square, to the world.

Reason Four: I’m a Social Networker

It’s not about me, anymore. Its We! And we meet, and hang out, but before we do, we plan our moves on Orkut scraps, Facebook messages, Twitter updates, and likes, tweets, comments, and events. What we hear, we share, and then we participate, and we become who we want to. Holding candle light vigils, chanting slogans, beating on closed doors, we are doing it, because we are like this only.

Reason Five: WE trust wikileaks

I don’t trust TV or print anymore. Never did! Which is why we didn’t share our plans via videotape with Al Jazeera like those Al Quaida blokes. My friends, are all reading blogs, and wiki’s and then there’s this huge leak of US spy cable transcripts which seems to say it exactly as we thought it was. We love Wikileaks. We believe it, because all those governments are trying to hang the founder.

Reason Six: WE don’t throw rocks-Gandhi Rocks!

We aren’t into using slingshots like the Palestinian kids next door, or shooting AK-47’s in the air. That’s the last generation, look where it got them. Low level government jobs, small time businesses, hovels to live in, and that thought that I have to suffer now to enjoy later.

M.K.Gandhi- proponent of non-violent struggle

We don’t read much but something about this man Gandhi, who Barack Obama quotes, makes loads of sense. And yes! When we sat down in non-violent protest in front of army tanks, we saw the fear in the eyes of the soldiers. We found out the truth about war. There has to be someone shooting bullets at you, and you fight to save your partner. If we don’t shoot or threaten those guys in olive drab, they have nothing they can throw at us. There is no victory, if there is no fight!

Reason Seven: My life is on YouTube!

And just in case, you got tired of seeing the same old anti- aircraft shelling exclusive footage from CNN, come see the video I made on my mobile phone about me and my friends, and uploaded on Youtube.(amateur protest video here) All we are asking for is an opportunity. An opportunity to believe in a dream, make it my own, through my hard work and determination, just as the other Hussain, who lives in the White House of the United States of Amrika (sic) did!

End Note: This conversation did happen, but don’t ask with who, I ain’t telling! Its Not just about Social media, and social technologies, It’s about People! And for the first time, people who are choosing to lead, and drive and choose new leaders from their own. The world salutes YOU!

P.S. the last word on this topic hasn’t been written yet, and wont be. The next post will explore the implications of this Social Media revolution in the Far East.