Saurabh Garg on The New New Thing

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ET reports today that mobile phone handset manufacturers are pre-loading social networking tools and applications on their handsets. I think this is one of the most important pieces of news for the mobile social networking industry as such.

• For users, it means that they can now save hassles of downloading and installing the application.
• For telcos (operators like Vodafone and Airtel), it means better revenues from GPRS usage for these social networking apps (ARPUs are falling by the day and increasingly mobile companies are looking at revenues from VAS).
• For Social Networks, it means larger user base and ease of adoption with every handset that is sold.
• And finally for Handset Manufacturers, it means yet another selling point for their handsets. Although users would not have a network of choice but a network atleast.

I am not sure how would this impact adoption of social networking in India. Actually adoption goes hand in hand with tools. You like a social network, you demand and seek the tools to access it. And once you have the tools to do things, you tinker around with them and get hooked onto the networks. A classical positive feedback loop.

Social network adoption also depends on the friend circle of the user. Social networking is no longer about meeting new people or discovering friends but is about staying in touch with people you already know or people who share common interests. A user would thus want to choose a social network where all his friends hang out. With a social networking app pre-loaded on the handsets, at least a user would give it a try, if not use it all the time (with openID and data portability, a time shall come when all networks would be able to talk to each other. This probably would be a time when a user could be on any network and yet connect with a user on a totally different network. This should accelerate new network adoption etc).

IMHO social networking on mobiles in India is taking so much time to take off because …

1. Low end mobile phone handsets - until your handsets are capable of running Java applications, most (all?) social networking apps simply would not work.
2. Low penetration of GPRS
3. Downloading and Installation issues.

With pre-loaded software, one of the three big hassles have been taken care of. Next logical step for social networks should be to talk to telcos and get discounts on GPRS usage or some kind of incentive mechanism for users to actually start using social networking.

This also has lessons for other online businesses. For example if a Cleartrip.com or TheStorez.com is able to embed a widget in mobile phone handsets, it will give users yet another quick and default option to book that ticket or order that book faster.

What other factors do you think influence mobile social networking adoption in India? Which networks will you bet your money on? And what other implications do you think this embedding would have?

Although Social Networking phenomenon is very old and probably past its peak, I am still intrigued by this very basic question. What do people do on social networking sites?

More than relying on research reports and data gathered by biggies of social networking over the last few years, I would rather introspect and document what I do at these sites. And what my friends do there. For me top three things would be

1. Share and Discover lives - Upload and read update, photos, notes videos etc.
2. Kill time - Games, Movies, Celeb Gossip, Event Planning etc.
3. Discovery of Interestingness - Interesting people, interesting links etc.

What do you see yourself (and people around you) doing on SNS?  What are the top three things? Please share.

Facebook now has over 10 billion photos (via mashable). The numbers for other photo sharing sites are unknown but assuming that Flickr had 2 billion in Nov 07 (and they were growing by 5 million per day, Flickr should have about 5 billion photos), Facebook becomes the largest photo-sharing website.

Can someone give numbers on Orkut, MySpace, Flickr and Picasa … ?

Brings me to a radical idea. If Facebook stated charging for photo uploads, would the reveune stream be sustainable? Would people continue to upload pictures?

Thinking out loud about Flickr, it has evolved into a place where all the aspiring photographers publish their pictures hoping to catch attention of the world. What if there are places like that for all niches? A place where all aspiring actors upload their videos to be seen by directors and producers? A place where all aspiring sportsmen uploaded their videos and profiles to be spotted by talent scouts? Hmmm .. could be interesting. Any thoughts anyone?

Brings me to another point. What do people really do on social networking sites. More than relying on research reports, what do you see yourself and people around you doing on SNS? For me top three things would be

1. Share and Discover lives - Upload and read photos, videos, notes, blogs etc.
2. Kill time - Games, Movies, Celeb Gossip etc.
3. Discovery of Interestingness - Interesting people, interesting links etc.

What are your top three things that people do on networking sites?

One fine day I got this email from one womworld.com and it asked me if I would be interested in reviewing a Nokia device. For a minute I thought that it was yet another African Widow Scam or Unknown Heir Spam. But somehow this one looked genuine and I queried other people on twitter. Within minutes I was told that two more known bloggers from India (TwilightFairy and Ashish) have got similar emails (TwilightFairy agreed to review the device, Ashish refused).

Convinced that it is for real, I replied to WOM and surprisingly they shipped the device all the way from London, within 24 hours (with pre-paid ship-back envelope attached :D). They asked me to use it, play with it, test it, review the device and publish the opinion on the blog. And return the device at the end of the day.

Lets evaluate if Nokia’s social media strategy is actually worth it. From what I can see, there are quite a few distinct steps involved in the entire campaign.

1. Identification and Selection of Bloggers

Most probably they are using some kind of algorithm (machine based or human) to make a list of popular bloggers on the Internet. This is how commonsense says they would have approached the problem.

• Identification of few popular bloggers and people who are real active on the Internet. Often known as A-listers, influencers, etc. Conventional wisdom says that these people hold a lot of influence over their contacts and can influence the decision making process.
• Followed by profiling of these people. This is important because I need to know if I should send a business phone or an entertainment phone or an expensive phone to these people.
• Target visitor profiling. Very important because I need to know what kind of visitors does that blog entice and are these the people that I want to sell my product to?

Are there more variables that I need to take care of? And thanks to all the behind-the-scenes magic (or maybe some luck), I got a Nokia E66 to review.

2. Costs and Risk Analysis

Costs and risks are very very important. Before a marketer agrees to spend money on any advertising or communication medium, they need to be assured of the returns. WOM said in their email that the device is worth Euro 500 and I am assuming that shipping costs between London and Mumbai would be another Euro 50 each side. They are thus risking 600 Euros on a review that I might post on my blog that about 20 people read on a daily basis. Is it worth it? To be honest I dont think so. May be I missing something. Any thoughts?

3. Results

I will not talk about technical or usability or features of the phone. They are meant for reviews. Since I am talking about social media strategy, I will talk about only the buzz marketing results.

• I posted few messages on twitter on Nokia E66 and engaged few interesting ones to know more about the device.
• I interacted with about 100 people in these 15 days (friends, colleagues, relatives, meetings with contacts from twitter, orkut, facebook, blogging etc.). Most were curious about the device and I was proud enough to talk to them brag. And I am sure these contacts would have spoken to more people.
• I would post a lot of things about this on my blogs, leave comment on other blogs talking about the same thing and since everything that you put on the Internet is permanent, Nokia E66 is getting a large chunk of my mind-share.

4. Results v 2.0

Results on the individual level are fine but what does the larger picture look like? How can Nokia utilize all these sporadic posts and messages by all these users and fit them in a larger context?

• Nokia is aggregating all posts on the device at one place and making them accessible to the world at large (here). So next time, I need to buy a phone, I would logon to WOM device list and check out feedback from bloggers (real men-next door, honest opinions, real men, non-marketers).
• It is making hundreds of bloggers (who ever is a part of the program) to write about the device on their respective blogs and spread the word within their respective circles of influence. This is as good a publicity as Nokia can buy. Customized, personalized, coming from first contact, personal review and honest opinion. And all these are very vital in building any kind of brand.

5. What next?

• Results? I would love to see the results. I have no clue how would I monitor the costs and ROI but I cant simply give away phones to people (cos even if they are returned in mint condition, they still cant be sold).
• What next? Everything that Nokia has done is very common-sensical and obvious. Is there a way to think of new ideas to get the buzz registers ringing?

And in the end, since I am as magnanimous as anyone the world has ever seen, I want to know why did they pick me. So why me?

• Old Blog? My blog is over 4 years old. Does this help .. ?
• Nokia fandom? I talk about Nokia and other mobile phone devices often on Twitter.
• Razr fandom? Then I keep on posting about my Motorola razr v3i.
• Jan Chipchase? I am a huge fan of one of Nokia’s employee, Jan Chipchase. I keep talking about him all the time and have said it umpteenth time that he’s got my dream job.
• Large circle of influence? I attract some 40 page views daily on my primary blog (mostly from search engines and most people are searching for lyrics and other India centric things) and post about 50 status updats on twitter everyday with about 700 people following me.

Could these things have helped me pop-up in the magic algorithm (if there is any)? Anyways, apart from this off the topic rant, I am really impressed by things that Nokia does on Social Media and activation amongst users and developers. (Talking about developers, two codecamps are coming up in Bangalore and Mumbai - register here).

What are you thoughts on use of Social Media by Nokia? Is the strategy coherent? Does it make sense? Are they correct in their approach? Are the costs worth it?

P.S.: I am yet to publish the review of the device they sent me :D

They have attached the word “social” to every word in the dictionary and are trying to make business models outta it.