Posts tagged Facebook
Twitter Tales
Aug 18th
Yesterday Twitter announced launch of Twitter Tales with 3 stories featuring @natashabadhwar (mother/filmmaker/photographer/writer from New Delhi), @caltrain (a crowd-sourced Twitter account) and @thebloggess (humour blogger). The stories were interesting but they were ‘copy written’ and that disappointed me. Personally I would have preferred stories in their own language and format – bringing out the real emotions.
This year we have seen similar initiatives from Google (Google Stories) and Facebook (Facebook Stories). Makes me wonder why all the leading web players are so desperately trying to prove that their brand adds value to human life. I have no doubt that they all do add value in their own unique way but none of them can provide all the answers. Also things on the web don’t work in silos – they’re non linear and interlinked. So a Twitter story is actually linked not only to Twitter but also to Google (where the tweets are listed now), Facebook (where the tweets/re-tweets appear) and to hundreds of Social Tools/Platforms. Unfortunately all three are trying to collect their own stories.
We’re living in an interconnected world and the new reality is about ‘AND’ and not ‘OR’. Celebrating human spirit is a great idea but it needs to go beyond individual platforms/brands. I hope the next idea that we see will be about human stories rather than Twitter/Facebook/Google (or for that matter any other brand) stories.
Fans on Facebook
Jul 21st
Signing up Fans on Facebook has become the latest craze and almost in every third meeting that I attend people are talking about Fans. Clients now want benchmarks around number of fans and cost per fan acquisitions etc and it makes me very nervous as the word ‘fan’ is used very casually. So I looked at a few online sources for definition of fan.
According to wikipedia: A fan, sometimes also called aficionado or supporter, is a person with an intense, occasionally overwhelming liking and enthusiasm for something.
According to reference.com dictionary: an enthusiastic devotee, follower, or admirer of a sport, pastime,celebrity, etc.
So before you get excited about your increasing fan base on facebook you should spend a little time evaluating whether these people really are you’re fans or in the absence of any other term they casually accept to be called ‘Fans’.
Status donation for Obama
Nov 4th
Today I was bombarded with at least 500 plus status updates where my friends were donating their status to Obama – it was driven by ‘Causes’. To me it looked like the old-school advertising approach of frequency overkill. I guess a time has come for Frequency Capping or Spam Filter kind of features on facebook so that you need not get 500 status updates with exactly the same message.
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