A very well written article about whether or not social media marketing should be a part of a company’s marketing and branding mix. The author discusses many aspects like whether or not your target audience is social media savvy, strategies to ensure that your brand is protected, some advantages of outsourcing social media, etc. A must read for marketing managers and company executives who are exploring the option of including social media in their marketing and branding strategies.

Read the full article here on Amit Agarwal’s blog at labnol.org

Continue reading…

Facebook has just published a detailed roadmap of the features it expects to add to its Platform over the next six months, along with projected launch dates. While the roadmap is intended largely for developers of applications – both on Facebook and on third-party sites and mobile apps using Facebook Connect – it gives users an idea of how we might interact with these apps in the future. Some pieces that sound intriguing:

Click here to read the full article on Mashable

Continue reading…

Google’s innovation engine (and search engine) continue to chug along. They just announced the launch of music search with MySpace, Lala, Pandora, and more. A must read article for all music buffs and Google fans. There’s more information about this on Google’s blog.

You can read the full article at Mashable here.

Continue reading…

I remember when I first saw it. My dad called me over to his office, where he had a x86 PC with a 1200 bit/s modem, which I’d mostly used for games (I was 15 at the time) and connecting to various BBS‘. He said: there’s this new thing, they call it the Internet. I think it’ll be really important.

What can you do with it, I asked? You can see what’s on other computers, far away, he said. You can do it via Gopher, or FTP, or Cello (the...

Continue reading…

JULY 12TH’S COVER PAGE STORY IN THE BUSINESS TODAY MAGAZINE EXPLORED HOW INDIA INC HAD DISCOVERED SOCIAL MEDIA. IT’S A GREAT ARTICLE WRITTEN BY KUSHAN MITRA AND A MUST READ FOR INDIA INC’S MARKETING AND BRANDING MANAGERS, AND COMPANIES/INDIVIDUALS IN THE SOCIAL MEDIA SPACE IN INDIA. CLICK ANYWHERE ON THIS NOTE TO GO TO THE ARTICLE.

Continue reading…

In another great piece at Mashable.com, Christina Warren talks about various mechanisms to measure ROI in social media. In a startling statistic, she says that almost 84% of social media programs don’t measure return on investment (ROI).

She says, “Companies and executives are finally beginning to really jump on the social media bandwagon, and that’s fantastic. However, for social media to fully work (for everyone), businesses and brands need to be able to evaluate the impact their social media use is having, both positive and negative. Measuring social media ROI...

Continue reading…

A comprehensive article by Mr. D. ShivaKumar (MD, Nokia India) discusses how social media has transformed the branding space in India. Reading this article convinces you that your brand’s message is not controlled fully by you any more, as thousands of tweets, Facebook shares and YouTube video views, etc shape how a brand is perceived. Mr. ShivaKumar also underscores two important points about how social media is changing the source of trust and how social media is changed the way news is reported. Recently, we shared another piece on the...

Continue reading…

Last week launched the social revolution for search. Microsoft’s Bing fired the first shot by announcing search deals with Twitter and Facebook and, at the Web 2.0 Summit,launching its Twitter integration. Google fired back almost immediately though, completing its own deal with Twitter and, perhaps more importantly, announcing a new feature: Social Search.

Social search, demoed at the Web 2.0 Summit by Google’s VP of Search Marissa Mayer, combines results from your friend’s blogs, Flickr, Twitter, FriendFeed, and a wide variety of other social media sites (so long as your...

Continue reading…