Social Networking Growth In India

India has become 7th top social networking markets worldwide as per the latest numbers of Comscore. In July 2010, 33.15 million unique visitors made India one of the three fastest growing markets with 43% increase since last year. United States of America retain number one position with 945 million visitors. China, Germany, Russian Federation Brazil and UK are also ahead of India. South Korea with an increase of 57% is fastest growing market currently on number ten with 24.9 million unique visitors.

ComScore also revelead that for the first time, Facebook has takenover number one spot from Orkut in India with 20.8 million unique visitors logging to Facebook viz a viz 19.87 million visitors to Orkut. With 179% increase in traffic, facebook.com has been at number two in terms of annual growth. Twitter.com is obviously the fastest growing social networking site in India with 239% increase in last year. Though it is still at 5th place below, bharatstudent.com and yahoo! Pulse. Traffic on Orkut also grew 16% since last year.

As per the support page of wordpress.com, ads which help you earn money through your free blogs are not allowed on free wordpress.com blogs. This means, if you have a blog such as www..wordpress.com, you are not allowed to add any form of advertisement in it.

Yes, there are ways, if you require to add adsense or any other advertisements to your blog.

1. Ad control feature of wordpress.com is for blogs which have high traffic of more than 25000 hits per month. In this feature, you need to share your 50% revenue with wordpress.com You can use the form at this page  to apply for ad control feature.

2. If you are managing your own wordpress installation, you are free to run any ads.

3. VIP blogs are allowed to run ads. VIP blogs are blogs which pay a flat rate per month fees to wordpress for getting the hosting and all other benefits. Some of the VIP blogs, as per wordpress.com are, allthingsd.com of Dow Jones, politicalticker.blogs.cnn.com of CNN. VIP hosting  is allowed only for the companies, which wordpress has confidence in. If you are getting more than one million hits per month on your blog, you are a candidate for VIP blog hosting.

Facebook ensures you do not lie to your wife or to your boss!

Facebook Places Launch

If you are a die hard fan of facebook apps, you may no longer call in sick at office and enjoy the day watching movie. Neither can you tell your wife about so called meeting in office to spend the evening with your special colleague. Facebook on Wednesday, 17th August has launched its latest feature, a location based check in application called Places.

When you dare to disclose your location to your buddies you can “check in” and select from places nearby. If you do not find name of your place, you also have an option to add your favorite restaurant or pub or wherever you are. You can also check about the whereabouts of other facebook users who have checked in, even if they are not on your friends list.

As you have been tagging friends on facebook in photographs, similarly you can tag friends as well to show with whom you are hanging out.

So no more excuses avoiding the trip to grumpy aunt’s house. She knows, despite having an upset stomach you are still eating out.

On the other hand, this would be a great marketing tool for restaurants and shops.

Don’t like “dislike” button on facebook

Facebook has denied having any “dislike” button and asked all its users not to click on any strange links. The dislike button is being promoted by spammers to install malicious softwares on the user’s machines. Hackers are asking users to install “dislike” button that notifies contacts “now I can dislike all of your dumb post”. Once the user has installed this application, the application sends an invitation to all friends as well.

If you have installed the “dislike” button, then follow the following steps to disable it.
1. Click on the top right of the facebook home screen on the “account” button
2. Go to the option “application settings”
3. Disable the “dislike” application

If the application is on your wall, delete the posts to stop the scam by going to the profile page.

“Like” button is used by users of Facebook for endorsing the comments, stories, or other shared content.

Bollywood Promoting through Online Games

ibibo is one portal which has been in the market now since last four five years. As per the website, it is focusing on social gaming and e commerce platforms.

Recently in july end, ibibo has launched a new game called "Mumbai Underworld". The movie, "once upon a time in mumbai" of Ajay Devgan, Imran Hashmi & Kangna Ranaut has associated with this game and is being promoted through this media as well.

The movie is about the functioning of underworld  in erstwhile BOMBAY... today's Mumbai. The movie has associated itself with this game. The TV ads of this game are being aired with the leading starcast of Imran Hashmi and Ajay Devgan.

This is not the first time when bollywood movie has promoted itself through interactive video games. Games have been made on many movies earlier as well. Gajini, Lagaan, Baabul are such movies on themes of which games have been created.

India's "Online Games Market" is estimated anywhere between $150 million to $200 million as in 2010. This is a big market to explore and our bollywood is encashing on it for sure.

Airtel and Social Media

Airtel has joined Facebook. Click here to go to the Airtel page on Facebook. Though 15055 people have liked this page till date (6th August 2010) still, there is a long way to go for Airtel, if they really want to utilize social media. Here is my piece of advice for Airtel, if they really want to leverage facebook.

2 way communication

The lifeforce of social media is two way communication. The Airtel page on facebook, lacks two way communication big time. There is no activity on the wall of the page, which gives a very closed feeling. In the discussion page, there are only 8 topics and there is no moderator to check or reply the messages of the consumers.

I have been through the twitter account of Airtel, and that is much more interactive. We are able to ee responses to various queries on the account. Though Airtel has one more account on twitter only to publish their news.

 

I dont know why the facebook page has not been given the same attention.

Games or Events to engage the community

I am sure, Bharti Airtel can create some really nice games based on their telephony services which the followers can play. Such games not only helps in promoting the brand but also keep the followers engaged.

Facebook - gateway to your product/service

Facebook pages are gateway to your product or service. Just creation of facebook page with a link to your website is no good. I think, Airtel should provide more details of their services - telephony as well as broadband services. Along with the plans. This would increase the reach for airtel.

I hope either airtel opens a new more interactive account on facebook or makes this current page more interactive.