3 comment(s) Google Suggest For Search; Guess Whose Business Card Got Affected?

After a long wait of 4 years, Google will finally be implementing Google suggest feature on the homepage, Google.com. Google suggest is an auto-complete for search which means as you type in the search box, related search keywords automatically appear below in a "drop-down menu" fashion. You can check out the feature at http://www.google.com/webhp?complete=1&hl=en

Wait, I am not discussing here how it will affect user experience or SEO (Search Engine Optimization). A simple question - Guess whose business card will be affected with this feature?

Heard of Matt Mullenweg, who is founding developer of popular blogging platform WordPress? His business card is pretty simple and great.

But, the inclusion of Google suggest in Google search has affected him. Also, with this feature, the "I'm feeling lucky" button is hidden.

Similarly, Kiruba Shankar, a prolific personality in Web 2.0, Blogging, Podcasting & Social Media in India has got Google cards as shown below:-

But, when you try with the new search,

Since, a picture says more than 1000 words, people might click on the image just above his website listing. So, for both of them it's time to change the business card. Yahoo too has instant search ajax functionality to the search. So, the only option left is Live Search. Here is a branding opportunity for Microsoft, any folk listening?

Do you know how Google affected funduBytes?

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2 comment(s) Listen To Twitter Theme Songs (With Lyrics) By Alana Taylor And Ben Walker

Now that's called Twitter Mania when someone shows Twitter love by writing a song on it!

Recently, Ben Walker who is taking up 50/90 challenge i.e. 50 songs in 90 days, wrote a song on Twitter - “You’re No One If You’re Not On Twitter" as a tribute to the micro blogging site.

[Lyrics]

You're no one if you're not on Twitter
And if you aren't there already you've missed it
If you haven't been bookmarked, retweeted and blogged
You might as well not have existed

In the old days it was all about achievements
Collecting all your trophies in a shrine
Then everybody came across the internet
And suddenly you had to be online

A home page was all you really needed
To seem like a success but not a geek
As long as you updated semi-annually
And checked your email once or twice a week

You're no one if you're not on Twitter...

Technology was moving rather quickly
And the next thing you needed was a blog
With intimate and detailed press releases
And now and then a photo of your dog

More recently the students brought us Facebook
And everybody has a hundred friends
The parties in the photos look amazing
They're not so great but everyone pretends

You're no one if you're not on Twitter...

Now you need to publish every movement
And every single thought to cross your mind
I'm told the Twitterverse is full of rubbish
But most of us are actually quite refined

We validate each other's insecurities
And brag about the gadgets that we've bought
We laugh out loud at every hint of jolliness
And try to self-promote without being caught

You're no one if you're not on Twitter...

Some time ago, 19-year old NYU student and tech-loving girl Alana Taylor wrote a song on Twitter

[Lyrics]

When I wake up in the morning,
The first thing I see,
Is an e-mail in my Gmail,
Sayin' you're followin' me.

And next thing you know,
I'm followin' you,
Not everybody does it,
But me and Scoble do.

Chorus:
Cuz Twitter beats Facebook any day,
140 characters is all you need to say.

Cool thing 'bout Twitter is you meet new people,
You even get to stalk the famous ones too,
We've got Veronica Belmont from Mahalo Daily,
Barack Obama and Hugh MacLeod too.

Chorus

Twitter's like a family,
As long as you're not spamming me,
We keep in touch, we share too much,
And @Garyvee meets up for lunch!

Chorus

But be careful, with you're iPhone...
Don't DM the whole worlldddddd

Chorus

Ain't it interesting and entertaining? Well, on the other hand you have iTunes to Twitter - an Applescript that can post your current playing track on iTunes as a twitter update.

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1 comment(s) Orkut Community Topics Update Notification Apps - Don't You Need It Officially?

The good thing about orkut is communities - it let you express your voice, you can find a community on almost any topic. But, the bad thing about orkut is engagement in community. Due to concerns of spamming, orkut does not allow sending message to the community once it exceeds 1000 members.

And talking about human psychology, an orkut user joins a community to be associated with it but does not participate frequently. One do not go to the community page on each log on to check out what has happened, unless and until he has participated previously and expecting new replies since last time he logged into. Even the updates notification does not include this information.

Recently, I noticed an orkut apps Notification - Communities that shows 5 recent updated threads for a community being tracked i.e. similar to what the community homepage offers.

This app does not works if the community requires join to access the content. Also, it does not notifies in "My updates". So, the problem remains same - you have to explore the community manually to notice the changes. Track this community for further development in this App (requires Portuguese to English Translator)

Till some time ago, an online tool was available which converts your orkut scrapbook and community topics to RSS feed; so that you can check updates without logging in to your orkut account.

orkut to RSS converter usage 

It became too popular and the developer Vikas Patial disabled the free version and put the script for sale. The last bid I noted was US$ 120.

Afterwards, using the same idea another coder Rahul Bansal developed an online tool orkutfeeds.com that make you keep track of updates for a scrapbook, community and a particular thread of a community. Currently he is working on building it as an orkut public search i.e. search without logging into and results being displayed as RSS.

He is also seeking donations for hosting charges to keep the service free, feature suggestions, feedback and possible monetization model for the same.

Noticing the usage of earlier orkut to RSS converter and orkut demographics where India is continuously growing, there is a strong possibility of contextual, behavioral and direct advertising. Think of how broad and diverse community topics are and determining behavior/character of an user based on the communities he has joined!

I strongly believe orkut should provide RSS feed for community pages

 

which can be subscribed by the inbuilt feed reader in orkut. That will make it true orkut 2.0.

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0 comment(s) Find Who Unfollowed Or Ditched You On Twitter

Have you ever wondered these social networking sites do tell you - who befriend with you or who followed you recently, but they do not notify who removed you from their friend list or dumped you!

In the context of Twitter, this hide and seek game of followers count plays a pivotal role for:-

1. SPAMMERS - who follow you to gain your attention and then silently unfollow you as a trick to get visitor on the link on their profile or increase their followers.

2. POTENTIAL FOLLOWERS - Human psychology refrains a potential follower from following you noticing the Following:Follower ratio in your profile.


3. FOLLOWER WANNABE FRIEND - One follower asks you "hey, I noticed you are not following me back?". You do so to make him happy and get rid of his frequent requests. But, you are not interested in his talks and unfollow afterwards silently.

Now, how to know who are no longer following you?
If you have a so-so equal but small number of following and followers count, i.e. you follow most of your followers you can check your Twitter Karma and trace who is hiding from you. This works only if the total count is small and you have a sharp memory to notice the change.

How do you find a needle in a hay stack?
If you have a subsequently greater number of followers and let say 1/2 unfollowed you. In this case, Tweetake comes handy to backup a list of your followers in .CSV file format.

For the experiment, I used a dummy profile to follow few random people including my original profile and then unfollowed it.

The .CSV file has columns - type, id, name, screen name .etc. Edit this file in Microsoft Excel or Google Docs and delete all columns except the "id". Save this file and keep as archive. If you are using Google Docs, export the file as a .CSV.

When you notice decrease in followers count, import a new list, process i.e. delete the unwanted columns and save it as a new copy.

• Now, Download and install csvdiff, an open source tool to compare two .CSV files.
• Copy the old list from archive and the new list to the folder of installation.
• Goto Start -> Run and type cmd. Navigate to the folder of installation. Execute:- csvdiff -e old.csv -a new.csv > result.txt 

• It compares the old and new lists and generates the report as result.txt file.
• Open the result.txt file to note the change i.e. expected data (old file) and actually data (new file).

• Copy the expected value (say XXXX) and open the link http://twitter.com/statuses/user_timeline/XXXX.atom in your browser to get the feed of that profile.

Note: Even this process might get a bit messy if you have new followers in between unfollowers. For exact results, you need to perform a set operation MINUS betwen old and new list i.e. A-B = data available in A but not in B.

TweepleTwak is another such service (currently in private alpha version) that solves the purpose.

Extending this idea, you can trace which orkut profile removed you from his friend list by importing your friendlist as .CSV and making a comparison between the email ids.

Interestingly, Facebook does not allow officially to import your contact list. But, it can be done using the apps - Fonebook and Friend CSV. 

Now, if you liked this story retweet it! and reply @fundubytes - what will you do once you catch the runaway follower?

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4 comment(s) Most Popular Bookmarking & Sharing Activities - What Should You Learn From It?

Ever wondered on sharing activities though bookmarking tools? Recently, ShareThis released an insight on how your visitors share your content and what are the popular content sharing activities.

The above pie chart shows the dominance of Email which reminded me of a post from the archives of GigaOm titled "Is Email The Ultimate Social Environment?"

No wonder, "Send by Email", "Tell a Friend" .etc. lead to a chain of Forwarded Mails and Email-SPAM!

According to comScore, Facebook overtook competitor MySpace to become the leading social networking site based on monthly unique visitors in April-June 2008 period which is clearly reflected in the pie chart above as Facebook sharing taking up the second slot.

Now comparing with AddThis bookmarking trends 2007, you can notice:-

1. Downfall in Google and Delicious bookmarks. May be that's the reason behind new face-lift of Delicious.

2. People prefer sharing on social networking sites like Facebook and MySpace than regular social bookmarking sites like Digg, Delicious .etc. Is it due to change in their popularity ranking algorithms?

Now, the learning curve based on the above trends
LISTEN, EVALUATE, ADAPT

How?
If you are using AddThis bookmarking widget on your blog/site, customize the button to rearrange the buttons accordingly. Please have a look at my older and current arrangement below:-

Before

Now

And if you are using ShareThis widget, choose your bookmarking services manually being displayed in the order of selection.

If you notice, I have chosen Twitter as a service in my AddThis widget gazing it a fast growing communication and sharing tool. But, ShareThis does not offer this service yet, so you can submit your request for twitter to ShareThis. (see update)

*Note: Apart from the trends above, tweak your AddThis/ShareThis bookmark button analyzing the demographics, content and sharing activity report for your blog/site.

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7 comment(s) orkut SMS Scrap Available In India, Silly Bugs Found

Some time ago, orkut launched their mobile version http://m.orkut.com and recently they added SMS as a way to communicate in India. Though orkut has launched the SMS feature in India, it does not include Airtel, Vodafone and BSNL that eat up the bigger pie in the mobile market.

( TRAI Report for quarter ending January-March 2008)

Now, when you try to register your mobile in the settings page,

it asks you to verify your mobile number by sending the verification code to 56555.

But, when you click on "Having problems?" link, guess what it displays!

 

It says - "Currently orkut SMS works only in Brazil". That's bug #1. But, it guides you to the orkut help section where it tells about the pricing details for your carrier in India.

Despite of having a Vodafone connection, I tried to register selecting MTNL as carrier and sent the verification code to 56555, I received an SMS saying "This service is not enabled yet" and the very next message was 

"Congrats, you now have orkut SMS. Reply with help for more info. Standard charges apply. Reply with "off" to turn off SMS notifications." That's bug #2.

I tried whether it works or not and it does, as I received an SMS notification for a new scrap in my scrapbook as under:-

Following is the screenshot of the mobile settings page after successfully setting up my mobile number:-

Previously, I had blogged about accessing orkut on mobile (when the xhtml version was not available) and receiving SMS notification for your email (selected operators) before this feature was available.

With these bugs, it seems like a half-baked cake. Moreover, the official orkut blog is silent. Any orkut folk listening?

Update Aug 23, 2008: orkut Team replied on this issue

and now Vodafone is officially supported in mobile settings page.

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5 comment(s) Irrfan Khan's K.I.L.B Teaser Campaign Revealed, BigAdda Pokes Its Nose With Aggresive Guerrilla Marketing

This story consists of 3 folds.

Fold #1:
Recently, you might have noticed a campaign (OOH, TVC, Print) featuring Bollywood actor Irrfan Khan, an "unknown brand" with an tag line - "Kya Apko K.I.L.B Hai?". Another Ad in the series, where Irrfan Khan acts as a doctor asking if you have K.I.L.B?

As expected the teaser left people pondering upon curiously and generated interest to search online. People started exchanging their wild guesses on the secret behind the campaign. Some interesting strong speculations were -
It's a Vodafone Ad; reason being previously Irrfan Khan was never seen endorsing any brand apart from Vodafone.

Another entry was for an AIDS/Cancer awareness programm, since Irrfan is seen wearing a doctor’s mask.

Besides this, the teaser started spreading and gaining popularity in online search to the extent that it made its way to top 10 Google searches in India on Aug 5, 2008.

Fold #2:
Sniffing the trends, Opportunistic BigAdda implemented guerrilla marketing tactics and created a hoax that K.I.L.B stands for "Kkyonki I love BigAdda".

A blogger called ChiefBrutus not only spoofed the acronym, also aggresively commented on other blogs. I discovered ChiefBrutus as AVP & Head - Web Development at BigAdda.com. Well, Reliance is well known for these kind of tricks. But, furthermore bloggers started receiving emails from fake identities with revealing the secret. Digging more, I noticed that the fake profiles were not present in BigAdda. Possibly, the unknown brand is behind this Push-Too-Spam move.


Fold #3:
K.I.L.B has stopped teasing and unveiled the identity of its brand as AEGON Religare Life Insurance and solved the mystery behind K.I.L.B as "Kum Insurance Lene Ki Bimari". Well following are some Twitter reactions on the reveal of the hoax:-

 

  

 

The campaign was conceptualised by Contract Advertising, produced by Apocalypso Filmsworks and directed by Pradeep Sarkar of the Parineeta and Laaga Chunari Mein Daag fame (Courtesy: afaqs). The reveal TVC is as under:-

Morale of the story:
There was a communication gap between Fold #1 and Fold #3 i.e. between the offline and online synergy of the campaign. The disconnect between the offline buzz and online visibility because online/social media search for the campaign has no official presence.

Was the campaign adequately insured? Because BigAdda did a "chance pe dance" trying to divert the attention with their part of acronym i.e. Fold #2. But, they tried too hard with spam email marketing. One lesson for them - Don't F**k people in Social Media!

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