Indian Social Media Landscape

Banking sector has always been very careful of adopting new technology and rightly so. While technology will eventually make life convenient for the consumer, the banks need to venture in to new space only when they are absolutely sure that the financial data of the consumers are not compromised at any stage.

The Truth

While 800 million people may be on Facebook, it would be interesting to see how many of them would actually go ahead and use this platform or any other social media platform for that matter for actual banking transaction. A good indicator of this comes from the Javelin Strategy & Research’s  latest report that investigates consumer personal finance behaviors toward social media. According to their report, only one in ten consumers are comfortable using social media sites to review or check account balances.

There are bloggers who try to do too many things and destroy their blog. Then there are bloggers who are so specific and niche that until they talk about matters you follow closely, you wouldn’t want to return to them. A good blog is one that can balance the need to be refreshing without doing too much. One such blog, Rheality Rings by Rhea Purnita Paine, is a classic example of a blog that reinvents itself with every post without losing its character.

Part rebel, part child, Rhea is a brilliant writer, photographer, doodler, sketcher and dreamer at large. Her interests are simply stated as ‘Living’ and live she does. It is for this reason that her blog also comes across alive. While you go through her pages, you feel a sense of life in each post. Be it the photo tour of India in ‘India on the move’ or the sketches in her ‘Arty Farty’ section, they all breath and come across with their individual stories.

The year 2011 has borne witness too many ups and downs and dynamism in the world of Social Media. Radical changes in the interface for two of the most ubiquitously popular Social networking sites, Facebook and Twitter, Klout’s remarkable drop in the ranks, Google+ and Facebook in close encounters, viral videos being recognised as a potent medium to catch eyeballs, augmented reality entering the Social Media Space et al.

Let’s take a look at some of the ways in which brands could maximize user engagement in the year to come.

Travel and Photography they say are inseparable. One such blogger who has aptly justified this statement’s sanctity is Rohit Sareen. Even his blog name, ‘My Third Eye’ symbolizes that. In his own words, he sees himself as an engineer by degree, a manger by profession and an avid traveler, photographer and writer by passion who loves the rush of formula one and the thrill of movies.

This Mumbaikar’s blog is a traveler’s delight and a photographer’s encyclopedia woven in an artistic style that makes readers take notice and compels them to see it through till the end. The photo quality is superior and forms a good second hand exposure for anyone who might be willing to travel to that destination and doing some research on various aspects of the place.

No less than TIME magazine themselves asked whether Facebook is on a decline. While I understand it’s fashionable to ask whether products that are seemingly approaching the plateau of their product life cycle – are dying out, I do not think Facebook’s going anywhere.

And why? (I like to analyse questions like these from an emprical and this-is-how-we-work way rather than cull out numbers, graphs and stats that can be used to say anything)

1. It’s become our Flickr and Picasa: Apart from professional photographers and enthusiasts who benefit from pro features, I can’t recall too many people using either service anymore. Let me put it this way – you’re just back after a vacation. Or a friend’s birthday party. Or just transferring photos you’ve taken using your phone cam. What do you do with them? My guess is, Facebook and tag. And one doesn’t need stats to say how important photos are to the Facebook experience.