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.

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.

Our blogger of the fortnight, Rati Tehri Singh, dons many hats as a modern professional. She is currently engaged as the Director with an MBA preparation website where she works full time and administers blogs and websites that dole out study materials. Amidst all this, she also runs a highly acclaimed blog that caters to her hobby (makeup and cosmetics) via her blog ‘Indian makeup and beauty blog’. And she excels in that as well!

In her own words, Rati’s journey into the glitzy world of cosmetics began right after her marriage when she discovered that there is very little available on the blogosphere that exclusively addresses the Indian makeup scenario. Seeing it as an untapped opportunity to provide a comprehensive insight into Indian makeup for most women, Rati, took up the initiative to share her understanding of the market place.

Most of the posts on the blog are attributed to her personal experiences with a particular brand. A plethora of make-up products ranging from eye-liners, mascaras, foundations to lip-gloss, face masques, bronzers, nail polish etc. are reviewed. This provides a detailed insight for a first time usage to recommendations according to skin tone and other prerequisites to arrive at a purchase decision.

Another interesting aspect of her blogs is that wherever possible, she has given the pros and cons of the product. This gives a very brilliant and true review of each product. Also, it gives the pricing of most of the products there by letting the reader evaluate the product more personally. We also love her rating scheme which is a excellent summary of the entire review.

Rati has also used her blog to educate people on how to achieve a particular look through make up. Along with few other writers, a dedicated section on tutorials about perfect skin tone, festival looks and star looks is maintained.

All the entries are ideally supplemented with pictures of products, their packaging and a personal take by Rati herself. Written in a crisp and an easy to read manner, it gives out most relevant information in an organized format making it a very convenient read for the surfer. All this entitles Rati to be our Blogger of the Fortnight.

Read more from our Blogger of the Fortnight gallery.

If you have been reading about personal finance and financial planning on the internet, you probably know Manish Chauhan. Manish writes about financial planning at Jagoinvestor.com. He is one of the few people who has been writing about financial planning for a long time  and is furthering the cause of the small investor – a cause that is very close to his heart.

Manish started writing in Dec 2007. He likes to refer his area of work as Financial Planning rather than Personal Finance, because not only does he write on products and their reviews, but mostly on psychology required for successful financial planning and what a common person lacks, how he perceives any financial information and thinks about it .

According to Manish, "the biggest mistake people make is that they don’t value its importance in their Life, they don’t understand that Its extremely crucial in their life. I personally feel that by doing you Financial Planning, your success in your professional life and personal life becomes more valuable and easy because an important part of your life is taken care of and now you are free to take charge of other areas ."

While the subject that Manish writes about may be complicated, his writing itself is simple and easy to follow. This is a key element towards making Manish such a successful blogger. Here are few must reads as suggested by Manish himself:

• Importance of Life Insurance
• How to calculate Insurance Requirement
• Why people don’t take Term Insurance and why they are wrong ?
• What makes an Excellent portfolio

Manish is fond of cooking, trekking and he likes to watch lots of TV sitting on his tongue shaped beanbag. After having authored hundreds of articles and answering over 20,000 queries in last 3 years, he has greatly contributed to the society. And for this, we proudly declare him as our Blogger of the Fortnight.

More treasures from our Blogger of the Fortnight series.