Success favours the bold as well as the interesting on social media, so don't hesitate to express your feelings and agenda, writes Guy Kawasaki At its foundation, social media is simple: if you share good stuff, people will reshare it, and you'll get more interaction and more followers. Everything else is optimisation (or delusion). This article (an edited excerpt from our new book) explains what it takes to create perfect posts that will add value to the lives of your followers, build your platform, and spread your story. We advocate the most aggressive sharing practices on social media, so buckle your seat belt, and put on your helmet. Be valuable. What do we mean by "share good stuff"? Your social media posts should come in four forms: What happened? Example: Secretary of Defense Chuck Hagel says that he's open to reviewing the role of transgender people in the military.What does it mean? Example: Mother Jones explains why Uruguayan soccer star Luis Suárez's biting incident during the World Cup was a big hygienic deal.How can I do that? Example: CNET explains how texting to 911 works.What the hell? Example: Every year, two churches in Vrontados, Greece, stage a mock rocket war to celebrate Easter. The goal is to emulate the NPR model. National Public Radio provides great content 365 days a year. Every few months, it runs a pledge drive to raise money. It can do that because it provides such great value. Your goal is to earn the privilege to run your own "pledge drive," which in this context means promoting your organization, product, or service. Be interesting. Many people and most organisations mistakenly assume that their followers want to read about only a narrow band of subjects. Should we share only stories about entrepreneurship, innovation, and technology or about social media and blogging? Should Motorola share only stories about Motorola? The answer is no. To do so would be boring, and boring doesn't work on social media. You should think more broadly and take more chances. Here are some examples of how organizations can remain on-brand and at the same time be more interesting: Restaurants: Atomic particles help solve wine fraud; the scientific way to cut a cakeMotorola: The 100 best Android apps of 2014; six great Android tipsAirlines: The last drive-in theaters in America; mindful travel photography.Design agency: Why it's okay to have an ad below a Web page's fold; key findings about retail-customer loyaltyMonster: "Weird Al" Yankovic's parody of Pharrell Williams's song "Happy"; fun/scary jumps If you share this kind of interesting stuff, you'll earn the NPR-esque right to promote yourself to your followers, and your followers will help you get more followers. #1 Be bold Success favours the bold as well as the interesting on social media, so don't hesitate to express your feelings and agenda. For example, if you think there should be more women CEOs, share an article that supports your perspective. People voluntarily followed you; they can voluntarily unfollow you if they don't like what you share. My theory is that if you're not pissing people off on social media, you're not using it right. There's much less leeway for organizations to be bold, although they can take strong stands on issues that affect them and their customers. For example, American tech firms can be bold about issues such as work visas for foreign citizens, and Planned Parenthood can be bold about pro-choice issues. But there are too many downsides, and it doesn't make sense, for example, for Apple to be bold about gun control. #2 Be brief Brevity beats verbosity on social media. You're competing with millions of posts every day. People make snap judgments and move right along if you don't capture their interest quickly. Our experience is that the sweet spot for posts of curated content is two or three sentences on Google+ and Facebook and 100 characters on Twitter. The sweet spot for created content is 500 to 1,000 words. #3 Be thankful Your created-content posts might not contain links, but when you're curating, by definition you're using outside sources so every post should contain a link. Links send traffic to the source as an act of gratitude; enable readers to learn more from the source; and increase your visibility and popularity with bloggers and websites. When you find content because of someone else's post, compose and share a post with a link to the source and then add a "hat tip" to the person who brought it to your attention. #4 Be visual Every post-literally every one-should contain "eye candy" in the form of a picture, graphic, or video. According to a study by content marketer Skyword, total views of its clients' content increased by 94% if a published article contained a relevant photograph or infographic, when compared to articles without an image in the same category. A great graphic or embedded video is as important for the success of a post as the text. #5 Be organised If your post on Google+, Facebook, or LinkedIn is longer than four paragraphs, try to use a bulleted or numbered list. This makes it easier to read, because the information is organized into smaller chunks, and it reduces the tl;dr (too long; didn't read) effect. I tune out when there's paragraph after paragraph of text. If I want to read a novel, I'll buy an e-book. #6 Be sly I find posts titled "How to…," "Top Ten…," or "The Ultimate… " irresistible. These words say to me, this is going to be practical and useful. The folks at Twelveskip compiled a list of great title templates, so be sly and use it. Here are my top 10:1. How to Rock ___2. Quick Guide___3. A Complete Guide to___4. Questions You Should Ask Before___5. Rules for___6. Essential Steps to___7. Most Popular Ways to___8. Tips for Busy___9. Tactics to___10. What No One Tells You About___ #7 Be found Hashtags are a beautiful thing. They connect posts from people all over the world and add structure to an otherwise unstructured ecosystem. When you add a hashtag to a post, you are telling people the post is relevant to a shared topic. For example, #socialmediatips on Google+ connects posts that are about social media. Twitter, Instagram, Facebook, Tumblr, and Google+ all support hashtags, and we recommend adding two or three to your posts. (If you use more, you look like an #idiot who's trying to #gamethesystem.) Also, don't use hashtags on Pinterest, because people hate them there-perhaps because they interfere with users' minimal-text sensibilities. #8 Be active By "active" we mean three to 20 different (that is, not repeated) posts per day. That's a guideline. As long as your posts are good, you can share more than that. But if you share one or two crappy posts per day, that's too much. Admittedly, you're reading a book coauthored by someone who repeats many tweets four times. But I'm sharing at a "hard-core" level - 3-4 Facebook posts, 8-10 Google+ posts, 4 LinkedIn posts, 10-12 Pinterest posts and 25 Tweets per day. When we decided to test the effect of repetition by sharing four identical posts with four different links to track clicks, we got about 1,300 clicks on the first, roughly the same on the second, 2,300 on the third and 2,700 on the fourth, for a total of 7,600 clicks. Would you be willing to risk complaints about repeated tweets to achieve 5.8 times more clicks? Those complainers will either get used to the increase or unfollow you. What matters is the net effect: are you adding followers and gaining reshares? #9 Be distributed Using tools to schedule and distribute posts isn't cheating. It's what smart people do to optimize their sharing. Anyone who insists that you must manually share your posts is silly. Most followers can't tell how a post was shared, and if you have a life outside social media, you probably can't manually share posts throughout the day. Services you can use to distribute your posts include Buffer, Do Share, Friends+ Me, Hootsuite, Post Planner, Sprout Social, Tailwind, and TweetDeck. In 30 minutes, you could plan a day's worth of posts by using any of them. #10 Be a mensch A "mensch," in case you haven't heard the term before, is a kind and honorable person who does the right thing the right way. "Give to others without having an agenda," says Mari Smith, the queen of Facebook. When you help others in this way, the reciprocity will surprise you. So share other people's posts, make positive and intelligent comments, suggest resources and solutions, and rack up points on the karmic scoreboard in the clouds. Goodness will eventually flow to your posts, I promise. Be promotional. We hardly ever do this, as a matter of pride and principle, but paying to promote posts on Pinterest, Facebook, and Twitter can work. The decision comes down to the math: does the revenue justify the expense of paying for the views? When Canva paid to promote to advertise a job opening, geo-targeting only to people in Australia, $60 brought approximately 14,000 views. If you refuse to pay to promote your posts (we'd respect you if this were your decision), you can "pin" your posts to the top of your page on Facebook and Twitter. This means that the post remains as the first visible story at the top of your Timeline. This isn't as effective as paying for promotion, but it's free. #11 Be multilingual Héctor García translates Japanese news into Spanish, and because he's often the first person to share the news, his posts become the de facto source. This is a clever idea. If you are bilingual (or multilingual), try translating breaking news into another language and see what happens. #12 Be analytical You can improve the relevance of your content (while keeping in mind my exhortations to share things that are interesting and bold) by analyzing the characteristics of the people who follow you. For example, Facebook's analytics are a rich resource for finding out who your fans are. Twitter provides extensive analytics for verified accounts, including the number of impressions per tweet and how many people engaged with each tweet (clicking, retweeting, replying, following, or favoriting). SocialBro reveals who follows you, helps you find new people to follow, and illustrates how your content is doing, and you can get similar reports in Sprout Social and Hootsuite. #13 Be curious If you asked five social-media "experts" a question, you'd get seven different answers. Our advice is to field-test common generalizations such as "Share on Facebook on the weekend" and "Share on Twitter in the morning." Jay Baer, author of Youtility, shares posts a few minutes before or after the top of the hour. His reasoning is that this is when people tend to check their social-media accounts because they are between meetings. Like most social-media advice, it's hard to test scientifically, but it's worth trying. Everyone's followers are different. ABC (always be curious) and experiment to find out what works for you. Products such as Tweriod and SocialBro for Twitter, LikeAlyzer and Post Planner for Facebook, and Tailwind for Pinterest can help you measure the effects of changing variables such as timing, frequency, and graphics use. #14 Be defiant In our opinion, most search engine optimization (SEO) is bullshit. There are 3,000 computer science PhDs at Google trying to make each search relevant, and then there's you trying to fool them. Who's going to win? Tricking Google is futile. Instead, you should let Google do what it does best: find great content. So defy all the SEO witchcraft out there and focus on creating, curating, and sharing great content. This is what's called SMO: social-media optimisation. (The author, Guy Kawasaki, is chief evangelist, Canva)
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Globally 'internet of things' has seen the past decade as more of a pursuit of innovative web tools to collaborate giving rise to a sharing economy and e-commerce era. Industry estimates indicate that the next five years will likely see the Indian e-commerce industry to clock a CAGR of 35 per cent and cross the $100-billion mark. It is estimated that over 65 million consumers in India will buy online by this year end from a 40 million last year. Besides Tiger Global, Sequoia, and Naspers amongst others, this year Indian e-commerce segment also saw new investors like DST Global, Soft Bank, BlackRock, etc. Tier II, III and IV markets are expected to come closer with planning infrastructure advancement that the new political regime may undertake thereby improving logistics and delivery time.While the last few years have seen an upsurge of many online companies big and small, there are yet fewer success stories sharing information about their profitability and organic growth. India is beholding a sea of disruption. E-tailing became a buzz word since last year. Flipkart, Snapdeal, Myntra, Jabong, Home Shop18, Yepme, Limeroad, Olx etc seem to have witnessed an extreme hype during the festival month. Flash sales received a boost from concepts like Singles Day, Big Bang Day, GOSF etc. The prices are extremely competitive. Freebies are a usual thing. Latest is that discerning Indian customers eventually have started to feel these as gimmicks as the discounts are becoming too regular now. Price fails to remain as a differentiator. Dr Yasho V VermaWhat all new may entice an astute buyer entails the selling or marketing strategy entirely. As the tech online players may like to understand, what marketing or sales tactic may act as a growth hack for them may decide their future in an ever changing and ever growing e-retailing world.A global entrant like Jet.com joins the rank as the newest club retailer and is seen offering prices lowest possible but that is not their core strategy. It isn't just about penny-pinching but also about creating a more personalized experience for shoppers. They have a unique selling preposition to allow discounts for repeat customers in a week urging them to buy more often allowing a more consistent sales curve, customers are encouraged to "Jet Anywhere" and shop on other affiliate merchant sites. When Jet first launched to a small number of beta testers (insiders program), its customer relations team sent out handwritten notes to customers after they made their first purchase. Since then, Jet reps have been encouraged to handwrite at least one note to a person they've interacted with during the day. In order for Jet's business model to work, it needs to sell $20 billion worth of merchandise annually. Jet cofounder Marc Lore thinks the company will hit that mark in the next five years. Amazon was generating a little more than $19 billion in sales annually in its first five years. Much like Amazon, Jet is focused on bringing its customers value and developing a loyal following. It is expected that Jet.com may spend $100 million on advertising and marketing to create unambiguous value proposition to enable volume of shoppers to the site.Another mention is that of Roposo that is positioning itself as a dedicated fashion social network that shares everything that is fashion - hairstyles, nail enamels, stilettos, lingerie and ways of wearing them in a unique way every time. Then there is a localbaniya.com or grofers.com trying to sell monsoon special offers along with fresh and organic monsoon fruits for your basket! These are illustrations of how Flipkart and Amazon started as their USP is going beyond the mundane of regular feedback, reviews and on time product delivery. Rankings and ratings may soon lose relevance too. Social networks are replacing the traditional word of mouth way where one-on-one feedback is considered paramount. It is a known fact that likes of Flipkart, Amazon, Jet.com have deeper pockets and wider visibility through paid form of all round advertising, the followers may find it a lot more difficult to advertise with costs increasingly becoming unbearable.If you see few other seemingly similar looking online startups like Pepperfry, Urban Ladder, LivSpace, et all, they all have picked up a niche market but may still differ in offerings to that of another. A solid wood furniture provider may be the USP of one, another may be offering Italian design and the third may be selling an entire concept of designing a room or a corner of your living space rather than focusing on selling per units of a furniture. So one observes after a closer look that each may have a fair chance of survival in a niche industry and further niche in the way they package their offerings. What also remarkably make them look different is they customize the product as per an order (size, color, delivery) and neatly package it as per the type of the product providing an anticipating customer with joy at the sight of delivery and further reinstating quality at the very first interaction with the brand.In India, traditional retail channel still covers 90-95 per cent share and until an online player acquires a double digit market share in retail segment, they still rule the game. Though there seems lesser skepticism now than perhaps five years earlier on proven success of e-commerce ventures it may still be considered a better cousin of dot com companies that went bust in 90's. Even then, Bill Gates had implied a possibility that even if 95% businesses fail, it will create enough content for the humanity and empower them with the knowledge. Businesses failed then largely due to lack of revenue models and that seems common to ecommerce models too. It may not be ideal to compare dotcoms with ecommerce platforms of today where physical exchange of goods may still be less at this point in time but then remains a revenue streaming model that needs acceleration. Well thought marketing strategies will provide these startups with the required impetus.Akin to dotcoms, it may be harsh to predict about ecommerce companies, but the way market is behaving seems the ones to survive would have become very large to maneuver market dynamics or would have achieved success in demonstrating core disruption in a niche industry and deeper niche in a service or a product.E-commerce is not content relevant neither it demonstrates any lucrative commercial value as yet, but if it proves itself in another few years, it will certainly be a leap in 'retail of things' and most of them would have sorted their sail boats to traverse well the vast blue ocean.The author, Dr Yasho V Verma, is a management thinker & philosopher
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Live streaming in recent times has been the talk of the town as far as social media is concerned. The rise and subsequent fall of Meerkat and the eventual launch of Periscope by Twitter, have all been well documented in the archives of twitterati in 140 characters or less.Thus, it is a good time to step back and see what this means for the companies who are always on the lookout for new and unique ways to interact with their customer base. Marketing and Advertising are the two verticals which will be affected the most by this tilt in the social media paradigms. While advertising is going to be directly dependent on the demand that platforms like Instalively/Meerkat/Periscope create in the market, marketing is going to be more of a ‘first come first serve’ and a real treat for the early adopters. Allow me to explain how…Live streaming is the best demo tool for a productA demo involving any product is based on the assumption that the intended customer develops a certain level of trust and understanding towards it so that he/she is comfortable in shelling out cash knowing what he/she will be getting for his/her money. While we have seen product demos live where a physically present audience gets a chance to see the product in action, ultimately such presentations cater to a very small user base.Now with the advent of portable live streaming on relatively slower net speed doing a live demo becomes as easy as whipping out your camera phone, setting it up and starting your product demo for the whole world to see. Reaching out in real time was never this easy before!Create a customer friendly brand imageBrand image goes a long way into deciding how a customer is going “see” the brand. Certain engaging brands like Adidas and Amex have made it a habit to be timely and witty in their responses to keep their audience hooked and it translates to good PR leading to a better brand image.However, there is only so much of interaction that can be done within the limits of 140 characters or via text in general. To keep yourself connected to the audience you need to be one step ahead of the curve, always projecting yourself as the cool kid on the block with all the new shiny toys. Enter Live streaming. It is immediately understandable how a well done live broadcast from a company can directly influence the brand perception in the eyes of the user. Any fun activity going on inside the office can be broadcasted for the world to see which helps in creating a personal connect with the brand.Doing Giveaways and other competitions liveFor the uninitiated, a giveaway is basically a company giving out some cash or goodies to a random follower on the social media channel of their choice. Giveaways are a very potent way of forming real time connection with your client base while also advertising your products at the same time. Mostly the giveaways work on either first come first serve basis or by picking up a random follower from the people who have completed the desired call-to-action to participate.A live stream is an ideal way to make such competitions more transparent and engaging. Basic functionalities such as text sharing and multi platform streams would be ideal in such scenarios.The author, Prakhar Khanduja, is co-founder of InstaLively
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The cyber-attack landscape has changed drastically. Broad, scattershot attacks designed for mischief have been replaced with advanced persistent threats focused on acquiring valuable data from an organization. The cyber-criminal community has evolved from pranksters, lone wolves, and organized gangs to hacktivists, cyber criminal groups, and state-sponsored threat groups.It's a more dangerous world. 97 per cent of the organizations that FireEye has evaluated globally have been breached. India isn't an exception. FireEye recently revealed a decade-long cyber espionage campaign based in China targeting India and Southeast Asia. This attack group, called APT30, focused on targets in the public and private sector which hold key political, economic, and military information about the region. Its operations went undetected for a decade until we published the report, which doesn't speak highly of organizations' abilities to fend off targeted attacks.Today no progressive country including India can afford to not acknowledge the gravity of the situation. Both IP and national security are at risk. Intellectual property fuels modern economies. If a nation's businesses can't secure their IP, their customer and supplier details, or their other internal information, they become less competitive in the global economy. Equally important concern is national security while increasing bilateral relations with the neighbouring countries like China. Information held by businesses and governments can be very valuable to adversaries to gauge military readiness, capabilities, vulnerabilities, and more. India cannot afford the status quo.With the Prime Minister's vision for Digital India and Smart Cities in the years to come, we can anticipate increased avenues for attacks by the threat actors seeking sensitive government information and consumer data. From small sized businesses to large enterprises all kinds of organizations are susceptible to these data privacy intrusions.Traditional defense-in-depth security measures, such as next-generation firewalls, antivirus, web gateways, and even newer sandbox technologies only look for the first move. This doesn't cut it. Today's advanced cyber-attacks are created to evade traditional network security.Adopting A Proven ApproachThere is no easy solution to shore up our cyber security. To succeed, we must adopt a different approach across three areas.Technology is the first step. Coupling it with sophisticated technology and intelligence will go a long way in ensuring the companies are covered at the cyber security front. Proprietary virtual machine technology that can detect unknown threats, along with the intelligence and expertise needed to detect, prevent, analyze and respond to the threats of today and tomorrow should be the way that the companies should embark upon. Overall, it's not just about deploying a product but also providing resources to customers to help detect breaches. This proven approach has been adopted successfully by various organizations around the globe.But technology can't do it alone. Shared threat intelligence is one of the most important weapons in our arsenal. Unlike other countries where the public learns of breaches thanks to breach disclosure regulation, most Indian breaches stay below the radar. This not only leads to a false sense of security, it makes us less safe. Today when a threat group breaches one organization, they can take the credentials from one theft to break in elsewhere - because people often reuse passwords.Breach notification requirements would help the public take stock of the impact, and provide threat intelligence to help public and private sector organizations better defend against tactics which have been successful elsewhere.Finally, expertise is required. According to a study done by EC-Council, a global certification body for information security professionals, nearly 86% of student IT talent pool in India display no awareness of cyber security basics. What's more, traditional cyber security skills are no match for today's targeted attacks. FireEye finds that breaches go undetected for an average of 205 days, clearly attesting to the shortcomings of traditional approaches. This is why organizations all over the world are increasingly turning to outside firms like FireEye to manage their security as a service. While this makes use of a limited skilled labor pool, we still need more skilled cyber security professionals to help defend organizations from attacks.All too often, organisations approach cyber security reactively. In the face of escalating attacks, India can no longer afford this approach. It's time to step up our game plan to secure the future. The author, Ramsunder Papineni, is regional director (India and Saarc), FireEye
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Reliance Communications (RCom) on Thursday (27 August) announced a partnership with global Internet of Things (IoT) platform leader Jasper to enable enterprises throughout India to launch, manage and monetise next-generation IoT businesses. This partnership pairs the capabilities of RCom's 11 data centre facilities and its Global Cloud Exchange platform with Jasper's global IoT services platform to enable enterprises to capitalise on IoT services, the company said in a statement. In collaboration with Reliance, the Jasper Control Centre platform will enable enterprises throughout India to deliver IoT services that create value for customers and unlock new and recurring sources of revenue for business.
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Guiddoo, an In-Destination mobile app and travel technology company, has launched first Map based tour and activity marketplace which will be available across 15 countries such as India, Jordan, Philippines and Vietnam, has more than 5000 tours and activities enlisted already.Guiddoo invited a selection of top rated independent tour and activity operators to put this service together and some of Guiddoo’s key partners in India include Bollywood Tours in Mumbai, Yak and Yeti Tours Sikkim, Dive Goa and Real Desertman Safari, Jaisalmer. Guiddoo plans to have unique features such as Traveler-Activity Mappings, Adaptive Price forecasts for Activities, Travel Happiness Index and Activity-Lifestyle Maps for Travelers. All of these features are map based, making search easy to discover and more relevant and will soon be available on the Guiddoo Android and iOS Apps."We at Guiddoo plan to build a great user experience and predictive tool for travelers during the In-Destination Phase and plan to launch features like Traveler-Activity Mappings, Adaptive Price forecasts for Activities, Travel Happiness Index and Activity-Lifestyle Maps for Travelers using Innovative technology like Big Data, Machine Learning and Analytics Tools, “ said, Prashant Choudhary - CTO Guiddoo who is an IITKGP Alumni and was previously Mobile Lead, Ericsson Global, India.The tours and activities will range from Volcano Mountain Bike Trails in Indonesia to Desert themed rides in Dubai to themed tours and day trips across Asia, Middle East and Africa. The vision is to create a marketplace for local experiences and activities because of the variety and uniqueness it can get to users. The basic functionality has been set up and the first bookings have successfully been completed, the Guiddoo tech team is working on adding features like rating and reviewing the services used, as well as some advanced options for tour calendars and pricing.“We forecast a huge surge in our usage and revenue potential with this addition with an expectation of 1000 per cent increase in usage of our web and mobile products in the coming year with this addition. In fact the addressable market for the Tour and Activity Booking Space according to Phocuswright’s Research titled - When They Get There and Why They Go - is bigger than the Car Rental Market Globally.” said, Vineet Budki- CEO & Founder Guiddoo.The Guiddoo app, currently provides In-Destination Experiences for 25+ countries through its Web and Mobile Products that offer features like Activity Meta-Search, Audio-Visual Guides and other key tools like Points of Interest finder which include Hotels, Restaurants, Spa and Shopping. With over 100,000 downloads Guiddoo has been a leader in this space and has been highlighted as a premier travel startup in events like Phocuswright’s Travel Innovation Summit and WSJDLive.(BW Online Bureau)
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Dating app, Woo, has launched a feature TagSearch for people to allow users to view profiles based on attributes such as city, profession, the author they follow or their favourite music.Sumesh Menon, CEO and co-founder of Woo, said, "The user should be able to steer what kind of profiles they see every time they use the app. Smarter discovery means more matches, more matches mean more people who actually find love through Woo".Woo takes a design thinking approach to the current problems users face on matchmaking apps, such as users being forced to ‘like’ or ‘dislike’ every profile or the problem of conversations fizzling out. Its feature Reconsider allows users to revisit profiles they’ve passed over and another key feature QuestionCast, allows users to cut to the heart of the matter and ask important questions that can set the basis for substantial conversations.(BW Online Bureau)
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Twitter is investing in its media partnerships function across the Asia Pacific and Middle East regions to accelerate its push for content partnerships across the news, politics, sports, TV and entertainment verticals.The company has promoted Rishi Jaitly to Vice President of Media for Asia Pacific and Middle East to lead the business strategy and build up the media partnerships function in these regions. His team will work with key publishers to prioritise Twitter as their first and immediate platform to reach, delight and engage with a mobile audience across Twitter's live, public platform, including the Twitter, Vine and Periscope apps.Based in Singapore, Jaitly will grow his teams in major digital markets including Australia, India, and Japan, while expanding his team into new markets in Greater China and Southeast Asia. For example, his new team in Singapore recently completed the TV partnership deal with MediaCorp to use Twitter's SnappyTV platform to exclusively provide high-quality video clips of the country's 50th National Day Parade via Tweets during the live event.Rishi JaitlyKatie Stanton, Vice President of Global Media, said, "Since joining Twitter in the fall of 2012, Rishi has done a tremendous job of evangelizing the power of Twitter's platform for our users, influencers and content partners in India and Southeast Asia, including several of our largest and fastest growing markets in the world. By promoting Rishi to lead our function across the Asia Pacific and Middle East, we can quickly expand into new markets with a winning playbook, build up our strategic alliances and audience engagement in major markets, and attract the best talent for our team that brings the best content in the world onto Twitter's live, public platform."Jaitly said, "The Asia Pacific and Middle East regions account for over half of the world's Internet, mobile and social media users today, so this is an exciting opportunity to connect with content partners to drive the global digital revolution from these markets. As many of our largest user markets are in these regions, my strategic priorities are to enable our content partners to grow their audience on Twitter, increase our engagement with emerging talent and digital natives, and bring more premium non-English content onto Twitter. Our goal is to make Twitter the first and best way to show you what's happening in your world right now."Prior to his new role, Jaitly was Market Director for India & Southeast Asia at Twitter, establishing Twitter's operations in India and growing content partnerships across India, Indonesia and the rest of Southeast Asia. Earlier in his career, Jaitly was head of public-private partnerships for Google in India and an Aide to then-Google CEO Eric Schmidt in California. He is also the Chairman of Michigan Corps, a social enterprise based in Detroit, the Founder of microfinance platform Kiva Detroit, and a former Director at the Knight Foundation and College Summit.(BW Online)
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Indianroots.com, an online marketplace by NDTV Ethnic Retail, to launch its maiden TVC campaign ‘Inherently Indian’ under new brand strategy on 15 August 2015.Rahul Narvekar, CEO, NDTV Ethnic Retail (Indianroots.com) said, “IndianRoots is a firm believer in “Make In India” and our TVC conveys the uniqueness and immense potential in this message. With this commercial we aim to capture the attention and increase the recall value of IndianRoots within the Tier II and III customer base of our country”.The ‘Inherently Indian’ is directed by Soumik Sen of Gulaab Gang fame. True to IndianRoots’ efforts around celebrating and glorifying India, the TVC highlights the everyday essence of being a modern Indian woman, who is rooted to her culture. The commercial is aimed at increasing the brand awareness among women residing in these cities.The commercial subtly blends Indian fashion with typical, underlying Indian traits and locations, and seeks to bring fashion down from its high pedestal making Indianwear look sensual. The TVC will initially be seen played on NDTV India and NDTV 24x7.Suvajyoti Ghosh, Co-Founder & Managing Director at Brandmovers India sai, “Agencies, in general, do not rope in Bollywood directors to direct a TV spot, but in this case, we wanted Soumik’s unique story-telling vision to come through and create great cinematic quality. To keep it real, we avoided casting the typical model figure, and instead chose to portray the real, modern woman, with a distinct candour.”'Inherently Indian’ will be extended across various social media platforms.
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India-born Google CEO Sundar Pichai has expressed gratitude over the deluge of wishes extended to him on his promotion to the helm of the technology giant. "Its been overwhelming to see such generous and warm responses from many dear friends, colleagues and strangers - heartfelt thanks," Pichai, 43, tweeted on Wednesday (12 August). Prime Minister Narendra Modi, Apple CEO Tim Cook and Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella were among the scores of dignitaries who took to the micro-blogging site to congratulate the IIT Kharagpur alumnus when he was named by Google's co-founder Larry Page as the next chief executive of the slightly slimmed down internet behemoth. Pichai had said he hopes to meet Modi soon as he thanked the Indian leader for his wishes. Pichai received a B Tech from the Indian Institute of Technology, Kharagpur and holds an MS in Engineering and Materials Science from Stanford University and an MBA from the Wharton School. He had joined Google in 2004 as its vice president of product management, where he led the team working on Google's Chrome browser and operating system. His alma mater Wharton had also tweeted on his promotion. Madhya Pradesh Chief Minister Shivraj Singh Chouhan posted on Twitter, "Remarkable success of @sundarpichai will?inspire youth across the country to work towards their chosen goals with more dedication and zeal." Pichai thanked Nadella, Cook and others who congratulated him on his promotion. Pichai becomes only the third chief executive of the company after Schmidt and cofounder Larry Page. Bret Taylor, co-creator of Google Maps, ex-CTO of Facebook and Co-Founder of technology Quip also congratulated Pichai, the first non-white CEO, on Twitter. Schmidt wrote on Twitter, "Really excited about the vision and brilliance of Sundar. He's going to be a great CEO." Bollywood star Khan, who had met?Pichai last year during the promotional tour of his movie 'Happy New Year' at the Google head office in California, tweeted,?"Well done and congratulations my friend. Well deserved. Running out of goodies your office gave, time to come back again for more."
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