In May 2012, GM had pulled out its advertising money from Facebook, and it had been major news at that time, especially coming as close as it did, prior to the Facebook IPO.

On May 19, 2012, I had written a blog post about my views on the episode.

Besides my analysis of the subject, I had shared my view there, and I quote:

“I would not be surprised if, by the end of this year, GM is back, with larger budgets, on Facebook!!”

Well, I was wrong!

GM did not return back to Facebook by the end of 2012.

But if may attempt to get a little technical, and consider ‘the end of the year’ as 12 months from the time I wrote that post, then I GOT IT RIGHT!!

Yes, GM is back on Facebook with it’s advertising moneys!! Within eleven months of parting ways..

Cheers!

Buy that FB stock back

I’d be a rich man if I earned a dollar each time a CEO, CMO, Brand Manager etc. expressed their concern over the increasing consumer voice on social media. And how it was a nuisance and screwing up everything. About their wish list of being able to curb that voice or “control” the space, if they could!

The insecurity about this consumer voice is felt as much by companies and brands, as by politicians. Perhaps more so with the latter. Which is why we have heard of crazy things like legislation to control the space or even banning some of the platforms!

The fact is that these folks are living in denial. Hoping that a reality will disappear – which never happens!

I have tried hard in my own small way, to convince some of these people to accept reality, and in fact, look at this as an opportunity. Some convert. Others still remain disbelievers. And want to “delete any negative that comes about me / my brand / my company / my party”!

Well, I would have never expected an ally in the form of Narendra Modi, to help me make my point! But as I sat through a long speech by him, addressing the India Today Conclave 2013, in Delhi, I found a very interesting clip that can be a lesson for other politicians as well as brand managers and CXOs alike.

Check out the specific 3 minutes of the talk, that I am referring to, here below:

Here are the few key points that you can see here:

1. Instead of being afraid of the online voice, Modi encourages it

2. He actually gives the example of a local government officer who could be “threatened” by a citizen that ‘address my concern or I will go online’

3. As a “CEO” of Gujarat, he believes that by empowering the citizens in this manner, he is able to locate the inefficiencies in his system and work on correcting those

4. At his level, he personally gets involved in the grievance redressal effort, as a consequence of this online effort; for the “CEO”, it is his opportunity of a direct connect with his “customers”

5. And then he talks of the method! Which is most heartwarming for me, as this is exactly what WE DO in our social media listening efforts. About bucketing issues in various heads and drilling down further into each head, and working on the ground, to fix the systems at all places, and then continue monitoring, to see if the complains reduce!

While Modi makes no specific mention of Social Media or Social Media Monitoring or Social CRM or Online Reputation Management, what he has given are those exact gems! Which every CXO and every politician must understand. And rather than viewing the space as a threat, view it as an opportunity and convert it to your advantage!

Key takeaways for CXOs and other politicians, from this Modi message:

1. Encourage a system for grievance redressal. Running away from it is like brushing things under the carpet. They don’t go away. Perhaps spread the rot more and start stinking. Best to deal with the issues!

2. Online space, whether your own or a public forum like social media, can be used well, to get this feedback loop to happen. Enable it and encourage it. Don’t curb it, don’t hate it, don’t hide it!

3. Listen to the feedback. Don’t just delegate it to some junior officer. Get the data at the most senior level. It is your direct contact with the consumer on ground. You will not get a better view of your consumer. All other views, whether coming through the hierarchy of your organisation or through commissioned market surveys, are “filtered” opinions, often tweaked to either show you what you’d like to see, or show you what your juniors want you to know!! Social media and direct feedback from the consumer, is unadulterated!

4. Beyond the specific issues that the individual customers are facing, look at the patterns. Categorise the feedback into buckets. Understand what are in those buckets, understand larger systemic challenges that you have, and then get to work to fix those.

5. Continue to listen, even as you are fixing the issues on ground. And then keep reviewing the changes via the feedback loop. Do you sense the change? Are fewer complaints coming in? Are there actually people sharing the good feel on account of the change you brought about? That is your true measure, and the long term dividend of the exercise.

Yes, if Narendra Modi can do it, why can’t other politicians?? And if politicians can do it, CEOs and CMOs and Brand Managers should definitely be able to do it also??

What do you think??

Yes, it’s that time of the year again!

When you either look back or look forward, or do a bit of both.

This piece is a looking forward piece, an attempt to crystal gaze into the year ahead, and see where Social Media’s going in 2013.

There are multiple aspects of Social Media. We can look at the consumer behavior on social media, or impact of social media on politics, or whatever.

However, coming from a Social Media agency, and focused on brands and social media, I will restrict this piece to Social Media trends for 2013, in the context of brands. Here are my top 5 thoughts on this subject:

1. Social Media Agencies will continue to be Super-Busy: If we thought 2012 was a high growth year, 2013 will be much bigger. Brands, which have stayed away from social media so far, will finally plunge in. Those who have been present on social media will continue to invest more, create multiple campaigns, build more applications, buy more media, etc. The work to do will increase multifold. And while many new social media agencies will spring up, there will still be enough and more work to do. In short, Social Media agencies will be busy, and those who can continue to scale, will keep scaling higher peaks.
2. Facebook will nudge away market share from Google, on advertising money spent: Yes, we have heard of the (now old) story of GM backing out of Facebook, for it’s advertising. But an IPO has happened since, the Facebook stock has taken it’s beating, Analysts have cribbed about Facebook’s inability to monetize the mobile user. All of these are from the past. Since then, Facebook has reacted. And how. There are some amazing paid media plans that Facebook now offers, including for the mobile user base. And with the billion plus user base and an extremely fast growing number in India as well, Facebook remains irresistible to brands. The coming year will see increased digital money spends going to Facebook. And the increased spends will come partly at the cost of non-digital media spends, and partly also at the cost of other digital media spends, including Google!
3. Blunders -> Paranoia -> Increased Spends on ORM: This is a vicious circle of sorts. The compelling need to be present on Social Media will see some brands taking risks. Of having cheap resources managing their social media fronts. On account of that, or on account of a certain enthusiasm to plunge into social media, especially from some top management types, we will see our share of blunders from brands. There have already been a few this year, and next year’s count will be higher. The blunders will unfortunately be expensive. These will result in widespread deriding of the brand, on social media channels, as well as mainstream channels. The resultant publicity will generate a sense of paranoia amongst the rest of the brands, who will finally wake up to the need and the call of Online Reputation Management.
4. Deteriorating traditional customer service will lead to increased requirement of Social CRM: Yes, we’ve all experienced this. Frustration at the call centers or the email based customer service offered by brands. After our patience has been tested long enough, we take the battle to Twitter-ground, and lo and behold, the brand responds in double quick time, and the problem is solved! Call center service, unfortunately, is unlikely to improve in a hurry. Brands are still reactive and not proactive. So they are setting up extensive Social CRM set ups, either in-house or agency-supported, to deal with the increased complaints on social media spaces. But few are recognizing that the cause for going to the public spaces of social media is only because the traditional means of customer service suck, and brands are not fixing those!
5. Businesses will get a little more social – budgets will come, not just from marketing departments: We have heard the grand visions of Social as a Business, or converting the whole organization to be social, since social media is not just about marketing. While these statements sound nice and earn claps at conferences, on the ground, this is still far from reality. Companies are NOT getting too social across the board, just yet. Marketing teams are barely “getting” social media, so the spread beyond that, is marginal. But the needle will move a little more. In previous points 3 and 4, I have already talked about ORM and CRM aspects, where budgets will come typically from Corporate Communications and Customer Service departments respectively. But few more departments may test the waters in 2013. Social Media and HR is primed to see some genuine movements from companies. Whether it comes in terms of Employer Branding initiatives, or getting an internal social network setup, the start will be made. And if IPOs return finally, then the investor relations department will not be able to afford to stay away from social media.

So these are my thoughts on where I see social media going in 2013, from the point of view of brands and companies.

But I am equally keen to hear your views. What do you see happening to brands and social media, in 2013??

Few days back, a friend had posted an interesting question on Facebook.

About how Facebook was meant to be that place where you reconnected with old friends and had enjoyable conversations. But about how, now a lot of different types of your friends / colleagues / bosses etc. have got connected to you on Facebook, and which puts a certain caution about what you speak out there!

Interesting point of view. And true too.

My response to her was that in pre-Facebook (aka pre-Social Media) days, we had our multiple “avataars”. We were a friend to our schoolmates, a colleague to our work friends, a neighbour, a son / daughter, a husband / wife, a nephew / niece, a grandson / granddaughter, etc. etc. And we could lead our independent existences, as these various beings. Because each of those relationships and each of those spaces were independent of the other.

However, with nearly ALL of our different relationships converging together on Facebook, we are actually in a melting pot of sorts. And as melting pots go, we have to present our “one unified self” to all those relationships.

THIS is a consequence of this new media, this transparency, this openness. And we need to deal with it.

But that’s for individuals.

How does that work for brands / businesses?

Let me narrate for reference, an incident that occurred very recently. A not-very-pleasant incident, at that.

One new brand, a smashing, new entertainment center / lounge bar, etc. coming up in one of the mills compounds in Lower Parel, reached out to me one evening.

This lady called my at around 4 pm, stating that they were looking for a social media agency, and can someone come and meet them that very day. Remember she calls me at 4 pm, and is looking for someone to meet her that day.

I resisted a bit, but she persevered suggesting an urgency. And she did not tell much about the business too.

Ordinarily, we would have not responded or run down for such a vague sounding urgent call. However, one of my colleagues was out somewhere, and for some reason, I sensed an opportunity, and requested my colleague to go and visit them.

He went by, understood their requirement, saw the “smashing” place, etc. He was there at around 7 pm or so.

Then, guess what? They wanted us to get back to them with a proposal by…. THE NEXT DAY!!

We completely resisted this bit stating that we’ll need a lot more time to put together a proposal. But the CMO speaks to me, and pushes and pushes. For the completely unrealistic timeline.

Finally I agree to send a senior colleague from our strategy team, to have a look, get a better understanding, and then be able to revert with a proposal, but maybe in 2-3 days. He agrees to have this visit to happen, but insists that we revert with a proposal in 2 days at most.

Post my second colleague’s visit, we are asked to give a broad scope (not a pitch) and a budget the SAME day, and if we are in the workable range, then they’d ask is to work on a pitch. But we’d still get only 2 days to complete.

We took our chances. Gave a scope of work and budgetary price, and which they found acceptable, and they asked us to do the pitch, and revert back for a presentation, the day after, at 2-30 pm.

It was an impossible timeline, so the team started working in earnest. Burnt the midnight oil, came up with some really interesting ideas and strategy. Worked really hard.

The morning of the meeting, we exchanged some notes with the client, they gave us information.

Then at 1 pm, just as the team was about to leave for the presentation, we get an SMS to state that the agency was finalized the previous evening, and we don’t need to come for the presentation at all!

WOW..

First they make us jump around in extreme urgency, make us slog the nights out and then they wouldn’t even give us a chance to pitch??!

On phone, some pathetic explanation was given. And that was the end of it.

Now what do I conclude about this company, this brand??

That they are an extremely unprofessional, arrogant and unethical set of people!!

Well, this experience was as a potential agency / vendor to them.

But now, me and our team, will continue to carry this image about them, as a brand overall.

So when the launch happens and they are written about, what will be the first thought that comes to our mind – “the unprofessional, unethical brand”! And we may share our views also to our friends and others on social media. For whatever be the worth of ours to be infuencers, to that extent at least, the story will spread.

And the brand would be hurt because someone in their brand / marketing team was an ass****!!

This in effect, is how brand reputation is also becoming a unified, one kind of reputation.

There were times earlier when a brand could have been a good, front-end service brand, and could have been squeezing its employees or vendors out. However, today those vendors or employees or other constituents and stakeholders are all alive on social media. And word gets out. You can’t be dual-personality. Even if you are a brand and not a person. Truth comes out!

Consider another scenario in today’s times. A brand sets up a Facebook page. From a marketing perspective. But seeing the brand name there, seeing the logo there, if there are folks who have not received their share dividend, and have not got response from the investor relations team, come to the page and post complaints, that cannot be stopped. Someone who applied for a job, and has been waiting to get a response, can come and ask the question here. A frustrated vendor, tired of waiting for his long pending payment, could come and post a question here. Etc.

Can these be stopped? No, these cannot.

So what happens to the brilliant marketing campaign that is otherwise running on the page? A user who comes to the page, may see some of the other negative aspects and make judgements about the brand. As a one whole piece. And not just based on the marketing campaign.

Today, brands may no longer have different reputations as an employer, as an investor friendly company, as a service provider, as a client to vendors. Like the human being who is found in a melting pot on Facebook, and not as individual entities like son, grandson, friend, colleague, neighbour, etc. so also, the brand has ONE reputation, based on the brand’s 360 degree presence.

So if the marketing folks are painstakingly building a certain imagery, they have to be equally concerned that their HR colleagues or their investor relations team colleagues are not messing things up!!

Interesting times we live in, what??

Just before the year began, in December 2011, I had stuck my neck out like many do, to make predictions about where I thought the Digital space was headed, in India.

As we are three-fourths of the way through with the year, I thought of taking a look at those predictions, and see how I have fared, or rather how the digital space in India has fared vis-a-vis my predictions.

And here’s the quick review:

Prediction 1. E-commerce or more specifically, online retail of goods, will continue to show fabulous growth: 

Irrespective of the challenges of Flipkart, to raise money mostly, the industry per se, has shown a tremendous growth rate. And continues to grow. So I would count this as a YES.

Prediction 2. The Group Buying / Daily Deals space will crack:

This was a bold one, if I may say so, back when I said this in December 2011. The space was hot, large investments were being raised, and it appeared like the hottest thing that could be. And yet, I think I got it right, when you view the state of affairs in October, 2012. The space did crack! Globally as well as in India. There may be survivors who are morphing their business model to something else slowly. But the fundamental group buying / daily deals space is struggling. So this is one more YES.

Prediction 3. Media Buy Spends for digital will increase:

Bang on!! Our own clients have increased budgets many times over. And we read the same stories with other brands too. Annual digital spends in crores are reasonably commonplace now. Heard about a leading private bank who had done 4 TVCs last year, and who are doing none, but instead, creating 80 YouTube videos. What do you say to that? So this one too, is a big YES.

Prediction 4. Marketing will get more integrated:

We are definitely seeing an emergence on this trend. The campaign we ran for Reliance, called Tweet-a-Tab was a classic case. It combined Facebook, Twitter, Google Maps, YouTube, Radio, TV, and an offline activation. All in a single campaign. All working in synch, for a tremendously successful campaign! Others are happening too, but the trend has to get bigger still. So I’d give this a 50% YES just yet.

Prediction 5. Brand Pages on Facebook will have to fight clutter:

Oh, totally! And besides fighting clutter, these need to also fight Facebook’s Edgerank algorithm, to be visible to their fans! So a double whammy. And a definite YES to this prediction.

Prediction 6. Google+ will get an honorable mention in history:

Okay, so this has not completely happened yet. Google is giving G+ it’s all. And continues to fight. So I would rate this prediction as a NO, just for now. Let’s see the status on this by December 2012, though!

Prediction 7. Social Media embarrassments will happen:

These are happening. Daily. It would seem. Brand Equity covered several of these, and more have happened thereafter. So this one’s a YES too!!

Prediction 8. Online Reputation Management will be part of a brand’s budgets:

This is a big YES too. And we know it from direct experience, and from what we read and hear from the market. We have been getting lots of leads for companies very keen to do ORM. And some at the highest levels of the organisation. Reputation challenges online, have started to hurt, and these are showing, and finally the ORM need has been strongly felt. Our own exclusive partnership with the world’s leading Social Media monitoring tool, Radian 6 (part of Salesforce.com) has been very well received, also on account of this dire need for ORM services!

Prediction 9. A killer case study will happen, on Social Media, in India:

Ahh.. this is still an iffy one. There have been case studies, but I am still searching for the “killer case study”. So I will call this a NO. Not happened yet. Can something surprise me between now and December? I will wait and watch!

Prediction 10. We should see some M&A in the agency space:

Oh, how true was this! Not SOME M&A, lots of it! Indigo, Hungama Digital, Resultrix, Communicate 2. And at least a couple of others in the pipeline I hear, and which may be announced before the year is done with! So a huge YES on this one.

An overall score of 7.5/10 is not bad at all! And it may yet improve by the time the year is done with.

So heck, I was not too bad, was I? Inspires me to start thinking about 2013 now..

The Twitterati is up in arms! How dare the Government of India (GOI) block some Twitter accounts? How dare do they even think of banning Twitter and / or Social Media, in general?!

Yes, a free society does not like curbs put on its freedom. And the recent move by the GOI to block some Twitter accounts, and other similar suggestions that have come, are not appreciated by netizens at all.

And yet, for a moment, let’s consider the government’s dilemma.

On very sensitive matters like communal tensions and rioting, if there are speculative rumours floating around, or if someone or some bodies are purposely causing damage by provoking people via a false propaganda, the government is at a loss to manage the situation. And at such times, knee-jerk responses like banning social media etc. get proposed!

Much like the developed western world’s vendetta against an Assange and Wikileaks, the Indian government’s response to social media, is not surprising.

However whether it is the US / UK movement against Wikileaks or GOI going after Twitter accounts, these responses are the wrong responses under the circumstances.

You stem a Wikileaks (IF you manage to do so) and some other “leak” will emerge.

You plug a few Twitter handles and others will emerge.

Much as a world living on ‘clouds’ of all kind cannot fully control leakages of information, so also, today’s connected world with the consumer / citizen at the helm CANNOT be controlled by knee-jerk blocks of some social media accounts.

In fact, the real challenge for governments, much as it has been for brands, is to deal with the fact that the word, “control” got out of the dictionary a while back!

Yes, brand managers and CEOs were used to have “control” over the communication that reached the public. Some of them still believe that they have the control. It takes a while for them to realize that they do not control anything anymore! Control, if at all, has now moved into the hands of the consumer on social media. You can’t get your PR team to “manage” what gets written about you. People will blog and tweet and post their status messages about your brand, just as they please. And you can’t do anything about that!

It is high time that governments realize this too! Gone are the days when the only form of mass communication was Doordarshan and which the government was able to control. In the era of social media now, the public will speak what they feel like, be it in the voice of a fake PMO office, or the voices of common individuals. The politicians and the bureaucrats and the GOI in general, has to understand this, appreciate this, and deal with this!

But then, there is false propaganda on sensitive matters, you’d ask? What about that?

Well, don’t brands face that? Haven’t competitors, disgruntled ex-employees and others who held some grudges against companies, not spread malicious rumours about brands and companies?

These aspects are part of the reality of the day! And the answer to these too, is NOT about banning and blocking, but again, dealing with things!

Let’s understand how brands handle the real and the false negativity on social media?

1. By setting up listening posts (“social media monitoring”) so they are not taken by surprise and can deal with issues proactively, once they discover them
2. By having a well-defined protocol and a workflow to manage normal responses to negativity
3. By also having a plan to handle and manage a potential PR crisis, while praying hard that such crisis actually do not happen at all!
4. By ring-fencing the brand well to ensure that miscreant activity is curtailed and as and when it happens, it is dealt with, firmly
5. In the event of false information that cannot be recognized easily by people, going out with the correct information, with proof, with details, with credibility, to give “their side of the story”
6. By owning up to their own mistakes once in a while, being honest to admit those, not hesitating to say ‘sorry, we screwed up, but we are working to fix it’
7. By creating their own content on social media, giving out interesting, lesser known information, so that consumers have a peak at the real story
8. Most importantly though, by being out there, ‘talking’ to the consumers, engaging with them, establishing a dialogue with them, winning their confidence, in normal times, and not just when there is a crisis!

GOVERNMENTS ALSO NEED TO FOLLOW THE SAME STRATEGY!!

Yes, governments are no different to brand managers, in this respect. The earlier that they understand and accept this, the better it is for them.

The knee-jerk reactions of banning this and blocking that, will NOT work. Remember that the Ganesh idols drank milk in Mumbai, way before the advent of social media!

So if a piece of news has to viral, IT WILL.

The only way to prepare and deal with this connected world, is to join it, and work with it.

And if government departments feel that this is overwhelming in terms of volume, and they do not have adequate or capable resources, then like brands, they may need to take help of social media agencies for the same.

Yes, why not?!

In the good old days, when social media was not there, brand communication was a broadcast communication, a one way monlogue. The brand spoke and the consumer listened. The rise of social media has broken the iron curtain that shielded the brand from consumer feedback. Now communication has become a dialogue. And dialgoue involves two interaction.  But what is if some interaction with a consumer is not going in the brands favour. And what if the brand has genuinely messed up something big time ? Should a brand apologise ?

Traditionally, a brand has been treated as something very sacrosant. Almost God-like. Economists will tell you that a substantial part of the market capitalisation of some of the largest  companies is on account of brand value. Marketeers will say that the only sustainable way to build a long term competitive business is by building a brand. Brand managers guard the brand, with the same zeal and enthusiasm like a someone guarding a treasure. Consumers swear by their brands. If brand is a God, then Gods don’t apologise !

As I see it,  this era of “Godliness” of brands is coming to an end. The kingdom of brands is coming to an end. And we are entering into an age of brand-democracy. And in a democracy, everyone is accountable and everyone is responsible.

Thus brands will need to get off their pedestals and acquire a more human face. If someone is complaining, brands need to address that complaint. If someone is maligning, brands need to defend themselves. If someone is ranting, that person can be ignored. And if something has got messed up somewhere big time, a brand must apologise. Human beings are fallible and so are brands. And accepting a mistake and working on correcting the same, only makes a better human being…or in this case a better brand.

Once upon a time the likes of Naukri, Monster, Timesjob and others served as staple platforms for recruitment.  However, in my opinion, the emergence of LinkedIn as a recruitment platform is a serious threat to these existing market leaders.

Speak to any recruiter and she will tell you that the problem with Naukri is not the shortage of resumes but rather the overwhelming number of “responses” that one receives, that separating the grain from the chaff becomes an issue. A lot of responses seem to be based on automated match-making, which pretty much tries to push resumes to the recruiter, and job openings to a aspirant. Hence lot of applications don’t have a serious “looking for change” intent.

Another challenge that a recruiter faces is validating the contents of the resumes.  Existing job portals, are a mere “database” of resumes. Hence it is just content that you are getting. However, a platform like LinkedIn is a “network” and in a network besides content you can access relationships. This is where LinkedIn scores big time.

Here are some interesting built-in features in LinkedIn, which makes it a great platform for recruiters :

1. Understanding ones standing in industry:  If a candidate has claimed in his resume that he is an ace salesperson, well networked at the top level, all one needs to do is to look at that persons contact list on LinkedIn. This immediately gives a feel of that persons network and thus his or her standing in the industry.

2. Recommendations : LinkedIn provides a ‘recommendations’ feature. While these recommendations may be generated at the request of the profile owner, looking at these recommendations and the profile of the person who has made these recommendations, can give a better idea about the candidate
3. More honest profiles : In a world that was not networked, one could be different  things to different people. But in a networked world, you can have only one avatar. Once upon a time, a candidate could create multiple versions of his resume, and depending on the job opening, forward one of the many “suitable” versions. Once you are on LinkedIn, you can have only one profile, only one avatar. And if one tries to fudge your profile, someone in your network who knows you, will question the fudging. Hence profiles on LinkedIn are likely to be closer to the truth.
4. Referrals : LinkedIn allows you see who in the candidates network is known to you. One could just pick up the phone and talk to one of these common contacts to a do a referral check. You no longer need to wait to do reference check via the candidates suggested references, which is any case are likely to be positive
5. Understanding beyond the resume : LinkedIn allows one to link one’s presentations and articles, books that one reads etc to ones profile. Looking at this gives a more deeper understanding about the candidate

When you put all these things together, you start seeing that Linkedin is a far more effective recruitment tool and as more and more people get onto LinkedIn, it will become the preferred recruitment platform.

When was the last time that an email that you intended for someone, actually got sent to someone else? Your email client pulled out multiple names with similar spellings and you hit the “send” button, before even checking if the correct one had been chosen, simply because there were 50 other tasks that needed to be completed in the next 15 minutes.  Or when was it last that your cell phone rang, and a name was displayed but you could not quite place who this person was. Obviously it was someone you met (that is how he got into your  phone book in the first place) and now you are not able to quickly place who this person is.  No, this is not a mid-age memory crises……this is new global syndrome : Continuous Partial Attention (CPA).

In the good old Victorian era, there was the concept of “work” and the concept of “leisure”. Work was something that you did a certain number of hours every day so that you could enjoy a larger share of time as leisure. And the demarcation between the two was mostly clear. But in a modern 21^st century social-media-connected-world, the lines between work and leisure have completely blurred. We don’t know where one starts and where does the other end.  We want to be doing everything, all the time.

Doing everything all the time, is not the same as multi-tasking. In a multi-tasking environment, you are doing a certain number of tasks but your attention to each task for the while that you are doing it, is complete. But now our new reality is that, we want to be kind of hanging around everywhere. The size of our attention window is becoming smaller and so is our level of attention during this window. We are quickly switching from one thing to another: from email to a voice call to a text message to browsing news to jumping to a social media site to looking at the continuous flow of Tweetdeck alerts……we don’t want to miss anything. We want to be there continuously, everywhere but our attention is only partial. This is continuous partial attention.

The consequence of the CPA is the we are more and more getting sucked into the virtual world, away from the real world. It is taking us away from people who are physically closer to us and the people we live with…but getting us more engaged with people with whom we were otherwise more loosely connected. There is too communication and it is becoming increasingly difficult to tell the difference between signal and noise. It is becoming harder to read something slowly and enjoy it. We keep hearing but we rarely listen… since listening demands engagement. Finally at some point of time, this is going to result in our complete breakdown and burnout.

We need to reverse the trend by realising that while speed matter, context and real world matter more! Hanging around, is not the same as networking. Communication without an objective is sheer noise. And listening is more important than just hearing. And creating is more important that just participating. Depth is more sustainable than width !

Legend has it that the digital universe, as we know of it today, evolved from ARPANET.  And a lot of websites, portals, directory sites and search engines lay claim to the ownership of this digital universe in its early days, until Google came along and put a method to the madness. It became the de-facto gate-keeper of this world. If Google did not know of you, for all practical purposes, you were just some digital litter in some corner of this universe !

For the past few years, Facebook is challenging Google’s role as the gate-keeper of this universe. Already the total number of minutes spent on Facebook by netizens equals the number of minutes spent on Google. And Facebook’s understanding of   relationships, and of likes and dislikes in the cyberworld is by far more deeper than what Google can ever achieve.

And now, with the launch of “Timeline” feature for brand pages, Facebook is signaling perhaps its strongest intent to move to the centre of this digital universe.  Here are some interesting features that implementation of timeline gives to brands:

• Brand pages on Facebook are now no longer pages, they actually become a brand website anchored in Facebook.

• The new timeline feature  gives huge real estate on the brand Facebook page, for a brand to communicate its message. Once upon the time, the only real estate that the brand had was a very small display picture (DP) and a small left hand aligned banner. Pretty much all Facebook pages looked the same !

• But now there is complete masthead that stands out and fills almost 1/3^rd of the screen, all it screaming brand. We will see very creative uses of this real estate, in time to come, which will enable brands to communicate their differentiation to the audience.

• Brands can pin a story of their choice, to the top of the fan page, thereby ensuring that page visitors definitely view that story. Again some more opportunity for brand communication

• Fans always had the facility to communicate with the brand using the wall. But this was a one-to-all kind of communication. Now a fan can send a message to the page and do a one-on-one communication, almost like  a “contact us” kind of communication.

• With the entire tab navigation now moving prominently to the masthead, and with a compressed drop-down list, a brand can create a complete website with these tabs (with individual tabs for about us, products, services, testimonials etc)

So now a brand can have its complete digital presence as well as its community.….both at one place. And as more and more of us depend on ‘referral’ based inputs for our decision making process, rather than ‘information’ driven inputs (that Google offers), we might see both consumers and brands finding the Facebook eco-system more conducive than the current Google dominated ecosystem.

So is www.mybusiness.com now passé and www.facebook.com/mybusiness the new norm ? And is Facebook now going to be the new centre of the digital universe? What is your opinion ?