Nokia's Social Media Initiative: Blogger Review Program

Before starting off, some pep-talks on some recent happenings around me of course. I posted last on 9th August which is like many centuries back it feels like. Actually was caught up into one of those times where my mind and heart wandered along the realm of the Web which caught my fancy. But to narrow down my surreal thoughts, Asfaq (@Asfaq) helped me in figuring out (here & here) why I was wandering for the last 2 weeks. He termed it as "The Twitter Effect" (Will post on it soon)- Sounds cool but trust me when you have it, that's about it. Your whole world, inlcuding offline & online world gets affected to be precise (more on it later though).

Anyways, the reasons I had to blog was a mail from Saurabh in the morning and more precisely a small tweet in response to this one. He confided to me earlier that he got a Nokia thingy happening in this life which mostly authenticate that he's hell of a good blogger/influencer (whatever you want to say!) which he mostly ignores or he's a Dumb A** to understand (Respect). Today he mailed me in the morning to share his experience with the Nokia Blogger Review Program.

He has some interesting thoughts on Blogger Review Program which Nokia Initiated and included him along with 2 others (TwilightFairy and Ashish - He denied later though). So I have few random thoughts to share from the mail which saurabh sent me in the morning along with few other Social Media Evangelists (if I may say so!) which led to some interesting conversations via mails, comments, tweets and blog posts.

• The first question from me would be: Has Saurabh Garg lost it? Mainly because why can't he believe that he is damn good and Nokia thinks he worth all their spending which included shipping the expensive piece (I was fortunate as Saurabh showed me the piece when we met) half way across the world & back. (P.S. I hope SG takes my statement above with little bit of salt and sugar)


• Secondly, the conversations over the mails were quite interesting:

TwilightFairy wrote: "....See another effect precipitating here due to Nokia giving u a handset for review :) Now there are posts around ur post"- This is to solidify that SG has turn out to be an Influencer since we all are blogging about him.

Ashish wrote: "....And that makes me wonder - Is Saurabh @ the center of 'ecosystem' or is there an ecosystem building around saurabh?" I like this sentence since it implicitly tells us that the subtle relationship between us & the Ecosystem of intent/things/ideas is becoming blur day by day.

Also read Gaurav Mishra's post on SG's new found job as Nokia Reviewer.

• And lastly, my reasonsing for selection of SG was right. What I believe Nokia might of thought is that they want to cover the whole Indian Culture/Technology/Social Media space. And who else to think other than Ashish of PluGGd.in or TwilightFairy who is a very well known name in Twitter and in Indian Blogging scene. Yeah SG would be a doubt that his reach is not that far flung as others, but hey this guy has some interesting fan following in twitter (Follow SG and you'll know what I'm saying) and has a definite voice to speak to the modern Indian youth.

So my analogy for Nokia's selection is: Covering the whole pond with little yet definite ripples which can move the water.

• Lastly, it's a great way to reach your audience and sure enough Social Media is giving them enough leverage to attain the critical class/mass. But I would have appreciated if they would have employed few more bloggers and lastly surprise them by giving the exquisite piece as a gift (I think I just said what's in SG's heart n Mind).

So one last thought before I finish this post and my very recent blog post droughts: THANK YOU Saurabh to act as in enabler in this case.