Is Facebook really Listening?

Click here for the inset picture

This is what Facebook Team has to say about my feedback on their new design. Below is the content of the mail they sent me today.

Hi,

We appreciate your feedback about the new site design. We’re constantly trying to improve things on the site, so it is good to know what is working for you and what isn’t. Unfortunately, we can’t write individual responses to each of these emails, but we are reading them. We hope these changes make the site even more useful for you. If there are any specific changes you recommend, please let us know.

You may also want to check out this note ( http://blog.new.facebook.com/blog.php?post=31033537130) from our founder and CEO, Mark Zuckerberg, and read his thoughts about the new Facebook.

If you are having any problems with your account, you can also check out our Help page ( http://www.facebook.com/help.php) where you'll find information about Facebook as well as the answers to many answers of your questions.

Thanks again for writing in.

-The Facebook Team

The highlight bold portion of the above content shows that Facebook cares. But how much care is care if they don't change the new design which I believe is still filled up with useless apps. Though I just hope the Facebook returns to its old design where navigation was so easy and user friendly.

Related articles

• Zuckerberg Responds to User Complaints on Facebook Redesign
• How do you feel about Facebook's redesign? [Poll]

What's your Tweet Worth?

This is a perfect "lazy sunday" post. This post will provide some juice on Twitter and the state of things. For almost a year now, Twitter has been the poster child for everyone who has been chasing Bright & Shiny Objects in the Web.

Now a new service called Twittad is launched which wants to monetize the Twitter background real estate. The company is allowing Twitter users to make their page backgrounds available to the highest bidder. Each listing includes the number of followers, the duration, and the price. Advertisers can then purchase the spots, with Twitter ad collecting a 5% commission on the transaction. So far there aren’t enough transactions completed to estimate the average value of a Twitter follower over a given time period, but this example of a recently sold ad spot for an account with 250 followers went for $5 for one month.

Now the company is sponsoring WhatsYourTweetWorth, a vanity site where you enter your Twitter name, and it tells you how much your Tweets are worth based on how many followers you have.

But there are inherent problems with this new business model:

1. Page backgrounds are not clickable (See here) and there is no easy way for a third-party service to track any meaningful metrics other than impressions.

2. With so much activity taking place on your friend timeline in the Web Interface or in a third-party apps, profile pages are not necessarily valuable estate.

3. Lastly, one most imminent problem is that I rarely go to my friend's Twitter profile since their tweets are visible on my twitter profile or third-party apps. So its like pushing ads to myself only at the end of it all.

Few possible solutions:

1. Try working out these ads in a blended format with the tweet stream (though it may prove out to be annoying).

2. Forget about trying to sell ads on Twitter pages, and put ads on WhatsYourTweetWorth instead.

3. These ads can at the best work out as pure brand advertisements for clients who just want to push in their messages in the twitter profiles.

Despite the inherent problems in Twittad’s model, there are a number of other companies attempting to monetize web page backgrounds, including AdCamo, who is providing a platform to both publishers and ad networks.

Courtesy: TechCrunch & Mashable

Related articles

• Revenue Models for Twitter
• TweetSense
• Twitter Changes to 'New Twitter' with New Design
• Integrating Friendfeed into Twhirl
• Community-led Business Model Monetization for Twitter

Lousy Customer Service

Click on the inset picture

There are many things which can make a customer go mad. One of them is lousy customer service. But this inset picture says it all. Just when an unassuming customer is entering a retail shop, he sees this.

Quote-unquote: Management is not responsible for any loss of hand baggage deposited with security.

My question is: Who is then? Isn't security a part of your team? TRUST is one factor which takes a lifetime to build and here it is broken at the very instant when a customer is entering the retail shop.

Image courtesy: Siddhartha Reddy (Twitter handler)

Related articles

• The Benefits Of Customer Service Training
• Surprise Your Customers
• Customer service is an important component of e-commerce
• The Pope is coming

Twitter Changes to 'New Twitter' with New Design

Today Twitter changed its old design to new and much loved new design which is being appreciated a lot. Take a look at the hundreds of responses from Twitterverse.


Also take a look at freezed Search.Twitter (Formerly Summize) screenshot for all the responses via tweets which is no less than WoW, Whoa....

It s needless to say that hundreds of responses are being fed per minute about the new design also being dubbed as "New Twitter".

Also check out the trending topics of Search. Twitter which has "New Twitter" as most talked about news (Marked in Red in above picture).

Check out the official Blog of Twitter here to read from the horses mouth about the new changes.

Integrating Friendfeed into Twhirl

This is an awesome new development coming from Chris Brogan via Twitter (link here). Reason why I'm excited about this new development is two fold:

1. I'm a huge fan of Data Aggregation and I feel sites like FriendFeed is just the tip of the iceberg since the future of internet in this age of ageless & countless information and on top of that millions of social tools available to track them makes our life more complex. So data aggregators like FF is sigh of relief since it has not only aggregated data but social tools like Flickr, Twitter, Blogger, digg, StumbleUpon and others in one platform from where we can track everything.

2. I always tried to keep a tab on Friendfeed (FF) but unfortunately always forget to check it out.

So this little bit of information made me quite excited since now I can track FriendFeed & Twitter together from Twhirl (twhirl is a desktop client for the Twitter microblogging platform, powered by Adobe AIR).

Down below is the steps of how to pull FriendFeed in Twhirl account (Source: Mzinga):

If you don't have Twhirl already, you need to start by downloading Adobe Air.

Once you download air and install it, download the beta version of Twhirl from Leo Laporte's site (don't go to Twhirl's site, the latest version they have is only .0.8.5)

Before you install Twhirl, make sure you have your current version of Twhirl closed if you currently use it.

This is the slightly tricky part - open up the new version of Twhirl and click on the logo in the top right-hand corner of the application (it looks like a mini green and white hurricane)

See screenshot below: The key is to select "FriendFeed" as an application option in the bottom left-hand corner:
a) Once you do this, enter your account info in the box just to the right and click the plus sign.
b) Now select your Friendfeed account from the list above.
c) Click "Connect" and this should prompt you for your "remote key" - click on the link below the box if you don't have one and it will pop up a FriendFeed browser window with your key.
d) Copy, cut and paste the key into your Twhirl dialogue box and hit enter.

Thanks again to Chris Brogan & Aaron Strout for sharing this information.

Image Courtesy: Mzinga

Read the official Twhirl release: twhirl 0.8 released - adding friendfeed support

Blog Info: HP Blog Printing Shutdown

This is a part of the mail I got on 9th September, 2008 for one of my widgets on right hand sidebar which helps users to print posts by just clicking it. It seems that now you can't! If you can't read what the mail reads (Screenshot of the mail above), then this is the literature portion:

Following up on our email dated Aug. 15, 2008, this is a reminder that HP Blog Printing will be discontinued on Sept. 15, 2008 and the print dialogue that is invoked when a blog reader clicks on your blog will no longer be active.

In order to ensure that your blog readers are not negatively affected by this change, please follow the step-by-step instructions outlined in the links below to remove HP Blog Printing from your site....

So apparently, today as in 15th September, 2008 is the late date you can avail this useful widget. Gosh, I so wish that they wouldn't shutdown the widget since lot of users like it.

Read more on Launch of this Widget from Mashable.

Tag Cloud of my Blog

Click here to see the bigger picture

I've been trying out a new 'Tag Generator' called Wordle. It selectively picks up the most used word as keyword and it seems I spoke most about Media, Marketing, Technology, Digital Marketing, Online Business, Brand and India mostly in this blog.

So if you're a blogger, then check if your area of interest that gets reflected in your blog. Non-Bloggers too can have fun seeing what their favorite blogs talk mostly about...

How Google Won Search War: A marketer's outlook

This Screencast says it all I believe. If it's still being not evidential then let me clear up few things then.

This is the screencast of Google way back in May, 1999 & the Screencast of Yahoo in May, 1999 which I took from Way Back Machine which archives everything in internet from past to present.

Now a quick check of the links above will show 110+ links for Yahoo way back in 1999 whereas Google had none. So food for thought is why did Google win over Yahoo in the search wars? Everyone must have their own reasons but surely I can figure out one. Google anticipated our actions in terms of needs, wants & desires in the most simplistic way. Isn't that how businesses should be run? We overkill it by adding complexity in our marketing messages by re-running those boring, slapstick ads over & over again till customers get bored and start ignoring.

So Friday's thought from my side as a Marketer is: What is the oppurtunity gain/loss between choosing complexity from simplicity for customers? Any thoughts from your side is most welcome.

Guess!

Click for the inset picture

In the inset picture, I have pasted the screenshot of my blog's visitors from different countries in the past one year from 26th August, 2007 to 26th August, 2008.

So can you guess how many countries have they visited from?

Please comment in the section below. Correct answers to the extent of ± 5 would be much appreciated.

Screenshot of the Day (Yours Truly Quoted)

Ever since, I saw Gauravonomics posting "Yours Truly..." blog posts, I wanted to put something like that in my blog too (Apologies Gaurav for zero creativity and complete fame-freak).

So talking about it, first of all prelude to this post ....I adored/loved Wikinomics since it made me see internet, demographics,technology, culture or for that matter human race in a whole new way. It won't be wrong if I say that it helped me evolve as a far better Marketer than I was before.

So going back to my respect for this book, this time around, "YOURS TRULY" was quoted in Wikinomics blog post about one of his recent posts on certain Wikinomics theory which he tweaked to certain extent. (View Inset picture)

Click here for bigger Flickr Pic.

Fail Whale

Again today, the same state of much loved or rather irritatingly loved micro-blogging site Twitter. This screenshot image called "Fail Whale" has become more or less synonymous with Twitter.

Quickly something has to be done or else people will find newer places to hang out. Though they bought out Summize (a Twitter search tool), but recently I'm seeing some tweets being missed and confirmed too.

So one request to all twitter guys : Please don't kill Twitter, at least for our sake and quickly monetize it so that you can save it at least from the clutch of budding competitors and industry behemoths.

Screenshot of the Day

What's this? Does Airtel and YouTube logos look similar? Laugh out loud my friend, it is!! Interesting I must say. Wondering is it "TRUE-COPY"?

Thanks Pratham.

Screenshot of the Day

This provides the perfect recipe for your morning coffee with snacks. Isn't it? NO I'm not kidding. Of all the Facebook Apps, research shows that "Just for Fun" is a clear winner. The next one is Gaming. Not surprising though, at least for me since I get most of my Facebook apps invitation from this group only (guys stop sending me such). Anyway getting down at number crunching, it's no rocket science to understand that numero uno i.e. Just for Fun Apps is ahead of the 2nd one i.e. Gaming by a whooping 270%+. Oops!!! There goes Facebook's valuation, at least for me...but as they say "..the rest is history".

Courtesy: Flowing Data

Screenshot of the Day

When was the last time you saw "Customize your homepage" tab in a website. BBC has got into the action it seems. Now this is what I call leveraging the "Power of Web 2.0": True sense of engaging, collaborating and making the viewers a part of the BBC community. And I surely don't know about the future of this new move, but sure it made me free from crappy news clutter.

So what's next, huh?? "Herd behavior" from other players!!!