The much-praised reputation mechanism that is supposed to ensure that bloggers remain true, honest and factually-correct is, in fact, just the rule of the mob, where those who shout loudest and get the most inbound links are taken more seriously and visited!! It is the online equivalent of saying that The Times of India always tells the truth because four crores people read it, and Indian Express is intrinsically less trustworthy as it only sells 2 crores.

How blogging is changing journalism and whether blogging is actually journalism? I am not denying the significance of blogging, or the value that comes from having the unmediated opinions and experiences of millions of people available online. Blogging left the geeks behind long ago, and the wide availability of easy to use tools like India City Pages, Blogger, WordPress, b2evolution, Movable Type and Grey Matter has allowed anyone with an interest and some time to create their own online journal.

I just do not subscribe to the view that this challenges mainstream journalism, even if it does mean that sloppy reporting and analysis based on incorrect assertions are more likely to be challenged by the online community.

On Google’s Blogging Plans? Some think that Google was simply helping out an innovator in hard times. Others see it as the start of an attempt by this most successful of search engines to own the blogospace all the blogs. Another theory has it that Google will use the content from the blogs it now owns to fine tune its news service by using the bloggers as an early warning system on breaking stories. The Indian equivalent of it is IndiaCityPages.com!

Author is the Lead Web Consultant with Solution Point.

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There is a growing rush to join social networks all around both highly popular websites and small niche and local sites (like IndiaCityPages.com), online consumers are moving towards establishing connections in some form or another. Networking trends has brought millions of advertising money to these networks. The ultimate sign of success is when you make it out via one of these sites – but keep sailing if you think you have a shot at the next exit.

The big question is, how to build a user base, when users join social networks only when their friends are already using them. Mike Speiser, who founded talent competition social network Bix and sold it to Yahoo. He said everyone at the start-up to send a link to the site to everyone in their address books. Sure, there is no silver bullet for overnight success.
Social networks brings a sense of connection for people online. I remember one of the things I loved to do when Yahoo first came out was chat. I would go into chat rooms all the time, and it was new and it was fun. Although the need for human interaction online has always been there, however, the realization of that need did not take place until emergence of many other players. They did not provide the type of social networking that you and I do today but it did provide a way for people to reconnect, email and chat with each other. The evolution of online social networking has reached its realization with sites like Facebook and MySpace breeding millions of users.

Who are these millions? Why are they gathering on such networks? Well..

1. They lack time and are getting busier. Such networks allow them to do it at their time.
2. Lack of face-to-face networking lowers ambitions and allows people to be more open, maybe.
3. Sharing with people and learning from each other in a fast paced environment.
4. Social networks that are user generated provides an entirely new way to find content.

As eager as online advertisers are to tap into the rich source of information that people freely offer about themselves on sites like Facebook and MySpace.com, there are nevertheless growing concerns about the privacy issues raised by such tactics. Facebook is allowing advertisers set up their own profile pages at no charge and encouraging companies like Coca-Cola and Pepsi to share information with Facebook about the actions of Facebook members on their sites. Ad Executives from consumer brand companies view ads on social networking sites as a priority in their ad spending. I heard they are now spending less on traditional broadcasting and print media!!

In business, appeal of social networking is limited largely to industries where workers are fairly isolated from their colleagues on a daily basis, like medicine, construction and sales. Online services are trying to promote a more personal type of business networking. Unlike relatively simple message boards that are open to all, these new sites for doctors and engineers have features such as profile pages showing professional credentials; personal blogs that function like a kind of online diary, links to friends online, invitations to real or online events, and instant-messaging.

Some social sites also charge a membership fee. For example, Reuters Group PLC is launching a new social-networking service (Reuters Space!), for fund managers, traders and analysts. They will be able to log on to create profiles with industry-relevant information like their asset class and instruments, check financial news feeds and ruminate about the industry on personal blogs. It also plans to allow companies to block certain features like blogging and to archive employees’ online activities for compliance purposes. No stopping here, though!

Sites like StumbleUpon.com, del.icio.us, newsvine.com and digg.com provide very unique content which, most likely, we would never find using Google. These reasons have brought the need for connecting online directly to the end user or consumer. The fact that many are now using social networks makes it clear why there is so much money being spent on social network advertising.

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To elaborate the point a bit more, as far as consumer adoption is concerned, the Internet has done very well; the advantage it has is its multi-dimensional character, which no other media has; they are all uni-dimensional, in the sense that they satisfy either the information or entertainment needs of people. The Internet, however, can do much more; it can be used as a transactional medium – you can buy online; do your bank transactions; communicate using tools like email, VoIP and messengers. And of course, it satisfies your information and learning needs – so the Internet is actually media plus. It would be wrong to classify it as a media property; it’s not just a media property; it’s much more than that.

It is the biggest revolution in our lifetimes; it substitutes for your shopping; it substitutes for your bank; it substitutes for your newspaper and much more. The world is still coming to grips with how the Internet will affect our lives? It already has, phenomenally, but I don’t think we have quite seen what all it can do. With its ability to take on digital sound and video – video on demand, pay-per-view films – and the ability to project them on large screens, it may also replace cinema halls one day!

It’s a big thing but we have not quite seen what all can it do for us. It’s really the strongest force in changing the patterns of consumer behavior that we have seen in last few years. While we are lesser mortals, even the founding fathers of the Internet will not be able tell you what all it can or will do for you.

Consumer will be the king: The Internet will virtually take over a part of our lives; well, for youngsters it already has! Gone are the days of visiting libraries for research, since students get access to everything right on their desktops thanks to Google search and other portals like that. In fact if we look back into our lives we would realize that how much we are able to do on the Internet today, from banking to shopping to communicating with friends, all of it. We can’t even imagine today what all it will substitute in our lives in the years to come if it hasn’t already.

Print and TV media are bound to get affected. They are all content-cum-distribution centric activities, but in the years to come, they will have to get increasingly divorced from the distribution part of their business. Therefore, if a newspaper were to look upon itself as a content business, and not as content married to a particular platform, then it will realize that it simply has to be in the Internet space; because the Internet has taken simple content delivery to content interaction to content manipulation which has elevated content efficiency to an exponential level, something which the Print and TV media cannot do.

So, when we say TV is merely a distribution technology that we are referring to; its video content has to be usable on the Internet, which allows one-is-to-one communication and interactivity (both these things are not possible on TV and Print media). It goes without saying that traditional video content has to undergo a phenomenal change on the Internet – and if content companies do not adapt to this change, they will die, because the Internet will become the number one content delivery platform. Another advantage with the Internet is that, unlike TV and print, it’s not a linear medium; content on the Internet can be presented in a form that enables it to be delivered individually to each person and allows that person to communicate back; so if you marry these things to content it can be customized to each individual’s requirement.

Companies like ours have to keep their ears to the ground and grow with the business; grow with consumer needs and find newer ways of either consuming that content or interacting with it or customizing it to cater to consumers needs. We need to be prepared as the consumer will get increasingly important and demanding and we have to grow with his needs, since we cannot predict them. The fact that he needs information is a given, but the how and in what manner he is going to consume it is a great unknown. If you think you have figured it out, you are dead because consumer patterns change, consumer behavior is the most unyielding reality in any business, as the consumer evolves in ways that you and I cannot predict. We have to learn each day and change ourselves, I think we are living in fascinating times in that sense.

What will happen when today 20 year old turns 40 in two decades? While the trend is that the younger generation forms a big chunk of Internet users, the older lot has also started moving in, more for the sake of convenience and conducting transactions. But still, conventional media forms an important part of the older generation’s lives. The question that needs answering – and I don’t think anybody has the answer to this – is what happens when the younger generation gets into the 35-40 bracket; will it stay as much with the Internet, to the virtual exclusion of all other media? Or will it start imbibing media in the more traditional manner? I think the answer to this is not known.

Also, it would be too facile to say that they won’t, because as kids their needs are different; their lives revolve around a small community, the outside world does not matter so much to them. But as you grow older, the outside world becomes important; it matters to your work; whatever is happening around the globe matters to you. What happens then?

Information is available everywhere; but do we need to customize this kind of general information? The information then gravitates towards the public domain, in the sense that it is less customized, it’s more uniform as millions of people are going to consume it. So though today’s younger generation will definitely stay on with the Internet even two decades later, the NATURE and CHARACTER of the information that they would want to consume is likely to become very similar to the kind of information that today’s older generation is imbibing. It may start approximating much more to what you and I call traditional media. So people who are doing an obituary of traditional media are doing it too fast.

Of course the delivery of this traditional information of 2030 will be on the Internet, but not all information may necessarily be as customized as some would like to believe. I keep grappling with this thought.

Original Writer and Copyright – Managing Director of TV18, India

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