Indian bloggers now acknowledged as consultants to media firms

Afaqs reports the launch of Livemint radio today with Business Standard to follow suit. These well established media firms are now looking towards veteran bloggers and established new media practitioners to set up their digital initiatives.

Well known blogger Kiruba Shankar is to aid the BS initiative while Kamala Bhatt, of the popular The Kamala Show is associated with the livemint radio.

This follows a pattern observed globally wherein established bloggers are sought by major corporate firms and media companies to guide their way through the untrodden territory.

Also, it is typical for top bloggers to get the recognition and the moolah while there is virtually no trickling down to the resilient masses. This too is expected as Darwin's theory of survival of the fittest holds good.

The trend of new media specialists partnering with corporate firms to set up their digital platforms is a welcome one from a communications perspective . Some bloggers have been able to make that transition to Mainstream Media (MSM). This definitely is a good sign for the social media business.

(Article link)

Continuing the Obama v. McCain social media initiatives series

An article in Mint today with the headline "What we googled for during the US elections" (link) details the various keyword searches across the globe. The interesting bit is how many corporates directed traffic to their websites and web properties by purchasing these popular keywords from Google.

Mahesh Murthy, Founder, Pinstorm Advertising, claims that Indian searchers predicted the Electoral College results. Obama-related searches outnumbered McCain-related searches 2.3:1, nearly the same as the Electoral College results, the article states.

The IT heavy areas of Karnataka and Tamil Nadu surfed for keywords BPO (Business Process Outsourcing), H1B visa alluding to the visa application process for NRIs, an expected phenomenon due to uncertainties of regime change.

Also it might be useful to see my previous post on the topic:
(Link)

Social media warfare: Obama vs. McCain

The social media strategies and tools used by now President-elect Barack Obama and his opponent John McCain is an interesting paradigm shift from the heavy reliance on Main Stream Media (MSM) outlets to the grass root level and democratic social media platforms. It would be interesting to analyze the various modes of digital communication incorporated by the two in their campaign.

Here are two of the top articles which provide a scorching insight into how one can leverage social media and digital platforms by both the candidates.

1) Barack Obama and John McCain - Social Media and search engine scorecard (Link)
Courtesy Brain Solis for his tweet which gives the link.

2) Windchimes, a Mumbai based social media agency is running an analysis, a two part series on this topic on their blog (link to part I), (Link to part II)

If there are any more analytical blog posts of this kind that you have come across, please share the link.

3) Update: Mint article which detail search engine trends across the globe during the time period of the election. Also, it informs how companies managed to drive traffic to their web properties by purchasing popular keywords.
Link to article
Link to my post

IRS 2008 R2: Update

The .pdf version of the Indian Readership Survey (IRS) 2008 Round 2 conducted by the Media research Users Council's (MRUC) can be downloaded here

IRS 2008 R2 released...Readership declines

The Media Research Users Council (MRUC) has released the Indian Readership Survey (IRS) round 2 ratings for the year 2008. Following global trends, total Indian readership is reported to have declined as compared to IRS R1 2008.

Amidst boom time in Indian media markets, there is an increasing trend of readers moving online which is also observed in developed markets. May be an integrated press room is in order.

The top five English newspapers by total readership are: The Times of India, the Hindustan Times, TheHindu, TheTelegraph, and the Deccan Chronicle.

The top five Hindi dailies by total readership are: Dainik Jagran, Dainik Bhaskar, Amar Ujala, Hindustan, and Rajasthan Patrika.

The below graphic (courtesy Livemint) provides a broader overview of the readership patterns.