Around the time of the recent climate summit at Copenhagen, a new word began to drift around: hopenhagen. It just showed what the summit was all about: hope – for the Earth and for us. Now, that our political leaders couldn’t see eye-to-eye on how to make the Earth cleaner and greener makes for excellent analysis and political commentary. But for folks like you and me, it’s just a lot of mumbo-jumbo about strategies and negotiations. Here are... 

Poke on facebook My father had this look of disbelief. “Poke?…really?” Having spent his formative years in the pre-social media days, he just couldn’t understand why ‘poking’ a friend was ‘cool’.To people of his generation, poking was (and is) a sign of bad behaviour. Simply, not the thing you can do regularly to a friend. Which set us thinking. Has social media merely changed how we connect with people and... 

It’s the talk of the Internet town and the biggest question media-watchers are asking is: are your internet posts really private? Recently an insurance company stopped paying health insurance benefits to a patient who had been diagnosed of depression. The claim is that the company saw the patient, who was on  long leave from her work, having a good time on a beach. And how did it do that? Through photos that she had posted on Facebook. It concluded... 

Management gurus and industry honchos alike, have all said their two-bits about customer service and customer relationship management. Point: serve your customers well, listen to them. If this was difficult to do in the physical space, it becomes even more challenging in the virtual space. You can’t see your customers, you can’t tell what interests them. Or can you? Enter web analytics. Though a familiar term for the web-savvy strategists,... 

In April this year, the US auto giant, Ford, launched a novel marketing campaign. It gave 100 web-savvy drivers, across the US, it’s new Fiesta subcompact, free to be test-driven for six months. It also decided to foot their fuel expenses. All that the drivers had to do was share their adventures and views online! Did that get your attention? Then you can imagine how much potential all those videos and tweets, from the drivers, have to pull... 

Overheard at a nationalised bank, which had recently adopted core banking. Employee one: “Damn! This computer is acting up again. Who said that this technology was supposed to make life easier? It has just added to my work.” Employee two: “Let’s call the help desk people and ask what is wrong.” Employee one: “As if that will actually help. Think we were better off without this new technology!” Most of us would rejoice about how... 

There have been many debates about whether or not companies should start blogging and tweeting. And each time, we say that the advantages of using social media far outweigh the disadvantages. Of course, if you are selling a truly flawed product or service, fancy posts and tweets can’t help you cover up. But if not, then social media can just about be the magic wand your marketing team wanted. Making it personal. Everybody wants to hear a story.... 

Replace Amsterdam with Iraq and Palestine. Replace the old confidant, the diary, with its modern avtar, the blog. And you have online personal accounts of people living in strife-hit regions, in politically troubled zones. It seems all too familiar: the stories of fear, of oppression, of denial of rights. The doubts, anxieties and hope. But what is different is the accessibility to and use of such tales. While Anne Frank* used her diary to pen her... 

Before going on to Web 3.0, you need to ask yourself: “Do I understand Web 2.0 well enough?” If you do, then you can skip the paragraph as well. But if you don’t, keep reading right from here. The term first came up in 2004 in a brainstorming session between O’Reilly Media and MediaLive International. One of the Internet buzzwords that rooted into the public consciousness, even though most didn’t quite understand what it meant. It was during... 

Answer: No, you can’t. The web media today has evolved into one of the world’s most versatile mediums. It’s a single most potent medium that showcases you – your organisation, your ethics, your values – to the world. While your viral marketing tools, ad campaigns and other marketing collaterals will attract traffic, those interested will all want to refer to your website eventually. And god forbid that they should find it lacking. So,...