Reality Shows: Selling emotions

Capitalists now socializing for profits

First thing first! Earn profits no matter what medium you choose. In the time period of recession and instability every capitalists is searching for the ‘cheap and best’ mode. Web 2.0 (I am not going to deal with technical terms but one thing I can say it is a present platform of internet that has revolutionized the entire world!) was last is accepted as the most preferred way to reach the customers under limited resources. Internet penetration may be abysmal but the gaining popularity of ‘social networking sites among the youth is prompting companies to ‘log in’ and gain to support themselves.

The numbers are also very promising; India Online Report tags the Internet population in the nation between 49-50 million, with nearly 15-35 age group. This not ends here; many small and big players are also setting up online stores to accelerate their sale. At present there are about 23 million social networking sites users in India, out of which orkut stands first on victory stand with 12.8 million users, followed by facebook, bharatstudent and others.

Sites	2007	2008
Orkut	7.1mn	12.8mn
Facebook	1.6mn	4.04mn
Bharatstudent	1.7mn	3.26mn
Fropper	0.256mn	0.248mn
Bigadda	0.515mn	0.385mn

Source: comSource, a global leader in measuring the digital world

www.socialize.com- launching a brand

Richard Branson, owner virgin brand though decided to fling himself from a 5 star hotel of Mumbai to announce the launch of virgin mobile in India, earlier in 2008 but his CEO, Prasad Narasimhan got the pulse of the market and dedicated himself towards social networking galaxy. According to him to get a grip of tastes and preferences of young Indian consumers! Virgin’s Think Hatke tagline was an obvious result. Conversations, contests and communities on portals like orkut, facebook etc were just few among the different ways that the ionic brand is building the resonance around its brand. Virgin has 10 different communities on orkut with 3124 members at present. Twitter even has a Think Hatke ID. Now company is not only preparing to pilot its ad campaign but also deciding to jump start their sales via e-commerce .

Till now company has not got the satisfactory results but the system and the means of communication is Hatke and it will help the company in the coming days.

www.socialize.com- election campaign

In India, the forthcoming general assembly elections have seen many local politicians follow Obama's footsteps, and the Internet is poised to play a larger role in these elections--to held in five phases on Apr. 16, 23 and 30, as well as May 7 and 13.

With nearly 700 million people eligible to cast their votes, political parties are busy wooing first-time voters and the country's tech-savvy middle class. Indian politicians have turned to YouTube, Facebook, Orkut, podcasts, live chats, Twitter and other Web 2.0 tools, to reach out to the electorate.

Bharatiya Janata Party's (BJP) octogenarian prime ministerial candidate, L. K. Advani, is reaching out to youths through live chats and his Web site(blog.lkadvani.in). Advani is also on Facebook, Orkut and YouTube, while his colleague and Gujarat chief minister Narendra Modi, uses tools such as podcasts, Twitter, Google SMS and widgets.

Supporters have also created groups on social networking sites such as Facebook and Orkut, to rally voters. Ruling party Indian National Congress' youth wing leader, Rahul Gandhi, for instance, currently has over 3,000 supporters on Facebook. Several politicians are also on Twitter, including Congress' S. M. Krishna and BJP's V K Malhotra.

The country's largest opposition party, BJP is undoubtedly the most active on cyberspace, and has banner ads--spouting "Advani for PM" messages--running on a plethora of Web sites.

The Internet, however, provides a way to appeal to the youth. Over half of India's 1.15 billion population is younger than 25 years, and 50 million new voters are estimated to have entered the electorate since 2004. Many first-time voters are likely to be connected via Internet and mobile phones.

www.socialize.com- eye on India

India is being heavily wooed by the giants of the internet, with both YouTube and MySpace having just set up dedicated Indian sites.

But both sides have the same audience firmly in their sights - young, internet-savvy Indians. Compared with the West, internet take-up in the subcontinent is not high but capitalists are taking it as a matter of investment. If we take infrastructure for instance, a huge investment was made in this field which it is paying now! YouTube has signed up a string of local media partners to put their content online - from Bollywood producers to Institutes of Technology.

In the meantime, internet users in India may have something of a golden age to look forward to.

Companies are falling over themselves to highlight what they can do for India, not what India can do for them.

All this competition will ensure that home-grown sites keep innovating - while the deep pockets of both YouTube and MySpace will mean more choice for web-surfers.

And all of it for free.

Geocities getting out of online street

Yahoo! Geocities is on the way towards close door. Geo –cities, a free website building service owned by yahoo.com is closing on October 26,2009. It means the whole time and money that you have dedicated for years at improving your site will be in hell at just one click! So, either you loose every thing or take a mid way.

If you'd like to move your web site, or save the images and other files you've posted online, you need to act now by choosing one of the following options:

1. Move your website to paid web hosts: There are many web hosting companies who will host your valuable sites at very comparative rates. Yahoo itself has announced the hosting offer at Rs 200/month for a year. You may also choose from the list like rediff, google and many others small and big players of hosting industry.

2. Download your files to your computer: If you are confused right now about what to do then don’t worry you may choose to be neutral right now by saving your files to your hard disk at a specified location.

But whatever you want to do, do it fast because countdown begins!

World Financial Cricis and its Impacts

World Financial crisis hasn’t left any industry or any part of the world. Job cuts, leave without pay, reducing regional offices, marketing and advertisement cuts, restricting bonus pay etc are the common steps that are taken by the organizations worldwide to fight this financial meltdown.
Jet Airways, major player in aviation industry of India had lay off 800 staffs on 13th October 2008.The move comes a day when Kingfisher and Jet Airways glued to form an alliance to reduce costs and improve operational efficiencies. But the political pressures by Indian political parties like Shiv Sena and Maharastra Navnirman Sena, headed by Raj Thackeray forced Naresh Goel, chief Jet Airways to take off his decision back.
Just after three days on 16th October 2008, Air India offered its 15,000 staffers leave without pay to save Rs 75,000,000 annually. But according to the statement of Aviation Minister, Praful Patel given on 21st October 2008, there will be no job cuts in Air India.
Kingfisher Airlines, headed by Vijaya Mallaya had also decided to cut salary by 10% from the present digits. Also trainee pilots will be hired on a fixed salary of Rs 20,000.
Meltdown also has profound effect on Auto Industry. ‘Cut in production’ is the eminent step taken by the most. India’s biggest auto company disengaged its 300 temporary employee at Jamshedpur unit. Mahindra & Mahindra, the country’s leading manufacturer of utility vehicles generally deploys more than 600 temporary workers at its Nasik Plant. All India Trade Union Congress confessed that down turn has forced company to trim their workforce.
In Banking sector, Cholamandalam DBS finance Ltd, joints venture of DBS Bank of Singapore & $ 2.4 billion Murugappa group has decided to close 75 of its 260 branches and also sees of nearly 200 employees. Its wonder that till now private banking giants like HDFC and ICICI has not taken steps like this!
In IT sector, Infosys has denied on any job cuts. In the 2nd week of October there was rumor that consultancy major TCS may cut variable pay, but after the Q2 result, TCS on 21st October decided to give full component of variable pay for the 2nd quarter of this fiscal. Call centers and business process outsourcing providers are among industry sectors in India that are likely to cut more than 25 percent of their staffing in the next 10 days, according to a report by a trade body.
Associated Chambers of Commerce and Industry of India (Assocham) said jobs cut would be across steel, cement, construction, real estate, aviation, It-enabled services and Financial services sector.
Meltdown is not only affecting main industries but also the education sector especially professional courses. Twelve brilliant students of IIT- Kharagpur who were selected through campus last year by US based IT firms have received regret letters in September stating that they cannot be taken because of internal re-organizing. Presently Aviation Professional courses popularity is decreasing by seeing the present scenario. But people from the industry are debating that recession is the short term process and education and career should not be judged by comparing up with global crisis, as it will affect the every sector.