Social Technology Quarterly Issue 09

Social TechnologyQuarterly09

July to September 2013

09© 2013 Kuliza Technologies Ltd. All Rights Reserved.

In this Issue

Quantified Self The Future of

Healthcare

The App Landscape

The Transformation Act of the Publishing

Industry

2 3

123456789

Harnessing the Power of MobileAchintya Gupta

Identifying the Role of Social MediaEkta Tibrewal

HTML5 Interaction EffectsKaushal Sarda

The Influence of Art Movements on DesignAnindya Kundu

06

09

12

14

The Transformation Act of the Publishing IndustryDiarmaid Byrne

Transacting Internet FameVandana U.

Show Me the MetricsArun Nair

24

28

34

Social Media, not so SocialMithila Nagendra

The App LandscapeVandana U.

Quantified Self: The future of healthcareDeepak Behera

Listening to the Community: A Lego case studyAnn Burgraff

37

40

42

46

Campaigns

Commerce

Communities

STQ

4 5

Social Technology Quarterly and the STQ logo are trademarks of Kuliza

Technologies Ltd. Their reproducion without the proper permissions is unlawful.

© Copyright 2013 Kuliza Technologies Pvt. Ltd.

You are free to share and make derivative works of this publication only for non-

commercial purposes and under the conditions that you appropriately attribute it,

and that you distribute it only under a license identical to this one.

Contributors

Achintya GuptaProduct Evangelist at Kuliza

Amit MirchandaniChief Creative Officer at Kuliza & MD at Lucid Design

Anindya KunduVisual Designer at Kuliza

Ann BurgraffChief Marketing Officer at Kuliza

Arun NairChief Executive Officer, Strata Digital

Diarmaid Byrne Chief People Officer at Kuliza

Deepak BeheraCo-founder at Healthalyze; Biomedical Molecular Imaging Scientist, Stanford

Ekta TibrewalAssistant Editor and Media Manager - Online, major news organisation

Kaushal SardaChief Executive Officer at Kuliza

Mithila NagendraGraduate Research Associate, Arizona State University

Vandana U. Marketing & Communications Specialist at Kuliza

Social Technology Quarterly 09

July to September 2013

Published by Kuliza Technologies Ltd.

Print 2 Last Solutions Printing

#7 Poorvi, 1st Cross, Shirdisai Nagar

Bangalore 560 077

www.print2last.com

Subscribeto Social Technology Quarterly at:

stq.kuliza.com

Diarmaid Byrne Editor

[email protected]

Vandana U. Editor

[email protected]

Amit Mirchandani Design

Lucid Design India Pvt. Ltd.www.lucid.co.in

The Social Technology Quarterly is a

research publication that distills the

signal from the noise in the fluid social

and mobile web domain. From multiple

perspectives it analyzes commerce,

campaigns, and communities through

the lenses of business, technology,

design, and behaviour.

Editorial

From being a feature, social has transformed into a product. Social technologies have provided deeper contexts that permeate our existence to an unprecedented extent, so much so that organizations, institutions and formal and informal set-ups will end up in existential crises if they were

to be without a social presence.

The use of social technologies has become a sweeping cultural, social and economic phenomenon. There are dozens of dazzling social technology-based ideas and products that we have at our disposal. Millions of people have adopted new behaviours. This raises the question of how much value does

it add to our existence.

By exploring this question, it is apparent that social technology has allowed people to connect at a different scale, as a unified and powerful voice in the form of strong communities. These communities have had significant impact on the ways in which a brand’s dialogues are shaped and how their policies

are made.

The big task then is how brands are scraping every bit of technology to ensure their loyal customers are engaged. And, while organizations make the most of technology, more and more ways to measure and analyse these attempts come up in the form of metrics, which indicate the increasing

enthusiasm for measuring the social value of brands.

While many such attempts dominate the social media forefront, marketing efforts too have been upped. While mobile emerges as the social element for years to come, the portability it offers is the exact kind of value creation that potentially has transformative impact across sectors and economies, changing how content is curated and distributed.

Social technology then is changing not only the economics of content creation and distribution, but also the nature of content itself; it becomes an evolving discussion, rather than a fixed product. We find that businesses have only just begun

to understand how to create value with social technology.

Diarmaid ByrneVandana U.

Editors

6 7Kuliza Social Technology Quarterly Issue 09

Harnessing the Power of Mobile

Campaigns

Innovation is the key word that drives marketing campaigns. Marketers love campaigns and promotions that increase brand awareness and give audience the excitement of doing something interactive and fun with a brand. For many years such campaigns took place during events and in popular locations such as malls, cafés and kiosks. With online media, marketers not only got a wider reach to the audience, but also ways to engage their audience in many creative ways such as quizzes, contest, games and other activities, all this without asking them to leave their homes.

Marketers soon realized that tools such as Facebook and Twitter could be used to create a social and viral layer above these

contests and campaigns that would help brands reach even more people at lower costs. By building these contests and campaigns as Facebook applications they efficiently engaged their fans, friends of fans and so on.

Enter WildfireWhen hundreds of brands were trying

to get their agencies and development partners to create Facebook apps and contests for them, companies such as Offerpop and Wildfire came up with the brilliant idea of providing SaaS based contests on Facebook. These contests were quicker to build, simpler to create, cost effective and gave brands exactly

what they wanted-ability to run contests, polls, quizzes, offers and deals with their Facebook fans.

However, this ability to build and launch quick, simple and economic campaigns came with the compromise on creativity. Such DIY tools for marketers and agencies limit the exact functionalities and designs marketers would like to add into their campaigns.

Nevertheless, brands and agencies were not deterred by this limitation and adopted Facebook contest tools, Wildfire and Offerpop as products and several start-ups even derived inspiration to emulate these ideas with their own products.

Wildfire grew at an exceptional pace

and went on to become the world’s top start-up, which Google soon bought for $250 million.

The SoLoMo ConsumerIt is surprising to see that apart from

Wildfire, for Facebook there are no good tools to create quick and cheap marketing campaigns for smartphones. It is surprising because present trends show that marketers and retailers believe in mobile. They understand that their consumers are Social, Local and Mobile and hence they are increasingly investing into mobile ads, proximity marketing, mobile sites and native content apps. A recent study by AdMedia reported that

25% of international media and marketing executives see mobile as the most disruptive force in their industry.

Although brands have understood the significance of mobile, they still rely on agencies and digital partners to develop and launch interactive mobile marketing campaigns. Such campaigns take time and money and require efficient agency management. It is like the pre-Wildfire era on Facebook when brands lacked the option of a tool that could help them build and launch something quick, cheap and powerful.

Effective Mobile Marketing CampaignsMobile marketing has some clear

Mobile as a channel offers an exciting opportunity

for marketers, yet has not been fully acknowledged.

Marketers now have tools to create mobile portals and

create campaigns. There is, however, a lack of DIY tools

that can make mobile far easier a channel to stream

revenue from.

by Achintya GuptaPoster Credit: Nanagyei

advantage over traditional online forms of marketing and social media marketing. It gives marketers the chance to target audience using locations and run promotions on proximity. This allows marketers to run different kind of marketing campaigns across different locations based on the kind of customers or kind of profits made. So, mobile campaigns for stores at commercial locations can be different from the campaigns for stores in residential areas based on the demographics and interest of target audiences. Similarly advertisements for audiences can be planned when they are near a store or a brand’s poster.

Thus, when digital marketing



communities such as Econsultancy say that 27 percent of brands will invest in location based marketing in 2013 and that 85 percent of merchants trust mobile to be the next big thing, it means brands need up their marketing strategies and go mobile.

This brings me to my earlier point about having efficient DIY tools. While marketers and retailers seem as confident about mobile marketing as they are about Facebook, mobile counterparts of smart campaign tools-Wildfire and Offerpop have still not appeared in the market. There are a handful companies present in the market, which are microsite tools such as GoMobi and BiznessApps that have a narrower focus on helping marketers create campaigns and a broader focus on helping them build mobile sites for businesses. There are a few location-

based campaign tools. One such was Geotoko, but after being acquired by the larger Hootsuite it has become a part of their offering.

Being a firm believer in entrepreneurial ideas, it is difficult and disturbing for me to believe that this is one opportunity that nobody has seized, but I might be wrong. Or tech entrepreneurs might have already realized that a market for such campaign tools for mobile does not exist. Whatever be it, I look forward to seeing such tools in the market.

References:“Mobile Commerce and Engagement Stats.”

Digby.

Olenski, Steve. “Mobile Marketing Too Large For

Brands To Ignore.” Forbes, 20 Sep 2012.

Shinal, Josh. “How Social Media Startup Wildfire

Was Bought By Google for $250 Million.”

Entrepreneur, 01 Aug 2012.

Photo Credit: Dontbeahayter

Identifying the Role of Social Media

Campaigns

Businesses have taken

initiatives to enhance their

social media presence,

but perceive that social

media is only an extension

of marketing and branding

functions. Social media can

work only when it is looked

at as an independent

function for every business.

by Ekta Tibrewal

With the advent of digital media, companies have now bent on thinking differently. As a result, marketing spends across companies are now bearing the losses on their budget. Today, every business out there believes that it is mandatory to have an online identity. Most brands have either jumped or are in the process of getting on the social media bandwagon.

Although skeptical, businesses are spending a significant amount of money to be seen as a ‘digitally viable’, perpetually available ‘social media friendly’ brand.

It is refreshing to see companies shifting their focus from traditional marketing to social media marketing. Platforms such as Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter have all enabled businesses to connect and reach out the world. Yet, social media strives to achieve an individual identity.

Social media managers often complain

that respective businesses have switched to social media marketing in pursuit to seem digital, while others complain that the function of social media for their businesses continues to be that of advertising.

It is important to understand why companies have such an opinion of social media optimization. When investing in social media marketing, companies often deduce that there are no returns to these spends. More so, businesses believe that social media is just another tool for customer engagement. What most businesses fail to recognize is that social media can don many hats of a company’s business function.

So, should your business have a social media presence? How is social media marketing profitable for your business? Does social media marketing deserve an

Kuliza Social Technology Quarterly Issue 09


individual identity? These questions have been deliberated over and argued about for a while now. While we are at it, here is my two cents and observation on these questions looming over the head of every social media professional out there:

Should my Business go Social Online?This is a question that most businesses

do not consider before creating their respective social media accounts. The series of questions does not end here. Another question that companies do not consider is, “What social media platform is relevant to my business?”

While it may seem great to have your business presence on every social media platform out there- from Facebook, Twitter

to Tumblr, Instagram and more - it can however span out as a liability. I call it a liability because all social media platforms may not be relevant to a business. Moreover, with presence across all social media platforms comes the responsibility of generating content regularly across all these platforms.

So, before businesses consider signing up for all the available hundreds of social media platforms, a social SWOT analysis is a must.

Can Social Media Drive Revenue?The concept of online sponsors is not

unknown. Junkets, sponsored stories and videos on the web are a common phenomenon.

Big bucks are spent on digital media in the name of online branding on social media. But brands often forget that Facebook likes and Twitter followers, together account for their social capital online. Also, most Indian businesses have not yet managed to crack social media partnership based on this social capital.

The money spent on television and print advertisements is for driving revenue, either via consumers or another business and to create brand awareness. However, why is online advertising treated differently? All the social updates sent out by a business are attempts to increase brand awareness. If businesses can crack strategic partnerships for sponsored posts and tweets, driving revenue back to the

business can be quite a prolific justification for social spends.

Even if these social partnerships are not monetarily driven, social media partnerships could still help a business raise its profile when associated with businesses that have excellent brand equity.

To elicit an example, a television channel airing a new sitcom that may not have a very strong or famous casting can consider a social media partnership with a doughnut-selling or confectionary a brand that has higher brand equity. Every time the confectionary brand or the doughnut-seller tweets, posts or shares something in relation to its products, it can be placed in the context of the sitcom. This ensures the new sitcom gets its visibility amongst its target group.

‘Social’ Media Marketing – Customer Engagement or Brand Reputation Manager?

Most businesses use social media largely for customer engagement. While I am not averse to the idea of using social media for that purpose, that alone is not the purpose of social media. In social media, conversations matter. But reducing those conversations to merely replying to customer queries is the fault brands make.

A company’s social media presence is often looked upon to be ‘cool’, which is why brands should adopt a similar voice or tone when talking on social media to create a brand image on social media.

An excellent example of this would be Kingfisher India. Kingfisher’s Twitter handle (@Kingfisherworld) strikes the balance right – it engages with its customer, manages to discuss its product and continues to be perceived as a brand with a voice. In fact, Kingfisher’s tweet-ups across various cities are usually one of the most anticipated social media events in the country.

The role of social media presence does

not end there. For every business, social media presence is a part of its online reputation and branding. The fact that PR agencies have now suddenly begun to offer social media marketing solutions and strategies with their bouquet of services, appropriately justifies this.

Social Media vs. Traditional MediaIt is quite apparent that roles in social

media marketing are quite diversified. Be it advertising, marketing promotions, branding and online reputation management, customer engagement or even driving revenue, social media marketing can individually carry out these business functions. Yet, it strives to be seen as valuable as traditional media.

Till date, tons of social media managers have to justify monetary spends and fight to get their share of marketing budgets. Most social media teams do not have the liberty to run an individual idea or campaign. The dynamism of social media cannot be leveraged within the confines of traditional brand guidelines.

Changing TrendsI am not of the opinion that businesses

will not change their attitude towards social media. In fact, media planners are going out on a limb to divert brand activations to social media.

Companies have begun to make official announcements through social media. For instance, AirAsia announced the name of its CEO via Twitter. AirAsia’s CEO Tony Fernandes tops my list of the most social media CEO to follow. Moreover, I look forward to AirAsia’s venture in India principally because of Tony Fernandes’ attitude and his company’s brand position on social media.

Another example would be automobile giant Tata Motors that made its recent product announcement via Twitter. Fashion retail business, Forever 21 used Facebook to announce its arrival and store

locations in India.

The HurdleIt is safe to say that businesses are

adopting social media optimization in their business module. But they are not giving social media the due credit it deserves. Most businesses fear pumping in money for social media marketing and hence, this department or team in a company, continues to struggle to make its mark and earn individual recognition.

Another reason for this struggle is that most business owners, people in key decision-making positions, perceive social media as a nebulous subject. For them, the reach, and the returns of social media cannot be measured accurately in numbers. While they believe that social media is the trend to follow, they have reservations about its visibility and results.

Do I still think that social media deserves an individual identity, independent from being an extension of marketing or branding or customer relation management? A resounding yes would be my answer. With the number of upcoming social media websites and their branding and advertisement offering, the elevation of social media’s identity could pan out to be one of the most significant functions of business in times to come.

Photo Credit: Givara13


HTML5 Interaction Effects

HTML5 has been at the technology forefront for quite a while now and its capabilities never cease to amaze the tech-savvy and marketers. Here are four HTML and Javascript demonstrations that show you what HTML5 can achieve. A few years ago, implementing this kind of animation was simply impossible and could only be created with Flash, but now, HTML 5 can give astounding and impressive animation effects.

The interactive element of HTML5 has clicked

well with everyone and these effects show why.

by Kaushal Sarda

ReferencesKim, Jongmin. “Form Follows Function.” 2013.

Html5advent2011.digitpaint.nl. “Amazing canvas pixels - December 16th,

2011 | HTML5 and CSS3 Advent 2011.” 2011.

Hattab, Hakim. “Kontext: A context-shift transition inspired by iOS.”

5. Pixelated

Radically straight-forward, this script converts an image into a pixelated version using an HTML5 canvas element thereby creating a pixel filter.

2. FlipClock

Flipclock.js is a simple javascript framework used to create different kind of clocks for websites and web applications. It can be used to create a clock, timer and countdown. It comes with a default flipping style digital clock layout which looks simply elegant and stylish.

3. Spiral

The resolution is an independent rotating spiral that is simple, but visually compelling and in a lot of ways hypnotic enough to charm any viewer.

1. Universe Panorama

What you see is the surprisingly mucus-like, star-flecked tendrils of the celestial heavens. It is a mess, but one that is so striking and with a flick of a cursor you can watch it all spin around in great circular depth—as though your computer was a portal to a physical world far beyond the borders of your screen.

4. Kontext

This is a context-shift transition inspired by iOS and is created using JavaScript, CSS 3D transforms and CSS Animations.

Image Credit: http://fff.cmiscm.com

Image Credit: http://fff.cmiscm.comImage Credit: http://fff.cmiscm.com

Campaigns


The Influence of Art

Movements on Design

In spite of their differences, art and design have always been intimately

linked with each other. Designers have always been inspired by the

aesthetic ideals of art and tried to incorporate them in their designs.

Depending on societal contexts, different generations of artists have

followed philosophies of their own leading to unique styles or tendencies

in their creations. These led to what are today considered movements in

the arts. There have been several notable art movements in the last 200

years - Romanticism, Realism, Impressionism, Expressionism, Cubism,

Futurism, Surrealism, Post-modernism and Deconstructivism - that have

influenced design.by Anindya Kundu

Campaigns



Art NouveauArt Nouveau emerged as a major art movement during the 1890s in Europe and had a major impact worldwide. Inspired by natural forms such as flowers and plants, its goal was to find harmony with nature. It found its expression and presence in varied forms - architecture, interior design and decorative arts including jewellery, furniture, textiles, household objects, painting and illustrations. Architectural creations of Victor Horta, Hector Guimard,

De StijlThe De Stijl movement (De Stijl is Dutch for ‘The Style’) embodied pure abstraction and universality by reducing every composition to the essentials of form and colour – vertical and horizontal lines based on a grid, rectangular shapes and only primary colours. Proponents claimed this expressed the utopian ideal of harmony and order. The movement began in the Netherlands and was at its

Peter Benhens and Antoni Gaudi exemplify this style. Notable artists of this movement include Gustav Klimt, Aubrey Beardsley, Alphonse Mucha and Jan Toorop. Its revival tendency and emphasis on nature can be considered as a reaction to the Industrial Revolution, but instead of negating machines the movement embraced technology to create complex structures using glass and wrought iron.

The decorative aspect of Art Nouveau is still popular with designers for its vintage

appeal. It is still used extensively in the design of jewellery, silverware and other household objects. Its decorative appeal is the reason it is often used in illustrations and book designs, particularly in fairy tales for children. The sign-in page of popular website Vimeo has fairy tale inspired artwork that is largely inspired by Art Nouveau.

peak from 1917 to 1931. The Netherlands was neutral during World War I and hence remained isolated from the international art world around this period. This helped the movement to develop and gain momentum independently. Dutch painter, designer, writer and critic Theo van Doesburg published a journal describing the movement’s theories. In his early life he was influenced by Post Impressionism, particularly Van Gogh, but later realized that instead of focusing on objects and instances from daily life a higher spiritual level can be achieved in painting from abstraction by using the most basic forms.

De Stijl found its expression not only in art, but also had an immense impact on graphic design. Currently many websites are grid based and make use of the De Stijl principles to highlight their content. Notable examples include the websites ‘Pixel Slave’, ‘Where They At’ and ‘Piet Mondrain’.

Photo Credit: Alexis Cannariato

Image Credit: Arnold Sche



Surrealism

Surrealism as an art movement evolved

in the early 1920s and flourished between

World War I and World War II. It aimed

at merging dreams with reality in order to

allow the unconscious to express itself.

This can be interpreted as a reaction to

the horrors of war and was an artistic

revolution that challenged rationalism. It

draws its philosophy from psychoanalyst

Sigmund Freud’s argument that the

unconscious mind is the root of social

problems. Notable artists include one of

the founding pioneers Max Earnst as well

and Salvador Dali. This movement was

a precursor to the hallucination-inspired

psychedelic art of the 1960s.

Many websites have tried to recreate

a surreal experience to enhance their

appeal. ‘Recycled Lifeforms’ and ‘Agote’

are two notable ones. Surrealism also

influences product and furniture design

with bizzare objects such as chairs with

human legs, tea pot shaped like nostrils

and table lamps with birds’ legs.

Image Credit: The Artist and his Model


Image Credit: Shephard Fairey

Pop Art

evolved in Great Britain

in 1950s. It challenged the lofty ideals and

subjects of fine arts by presenting mass produced items as

subjects of art. Pop Art was influenced by Dadaism, which rejected

‘high’ art, and Abstract Expressionism because of its ability to convey

feelings. Pop Art tends to isolate a subject or combines it with other elements

to provoke contemplation. Andy Warhol’s iconic 1964 ‘Campbell’s Tomato Soup’

silkscreen painting challenges people with the question “What is art?” Other notable

artists who propagated Pop Art were Tom Wesselman and Roy Lichtenstein. Removed

from World War II and ration-era Britain, its aesthetics had a humorous, light-hearted note.

It derived inspiration from comic books and advertisements and often used bright colours.

The newly emerged medium of silkscreen printing was often used to reproduce the artwork.

Pop Art is still very popular in graphic arts today. Many illustrators recreate old

movie and music album posters in Pop Art style. Youth oriented products such as

t-shirts, pillow covers, bags, mugs and other household objects produced often have

Pop Art versions youth idols of Che Guevara and Bob Marley printed on them.

The immensely popular Epiphone ‘Emily the Strange’ SG guitar model

has a Pop Art influenced design. Websites such as ‘Blue Meuh’,

‘An Idea’, ‘Markus Daum Gallery’ and ‘Will Portfolio’

also use the bright colour and imagery

associated with Pop Art.

Pop Art


MinimalismThe Minimalist art movement originated in New York during the 1960s. It found its basic idea from the artist Kasimir Malevich’s 1913 painting of a black square on a white background. The movement symbolized reduction and simplicity. It believed in removing unnecessary elements and approaching art or design in its barest, most literal and objective form. This movement embraced the ideal ‘less is more’ and was inspired by traditional Japanese design and Zen philosophy. The works of ‘De Stijl’ artists also helped lay its foundations. Its appeal lay in maximizing functionality while retaining a strong aesthetic sense of simplicity. The movement’s prime feature is simplified geometric forms on flat or two dimensional surfaces with precise shapes and lines.

Minimalism is beyond doubt the current trend in web and interface design. It also finds its application in modern architecture, furniture and interior design. Modern print design and household products have an inclination towards minimalism. The product design of Apple products can be considered as the pinnacle of minimalism. Even the latest automotive designs can be viewed as inspired by minimalism with clean lines and shapes dominanating.

Image Credit: Shinypaperblog


In 1999, Napster introduced music fans to the ability to download almost unlimited quantities and varieties of music instantly through peer-to-peer networks. The result was that customers began demanding the availability of more purchase options from record companies. However, rather than take advantage of consumers’ new behaviour and comfort with technology, the record industry’s response was to sue Napster and individual downloaders in order to maintain their position and profits. As music piracy soared through the 2000s, record labels never made any attempt to deliver what customers wanted. Apple, and other technology companies, did and with the success of the iPod the company grew to be the largest and most prominent company in the music industry.

Today, the publishing industry is in the throes of a major transformation, the greatest challenge to the established practice of business possibly since Guttenberg in the fifteenth century. The closest parallel to the publishing industry right

The Transformation Act of the Publishing IndustryThe publishing industry’s

reactions to the dynamics

of changes in technology

with the introduction

of digital publishing

reflect the current

problems, challenges and

opportunities faced by

leading publishing firms

today.

by Diarmaid ByrnePoster Credit: Loxpapers

Commerce


“It is difficult to get a man to understand something, when his salary depends upon his not understanding it.”

now is the music industry. As the reach of Amazon and e-books extends ever further, it appears as if publishers are repeating some of the mistakes that the record industry made. By their behaviour, consumers were telling the record industry that they wanted the facility to download any music. However, the record industry

did not support consumers or initiate the technology revolution. Instead it came from Apple and other technology companies. Similarly, it was not the publishing companies but Amazon who launched the Kindle, popularized e-books and provided for the delivery of e-books through their online store.

it, is resisting the new digital model. Record companies own manufacturing, packaging, delivery and marketing of music. The costs for this are naturally passed on to consumers. However, by downloading songs and albums, the first three steps are unnecessary and so reduce potential revenues and profits for record companies.

Publishing companies are similarly motivated to slow the growth of e-books. The publisher-author split is 75-25 percent. Authors then have to deduct Amazon’s 30 percent commission and agents’ 15 percent commission.

In spite of the existential threat to the publishing industry, parts of it are doing well. As it navigates technology and

In 2006, the year before Amazon launched the first Kindle, e-book sales were 0.1 percent of overall revenue for publishers. In 2012 e-book sales were approximately 20 percent. For some genres such as science fiction and romance it was 60 percent or more. This transformation in how people consume books is disrupting the traditional business and practice of the publishing industry, dislodging some incumbents, opening up opportunities, and introducing new companies who are going to shape the industry in the future. When looking back at how the music industry has evolved from the late 1990s, this is a similar pattern.

There is a good reason the publishing industry, like the music industry before

alternative business models, it is managing the transition well. Revenue from children’s e-books, for example, has been increasing by almost 300 percent annually from mid 2011. According to Publishers Weekly, the Association of American Publishers reported a 13.1 percent increase in sales with e-book sales increasing 34.4 percent to $621 million. In June 2012, e-book sales exceeded hardcover sales for the first time and in January 2011 Amazon announced that Kindle books were outselling paperbacks on their website. Considering

Kindle was introduced in 2007 and is a six-year-old revenue stream, the pace of change and adoption by customers has been very fast. Another interesting point according to Digital Book World is that while sales for some publishers may be flat, their profit margins are increasing because of the higher margins that publishers earn on e-books.

What the publishing industry has discovered is that selling to early adopters is a sensible move. By their actions, the music industry created a generation of

consumers who would either pirate music they wanted or do without it. The impact was more than a decade of declining music sales from 2000. According to the Recording Industry Association of America,

2012 was the first year that sales actually increased since year-on-year since 2000. The advantage for the publishing industry was that the Kindle was launched with good quality hardware, a wide range of

books to choose from, licenses for those books and an established retail system that consumers were comfortable and familiar with. This is a package and service that piracy is still unable to compete with.

There are clearly positives for the publishing industry as it navigates the digital transformation of its industry. There are also a number of challenges that have not been resolved yet. 1. To maintain a reasonable rate of print book sales and profits at a time of declining shelf-space in fewer retails stores. This

could result in publishing a narrower range of authors who guarantee large sales, with less focus, experimentation and risks taken on unknown and lower selling authors 2. The struggle for visibility extends to book review space in print media. This makes it more difficult for publishers to get their books noticed and so they have to develop online marketing skills to grab attention and increase sales3. Maintaining high margins and increasing sales of e-books

4. Publishers will need to remain relevant to authors and readers. HarperCollins views its role as an ‘author-services company’ with a range of services beyond selecting and publishing books: marketing, analytical tools, audience development, dynamic pricing and possibly even to developing alternative ways of reading a book. 5. How to profit in the new economic model in which the power lies with retailers such as Amazon and Apple with their strict pricing guidelines, rather than with publishers 6. E-book formatting standards. Currently there is no standard format that is platform agnostic, which means that a book has to be formatted in different ways for iBooks, Kindle and Nook

It is uncertain how the publishing world will look in the future. It is likely in the near

term, however, to involve a mix of print and digital options, rather than exclusively print or digital. The survivors will be those publishers, established or start-ups, who can take advantage of both. References:Greenfield, Jeremy. “Commentary on The

Guardian’s Ten Ways to Save the Publishing

Industry.” Forbes, 10 Dec 2012.

Greenfield, Jeremy. “How Long Will Publishers

Be Able to Ride the E-Book Profit Wave?”. Digital

Book World. 27 Feb 2012.

Osnos, Peter “Ignore the Doomsayers: The Book

Industry Is Actually Adapting Well.” The Atlantic

Cities, 23 Oct 2012.

Ostrow, Adam. “Kindle Books Now Outselling

Paperbacks at Amazon.” Mashable, 27 Jan 2011.

Reid, Rob. “Music, Books and Online Piracy.” The

Wall Street Journal, 01 Jun 2012.

Kuliza Social Technology Quarterly Issue 09 29

Transacting Internet Fame

Internet fame is often considered the

gateway towards serious monetization.

The Internet offers exceptional abilities to

reach masses and the independence of self-

publishing and the concept of virality have

created famous people. However, can they

really cash-in on their fame?

by Vandana U.Photo Credit: Ryan Tir

Commerce



than $500. A recent article by author Ed Robertson at Failure Ahoy shed light on the math of how many self published authors are making a living. He says, “Many indie authors are capable of making nontrivial money with ranks much worse than #12,000. They just have to have more than one book…” “If a #2000 rank is good for $5000/month, that means about 500 indie books are doing that well on Amazon–but the ones on the upper end are doing much, much better. An indie with a $2.99 book ranked #100 is making something along the lines of $1000-1500 a day.”

Although the trend reflects that traditional writers too are going digital, it is only to build a readership and for widespread awareness. Many writers who want to get published still choose to go the traditional way and keep their Kindle or Indie versions as generators of word of mouth. This hybrid attempt is evidence enough that one cannot rely on online publishing alone to earn, although most target readers are at almost all times online.

Online MusicMusicians have begun to assert that as artists they should have

creative control over their work, their careers and they should be paid fairly. There are several stories running on the tune of musicians being paid poorly and exploited by labels and recording companies. The question then is does the Internet make it worse for them or gives them their due?

Music industries have continued to whine about dwindling sales. What about artists then? How much money do they manage to make online. The Huffington Post reported last year that although musicians such as Rihanna and Taylor Swift crossed 50 million in revenue, their online earnings amounted to a rather tiny portion. Data from various sources suggest that even musicians with great record labels are not earning much from online sales, which makes one wonder what about musicians who have no fancy and successful label to back them.

Most labels use Spotify and similar platforms. An article on Digital Music News reported that labels are paid huge advances or guarantees for Spotify’s use of their artists’ music. Steve Gordon, an entertainment attorney wrote about Spotify paying a meagre amount to indie artists. “The average payout for an indie label is about $0.005 per stream (half a penny). He adds, “Most artists signed to major record companies are ‘unrecouped,’ that is, they owe their labels money. Major labels spend a great deal on production costs, including hefty and sometimes huge producer fees, not to mention videos, indie marketing, and other contractually defined expenses. The artists are responsible for paying all these costs back, and until the label ‘recoups’ these expenses, they do not pay the artist any record royalties.”

David Lowery, a musician who wrote the song “Low,” exclaimed, “My song got played on Pandora 1 million times and all I got was

MMany have risen to fame and made their so-called successful careers by becoming Internet famous. The enthusiasm for user-generated content, self-publishing and all that the Internet has to offer is unfathomable and the penchant for fame is unquestionable. These are times when people’s credibility and legitimacy need to be backed by their followers, re-tweets, influence scores and overall internet presence. Every attempt, every click, like, comment, share, pin, tweet, upload, photos, videos blog, amongst a other social actions reflect the aspiration to be popular as well as monetize. However, what it must be like to be internet famous is different from the kinds of earning one can expect from it.

One Google search will take you through countless celebrities who began in all sorts of ways. Be it Caite Upton’s ridiculous answer at a pageant that went viral and made her a star or be it Justin Beiber’s videos that led way to him becoming a sensation. People intelligently combine SEO, virality and other marketing attempts to translate these into internet fame that cracks the million dollar deal. There are several portals that claim to prove how with anywhere between $69 to $499 can get one all the fame and riches through the virtual world. Everyone seems to be working tirelessly to create great online presence which is why the question, is there really a pot of gold at the other end of the Internet spectrum?

Self-PublishingThe perception remains that any writer who sells books at

least in thousands is defined as “successful.” One such self-published author, Patrick Wensink whose novel “Broken Piano for President,” shot to the top of Amazon’s bestseller list for a week, was featured in Forbes, The New Yorker and Time Magazine did the math off his internet popularity. He made about $12,000 from the book’s sales. Besides the very little money, he confesses he did not expect to earn much which reflects in his cynical comment that can be summarized as poverty chose the profession (of writing). He adds that $12,000 although is not less money, but even we would agree it is not a windfall. Royalty percentages, book sales, time spent and several other things to take care of, take away a huge chunk of the money one would earn, thereby leaving not much money.

A wide-ranging survey of such writers revealed that despite a great name and increasing popularity, most authors struggle to sell. The survey, carried out by Dave Cornford and Steven Lewis for the Taleist website, of around 1000 such self-published authors was done in 2012. It revealed that while a small percentage of authors were bringing in sums of $100,000-plus in 2011, average earnings were just $10,000 a year. This amount, however, is a distortion as less than 10 percent of self-publishing authors earn about 75% of the reported revenue and half of writers earn less

$16.89.” His song is earning him just over a thousandth of a cent per Internet radio play. Pandora then is hardly giving anything of worth to artists or songwriters.

Kristin Thompson from the Future of Music Coalition opines that although there are several new revenue streams available to musicians, many of them pay only micro pennies. Trichordist, a platform that asserts, “Artists for an ethical and sustainable internet” is blatant in its view that “There appears to be plenty of money being made online from the distribution of music, it’s just that the money is not being shared with musicians.”

Will Blogging Fame Pay Bills? In 2010, Michael Stelzner of Social Media Examiner interviewed

blogger Wendy Piersall, whose blatant opinion on making money

through blogging comes in the form of an answer which reflects her firmness and the naivety of the one who put forth the question. According to Piersall, fame does not pay bills and being on the front page of Digg definitely does not bring any success. Now, in 2013, is the idea tenable to be spending 100 percent of work life to blogging? Certainly not!

Undoubtedly it requires time and energy to keep a blog useful and running. Bloggers in effect work around the clock, but what does publishing so much knowledge and content yield them?Every blogger has to rely on ad sales to make any money. In 2011, WordPress allowed bloggers to make money from online advertising through WordAds and 2013 saw Skyscraper. Co-founder of the latter, Paul Burger, said the company’s focus is shifting to a full-service blog monetization service. Despite the

Photo CreditsTop: JohanLBottom: Thomas Abbs

33Kuliza Social Technology Quarterly Issue 09

availability of such tools, just as in publishing, the earnings of bloggers strengthen the perception that they swing toward the financial extreme — either earning six figures or nothing from their efforts. An article by Forbes looks at women bloggers in particular. BSM Media’s Maria Bailey and author of Power Moms says, “There’s the top 10% who make six figures, who write books, and have deals with the Food Network. Then there’s the bottom 20% who are only doing it for the love and not making anything. This leaves 70% of women bloggers — some 13.2 million — who blog for some modicum of profit. While no two bloggers are alike, they all receive money from similar opportunities. Those with around 60,000 monthly views earn $10-$20 a month from an affiliate network, but are able to command $200 a month for an advertisement posted on the side of the page and $500 a month for the leaderboard space, according to blogger media kits.”

The concern though still remains, however ruthless a blogger might be, blogging is no different from any other industry, in that the more money is earned by a relatively small number.

In my opinion then internet fame is an overstatement and a delusion. This in no way implies that one cannot at all cash in on internet fame. The present model seems quite flawed. However, I do not want to shrewdly argue or place the cyberspace in the purview of an exploitative, non-benefitting organism, but more as to whether in the increasing enthusiasm, can we expect a great economic turn too.

ReferencesBell, Crystal. “Music Artists Online Earnings: How Much Do Musicians Earn

In Digital Sales?.” The Huffington Post, 31 Jul 2012.

Faw, Larissa. “Is Blogging Really A Way For Women To Earn A Living?.”

TechCrunch, 25 Apr 2012.

Flood, Alison. “Stop the press: half of self-published authors earn less than

$500.” The Guardian, 24 May 2012.

Resnikoff, Paul. “Industry Attorney: Major Labels Rarely Pass Through

Spotify Earnings.” Digital Music News, 09 Jul 2012.

“How Musicians Are (Not) Making Money, and who is… @SFMusicTech w/

East Bay Ray.” The Tricordist, 27 Feb 2013.

Lardinois, Frederic. “Blog Monetization Service Skyscraper Comes Out Of

Closed Beta, Adds VigLink Integration & WordPress Plugin.” TechCrunch,

28 May 2013.

Thompson, Derek. “The Reality of the Music Business Today: 1 Million Plays

= $16.89.” The Atlantic, 25 Jun 2013.

Wensink, Patrick. “My Amazon bestseller made me nothing .” Salon, 16 Mar

2013.

Wauters, Robin. “You Deserve Better Than AdSense”.” TechCrunch, 29 Nov

2011.

Photo Credit: Steven Depolo


1

2

social media based activities. Unlike the earlier days when social media campaigns were more miss than hit, today there are time-tested tools that help you measure, monitor and correct the course of the campaign.

Several brands have benefitted from the knowledge metrics can provide. In the course of the Colgate Smiles campaign, metrics revealed vital information that allowed Colgate to refocus its overall brand message moving away from corporate to more of a consumer-focused message. During my stint at Mahindra, we would live by these metrics; in more than one instance, these have provided critical insights that helped us make improvements to the campaigns and getting us to our goals.

Show me the Metrics!

With a wide variety of

metrics available to

brands, it is essential

brands are cognisant of

these and gauge them.

When tailored to a brand’s

specific requirements,

these provide valuable

analyses and insights to

help you drive your social

media efforts.

by Arun NairPhoto Credit: Made in Design

Recently, at a conference I was pleasantly surprised at the surge in adoption and optimism for social media by brands present there. Many were even considering raising their budgets for social media over the more traditional means of marketing. However, there are some brands who are vary of social media because of the uncertainly of measuring their social media efforts. The common misconception about social media is that it is too amorphous to attempt measurement.

Au contraire, this is precisely why a brand should invest in metrics to measure their social efforts failing which campaigns will get lost in the vast wilderness and noise in social media. In fact, the very perception of success or failure of a campaign relies on the metrics to measure

desirable to have. The ratio of owned versus earned is an indicator of the degree of influence the communication wields. A higher percentage of earned versus owned media reveals a brand’s success in influencing or spreading word about itself.

Customer Satisfaction and Responsiveness

Successful brands are built on the cornerstone of great customer service. Great customer service is imperative to the objective of gaining tremendous word of mouth. On the flipside, mediocrity can be disastrous more so in a socially connected world where the margin of error is thinner. The key metrics for measurement are:

Average Response TimeThis is a key measure of customer

responsiveness of the service team. This gives insights into the average time your brand takes to respond to a customer query, request or suggestion. The lower the number, the better as it gauges the speed of your response.

First Post ResolutionThis is an important indicator of

customer satisfaction as it measures the percentage of issues that were resolved on first contact by the customer service team. This is significant when you want to gauge the ability of your customer service team when resolving issues. The lower the number the better. In combination with the average response time metric, brands can gauge the effectiveness of the customer service team.

Quality of ResponseThe quality of interactions is a key

aspect of customer service on social media for three reasons. They result in better service resolutions, lead to higher levels of customer satisfaction and the interactions on social media are there for

much lower because only a fraction of the followers would have consumed the message. This metric is important nonetheless because it helps scale the outreach of a campaign.

AmplificationThis measures the amplitude of

campaigns and is an indicator of the virality of campaigns. This must be broken down on basis of the channel used.

For example, in Facebook, amplitude is calculated as the number of shares. For twitter, it is the number of retweets and so on.

Conversation RateThis metric measures the conversations

sparked by a campaign or a message. Conversation rate is calculated as sum of comments and mentions across social media. This is an important metric as this measures the involvement of the audience who are conversing about the brand.

Combine the conversion rate and amplification metric to determine the engagement level of your audience.

Share of VoiceThis measures the strength of a brand’s

share in the social media pie in relation to competition. This metric is derived by collecting all the positive and neutral mentions of the brand and its competitors (using tools such as Radian 6 or Sysomos Heartbeat) and comparing it against competition, in the form of a pie-chart, to arrive at the brand’s specific share of voice.

Owned vs. Earned MediaOwned media consist of channels and

conversations a brand owns and has control over. On the other hand, earned media is generated by word of mouth and the virality of the communication. In the latter a customer becomes the channel and this is the kind of media far more

Define the objectives of your social media campaign and then wrap it around with metrics. It may not necessarily fit into the mould of the traditional RoI metrics, but there are new metrics that have been necessitated, thanks to the proliferation of social media, which are fast being acknowledged universally. Some of these metrics are also more useful than traditional metrics because of the kind of information that add great value to the brand.

What Should be Measured?There about a dozen or more metrics

that are in common use. For a better understanding these can be clustered in three categories:1.Reach and influence 2.Customer satisfaction and responsiveness 3.Conversions

Reach and InfluenceThis helps you measure the impact and

virality of your campaign’s message. Here are some key metrics:

ExposureThis metric captures the potential reach

in views and impressions accumulated across all social media channels over the period of the campaign. However, one ought to keep in mind that this is potential exposure and not the actual, which is much lower.

For instance a certain brand with a follower base of 25,000 runs a campaign in which a message was broadcast 5 times. The campaign results in 100 retweets.

The exposure from this campaign is 25,000 (followers of the brand’s twitter page) *5 +50,000 (the sum total of the followers of all those who retweeted), which adds to 175,000. This figure is the exposure or the potential reach of the audience as a result of the campaign. However, the actual numbers are

Commerce


3

everybody to see and act upon.This metric evaluates a brand’s

writing style, communication skills and quality of communication, response customization, compliance with standard operating procedures (SoP) and product knowledge. Each of these can be rated on a score of 1-10 with high priority given to communication skills and product knowledge.

Number of ComplaintsThis is a straight forward metric that

measures the quantum of complaints received on social media. Break this up according to the different channels your brand uses in order to get a better understanding of the composition of the complaints.

Evangelist Turnaround RatioAny brand would be delighted to have a

detractor turn promoter. This is important because there is no better example of excellent customer service. This metric is calculated by dividing the complaints-turned-praise or the detractors-turned-evangelist by the number of complaints. A high ratio is an indication of the brand’s ability to wow! or delight its consumers.

Sentiment RatioThis is the ratio of positive mentions

divided by negative mentions, measuring the general sentiment of a brand with its audience. This is computed by processing all mentions or in some cases, a representative sample and then applying sophisticated NLP algorithms to derive the sentiment. Since this is a machine derived metric, the accuracy is at best around 80 percent.

ConversionsThis is considered as the most significant

and is the big daddy of measurements. From an RoI perspective these metrics

are very important since these have direct economic impact.

The Conversion TunnelHere, the best move is to combine

several metrics into one, flowing through a funnel from referral traffic through to fulfilment. The funnel can be created by using Google analytics to cluster specific actions or metrics into the different segments of the funnel.

Benchmarking Against CompetitionIt is necessary to understand the various

metrics and the categories they belong to. However, these metrics come to life when stacked against competition. Comparative figures help brands to view their social media activities from a critical perspective and see how they measure up.

For example, a sentiment ratio of 5:1 in which 5 positive mentions for every negative mention, may look good, but if a competitor’s sentiment ratio is 10:1 then it is evident that the competition is better off and that you need to put in more effort.

Though analysis is essential, do not be smothered by it and become a victim of “analysis-paralysis”. It is also important to apply collective discretion to the reading as opposed to being consumed by them. In the earlier example a sentiment ratio of 5:1 may look bad in comparison with a 10:1, but that does not necessarily mean the brand is doing a bad job. Perhaps the competition is seeding the web with fake positive articles. It is of significance that you do not jump to conclusions and it is important to define your own benchmarks of acceptability as you progress with your campaigns and refine them along the way.

I recommend every brand to have a comprehensive dashboard that lists down these various metrics alongside the competition. Also, these must be monitored frequently and included as part of the management information system.

This not only puts the brands social media performance in perspective, but will always keep your activities right on track.

SOCIAL MEDIA, NOT

SO SOCIAL

Smartphones have made

it possible for us to stay

connected at all times.

However, we often do not

realize how absorbed we

are in them and cannot

determine what we gain

or lose in the smartphone

future.

by Mithila NagendraPhoto Credit: Wacom

The launch of social media services such as Facebook and Twitter has redefined the way in which human beings communicate and interact with each other. Online social networks allow us to seamlessly integrate our real lives with the virtual world. These are wonderful platforms to meet people, post interesting articles, write about our moods, upload photos, share special moments and events; all with the click of a button!

As brilliant as the virtual world may seem, the other facet of social media is far from good. Online social networking is great in small doses, but any kind of unrestrained behavior can turn this friendly and playful environment into one that is shockingly hostile.

Several studies indicate that over-indulgence in social media and networking can have negative effects on regular users, irrespective if they are bloggers or tweeters. Irresponsible conduct in social media can lead to reduced productivity, cyber-bullying, obliteration of privacy, false sense of close relationships and worst of all, isolation.

True human forms of communication such as memorable conversations over a cup of coffee or face-to-face interactions are taking second place to hyper-networking on social media. This paradigm shift in human interactions

Communities


goes against how human beings were born to communicate. In an article published by

BBC News, British biologist Dr. Aric Sigman claims that reduced levels of face-to-face

interaction may have harmful effects on a person’s health. He points out to the evidence

that show the absence of real communication and social isolation can lead to a host of

mental, hormonal, and immunological problems, which can further increase the possibility

of health issues such as heart diseases, stroke, dementia, cancer amongst a host of other

diseases.

It is ironic that social media brings with itself such effects.

Many people become addicted to their virtual communities. They spend endless

hours doing everything within their power to please their online friends to stay popular

in their ever-increasing online social network. The flip side to this cybernetic existence is

that their real life takes a beating. The more time people spend on social networks, the

lesser is the time they spend on building genuine human connections. Steven Strogatz

of Cornell University opines that important relationships will weaken as a consequence of

expending a lot of time and energy on less meaningful relationships developed through

social media.The advent of smartphones has further magnified the negatives of the virtual world.

These tiny portable devices give us an easy way to stay connected, anytime, anywhere!

On the other hand, these allow social media to truly engulf us. An experience during a trip

to Australia brought me face-to-face with this sad reality.

reach out to our smartphone every time it calls out to us with a notification.

The one thing I missed the most about my smartphone was the constant updates it would throw at me. When I switched to a regular phone, I still had a compulsion to check this phone for new notifications. It was silly! But after a while, once I finally got used to the fact that my phone was no longer smart, I started to enjoy this newly found freedom from the smartphone. I never expected to be happy without a smartphone. In a way, it was a relief!

A few months after I lost my smartphone, I eventually ended up buying a replacement smartphone for a reasonable price. Though I will not miss my regular phone I will always remember the lessons I learnt during the period I used it. I might at times think of my smartphone at the bottom of the Brisbane river, but I will always look at the silver lining.

The experience of being without a smartphone has made me a more responsible user of social media. I now realize that there is more to life than a smartphone and the unceasing stimulation provided by online social interaction. A fine balance between exchanges in the virtual world and evolving honest human connections in the real world is all that is required for social media to become truly social.

References“Online Networking ‘Harms Health’.” BBC News.

19 Feb 2009.

University of Illinois at Chicago. “Effects Of

Social Isolation Traced To Brain Hormone.”

ScienceDaily, 15 Nov. 2007.

Frazier, Karen. “Negative Impact of Social

Networking Sites.” Love to Know Social

Networking. LoveToKnow Corp.

Jung, Brian. “The Negative Effect of Social Media

on Society and Individuals.” Chron. Hearst

Communications.

Jarvis, Tim. “Social Not-Working: The Perils of

Too Much Communication.” Oprah.com.

Koerner, Brendan I. “How Twitter and Facebook

Make Us More Productive.” Wired. 22 Feb 2010.

“Cyberbullying Continued After Teen’s Death.”

CBS News. 29 Mar 2010.

Lenhart, Amanda, and Mary Madden. “Teens,

Privacy and Online Social Networks.” PEW

Internet. Pew Research Center, 18 Apr 2007.

I was in Brisbane, a beautiful city located close to the renowned Surfers Paradise on the east coast of Australia. Like any good tourist, I was taking in the sights and sounds of this amazing city, when all hell broke loose and I lost my smartphone in the most bizarre manner. In my excitement of photographing an intriguing bridge over the Brisbane river (to post it on Facebook, of course!), I dared to venture too close to the river, lost motor-control over my fingers, and found myself looking at my smartphone taking a plunge into the river. My heart sunk as I heard the plop of my phone hitting the water. I was alone in a strange city, without a smartphone to keep me company. I could no longer check emails, spy on my friends on Facebook or constantly fiddle with my phone as though there was nothing more important. I felt truly isolated and lost without my smartphone.

But to my surprise, I survived without a phone, “smart” or otherwise, for almost a week. I came back home and could not replace my smartphone because I had no insurance on it. The only other option was to buy a new one, which was out of the question. So I decided to live without a smartphone for a while, which was awfully challenging. Once a smartphone had taken over my life, going back to a regular cell phone took quite some effort. The wait in the immigration line at the airport when I finally got back from my trip, for instance, seemed to be longer than usual. There was no smartphone to keep me busy, no social media to indulge me. It felt weird, but for the first time in a long time, I started to once again notice the world around me.

This experience brought out a realization. Smartphones, to a certain extent, help reinforce the bad traits of social media. Through our smartphones, we are constantly bombarded by all kinds of notifications: Facebook feeds, new emails, messages, the list is endless. The compulsive being in us always forces us to


Communities

DOWNLOADS BY OS APPS BY OS

APPS PER PERSON

APPS PER DAY PER SMARTPHONE

2010

7.0

7.1

7.2

7.3

7.4

7.5

7.6

7.7

7.8

7.9

8.0

2011 2012

48billionon android

800,000on android

32on android

40on iOS

775,000on iOS

125,000on windows

70,000on blackberry

by Dr. Michael Mandel reveals that the app economy has resulted in the creation of 752,000 jobs. But the more interesting aspect of his research is when he points out that the app economy has not been estimated accurately, is far bigger than we imagine and that the official statistics are wrong about the App Economy. “How big can the app economy get?” Mandel asks in the report. “That depends in many ways on the future of wireless and social networks. If wireless and social network platforms continue to grow, then we can expect the

The App Landscape

The global app economy continues to accelerate

with the number of opportunities, jobs and

increasing revenue ever since its inception.

by Vandana U.Illustrations: Amit Mirchandani

In the last decade we have witnessed an astonishing wave of innovations. The growth of different kinds of applications, popularly called apps, has undoubtedly made a remarkable presence on the technological landscape.

The app economy has created new types of jobs across the world. There is a phenomenal increase in the demand for light-weight applications to run on mobile devices and platforms. The app economy really only developerd after the debut of the iPnone in 2007. A new study conducted

App Economy to grow with them.” Tim Shepherd, Senior analyst, Canalys,

says “The strength of app ecosystems will increasingly help to determine winners and losers in the smart device industry.”

The increasing numbers prove that this sector of the economy is growing fast and that many more of us will soon be earning our pay in the app economy.

ReferencesMandel, Michael. “The Data Economy Is Much,

Much Bigger Than You (and the Government)

Think.” The Atlantic., 25 Jul 2013.

“How Many Apps Are in Each App Store?.”

pureoxygenmobile. Pure Oxygen Labs,

05 Mar 2013.

Etherington, Darrell. “The App Store’s 50B

Downloads Vs. Google Play’s 48B: Android

Closes The Gap.” Tech Crunch, 15 May 2013.

Perez, Sarah. “Apple’s App Store Hits 50 Billion

Downloads, 900K Apps, $10 Billion Paid To

Developers; iTunes Now With 575M Accounts.”

Tech Crunch, 10 Jun 2013.

“State of the Appnation – A Year of Change

and Growth in U.S. Smartphones.” Nielsen. The

Nielsen Company, 16 May 2012.

Gordon, Mary Ellen. “How To Reach America’s

Mobile Moms.” Flurry Blog, 02 Jul 2013.

TOTAL APPS DOWNLOADED

58billionon phones

14billionon tablets

50billionon iOS

1 billionon windows72billion

total


Quantified Self: The future of healthcare

CommunitiesCommunities

Knowledge of healthcare

and wellness needs to

be incessant. Owing to

the concept of quantified

self, the collaboration

of technologies and

healthcare ensure

efficient self discovery,

self awareness and self

knowledge.

by Deepak BeheraPhoto Credit: Fitbit

It was going to be a long flight home from Singapore to Bangalore and the fact that I was going to spend the flight sandwiched between two strangers did not improve my outlook. I settled into my seat, next to a professional-looking young man. I envisioned him working in sales or consulting and probably spending most of his time hopping between multiple time zones. When a flight attendant directed us to turn off all electronic devices, I noticed him checking several items including an iPhone, mp3 player, laptop, a headset and a hi-tech wristband. I was intrigued. He told me it was a wearable sensor that monitored the number of steps he had taken throughout the day, his body temperature, the amount of water he lost through perspiration and his heart rate. It even included a time-zone sensitive sleep-cycle responsive alarm that woke him up at his lightest stage of sleep, so he always felt rested. He then described how he uses an app on his smartphone to help him track his daily food intake, including water consumption, nutritional content and number of calories. He was a perfect example of the movement known as quantified self; that is, self-knowledge through self-tracking. Needless to say, I forgot all about my middle seat!

Conventionally, measuring one’s health was mostly achieved by one’s physician, derived from tests performed in either the medical office (e.g. weight and blood pressure) or through clinical laboratory tests (e.g. blood tests measuring glucose, triglycerides, or cholesterol levels). While these tests reveal significant information about the status of an individual’s health, these do not account for, at least explicitly, an individual’s’ lifestyle; that is, nutritional habits, emotional well-being, or physical fitness, for example. Often, these tests are never done without a visit to the doctor


and so only get performed when we are already sick.

There are a number of self-monitoring sensors and self-tracking gadgets such as BodyMedia, Amiigo, Basis, Fitbit, and Nike+ fuelband and various smartphone apps such as mapmyfitness and runkeeper that enable users to embrace their quantified selves. These count every step taken, map the route of a run, calculate calories burned, and record nutritional intake. Furthermore, behavioural activities and emotional well-being can be turned into measurable data through apps that track largely self-reported data. These include time prioritization, productivity, sleep, meditation and mood. We can then analyze the data ourselves, set goals and monitor our progress. Thus, owing to these self-tracking devices, generating personal health and lifestyle data is no longer prescriptive and fragmented but voluntary and continuous. The real challenge is not the quantification process, but engaging and motivating a user to track it regularly. Several successful devices and apps have tackled this issue by taking user engagement from an individual level to a “social” level. Many of these apps are connected to social networks such as Facebook or Twitter, which allow people to display their achievements, engage in healthy competition, form online communities and even inspire others to join the movement. Several of these apps utilize the concept of gamification to engage the competitive streak in their users. For example, in Zombies, Run! everyday outdoor running becomes an immersive real-time game where people run for their lives to escape hordes of zombies! Other apps utilize the time-tested concepts of leader-boards, badges and awards.

Of significance is how we can take this quantified self to the next step, up the ante and increase our role within the healthcare system.

Contemporary healthcare system is largely geared towards curing a problem once it arises rather than preventing it, despite innumerable studies proving far superior cost-efficacy of prophylactic methods. Logistically, doctors are doing what they were trained to do - solve a problem. They are paid to prescribe pills and order tests, not to take us for a walk (even though walking might be the best thing for us). Moreover, prevention of chronic diseases is a continuous process, not something achieved through an annual check-up at the doctor’s office. We ourselves need to become active participants in producing, analyzing and managing our own health information rather than staying passive consumers of healthcare. This is where self-tracking and data compilation shows tremendous potential for bringing forth changes to the healthcare system.

In addition to these inadequacies in personal health care, the healthcare system in its current state is also unable to control the larger and more important determinants of public health, which are diet, exercise, stress and access to quality healthcare. The large amount of data available can be analyzed for trends based on factors such as geographical region, ethnicity, income and insurance status. The aim is to strategize interventions and formulate policies targeted towards populations that are most affected or are most likely to benefit and reducing tremendous cost to employers, government agencies, insurance companies and organizations like the WHO. Also such analyses can provide insights to detect, study and monitor the efficacy of intervention in acute diseases of epidemiological proportions such as a dengue or diarrhea outbreak. By logical extension, the focused connectivity provided by social media platforms can be used by health agencies to make known vital and timely information, to prevent

spread of disease.Primarily, health information has to be

available to physicians continuously, in contrast to the current practice of sporadic visits where physicians or their assistants try to collect as much new information as they can since our last visit, in a short period of time. This current catch-up-method carries the concern of introducing recall bias and missing information on levels of blood and urine parameters or other measures during the time in between visits. Self-tracking devices, powered by increased connectivity through technology, update results of blood pressure, blood glucose, and urine ketones on a patient’s file on a daily basis. Measures of important determinants of health such as stress, diet and exercise can sometimes be sidelined by physicians and allied health professionals partly due to the difficulty of measuring them in discontinuous clinic visits. Quantified individuals can now continuously measure such parameters and provide results to the concerned representatives in their health care network. This type of continuous health monitoring could be especially beneficial for patients with chronic illnesses in which regular monitoring is essential. By getting continuous feedback remotely, people will not only save time and money on clinic visits but also will be able to take an active role in managing their own health.

Further, this personalized data could be made readily accessible to one’s entire healthcare network, including not only the primary care physician, but also the cardiologist, physical therapist, nutritionist, counselor and personal trainer to provide comprehensive data to enable more informed decisions and more personalized healthcare advice for every patient. The higher efficacy of health care delivery by a coordinated team in managing chronic conditions has been well-established, as has the detriments and inefficiencies arising from miscommunication between

un-coordinated health professionals. Individualized treatment plans are more likely to result in satisfied, compliant and engaged patients. Disease-specific education and behavioral counseling translates into better support and encouragement for self-management of chronic diseases. Close and sustained follow-ups with patients ensure early detection of side effects from medication, non-compliance with treatment plans or lack of efficacy of the intervention. A physical trainer will then be able to customize exercise regimes based on the doctor’s notes, a nurse will be able to determine reasons for the sudden rise in blood-sugar levels, a counselor can detect an unhealthy behavior and educate about possible future effects and friends will laud with a virtual thumbs-up on Facebook when they notice achievements on timelines of one reducing 5 kilos in 3 months without having to pay a visit to any of the professionals mentioned above!

For the future, integrating quantified self and social health with medical and allied health networks is the paradigm shift that will spur innovation and improvement in the healthcare system. Already clinical research has begun to shed the conventional method of sparse contact with participants and embrace a more continuous out-of-lab tracking. The tremendous amount of data available can help epidemiologists develop novel mathematical and statistical models for disease prediction, effectiveness of intervention and prevention and the efficacy of treatment. This is the significant step ahead to re-evaluate how we value health and our role in generating a new healthcare system.

References:G.F., “Fit, fit, hooray!” The Economist. 24 May

2013.

Kolata, Gina. “A Long View on Health Care: Think

Like an Investor.” The New York Times. 21 May

2012.

Kottke TE, Isham GJ. “Measuring health care

access and quality to improve health in

populations.” Prev Chronic Dis 2010;7(4): A73.

Macera, Carol A. “Promoting healthy eating and

physical activity for a healthier nation.” Centers

for Disease Control and Prevention.

Wagner, Edward H. “The role of patient care

teams in chronic disease management.” British

Medical Journal. (2000) 320: 569–572.

45


Some products have revolutionized the world. One such is Lego blocks. The giant toy maker has come a long way over the past almost 80 years - from a small carpenter’s workshop to a modern, global enterprise that is, in terms of sales, the world’s fourth-largest manufacturer of toys today. For fifty odd years Lego made great sales. However, in 1998 it made its first set of losses and in 2004, following six years of declining sales and profits it made a huge loss of US$240 million. Rumours circulated that Lego would be taken over by Mattel, America’s biggest toy maker.

But, Lego made its smart move. It listened to its customers, understood the propensity of its customer base and offered its consumers exactly what they needed, making some revolutionary decisions. In 2002, Lego released a 3,104-piece Imperial-class Star Destroyer building

Listening to the Community: A Lego case study

It takes a community to

raise a brand. Toy maker

giant, Lego understood the

power of its enthusiastic

fan communities and

created a product that

saved it from going

bankrupt.

by Ann BurgraffPhoto Credit: picstopin

kit for its Ultimate Collectors’ Series line, which meant it was detailed and complex. It was priced at $299 and at the time of release it was the largest set in size ever created.

The exercise began with Lego hiring an agency, Informative, which set up customer communities for Lego enthusiasts of all ages and ways to listen to customers ideas about products to build. One of these was the Lego My Opinion Consumer Development Portal. The portal enabled customers to directly talk to Lego. It had 150,000 active members who voiced what they really wanted. The portal echoed with a need for more complex sets that Lego enthusiasts could play all weekend long and not something that was simple enough to be built in an hour or two.

Lego took the voice of its consumers so seriously that it came up with the Star

Wars Imperial Destroyer, which offered audiences the opportunity to recreate and replay scenarios of the Star Wars universe, making it as a particularly compelling product.

The product reconnected Lego with its core customers; not only 7 year-old boys, but also mostly male adults who remain 7 at heart, who make up for the adult fans of Lego: AFOLs.

AFOLs are responsible for 5 percent to 10 percent of Lego’s billion-dollar-plus business. It was not clever above the line or below the line advertising. Even the high price was not a deterrent. But once this kit was released it sold like hot cakes, which made Lego create more such iconic toys, becoming an example of a company that was at the brink disaster but made an impactful comeback. Though several sellers were sceptical, Lego sold it at

events to which Informative invited Lego opinion leaders, reaffirming that it had taken its customers rather seriously and was bent on “wowing!” them. As Michael McNally, Senior Brand Relations Manager at Lego says “We realized that innovation can really come from the people who are using our products, every single day of their lives.”

This episode chronicles Lego embracing the motto of being customer-driven.

ReferencesLi, Charlene, and Josh Bernoff. “Lego: Energizing

an Existing Community.” Groundswell: Winning

in a world transformed by social technologies.

Boston, Massachussets: Harvard Business Press,

2008.

Robertsson, David. “Brick by Brick: How

Lego Rewrote the Rules of Innovation and

Conquered the Global Toy Industry.” www.

robertsoninnovation.com

“Star Destroyer.” Wikepedia. Wikipedia Inc., 15

Jun 2013.

“The Lego History.” Lego. Web.

Communities

49Kuliza Social Technology Quarterly Issue 0948

MobichirpFuel Your Referral Traffic

Apps that make your brand

sharable by enabling sharing,

expressions, and stories and fuel

referral traffic.

We Engineer Exceptional Web Experiences.

Better understand, monetize & amplify

your facebook fans.Build Instant Customer Loyalty

Apps that steer loyalty by

understanding and engaging

fans meaningfully through

rewards and incentive programs

to stimulate repeat purchase and

word of mouth.

Build Marketing Apps in Minutes

Rich media mobile marketing

apps for customer engagement

and in store traffic.

Drive High Conversion Traffic

Apps that drive high-conversion

traffic through socially engaging

activities that trigger virality and

allure relevant traffic.

Elevate Evoke Echo

stq.kuliza.com

Social Technology Quarterly Issue 09

Technology

Transcript of Social Technology Quarterly Issue 09