I was driven towards Farmville by an enthusiastic and devoted wife, who told me it is the best thing that ever got online. For a couple of days, I believed, and hence opened my very own online farm. And then, my wife took over, and diligently worked away on my farm, even while working on her own farm, and managing her work, and the kid, and countless other things that go with managing a home. Hats off to the Indian superwoman, better known as a wife.

a quick list of some very cool and useful apps which you must have on your windows mobile devices. i have an Asus p750, perhaps the ideal phone that suits my needs..never been an iphone lover…and this machine works perfectly for me. so here goes my list of favs:

With all due respect, facebookji, i find it surprising you have made it so tough for anyone to search for facebook pages. i tried for 15 odd minutes, and other than the generic search, tehre was no way for me to search for a specific page or browse through pages. i can do so with groups, though. Odd, that when i googled my dilemma, i got to know that by visiting facebook pages i can actually do that, just the way i am doing with groups…odd. if pages are so popular (zoozoo for example) and so many people get confused about whether to go with groups or pages when launching a brand on facebook, then fb should sure have taken care of this teeny weeny aspect, and made it easier for us to search for pages!

broadly, there are 2 aspects of social media, as i understand it: pleasure and business (and i’m limiting my TG to only the corporate employees / companies and their employees)
the pleasure aspect is basically about the people we know and keep meeting daily. most of them were on orkut and most still are, but a lot many are migrating to facebook, and also creating profiles on linkedin and trying to figure out twitter…this set of people try to stay updated about what their pals are up to (though they get irritated by too many updates happening all of a sudden), and almost making facebook their home page, as fb is becoming almost part of daily things to do list. linkedin is more about future hope to find a better job through a connection…all that’s fine, but if you ask these employees, if anyone in their office, either in marketing or in corporate communications team updates social media on behalf of the company regularly, then my guess wud be 80% not knowing much about it. as the companies in india have still not started using the social media effectively. they probably don’t realize the potential of staying in touch with fans and foes, who have the liberty of giving instant bouquets and brickbats..perhaps that scares most companies away, the fear of getting ridiculed publicly….but why should we really be defensive about our products, services and decisions? why can we not tolerate criticism? why do the indian companies feel that 2000 fans are good enough, who can help get 10000 new customers to become fans, over a period of time? the viral effect of social media stays confined to releasing viral animations, but not everyday updates, which can help crate a brand salience…more of a longterm play than considering only short term gains….i mean look at how dell has used twitter to jack up additional sales of 1mn USD. amazing. 17 different divisions of dell are on twitter, giving deals news and discounts to people who really care. nice to read that kingfisher is now on twitter, but my earnest suggestion is to actually use it meaningfully. make people see value from it. promote new features, give discounts, make the followers feel privileged and special, and ensure its not only a one way communication. get prepared to listen, and implement suggestions. give them info and affection on facebook..make them see videos, photos and stories which otherwise the brand fans would never have seen…..its the way forward. and the sooner social media is adopted by brands, the better they stand to gain. ofcourse, in the long run…

if they are, i would advise them to get other telecom carriers into their list of compatible operators. Tata Indicom is perhaps having the least number of subscribers, when compared to airtel, idea, vodafone, reliance, bsnl and aircel….and yet, they are the only carriers compatible with facebook…strange, i would say!