Social Archives and Digital Legacy - Data Miners' feast!

"We are not just viewers of incidents in our timeline... But witnesses to a past that shall be etched among the archives of our digital history." 

Some day we'll realize how those words make more sense than ever. Today we are certainly in an age where every piece of content that we view/share/read/write and create within our social and digital networks we tend to forget the overarching theme of how this will shape the future of Internet consumption and how constantly our lives are going to be driven by the legacy that we leave behind. 

Every day and every moment we thrive in this world that is as digital as it gets, we are striving hard to communicate and contact to a world that is built in this realm so open and so evidently 'out there' Privacy is a word beyond a realm without any real strings attached and most important element in today's consumption of information is the fact that curating has become a key component more than anything else. 

Digital footprints make more easy to find and track rather than actually trying to profile someone in a hypothetical analysis. While a very good thing for marketers who are keeping a close eye on their subjects and building their products and brands to touch the right pulse, it's all the more creepier for people who are subjected to targeted consumerism via digital media. 

We all have not just become a part of a timeline that we can view in retrospect, but also witnesses to a past that will always be with us and in the Internet archives so as to give leverage to not just ourselves but to a lot of data miners out there. 

The day isn't far away that every transaction carried across the web has critical importance and every transaction giving priceless information about target consumers and behavior profiles would transform into some sort of currency. Heck, even Bit-coin mining would probably provide opportunities to share,sell personal data which is no less than the golden eggs that this digital chicken (Read:Consumer) lays for marketers. What say?

Image Source: Social Business News
Srinivas has been a communications professional for over 15 years. He has worked with and built India's largest digital agencies from the ground up and been part of their acquistion journey. Social Wavelegnth (now Mirum, part of the WPP group) and Kinnect, now part of the Interpublic Group (IPG). He's also been a public speaker, keynote speaker at various large panels/events of the likes of BBC Knowledge Summit, Blockchain Summit Bangalore. And has been a guest lecturer at IIM, Symbiosis, Indian Institute of Digital Education.

He has been blogging since 2005. And also been author at various publications, that include Startup India by ZDNet, Social Samosa, Lighthouse Insights.  His passion for Writing, Advertising, Creativity, Digital, Blockchain and Future Tech is what drives him each day.

How would you persuade anyone to use a 'Social Media Website?

This was an [A2A] I received on Quora for this question

If you were in charge of my social media website, how would you persuade people like yourself to use it?

The Web site he has is frendsdom.com

[A2A] I've been part of promoting a few Social Networking sites and early adopter to enterprise social networks within my organization, so from my experience penning down a few things that would / would not work especially when you want to thrive among a competition of social networking sites as such. Personally I'm of the opinion that there's too much connectivity and too much networking happening. People should reverse the trend and offer products that are more niche and closed group and non-intrusive per se.

1. Social Networking is out there. I don't need a new network to connect on to the same people or for the same purpose. (So after facebook, orkut, hifi,myspace etc. Why did twitter,foursquare, goodreads, Quora, whatsapp, (closed social networking), G+, Line, Kakaotalk, Sina Weibo etc become popular? For their individualistic reasons and problems they solved. What's different from others? Try to make that possible.
2. As far as promotion goes, don't shove it down their throat. It should be intuitive and give me a reason to use the network than just using it because it's there.
3. Again, points (I don't think that's a good idea, unless it's in real time value of some sorts, yet it could sometime feel overwhelming at times.)
4. As Abhirup Dutta mentioned it's important to answer the "problem statement" that inspired you to create this site as the solution.
5. I saw this: "Find People: Find people of your interest from anywhere in the world." at the very bottom. I think this is something you could really rely on and revolve your entire network per se around this fundamental aspect.

What it is is less important more than what it can offer and what it drives. Build your product, offer the problem and promotion becomes easier then. Rest is business as usual.

Srinivas has been a communications professional for over 15 years. He has worked with and built India's largest digital agencies from the ground up and been part of their acquistion journey. Social Wavelegnth (now Mirum, part of the WPP group) and Kinnect, now part of the Interpublic Group (IPG). He's also been a public speaker, keynote speaker at various large panels/events of the likes of BBC Knowledge Summit, Blockchain Summit Bangalore. And has been a guest lecturer at IIM, Symbiosis, Indian Institute of Digital Education.

He has been blogging since 2005. And also been author at various publications, that include Startup India by ZDNet, Social Samosa, Lighthouse Insights.  His passion for Writing, Advertising, Creativity, Digital, Blockchain and Future Tech is what drives him each day.

Consumer Trend through Social

An interesting behavior that always was popular and will be popular is identifying or creating consumer trends through behaviors within the market in any industry. That is a popular process and there are billions of dollars spent on making sure that any particular brand actually goes ahead and gets its consumers and target market right. 

Today Social allows a very good opportunity to identify that trend. Certainly it's been a popular aspect with the likes of Big Data and social media monitoring / online reputation management existing in that space. But the more fascinating aspects of consumer trends is through deep rooted study via tracking and identifying consumer behavior through understanding what they want what they like, what they do what they share with others and most importantly what their tastes are. 


Certainly this process is of an interesting order and a lot of brands and a lot of research goes into identifying individual customers and understanding their behavior. Unlike generic results via social media monitoring this would involve deep and further study on specific customer behavior. This is a space that will certainly go to the next level and brands will start getting into it via social all the more. Social media ethnography as it would be popularly known is certainly looking interesting and general interest about it is picking up. 

Srinivas has been a communications professional for over 15 years. He has worked with and built India's largest digital agencies from the ground up and been part of their acquistion journey. Social Wavelegnth (now Mirum, part of the WPP group) and Kinnect, now part of the Interpublic Group (IPG). He's also been a public speaker, keynote speaker at various large panels/events of the likes of BBC Knowledge Summit, Blockchain Summit Bangalore. And has been a guest lecturer at IIM, Symbiosis, Indian Institute of Digital Education.

He has been blogging since 2005. And also been author at various publications, that include Startup India by ZDNet, Social Samosa, Lighthouse Insights.  His passion for Writing, Advertising, Creativity, Digital, Blockchain and Future Tech is what drives him each day.