Who says Facebook is a waste of time

Inderjit Vasudevan Moorthy, Karthi Sekar and Sorav Jain are not just social media users, they have made a career out of it

Making social media workSorav Jain and Karthi Sekar (on the right).Photo: Ashokarsh

What if someone told you can make a living out of Facebook? Or that the more time you spend on various social networking sites, the richer you can get. Take for instance, the cases of Inderjit Vasudevan Moorthy, Karthi Sekar and Sorav Jain — a former TV producer, a gym owner and the third, an alumnus of Leeds University. They understood the influence of social media marketing and are now experts at it.

From multi-million dollar corporate companies to the store next door, it’s a tool everyone is investing in. Even celebrities and politicians hire professionals to make sure that their Twitter and Facebook pages are always abuzz. The job of the social media manager is not only to draw attention to their client’s social media profiles, but also keep visitors engaged with them. More importantly, ensure that the visitors return regularly. These three men were like any other users of social media till they stumbled upon the business aspect of it. And now it gets them their bread and butter.

Sorav Jain, 27

Many of us may have forgotten Orkut, but Sorav owes his career to the site. “I started at 17 when I was a student at Loyola College, Chennai. I used to work as a content writer and was learning about Search Engine Optimisation. This area caught my fancy. Orkut was the first social networking site that I started with. I was an Orkut addict,” says Sorav. He joined a start-up after he returned from the U.K., where he studied international marketing management. “That was when I started blogging. The directors of a Spanish personal branding company approached me after reading my blog and asked me to join them on their board of directors.  I was too young to handle that and I gave them the option of outsourcing their needs to me. This inspired me to quit my job and take the big leap,” says Sorav, who started Echovme, a digital marketing training and services firm. “I now employ 15 people and we have clients like Cashkaro.com, Bosch India, Kay: The Fashion Bay and more. We also work for politicians and celebrities,” he says. He has also published a book titled Social Media for Business: Stories of Indian Brands .

Karthi Sekar, 40

Karthi was looking to promote his gym and yoga studio when he discovered the potential of the social-media business. “My friends noticed the presence of my enterprises online and started asking me for tips. Soon I was helping them out,” says Karthi, who started Brand Width in 2011. He works out of Alwarpet in Chennai and handles clients such as Udhaiyam, KGS Developers and Kaizen.

The scope of online marketing is vast and each site reaches a specific group, he says. “I was working for this NGO that required volunteers in rural areas. That entailed taking a break from their job. Most of the volunteers were foreigners. I decided to tap LinkedIn for Indian volunteers. We soon had the desired output,” says Karthi, who asserts that one has to be on the lookout for opportunities and update knowledge to make social media a successful business proposition.

Inderjit Vasudevan Moorthy, 31

A high-school dropout, this entrepreneur never let that tag affect him. He worked as a producer with a TV production company. A regular on Facebook, he saw many people use the site as a medium to vent their ire about Chennai. He decided to start a fan page, ‘I Love Chennai’, for the city he loved. “I remember inviting two of my cousins, the next thing I knew I had more than 100 followers. I started updating pictures, uploading articles celebrating the spirit of the city and uploading multimedia content. In no time, I had over 1,000 likes for the page. I started the page last May; by August I got my first sponsor. Our display picture had their logo,” says Inderjit.

That page is now called ‘My Chennai’ and now has 477,489 fans. He realised its impact and began exploring the social medium further. He came across the Chennai Traffic Police page on Facebook and noticed scope for improvement. “I met the (then) Additional Commissioner of Police (Traffic), Sanjay Arora. He was more than happy to help. Soon, a team was formed and we started reworking the page,” he says.  Today, it is one of the best maintained pages where action is taken immediately on complaints. He manages the page now.

Inderjit’s Ikebana Consulting has clients, including the Sports Development Authority of Tamil Nadu and Chennai Metro Rail. A team of 11 people work with him. “This industry is still in its infancy. A lot more can be achieved because it connects people directly with clients,” he says.

 

What’s Facebook up to?

The acquisition of Whatsapp gives Facebook access to metadata, enhancing its ability to pick out people’s relationships which could lead to better-targeted ads.

When Facebook bought Instagram for $1 billion in 2012, Internet geeks gasped and business executives leaning on water coolers the world over asked, “Why would Facebook pay $1 billion for a company with no revenue?” It turned out to be a bold but necessary move, bringing the mobile photographers of the world into its fold. The company’s latest supersized acquisition has yielded an even louder cheer of chatter, unsurprising given its hefty price tag. This time the purchase is a revenue-generating, mobile-messaging success story — but, at $19 billion, is Facebook paying too much?

There has been much talk about the decline of Facebook. In January reports suggested that the social network had seen a 29-percent fall in active users among American teens during 2013, threatening Facebook’s dominance as well as highlighting a broader shift of social-media users to mobile. The drop also was said to be part of growing teen use of popular new messaging apps such as Snapchat and Whatsapp.

That being the case, let’s take a look at what Facebook is actually buying.

These fickle teens are exactly the kind of people Facebook is worried about losing. Whatsapp has managed to amass 450 million monthly active users in five years, which is about three times as many as Facebook had in its first five years and almost 10 times the number Skype or Twitter had. What’s more, 70 percent of Whatsapp’s users send messages on the platform every day, a number much higher than Facebook’s.

Whatsapp has managed to do what Facebook hasn’t: It employs a subscription-based revenue model, charging its users 99 cents a year after their first year of use. There is also a zero-advertising commitment and, presumably, no commercial exploitation of user data. This acquisition could help Facebook understand how to successfully execute a business model that could replace its own.

Facebook has become the medium of choice for subscribers who want to make announcements about their lives, milestones or daily activities. However, the daily messaging volume of Whatsapp is almost as high as the number of text messages sent over the entire global telecommunications network. Daily connections are better captured by metadata from messaging apps than by the ad-hoc posting of status updates. This data could enhance Facebook’s ability to pick out people’s most important relationships, which could lead to better-targeted ads.

Facebook Messenger, the social network’s attempt to enter the instant-messaging space, is big in the United States but not in other countries. In buzzing social communities across India and South America, Whatsapp is much more popular. This is where we see substantial intermediate value. The global shift to mobile is happening much faster in emerging markets, and Facebook needs to be a part of it.

One more obvious benefit is that Facebook has beaten Google and other major competitors to Whatsapp. This should give Facebook an edge, at least for now.

Who loses? Well, for one, the global telecommunications industry, which currently enjoys about $100 billion a year in revenues for short-message services.

The moral of the story? If you don’t create the alternative or bring innovation to your business model, others will disrupt it.

Serguei Netessine is a professor of technology and operations management at the international business school Insead, where Karan Girotra is an assistant professor of technology and operations management.

© The New York Times 2014

© 2014 Insead

 

 

FB bug fetches $5,000 to Hyderabad student

A city student, Aellaboina Tarun, won 5,000 USD for discovering a bug in popular social media platform Facebook last month. The bug reported by Tarun, a third year engineering student in Computer Science at CMR College of Engineering and Technology, enables URL redirection and causes severe cache issues.

“I was attracted by security modules and was in search of vulnerabilities when I found a URL redirection which lands the user on unexpected webpage rather than the main Facebook webpage. Also while studying its source code I found a serious cache issue due to which the user’s access to the social media platform can be interrupted,” Tarun explained.

The discovery was a result of several hours of intensive study after which Tarun sent a detailed report along with proof of concept (POC) to Facebook. Acknowledging his contribution, his name, along with the college name, was listed in Facebook’s ‘Hall of Fame’, also known as ‘Whitehat’ list which can be seen at ‘www.facebook.com/whitehatlist/thanks’.

The CMR College of Engineering & Technology is also the first college in the world to get listed in the ‘Facebook Whitehat’ list. Facebook initiated a programme called ‘Bug Bounty Program’ to encourage experts to detect and report security threats and vulnerabilities of the platform.

You’re being watched

In the euphoria of sharing, what one forgets to realise is that what one posts is public.

The social media is an exciting platform from which we connect and communicate with the world. It creates links, in ways that could never have been imagined. Today, you literally have the world at your fingertips and from the Email revolution , things have accelerated to include Facebook, Twitter and Whats App (an application that allows you to instantly share messages, photos and video) to new forms that are generated every day. Besides communication on a personal level, social media is now the latest tool for revolution or change. Groups use the social media to further their cause, raise petitions to voice protest and create change at a global level.

At a personal level, it breaks long helped notions of hierarchy in relationships. A person in Coimbatore shares his poetry on his Facebook account which is regularly accessed by his granddaughter in Norway. She adds her comments on it and immediately sends it across, posting her refreshingly candid views. In a matter of minutes, this exchange takes place and connects people beyond conventional modes of expression.

Throughout history, change has always been followed by new ways of adjusting, negotiating and working with the new rules in place. The social media is in a nascent stage and as we engage with this medium, we find ourselves sometimes facing the repercussions of this new mode of communication. In a free-for-all scenario, the social media is witness to all the “darkness” within — tendencies towards violence, bullying and manipulation become more open, more immediate, and more real. The division between what is personal and public becomes blurred.

In the euphoria of having access to this medium, have we forgotten notions of privacy? How then does this manifest in the “real” world? In sharing these two stories, it would be interesting to step back and reflect.

Public versus private

The first story happened, a few years ago, in the school I taught. A senior class had gone for an annual excursion. Since time immemorial, excursions have been spaces when we all have enjoyed the freedom of being with friends and freedom from parental control. Inhibitions are shed and these trips build memories for the future — where we have bonded over late night food raids, playing pranks on each other and generally being in a state of sillines. This particular trip had the seniors taking pictures of them at a beach party. The photographs were immediately posted on Facebook. As always this was followed by a barrage of comments, and the comments took on an ugly turn, where one person was singled out. The comments became vicious and personal — even if it was said in the context of “humour,” when it appeared in black and white, it lacked context. Adding to this, a distant relative of a student was shocked by the kind of photos taken and immediately called up the parents. The distraught parents approached the school and much mediation took place before the whole incident snowballed into something uglier.

In the euphoria of sharing, what one forgets to realise is that what one posts is public. It is not just between you and your close circle of friends, it becomes accessible to an entire community who will respond.

A private moment with friends becomes a global talking point. Photographs and visuals come with their own interpretations and when you post every private meeting, you lose that balance between what is personal and what is for public consumption. Some of the seniors felt violated as they did not know that their photographs would be on a public platform. They shared with us, that instead of it being liberating, it made them more apprehensive –letting their hair down was a private moment and seeing themselves posted on a global platform made them feel unsettled.

Workplace

In the second incident, a young intern who had been working in a prestigious law firm was asked to leave.

The company, he was representing, told the firm that they did not want him on board. On further investigation , it was found that the young man’s profile on the social media, had images of him that the company felt was not in line with what they stood for. Furthermore, the young man had made disparaging remarks about the company he was going to represent. It was an unfortunate matter of not being aware, what he thought was personal was open for all to see.

Today companies, in their recruitment, access the social media to get a sense of “who” you are. It is unfair — A collection of photographs or comments made do not define you. It is one aspect of your life. Yet, because it has crossed into public territory, it is open to all kinds of interpretation. Ironically, the social media also becomes restrictive, as one young model said, “My every move is watched so my every move is calculated”.

Handling social media

How do we redefine the way we use this new tool? The tangled web where the private and public have no boundaries. Perhaps, just good old-fashioned common sense, which in our hurry often takes a backseat. Some pointers that might help when you use the medium

Awareness: Know that everything you post is public and permanent. Slow down before you click that post button. Understand for yourself whether you want this to be public or not.

Respect: Communication is about respecting boundaries. If you are going to photograph a private space (party, outing, work), it is important to ask whether the person wants to be online. We have numerous situations, in schools, were people have felt violated.

Introspect: The choice to be on a social media application is yours. If so, decide what aspect of yourself you want to project to the world outside. There is beauty in privacy. Discover that beauty again.

One of my favourite writers, Gabriel Garcia Marquez once said, “All human beings need to have three lives: Personal, public and secret”. In today’s world, those boundaries are shrinking at an alarming pace.

Does this story speak to you; do share your opinions and thoughts: anamika292000@yahoo.co.in

 

Today companies, in their recruitment, access the social media to get a sense of “who” you are.

 

 

In the euphoria of sharing, what one forgets to realise, is that what you post is public. It is not just between you and your close circle of friends, it becomes accessible to an entire community who will respond.

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Robotics contest for students this month

Are you a school student fascinated with robots? Well, here is your chance to build one and compete with like-minded enthusiasts from across southern India.

Indian Robotix League (IRL) 2013, a three-day competition for students to build robots and put them to test in various contests including racing and football, will be held from December 28 to 30 in Chennai. Over 400 teams are expected to take part in the event which has a grand prize — a trip to Singapore to participate in the international edition of the event.

Race car driver Armaan Ebrahim unveiled the logo of IRL 2013 at a media event held at a star hotel in T. Nagar on Tuesday afternoon. “It is good that students, from a young age, can enjoy the experience of building a robot and understand its functions, especially in cars, using electric and hybrid technology,” he said.

Organised by Robotix Learning Solutions in association with Meritus Mynd Works, IRL will commence with a two-day training for participants on construction of a nitro/electric/green hydrogen fuel-cell car, humanoids, and various aspects of developing a competitive miniature robot. Scheduled to be held at Bala Vidya Mandir in Adyar, the training workshop will witness the selection of teams of students, from classes IV to XI, who will battle it out in the final round of IRL to be held at IIT-Madras on December 30.

Those interested may log on towww.indianrobotixleague. comto register. For more details, visit the Facebook and Youtube space of IRL.

Next summer, post IRL, the organisers, in coordination with Ability Foundation, have planned to conduct training workshops on robotics for physically-challenged children.