Would Spot Fixing help brands advertising in IPL?

S Sreesanth, Ankeet Chavan and Ajit Chandila may have failed a cricket worshiping nation, but have they undone the big bucks of marketers riding on IPL?

There is no doubt that the Indian Premier League is about the money first and the cricket later. But has the money brought into it by splurging brands been undone by the perils of big money?

Lemonade to Viagra - An Entrepreneur's dilemma

If your lemonade does not sell, would you switch to selling Viagra?

Even more if you are passionate about making a lemonade.

Infibeam.com - NEVER use it!

It was 11th April and I was very happy to order "The Great Gatsby", a classic novel by F. Scott Fitzgerald on Infibeam.com. I was even more happy to get a good deal on it. Although while ordering they said that despite being in stock, I was told it would deliver the book to me a fortnight later. This is when the delivery had to happen in Delhi. Had I stayed in a remote town in India, it would have been justified. Anyways the price conscious Indian consumer in me was very happy.

Social Media, Sustainability and Green Supply Chain

Social Media has been in part responsible for huge political changes like the ones in the Arab world, has helped shaped huge election campaigns (Barack Obama), and at a micro level changed the way we interact with friends and family.

All these changes have a fundamental common factor that makes social media unique and more important than any other media form - It puts us all on the same space. There is no hierarchy, caste, class or status that stops your voice from being heard.

While social media has caused so many changes for good, can it also provide the solution for a big problem facing mankind today? Can social media drive sustainability?

What digital metrics don't say about brands

There have been a lot of discussions around sentiment analysis and metrics about brands on the internet. To address this area, there are a lot of companies that have designed software that help brands figure out sentiment and other related things in real time.

With fancy interfaces that look no less like a NASA control panel, these packages aggregate what people are talking in real time, process it and make sense out of it.

All this enables brands to figure out their online sentiment and the profile of engaged netizens. What it does not tell brands is the culture. The big problem with a sentiment metric is that it takes the social out of social media.

Facebook Algorithm tweaks and its impact

Facebook has tweaked its News Feed algorithm that basically displays the activity of your friends and subscriptions. To those who have seen a decline in activity or the number of likes and comments on their posts, there is a surprise.

Nick Bilton, a popular journalist made merry of the subscription feature that was introduced on Facebook which allowed people to see others public activity streams without being Friends. Many other journalists and celebrities like Nick made good use of this feature and promoted their content and activity on Facebook. Like in all happy tales, there was a climax.