Tag: marketing

Facebook or Orkut?

Prasad Ajinkya5 Comments

social

I was mulling over Alexa this weekend, when I decided to compare the web traffics of the three networking sites; facebook, myspace and orkut. The annual traffic graph revealed an interesting picture I must say. The myspace traffic is more or less constant with its brief set of fluctuations, Fox Interactive Media should be a happy puppy. Their market share has remained solid,whew!!

But look at orkut and facebook, facebook (in red) has been steadily growing from milestone to milestone, and recently was crowned as the top social network site on the blue nothing (that’s the internet). The sudden spurt you see in all the curves, I think its the announcement of Facebook, when they announced their predator safegaurds. Remember that time in May, when a youth in India was kidnapped by some strangers through orkut? Well, could that explain the sudden dip in orkut traffic?

Strangely, during that time, orkut went the facebook way by having a few orkut apps, could this culture shift have thrown more traffic towards facebook?

I know a lot of people have not put too much thought into social communities, et al, but community management and monetization of the same is the only revenue models for both orkut and facebook. I wonder whether the orkut product manager is breaking a sweat on this? Incidentally, the orkut development and engineering team has shifted entirely to Brazil, where it is the no. 1 social networking site.

Addendum

I don’t know how he came across this blog, but Gaurav Dua gave a very logical explanation for the sudden dip in the traffic. If you see the Orkut url, then for Indian users it is nowadays orkut.co.in, same for Brazil, hence the traffic figures have dropped to 33% (approx.). I feel like such a dunderhead :-)

Customer Loyalty

Prasad Ajinkya5 Comments

I was coming back from Mumbai via Indian Airlines (now known as Air India). As you would have it, the flight was delayed by 90 minutes … the passengers were sitting in the flight without the airplane moving a single inch. Finally, when the flight reached Hyderabad, I took a cab to office, half the day was wasted … hrrrumph!!

On my way to the office, I receive a call from an Air India representative, saying that 4 air miles have been accrued to my account and I can check those at so and so url, all I need to do is keep my boarding passes with me. Just how idiotic is this … for travelling 1600 miles, I get 4 air miles … so after 400 trips with Air India, I will finally get one flight free of cost. That’s a discount of 0.25%

If only they can take that discount and use the savings to bolster their infrastructure and setup so that such flight delays do not occur. I would rather pay that discount instead of waiting those additional 90 minutes. Does the marketing department of Air India have a warped definition of customer loyalty?

Direct from Dell (to Hell)

Prasad Ajinkya9 Comments

No its not a complete, “I hate Dell” post.

I was the student representative for IIM Indore, in handling all the IT problems. I loved it, and liked fixing the varied problems that my classmates, juniors and seniors had. Back then, we had a tie up with Dell for laptops. Roughly at any point of time, at least 70 laptops were there from Dell. The warranty on them had lapsed in a years’ time, so … as Murphy would have it, the problems started cropping up only after then. Thus started the telephone calls over Warranty issues, and the constant bartering … over warranty given on paper … then comes the line, read the fine print. I was glad to hand over the ITCom Secretary post to my able junior .. whew!!

Now I do not own a Dell laptop anymore, but two of my colleagues do. Both have malfunctioning laptop batteries and chargers to boot, so the machine refuses to run without AC power and a functioning battery. Ok … easy solution … go to support dot dell dot com and raise a request. One month wait for customer care to respond. Fine, lets raise a sales enquiry of purchasing a new battery and a charger … one month wait for sales to respond. Is the site working anymore?

If you have a website and are making case studies of it in so many b-schools, then can you make sure it works properly; and if it is working properly, then why not respond to the customer, establishing their expectations. No response is a no-no. That has not only resulted in lost sales, but more importantly lost customers. An easier approach would be to sell extended warranty support to them and retain them as customers.

IPE taking on Ibibo!

Prasad Ajinkya4 Comments

I was just checking out the alexa rankings of this new site I read about in Deccan Chronicle (yeah! sometimes I do read newspapers … no, I actually dont!!). Its apparently the firstIndian pr0n toon star (the IPE in the title stands for Indian Porn Empire)!! Her name is Savita Bhabhi, and the site is a daily comic strip of her shall we say “exploits”.

I compared the pageviews of savitabhabhi dot com to ibibo dot com (no links, I do not wish to link myself to these sites), and lo behold! check out for yourself …

sbib-1

Just an interesting piece of stats and comparison, if nothing else. But, isnt it interesting to note that the same time the traffic stats on ibibo went down, those on savitabhabhi went up.

Sidenote – What do you think would be ibibo’s target market?

PS – This post in no ways is an attempt to offend any of the owners of the sites mentioned.

7C Model

Prasad Ajinkya4 Comments

When I was doing my PGDM at IIM-I, I had taken one course known as IT Enabled Marketing (ITEM). The crux of that course was a simple model known as the 7C model. The point I am rekindling this knowledge is because I aim to use it in real life business for a change. The theory that was taught two years back is finally going through chrysalis and culminating (in what I hope) to reality. Any web portal should have as many of the 7C’s as possible, they would be –

  1. Context
  2. Content
  3. Community
  4. Customization
  5. Communication
  6. Connection
  7. Commerce

The latest web portal that I was working on had just 4C’s … we are currently working on the 5th one. Will keep you posted on this.

Customer Orientation

Prasad Ajinkya5 Comments

One day after a good satisfying lunch, Don and I hitched an autorickshaw back to our office. The road on which we got the ride is a one-way and the autowallah was reluctant to come along, saying that his children will have to wait. We assured him that we knew a shortcut (that we did), and we would walk the rest of the way ensuring that he gets to his kids on time.
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