Democratisation of Super Influence!

A new report from Universal McCann discusses the rise of "a new breed of super influencers" that has been created by "the tools of the social media revolution."

Entitled When did we start trusting strangers? How the internet turned us all into influencers, the premise is that influence was moved beyond "professional and top down" (mainstream media) and into Web-enabled peer to peer influence. But despite McCann calling this a "democratisation of influence", all influencers are not equal. There are "super influencers" who are "extremely heavy users of social media, particularly in terms of content creation." Are you one of these people?

Download the report here.

Got to the report through ReadWriteWeb.

Bhagawan Aaye Cycle Se

No wonder it won the Bronze at Cannes.

Orkuting In Cyber Cafes Of Varanasi

Above photo taken on the streets of Varanasi.

Perhaps they should add Orkuting to the OED, at least in the Indian edition.

Truth About Youth - An MTV Study

Not yet. Turns out MTV is not going out of business because of every Tom, Mark and Steve and Chad turning into a content generator or building platforms for user generated content. A series of studies and research by MTV compiled into a book The State Of Cool, confirms mostly what is common knowledge and some insights into trends on youth culture, their usage of internet and mobile.

The State of Cool, a book published by MTV’s Insight Studio has a statistic that should set minds at ease only 1% of young visitors to user generated content sites actually upload anything fresh and original. 10% or less actively participate and leave comments, while 90% are passive spectators.

Ah, what about the Pareto Principle then? But 1% is way too less.

The importance of catching ‘em young is almost a cliché , but MTV states the market is more lucrative than ever before: youth across India spend up to Rs 9 billion in pocket money every day. A good deal of it on mobile phones and related services. Two years is the utility expectancy of a cell phone for 63% of young Indians; 57% of youth across Asia state that they’d like to replace their MP3 players with a music enabled mobile. The eagerness to add ringtones, music and games is good news for promoters of value added services.

No wonder every youth brand is chasing the youth these days. And their pockets are only going to swell in the days to come.

Indian youth are obsessive about keeping in touch, of which social networking is a huge component . 59% visit sites like MySpace almost every time they are online (see I-Generation ). India lags behind only Brazil in this sphere. As many as 69% of young Indians use these sites to chat with existing friends. 57% consider it an avenue to meet new people. It’s a de facto art gallery for 49% who share pictures. In India , Brazil and China, exclusively online friends beat close friends by a huge margin.

What Indian youth add to their mobile phones?

















What Indians use the internet most for?



















What Indians use the mobile most for?


















Source: This Economic Times article.

PS. Recommended reading - Chasing Cool.

Are Status Messages The Next Blogs?

Please take this survey - Are Status Messages The Next Blogs? . Will definitely be interesting, the results of this!

Teaser Campaign Using Websites..

...and offline promotion of the same.




















It's perhaps a campaign for a mall to be launched soon. The stat counter on the site at this point reads 16137. Decent enough numbers one would say for a visit to such a website.

The previous such campaign which is still fresh in one's memory is the whatiteez campaign for Krackjack(?) featuring Cyrus Broacha. Interesting trend this, of using the internet to run teaser campaigns.

An Economy Builds Around Britney

And you thought Britney's days were over? Huh.

"Britney is the most bankable celebrity out there right now, and she has been for the past year," said Francois Navarre, founder of the paparazzi agency X17.

"An editor's dream is to have a real life soap opera unraveling in front of you, and Britney provides that every week," said Sarah Ivens, OK!'s US editor. The magazine has a 10-person team in Los Angeles devoted to Spears coverage. "We're on constant Britney alert." She wouldn't disclose the costs to the magazine, saying only that Spears has been "amazing" for OK!'s business.

More here.

Here's Britney driving the economy around her.



PS. A bonus. Britney's marriage licence here. Interesting that one of the fields is Number Of Marriage.