Disqus - Latest Comments for Asfaq

Re: Social Media Interview with Mani Karthik

Asfaq — Thu, 01 Oct 2009 01:10:15 -0000

My experience shows that most clients are dont bother about NDAs.. they couldn't care less.. as long as you have made an effort to shape mindset and bring about a culture of openess.

Re: Social Media Interview with Mani Karthik

Mani Karthik — Wed, 30 Sep 2009 14:39:03 -0000

@Asfaq,

Most clients go for NDA's but Im happy to discuss it personally with you if it helps. :) You can see others in my profile on dailyseoblog.

@Brett, thanks for the opportunity, it was fun answering the q's.

Re: Social Media Interview with Mani Karthik

Asfaq — Wed, 30 Sep 2009 08:11:38 -0000

So erm.. who are your clients engaging in Social Media from India?

Re: Outlook 2007: Minimize to System Tray | Microsoft Outlook | Tech-Recipes

Asfaq — Wed, 12 Aug 2009 01:52:39 -0000

Just to tell you, this works on Outlook 2010 too. Thanks!

Re: Shopcorn.com Exclusively Uses SlideShare and Twitter For Marketing

Asfaq — Mon, 15 Jun 2009 01:03:35 -0000

Thanks, Purva :)

Re: The UTVi Group jumps onto the Social Media Bandwagon

Asfaq — Tue, 09 Jun 2009 08:33:44 -0000

Thanks, Vivek. Let me check. Will touch base with you offline soon :)

Re: The UTVi Group jumps onto the Social Media Bandwagon

Vivek Khandelwal — Tue, 09 Jun 2009 07:59:31 -0000

Jagriti Yatra has a great online presence. It was a great active community and the twitter account was heavily used by @juptierorbit during the yatra.

Ngopost is one of those website that collaborates NGO stories. @ngopost does exist.
Will let you know if i come acorss any more.

Re: The UTVi Group jumps onto the Social Media Bandwagon

Asfaq — Tue, 09 Jun 2009 07:54:48 -0000

do u know of any NGO's in India that extensively use SM?

Re: Bing is Cool, Now Wake Me When True Semantic Search Happens

Asfaq — Tue, 02 Jun 2009 01:27:32 -0000

Yes, My default location was set to UK when I took the first screenshot. When I set it to Mumbai, this becomes very relevant. Thanks for the tip! These results are definitely better than Google, don't you think?

Re: Bing is Cool, Now Wake Me When True Semantic Search Happens

Asfaq — Tue, 02 Jun 2009 00:51:04 -0000

Not really. Even if I did, it would be one person's opinion and not the collective opinion of a crowd of people voting for or against a particular hotel. When that happens, confidence levels increase.

Wouldn't you rather go to a hotel that's recommended by 10 strangers rather than one?

Re: Bing is Cool, Now Wake Me When True Semantic Search Happens

Asfaq — Mon, 01 Jun 2009 05:41:02 -0000

Thanks for the tip, Manan. The post has been updated :)

Re: Why “unfollowing” someone is not the solution

Sengupta — Sat, 30 May 2009 02:05:01 -0000

Yes, Twitter has done a good job of having a very strong API so far- the number of clients and services based on Twitter only enforces this. Manan told me yesterday that Tweetdeck can filter out certain tweets- I don't use tweetdeck anymore though, but those are different issues. I hope to see the ability to selectively filter out, and along the same vein- selectively aggregate certain tweets proliferate across twitter clients. For instance, I might want to filter out #ipl since I'm not a big cricket fan (this isn't flamebait) but I might want to read catch tweets on #F1 since I don't get the channel it's broadcast on in India. I appreciate that server-side issues like filtering out tweets can be expensive for twitter- I understand that this is the cause of the recent @replies issue. On a sidenote, I hope twitter offers this feature in any prospective premium service that they might consider having.

Re: Why “unfollowing” someone is not the solution

Asfaq — Sat, 30 May 2009 00:23:45 -0000

I find it amusing that you have a blog post up on this.. heh... but more on that later. What I will talk about however are the various suggestions recommended to Twitter from the comments above.

Our discussion last evening only suggests that Twitter is used differently by different people. Twitter - so far - has restricted itself to being a platform and allowed for various clients and ancillary services to build on their platform. This strategy allows them to focus on their API and be very good at maintaining it. This is also the reason they switched off support for IM and texting from most of the world. They would rather someone else building a plugin for Twitter IM support in Adium or Pidgin or maybe allow developers to building the 'selective blocking' functionality into their clients than them having to build it into their API and then support it till kingdom come.

Thanks to #3wordsaftersex and #liesgirlstell, I think devs are already trying to build the selective blocking feature into their clients. Since this will be implemented on the client-side, Twitter should not have any extra load issues either.

Re: BookMyShow.com Premiers Social Media Plan to Packed Houses

Asfaq — Sat, 30 May 2009 00:03:44 -0000

Gee.. thanks, Shweta! :)

Re: BookMyShow.com Premiers Social Media Plan to Packed Houses

Asfaq — Sat, 30 May 2009 00:02:55 -0000

Thanks for the comment, Mayank! It's not often that you come across such frankness from companies.. startups or otherwise :)

Re: Word Of Mouth, Referral, Online Media, the latest buzz words for a brand new business!

pepster — Tue, 24 Feb 2009 05:26:53 -0000

Traditional PR companies are now more aware of the need and importance of Social Media, but are completely clueless about how to initiate, organise and monetise the model. The simple reason is that the results are not quantifiable. The content quality cannot be maintained given the rate at which PR "professionals" change jobs.

The traditional PR agencies therefore underplay the role of SM and bank on SEO/SEM activities to garner online visibility. Companies who do understand the importance of SM, employ professionals on their payroll to conduct these or hire professionals like Moksh Juneja to do their job right and the first time.

Hope query clarified!

Re: Word Of Mouth, Referral, Online Media, the latest buzz words for a brand new business!

Asfaq — Tue, 24 Feb 2009 02:18:00 -0000

I think you make a very important point about 'networking' and of how your pitches improve as you network. That to me is very important as it gives you the experience to deliver when the pressure is on.

On the questions front, I'd like to know if traditional PR companies in India are waking up to the Social Media and what are they doing about it?

Re: Web advertising is broken

Asfaq — Mon, 19 Jan 2009 03:15:41 -0000

Here are some of my opinions on the digital marketing sphere:

Many companies set aside 10% of their turnover for marketing communications. Of that 10%, 90% is spent on media and 10% goes to creative work. So if you are in the media buying you just make 2.5% of the 9% spent on media and you end up addressing .2% or .3% of every marketing dollar spent, while your creative ad agency addresses 1% of the market. The total advertising business is just 1.3% of the marketing business. A distributor or reseller, on the other hand, makes 20-50% of the bigger pie, and if a digital agency occupies that role, they can make more money, especially in the pay-for-performance model where delivery in not charged. We run a customer’s e-business, get an order, collect the money and get others to fulfill the order. Potentially, you can grow that way much bigger than an advertising agency can. The key factor here is whether you can market online better than the marketer himself. At Pinstorm (www.Pinstorm.com), we feel the world is full of incompetent online marketers, and they all can be our clients. If we can deliver a sale, we can charge high margins.

The Pay-for-Performance model is unique for its integrated approach which re-bundles creative and media in the digital world. Pinstorm’s solutions are created across Display, SEM, SEO, WAP, SMS, Social Media, Viral and other digital media – while they are charged for only on a pay-for-performance basis. Clients don’t pay for strategy, creative, servicing or media – but only pay for the measurable branding impact and prospect responses generated.

(Dislaimer: I work for a Pinstorm, a digital marketing agency)

Re: Why Facebook May Already Be Killing Twitter

Asfaq — Mon, 05 Jan 2009 03:03:56 -0000

I agree with the author too. I follow the same practise of importing my tweets to FaceBook and I find that the conversations are far richer there than on Twitter itself. Maybe it is because the conversations are threaded, which make it more contextual when an outsider views them than on Twitter?

Re: Leaving on a jet plane…

Asfaq — Wed, 31 Dec 2008 01:53:59 -0000

So you coming to India? awesome! Do try to make it to Mumbai. If you do, (like Gaurav says) we could do a tweetup :)

Best,
Asfaq

Re: louisgray.com: Arrington? Loic? Scoble? Everybody's Right About "Authority".

Asfaq — Mon, 29 Dec 2008 02:18:36 -0000

Agree.. but I don't think we can accurately measure 'authority' just by looking at number of followers. We have to remember that PageRank also does not work merely by virtue of pageviews :)

I think the ranking should be based by way of interactions and the number of replies one receives. This too is not the most perfect way but it is a step in the right direction, IMHO.

Re: louisgray.com: Arrington? Loic? Scoble? Everybody's Right About "Authority".

louismg — Mon, 29 Dec 2008 01:07:12 -0000

I think the conversation exploded beyond its original intent. I think
offering the option to rank by # of followers should absolutely be
enabled. That's not the be-all and end-all of rankings, but there's no
reason it should not be developed.

Re: louisgray.com: Arrington? Loic? Scoble? Everybody's Right About "Authority".

jessestay — Sun, 28 Dec 2008 05:27:25 -0000

Asfaq, I agree. In the end it's about building the most personal experience you can around the individual. That involves both sides of the coin and enabling the user to make their own choice.

Re: Thanks Mike Arrington for taking us off the rails into Twitter idiot land

Asfaq — Sun, 28 Dec 2008 04:53:46 -0000

Very interesting post Robert. I have followed the FriendFeed conversations between you and the others, read Jesse's point of view on his blog and now yours.

Personally, I believe that everyone will find different ways of using and engaging social media. You talk about how important it is to surround yourself with smart people, people who have ideas.. My question is how do you define, 'smart' or intelligence.. Surely, it cant just be about adding as many people as you can, right? I think this is what Loic was trying to arrive at.

The idea to me sounds interesting.. the way to measure 'intelligence' with follower count - that seems rudimentary.

I really do hope this conversation between the worlds top bloggers will result (maybe even inspire?) someone to create better AI? Only time will tell.

In the meantime, here is wishing you and yours a wonderful new year :)

Re: louisgray.com: Arrington? Loic? Scoble? Everybody's Right About "Authority".

Asfaq — Sun, 28 Dec 2008 04:53:19 -0000

Personally, the ranking idea makes sense to me. Why should a network not reward a person for spending more time on their service? Having said that, following people on Twitter and FriendFeed (irrespective of them following me back) has helped me derive valuable insights into social media and the internet - among other things.

Therefore, I think both sides of the coin are equal.. irrespective of where you are coming from.