Profile: Rajesh Sawhney

Image Courtsey

Rajesh Sawhney set up Reliance Entertainment's BigAdda in August 2007. The site is one of the largest and fastest growing youth networking sites in India.

Sawhney worked with the Times of India group for more than 10 years before joining Reliance Entertainment. He graduated from Delhi College of Engineering in 1987 and Mumbai University in 1990. He has also done a fellowship in globalization from London School of Economics in 2000. He married his girlfriend of 5 years, Chhaya, and had two sons, Rohan and Arjun.

Although BigAdda is not in the same league as Facebook, it still claims its fair share of visitors and continues to grow in popularity. The site has been featured as one of the top 25 internet start-ups in India by Dataquest.

Watch Out, E-Commerce and M-Commerce: Here Comes 'F-Commerce' and He's Ready to Steal Your Girlfriend

Watch Out, E-Commerce and M-Commerce: Here Comes 'F-Commerce' and He's Ready to Steal Your Girlfriend | Social Media Today

Profile: Michael Sanchez

Pix Courtsey

Michael Sanchez co-founded CafeMom; a social networking website that is specifically aimed at mothers. The site offers member-generated content such as journals, photos and profiles. CafeMom became the most trafficked website for women within a year of being launched. Currently, CafeMom receives more than 3.1 million unique visitors a month and  more than 140 million page views. The website is operated by CMI Marketing and the company is located in New York City.

Prior to CafeMom, Sanchez was the co-founder and President of Do Something from 1993 until 1999. Do Something has been involved with more than two million students and educators; with the aim of providing youth leadership and citizenship initiatives in schools. Sanchez also co-founded ’94 Cup Daily; a daily newspaper that was dedicated to the 1994 World Cup Soccer Tournament that was held in the US. He also served as its CEO.

As a child, Sachez travelled extensively around the world as a top-ranked chess player and received a lot of media coverage during that same time. He graduated from Columbia Law School in 1993 and currently resides in New Jersey with his wife and kids.

Carwale's route to social media success

According to AllFacebook.com, during the average 20-minute period last year, there were more than 15 million wall posts and over 10 million comments posted. With overwhelming statistics such as this, who can deny the power of social media? Tapping into this potential is India’s largest auto media platform CarWale (www.carwale.com).


CarWale’s Karobar
Launched in 2005, the website focuses on Indian car consumers. The aim is to provide comprehensive and unbiased information to car buyers so that they may take informed decisions. The site offers various categories of information, including detailed specifications of various manufacturers and brands as well as expert reviews and owner reviews. The site also provides comparisons, so that people can narrow down their choices more conveniently. So, if you’re keen on buying or even selling a car, this is a good place to start off.


Social Media as the Fuel
Why is social media important to CarWale? The answer is simple. The site’s revenue model is based on traffic. The site makes money by providing services. So, every time someone visits the site and engages in any of the activities - car research, new car purchase, used car sale or purchase. Even if the visitor does not use these services, the site generates revenue through advertisements. In either case, the site needs to attract traffic. CarWale has used social media to engage the common man, create its brand image and get him to visit the site.


CarWale’s Social Media Test Drive
The fan page on Facebook was created in 2009. The start was slow because social media was not a priority then (possibly because the craze was yet to engulf the Indian metropolitan population). It was about eight months back that CarWale gave serious thought to its social media strategy. The results have been outstanding as the Facebook fans have grwon from around 800 to close to 18,000.   


In order to capitalize on the World Cup fever, CarWale recently launched the Fix the Match Contest. CarWale uploads pictures and short write-ups of cricketers and asks their fans which car would suit that particular cricketers the most. For instance, the latest one is about Ashish Nehra. One fan has selected the Tata Nano for him, as it is good for short rides, but not for the long haul. Another fan believes the Maruti Suzuki Swift is perfect, as Nehra is dependable, while yet another has chosen the Chevrolet Cruze because of Nehra’s love for speed.


The Speed Breaker
While CarWale has experienced a lot of success with Facebook, its Twitter page is not as eventful. It has only a little more than 500 followers and regularly distributes news and important updates through this platform.


Social Media Mileage

“We perceive social media as a very effective brand building vehicle. We feel that social media has huge potential and it will only grow. We are yet to use it to its potential though,” says Banwari Lal Sharma, Assistant Vice President – Product at CarWale.

“The referral traffic from Facebook page has grown 11 times year-on-year in last year which is indicative enough as what it can grow to. With social media landing on mobile phones, we are hopeful that it will contribute to a significant amount of traffic,” Mr. Sharma adds.

Carwale.com has a global Alexa ranking of 3,467. Its India ranking is 247.

Social Media Servicing Costs

CarWale has invested the time of its marketing, product and design teams. It has also tried Facebook advertising, although it believes that such ads do not justify the spend, as they are expensive and have relatively low ROI.

“As far as social media is concerned, we are not in the ROI game as of now. It's a long-term investment. But that said, we feel our efforts have paid off. We are happy interacting with our customers informally. The feedback they share with us help us immensely in building better products and services,” says Mr. Sharma.

A lot of companies consider the users of social media as a little non-serious and non-engaged. However, in CarWale’s experience, this has not been the case, especially when they were able to come up with “thoughtful ways of interactions”. “During a couple of campaigns on Facebook, we noticed that the quality of referral traffic was slightly better than any other referral we had received. It was almost equal to the quality of direct visits we receive, which is nothing short of remarkable!” opines Mr. Sharma. 

Profile: Caterina Fake

Caterina Fake is the co-founder of Flickr;  a popular photo sharing platform. In September 2010, Flickr was reported to host more than 5 billion images on its platform and continues to grow. Flickr has an official iPhone app and also supports Windows Phone 7. Fake sold Flickr to Yahoo in 2005 and went on to co-found Hunch in 2009, a site that will map every user on the internet to every entity and their affinity for that entity.

Fake was born in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania and graduated from Choate Rosemary Hall before she attended Smith College and Vassar College, where she graduated in 1991.

Prior to Flickr, Fake served as Art Director at Salon.com and was heavily involved in the development of online communities and personal publishing. Fake also ran the Technology Development group at Yahoo; which ran programs such as Hack Yahoo and Brickhouse.

Fake has won various awards, including Red Herring’s 20 Entrepreneurs under 35, Business Week’s Best Leaders of 2005 and Forbes 2005 eGang. She was also named by Time Magazine as one of the world’s 100 most influential people. Fake is also a partner at Founder Collective where she serves as an advisor to new start-ups and businesses.

How to Generate $500,000 in Leads by Guest Blogging

How to Generate $500,000 in Leads by Guest Blogging | Social Media Today

Online Commerce is Already Social

Agreed the data below is for one small, well connected country--Ireland. But the impact of group buying deals is significant. We are seeing a lot of action in this space here in India as well, and I expect group buying to be a major disruptive force.

Online Commerce is Already Social | Social Media Today

What the Egyptian Revolution Taught Al Jazeera About Digital

Often seen as the voice of the Arab world, Al Jazeera has been at the center of and reporting on Arab issues through many a crisis. But the recent Egyptian revolution was the first opportunity for the network to witness first hand the power of social media.

What the Egyptian Revolution Taught Al Jazeera About Digital

Using Social Media While Driving

GM is introducing a feature that will allow you to access Facebook and Twitter while driving. Personally, I feel this is as dangerous as chatting on your mobile while behind the wheel. What do you feel? Share your thoughts below: Using Social Media While Driving | Social Media Today

Profile: Michael Birch

Michael Birch is a computer programmer and entrepreneur best known as the founder of Bebo; an online social networking website. Bebo was first launched in January 2005 with the help of his wife. In 2008, Birch and his wife sold Bebo to AOL for $850 million, yielding a $595 million profit for their 70% stake. Birch and his brother Paul founded BirthdayAlarm.com and also Ringo.com, which was later sold to tickle.com.

Bebo had more than 45 million registered users in 2007 and was ranked the sixth most popular website in the United Kingdom; surpassing Amazon, AOL and BBC.  In 2010, AOL announced the sale of Bebo to Criterion Capital Partners and the sale was completed on June 17 of that year.

Birch was born on July 7, 1970 in Hertfordshire. He attended Imperial College London where he studied BSc in Physics and later went on to marry Xochi Birch. In 2008 Birch invested in MyStore and also joined as a board member. He is also an investor in Goodreads, a book-oriented social network. Birch and his wife reside in San Fransisco.

China's paranoia, India's opportunity

Egypt first, Libya most likely next...and China after that? Chinese leaders have long feared the power and reach of the internet first and now social media. They would have taken note of how Twitter and Facebook have been successfully used to galvanize thousands of protesters, and they are probably doing everything in their power to make the great firewall of China even greater.

However, in doing so they are also doing an injustice to the engine that drives the remarkable China growth story...their exporters. Think about it, social media has emerged as the most powerful marketing concept since Google dished out adwords. Every business worth its bottom line, either already has a social media strategy or is desperately scrambling to get one. Just look at how print and television campaigns are being reworked around a Facebook fan page, or a Twitter handle. Online, every campaign and website has an FB or a Twitter reference. Linkedin has become the defacto meeting platform for businesses and the Chinese are missing out on this action (actually Linkedin is not blocked there, but it is not popular in mainland China).

Here are the main reasons why I feel the Chinese are missing out:

* Social Media is about engagement: Unlike traditional marketing channels, social media marketing is about engaging with your customer. It is a platform that allows you to pitch your product/service, get feedback and interact with your customers/potentials. Apart from your own social media properties, you also have a great opportunity to interact on general forums. This two-way engagement is an excellent opportunity to grow your own business, learn about new opportunities and make useful contacts. However, if you are not there you do not exist.

* Cost effective marketing: The best social media campaigns actually cost little or nothing. They are the ones that are liked by the community and go viral. Given that a majority of mainland China exporters are low-cost warriors this is a marketing solution that would have worked very well for them.

* Small biz's best friend: While all of us know about the big guns like Lenovo and Huawei the export engines of China and India are driven by small to medium-sized companies that are extremely price competitive. These firms invest every dime on their core activity and have little left over for marketing. A social media campaign would have helped them register a global presence at a fraction of the cost they have to otherwise incur.

Anyway, the point is they are missing out, but then so are companies in India that should be taking advantage of this opportunity. While the Chinese can at least blame their firewall, you have no reason not to take full advantage of this opportunity. So here are the five things you need to do to leverage this opportunity:

1) Create a Linkedin profile: Linkedin is a great place to start. This is quietly emerging as the platform to do business and you need to create either a personal profile or one for your company there.

2) Join communities and forums: Check out the most popular communities and forums for your line of business and join. Remember to contribute to the discussions and not just plug your business. Contributing to discussion and being seen as a thought leader is a good way to build up solid connections. These are everywhere, but the most ones for business seem to have migrated to Linkedin.

3) Facebook Fanpage: Set it up. Takes less than 10 minutes. Ensure your friends like it. Post regularly on it and use it to get feedback on your products/services, ideas whatever. If you get an audience going, they will be a great ally for your business.

4) Blog; It does not take time. Set it up within your own website or do it on a blogging site like this one. Again, don't just plug your products here, share your thoughts, problems, issues, success, doubts...let your audience into your business.

5) Google Places: If you have a retail front to your business, dont forget to put it up on Google places. List it there, and give as much details as you can. Also encourage your customers to rate your service.

There are lots of other stuff you can do, but doing these five should help you get started. When your effort starts paying off, you can do more.

3 Must Have Free Cloud Software Services

A must-read for everybody, the cloud is indeed setting us free. I have used the services mentioned in this post and I totally agree that these are great services to use.

3 Must Have Free Cloud Software Services | Social Media Today

Profile: Gina Bianchini

Gina Bianchini is the co-founders of Ning; a platform for creating social media websites. Bianchini, along with  Marc Andreessen, founded Ning in October 2005. Bianchini holds a B.A. from Stanford University and an M.B.A from Stanford Business School. Prior to Ning, she served as co-founder and President of Harmonic Communications. 

With an estimated annual revenue of more than $10 million, Ning is considered to be the world’s largest platform for creating social websites, with more than 2.3 million user-created Ning Networks and more than 45 million registered users.

In 2010, Bianchini announced that she will be stepping down as CEO of Ning; moving to Marc Andreessen’s new venture capital firm Andreessen Horowitz as an Executive in Residence (EIR). Aside from being one of the co-founders of Ning, Marc Andreessen is also the co-founder of the popular Netscape browser.

Bianchini has been featured in New York Times, Fortune, Forbes, CNN and CNBC; and Ning has been labelled as one of the world’s most valuable start-ups.  

Profile: Mark Zuckerberg

Mark Zuckerberg is an American entrepreneur and software developer that is best known as the CEO and founder of Facebook.  Facebook is the largest social network service with more than 600 million users worldwide. Zuckerberg co-founded Facebook along with his classmates Eduardo Saverin, Chris Huges and Dustin Moskovitz in 2004 while studying at Harvard. Zuckerberg was born in New York in 1984 and has attended Ardsley High School before joining Harvard University in September 2002.

Whilst being a college sophomore, Zuckerberg originally wrote Facesmash; a photo comparing website that served as the predecessor to Facebook. Following the site’s overnight success, he developed Facebook and it was officially launched on February 4, 2004. Facebook became a huge success; with more than 130 million unique visitors monthly and was placed in the Top 100 Classic Websites by PC World Magazine in 2007. Zuckerberg was also named Person of the Year by Time Magazine in 2010. 

Zuckerberg currently serves as President and CEO of Facebook, holding 24% of the company’s shares. Residing in Dobbs Ferry, New York, Zuckerberg’s net worth is estimated at $12.5 billion. Zuckerberg also founded the Start-up: Education foundation and in December 2010 he announced that he had become a signatory of The Giving Pledge.