ITV

Category: Social Media

  • Twitter refuses to appear before Parliamentary Committee on IT

    Twitter refuses to appear before Parliamentary Committee on IT

    MUMBAI: Amid growing concern about data security, Twitter CEO and senior officials declined to appear before the Parliamentary Committee on Information Technology on 11 February. The global social media giant cited “short notice of the hearing” as reason for the refusal.

    Earlier the Parliamentary Committee headed by Anurag Thakur issued a summon to Twitter via official letter to discuss the issues concerning the use of social media. While 7 February was decided as the date for meeting, it was rescheduled to 11 February to provide more time to Twitter CEO and senior officials.

    "It may be noted that the head of the organisation has to appear before the committee," the letter clearly mentioned according to reports. "He/She may be accompanied by another representative," it further added.

    Twitter's legal, policy, trust and safety global lead Vijaya Gadde sent back a letter stating, "No one who engages publicly for Twitter India makes enforcement decisions with respect to our rules for content or accounts in India."

    The letter also added that deputing a junior employee to represent Twitter at the Indian Parliamentary IT Committee has not gone down well with Indian lawmakers especially since they have no decision making authority.

  • With a focus on empowering women, Facebook launches digital skilling and mentorship initiative

    With a focus on empowering women, Facebook launches digital skilling and mentorship initiative

    MUMBAI: In a bid to empower more women with digital know how and new age skill sets, Facebook today announced GOAL- Going Online As Leaders, a program aimed at inspiring, guiding and encouraging tribal girls from across India to become village-level digital young leaders for their communities. Spanning across West Bengal, Maharashtra, Jharkhand, Odisha, Madhya Pradesh, the initiative seeks to nurture and train young girls from India's tribal heartland across three core areas – digital literacy, life skills, leadership and entrepreneurship. 

    The program will see 25 eminent people from diverse backgrounds like business, education and health to politics, arts and entrepreneurship volunteering and personally mentoring 4 girls each from tribal communities across the above priority states. Spanning over six months, the program will see on-ground trainers impart digital literacy to the identified girls through a dedicated digital skilling curriculum while the 25 women leaders mentor them via Facebook or WhatsApp on a fortnightly basis. The digital training of the selected girls will be supported by Digital Empowerment Foundation led by Osama Manzar through pre-established community digital infrastructure hubs in tribal areas of the country. 

    Ankhi Das, Public Policy Director, Facebook -India, South & Central Asia said, “The internet, especially social media over the past few years has emerged as one of the most powerful tools for empowering women from across India's diverse social economic backgrounds and varied cultural roots. With GOAL, we seek to make the digital medium more accessible and usable for young girls from our resource rich but economically weak tribal communities in the country. We are confident that this network of learners will employ these skills as a means of social and economic elevation for themselves and drive change making in their communities.”

    In order to be a part of GOAL, the applicants will be required to be over 18 years of age and of tribal origin. The programme will specifically focus on girls who've dropped out of school due to financial constraints, reside near the skilling center to ensure regular participation.

    GOAL will provide functional digital marketing and safety skills; equip the participants with basic digital tools; and nurture this network of young girls to instill life skills, leadership qualities and entrepreneurial attitude- readying them to shape the future of their respective communities. By the end of this year-long project, 25 women leaders would have inspired, guided and encouraged 100 girls from tribal communities to imbibe digital skills and life skills to become village-level Young Agents of Change.

  • Facebook fuelling growth story via ‘Stories’

    Facebook fuelling growth story via ‘Stories’

    MUMBAI: Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg's vision of Stories as the future of the social media giant is gradually becoming a reality. While investors kept an eye on the advertising revenue coming from Stories, the company definitely did not disappoint. More importantly, Stories is growing quickly not only on Instagram which just passed 500 million daily active users on stories but also on the Facebook blue app.

    The media tech company claimed in an earnings call after posting Q4 results that 2 million advertisers are using Stories to reach customers across all its apps. As more users are also starting to use Stories, this is emerging as a promising area of opportunity for marketers. According to Facebook, it is trying to make it easier for advertisers to adopt its campaigns for Stories. It even launched ads in Messenger Stories in the last quarter but feels it is too early to talk about monetisation.

    Mumbai-based Digital marketing agency DigiChefs co-founder Deep Mehta also thinks Stories will gain more popularity as the language of communication moves to more instantaneous and visual ones. According to him, users today have a tendency to first see what's happening 'right now' as soon as they open their favourite social media app via the Stories and then move to the newsfeed.

    Mehta said that from the advertising point of view as well it's no secret that brands running ads in Stories usually end up seeing a better Click Through Rate. He added that if someone has not exploited the power of Story ads yet, it's time to jump in.

    “Though for now, there's quite some time for advertisers to have their campaigns circled only around Stories and the feed ads are pretty much indispensable, it will be interesting to see how advertisers use the AR enabled stories and features like Instagram carousel ads to their advantage. As a performance agency, I would definitely insist my clients to bet their monies on Story ads in the long run with a creative strategy suited to showcase their propositions visually without being to pushy,” he added.

    However, compared to Facebook, there has been a faster adoption of the feature on Instagram. Despite the decrease in the average price per ad, the number of ad impressions across Facebook apps increased by 34 per cent. According to Facebook, the impression growth was primarily driven by ads on Instagram, including both feed and Stories.

    “While we have opportunities to grow impressions on Facebook and Instagram, that's less so in feed, where we already have healthy ad loads in – on both surfaces and more in Stories where we have lower CPMs. So – whereas in 2018, we benefited from strong impressions growth on Instagram in both feed and Stories. We'll be more reliant on Stories impression growth in 2019,” Facebook CFO David Wehner commented.

    Facebook rolled out ephemeral stories in its mobile apps back in 2017 resembling Snapchat, which invented the Stories format way earlier in 2013. While the success of the feature was uncertain, Facebook first spoke about its growth in 2018. After acquiring a 150 million daily active user count for its Snapchat Stories clone, the social media network went down the path of advertising.

    It is now gearing up to put more efforts into popularising it on Facebook too. As the platform is eying more advertisers for Stories, Facebook will bring more ad formats for the product also. Facebook COO Sheryl Sandberg said it is focusing on making the format of Stories easier for marketers to help them to get the best ROI. According to Sandberg, both large advertisers and small advertisers are adopting the format.

    “Now right now, one of the interesting things about Stories is there's a benefit to being an early adopter. So the pricing is really attractive. And so we think the mix shift to Stories is a big opportunity for us and it's going to take time to continue to get advertisers in, but we're very happy with demand to date,” Sandberg added.

    "From a pricing perspective, we've got to improve our ability to grow the number of advertisers using Stories and improve price there, but it's going to be more reliant on that in terms of revenue growth,” Wehner added. However, he also added there’s a scope to improve pricing as well as number of advertisers using Stories.

    Facebook's CEO also spoke on a highly optimistic note about the potential of Stories. Zuckerberg has put his faith on Stories too along with core News Feed work for growth of the business over the next year. But he admitted that they have to work a lot to monetise Stories at the same level of News Feed.

    “Stories on Facebook is growing quickly. I think we're going to get to where we need to get to there. We started a little bit later, and some of the early execution, I think, wasn't as good as it needed to be. But I think we're doing good work there now and it's growing quite quickly. So I'm confident about where we're going to be there,” Zuckerberg added.

    Though the feature is being adopted first on WhatsApp also, Facebook does not have a plan to launch ads there in near term given the consumer experience-centric focus on the messaging app.

  • Zuckerberg says Whatsapp, Messenger, Instagram to integrate by 2020

    Zuckerberg says Whatsapp, Messenger, Instagram to integrate by 2020

    MUMBAI: While there is an ongoing global outrage against the plans of Facebook to integrate WhatsApp, Messenger, and Instagram, the company’s founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg is confident that the move will be in the best interest of the users. However, it is going to be a long-term project that might extend to 2020 or beyond.

    Speaking during an earning’s call announcing Facebook's fourth quarter results, Zuckerberg stated, “I can talk about messaging and the integration that we're thinking about, but first, we're really early in thinking through this. So there's a lot more that we need to figure out before we finalise the plans. And then, of course, this is going to be a long-term project that I think will probably be to whatever extent we end up doing it in – a 2020 thing or beyond.”

    He also added, “There are a few big reasons why I'm excited about this and think it'll be good for the user experience, which is the reason that we're doing it. I mean, part of the question was about a commercial benefit, but that really isn't the big focus here. The first reason that I'm excited about this is moving more to end-to-end encryption by default in more of our products.”

    Mark noted that people ‘really like’ the encryption function in WhatsApp and he thinks that to have encryption work in a consistent way across will prove beneficiary. “There are also a number of cases that we see where people tell us that they want to be able to message across the different services,” he said.

    The Facebook CEO emphasised on this matter by citing the example of its popular marketplace feature. He said, “A lot of people are using Marketplace on Facebook now. And a lot of people are using that in countries where WhatsApp is the primary messaging app that they use. So we have these experiences today where we're building Marketplace and you go to message someone to buy something. And the link to basically do the messaging is over Messenger, but in that country, where people really want to be using it, is WhatsApp and we need to make it so that people can communicate across the different networks and graphs that they have or be able to do that integration better in order to facilitate more transactions and connections there.”

  • FB Q4 2018 earnings saw mobile contribute 93% to ad rev

    FB Q4 2018 earnings saw mobile contribute 93% to ad rev

    MUMBAI: Last year saw Mark Zuckerberg-led social media giant Facebook entangled in a number of controversies, especially its privacy policies with the biggest being the Cambridge Analytica scandal. Despite all the negative press throughout the year, the FAANG company has reported strong financial gain in Q4 beating revenue and earnings per share estimations. Daily active users on the social media platform reached 1.52 billion led by growth in India, Indonesia and the Philippines.

    Facebook reported 16.91 billion revenue against the estimate of 16.39 billion and $2.38 EPS against $2.18 consensus estimate. The key contributor to revenue definitely remains advertising with $16.64 billion. As the company reported, the year-on-year growth for total revenue as well as ad revenue was 30 per cent. North America, the domestic market of the platform alone brought in $8.25 billion. Notably, the ad revenue growth was strongest at 34 per cent in Asia-Pacific region.

    The number of active users was also slightly higher than the expectations. Facebook reported 2.32 billion monthly active users and 1.52 billion daily active users with a 9 per cent year-on-year growth. Mobile advertising revenue represented approximately 93 per cent of advertising revenue for the fourth quarter of 2018, up from approximately 89 per cent of advertising revenue in the fourth quarter of 2017. The platform now has over 7 million active users across all its services.

    “In Q4, the average price per ad decreased 2 per cent and the number of ad impressions served on our services increased 34 per cent. Impression growth was primarily driven by ads on Instagram – including both feed & stories – as well as Facebook mobile news feed. The year-over-year decline in average price per ad reflects an ongoing mix shift towards product surfaces and geographies that monetise at lower rates,” Facebook CFO David Wehner said in a statement.

    Recently, Facebook has started focusing highly on stories across all its properties. Facebook COO Sheryl Sandberg said that 2 million advertisers are using stories to reach customers across their family of apps. In the last quarter, the company launched ads in messenger stories too.

    As per the company presentation, daily active user grew in every region including in Europe. While monthly active users stayed flat in North America, it grew in every other region especially in Asia Pacific. The presentation says average revenue per user (ARPU) also grew to $7.37 billion from $6.09 billion in the third quarter.

    The numbers clearly that indicate advertisers have not lost interest in the social media engine despite all the data privacy scandals. Even backlash from governments across the world didn't affect its value much for advertisers.

    "Our community and business continue to grow," Facebook founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg said. "We've fundamentally changed how we run our company to focus on the biggest social issues, and we're investing more to build new and inspiring ways for people to connect."

    With an attempt to focus more on videos, Facebook Watch entered global markets. Zuckerberg expects 2019 to be the year where Watch becomes more mainstream. “There are now 400 million people who use it every month, and people spend on average over 20 minutes on Watch daily. This means we're finding ways for video to grow outside of news feed so it doesn't displace the social interactions that people primarily come to our services for,” he added.

  • Girliyapa and Robin Hood Academy come together for #CreateTogether campaign by Facebook

    Girliyapa and Robin Hood Academy come together for #CreateTogether campaign by Facebook

    MUMBAI: Girliyapa, the women centric brand from The Viral Fever (TVF) umbrella is known for tackling social issues through their creative and innovative content. This Republic Day, the channel has collaborated with zero-fund organization Robin Hood Academy to release a special video ‘Little Voices’ that tackles the issue of education for the underprivileged, for the #CreateTogether Campaign by Facebook. Starring internet sensations like Srishti Srivastava, Ahsaas Channa, Khushbu Baid and Shreya Mehta, the video motivates people to take a step towards getting out of their comfort zone and volunteering to educate under privileged children across the country.

    #CreateTogether is a campaign by Facebook, to encourage creative collaborations around common ideas and causes. Robin Hood Academy, on the other hand, serves as a bridge between the street and schools, by giving children the tools and knowledge to embrace full-time education.

    Understanding consumer psyche that most people have a desire to help underprivileged children but for numerous reasons tend to hold back; this video attempts to shatter these myths by giving people an easy and interesting solution!

    Nidhi Bisht, Creative Head, Girliyapa, said, “It is our firm belief to highlight various social issues of our time, but with a creative outlook. Little Voices lays particular emphasis on the importance of education for under privileged kids and how we can come together for this change. We’re glad to partner with Robin Hood Academy. Happy Republic Day”

    Neel Ghose, Founder, Robin Hood Army, said “The Robin Hood Academy goal is simple – we aim to provide less fortunate children who live on the streets, the opportunity to learn and grow. #AcademyVoice is all about providing a platform for these kids to publicly voice their thoughts, dreams, and aspirations – they are the real future of our country. We are grateful to all our radio and media partners for giving our kids this once in a lifetime opportunity and are very excited to partner with the TVF team to take the kids voice to the masses.”

    Saket Jha Saurabh, the Head of Facebook Entertainment Partnerships India, said: “Content creators have strongly engaged communities on Facebook. When creators combine their creativity and talent to produce content, the outcome is not just more entertaining, but also brings more people together. We are excited about this #CreateTogether and this Republic Day special moment, is a compelling way to positively influence fans with a really relevant message.”

  • Twitter hosts ZEE Jaipur Literature Festival’s first-ever digital panel

    Twitter hosts ZEE Jaipur Literature Festival’s first-ever digital panel

    MUMBAI: As the literary world prepares for ZEE Jaipur Literature Festival 2019, the largest convention of writers, thinkers and cultural icons in India, Twitter today announced that it will co-host the Festival’s first-ever digital panel, #PowerOf18, which can be attended exclusively on Twitter.

    The panel, named after Twitter India’s recently launched social initiative #PowerOf18 to encourage young Indians to take part in the public conversation, will take place at 5.30pm on 25th January, on National Voters Day. It will bring together young, dynamic Indians who’ve both, chronicled and shaped the zeitgeist, to discuss the transformative power of civic action and the importance of making your voice heard on Twitter, and beyond.

    The panel will feature:

    ● Ravinder Singh (@_RavinderSingh_) – One of India’s best-loved romance authors, Singh has sold over 3 million copies of his novels and runs Black Ink, a publishing platform for debut authors

    ● Zuni Chopra (@zuni_chopra ‏) – At 17, Chopra is a prolific writer, having already published two poetry books, a novel and a collection of short stories

    ● Snigdha Poonam (@snigdhapoonam ‏) – The award-winning journalist covers national affairs with a focus on young India. Her first book Dreamers: How Young Indians Are Changing Their World and Yours won the Crossword Book Award in 2018

    ● Nishtha Satyam (@SatyamNishtha) – Satyam is the youngest Deputy Country Representative for UN Women across 193 countries, and a staunch advocate of mainstreaming women in the marketplace, workplace and community

    ● Reshma Qureshi  (@reshmaqureshi_b)- Qureshi, who survived an acid attack at 17, is an activist, model and vlogger. She is the face of NGO Make Love Not Scars, has walked at New York Fashion Week and co-authored a book about her incredible journey

    The discussion will be moderated by Amrita Tripathi (@amritat), author and Head – News Partnerships, Twitter India.

    In addition to the  #PowerOf18 panel, ZEE Jaipur Literature Festival will also live-stream a selection of sessions featuring some of the world’s best and brightest thought leaders, on Twitter. Audiences can tune into these and the  #PowerOf18 panel via @ZEEJLF. (See Appendix for the full list of panels that will be broadcast live on Twitter via @ZEEJLF.)

    Simultaneously, Twitter is collaborating with Penguin India (@PenguinIndia) and HarperCollins India (@HarperCollinsIN) to bring authors closer to their fans. These include creative challenges and author-driven Q&As, allowing to capture live content from the authors. Often found at major award shows and talk show green rooms, the Twitter Challenger allows and encourages celebrities to take engage with fans. The photo or video is then sent out through ZEE Jaipur Literature Festival’s Twitter feed, driving conversations amongst fans and followers.

    Commenting on the initiatives, Keya Madhvani Singh (@keyamadhvani), Head. Entertainment Partnerships, Twitter India said: “Twitter is a frontier of creative experimentation, showcasing what’s happening in India and around the world. Our partnership with the ZEE Jaipur Literature Festival has enabled us to serve cultural and literary affectionados with real time updates on their favorite panels over the years. As we move closer to the upcoming election in India, we are thrilled to take this association a step further and reach out to more young people in India, with an objective to encouraging and empowering them to make their voice heard and realizing their #PowerOf18.”

    Sanjoy K. Roy, MD of Teamwork Arts, Producers of the ZEE Jaipur Literature Festival, said: “Twitter has always been an important part of our social media mix for the ZEE Jaipur Literature Festival, connecting us to various stakeholders and audiences who love literature. This year we are taking our partnership to the next level. We are happy to announce the first ever digital-only session in the history of the 'biggest literary Festival on Earth.”

  • Google promises more transparency in online election ads

    Google promises more transparency in online election ads

    MUMBAI: Google has vowed to take India specific initiatives aiming at transparency in political advertisements on its platform ahead of general elections in the country. The tech giant will provide details of advertisers as well as money spent on such ads.

    "To bring more transparency to the online election ads, Google will introduce an India-specific Political Advertising Transparency Report and searchable Political Ads Library. These will provide comprehensive information about who is purchasing election ads on Google platforms and how much money is being spent," Google said in a statement. The report and ads library will also enable voters to get the election-related information they need.

    Apart from that, Google has updated election ads for the country. Under the new policy, the platform requires advertisers seeking to run poll ads to provide a ''pre-certificate'' issued by the Election Commission of India (ECI) or anyone authorised by the ECI, for every ad they wish to run. Along with that Google will verify the identity of advertisers before their election ads run on its platforms.

    Google said the advertiser verification process will begin on 14 February, while the India Political Ads Transparency Report and Ads Library will go live in March 2019.
    The digital ad spend forecast report published by Dentsu Aegis Network predicts digital ad spend will touch Rs 14,281 crore by 2019. A majority of this predicted amount will come defiantly come from election ads.

    “In 2019, over 850 million Indians are expected to cast their vote to elect the country’s next government. We’re thinking hard about elections and how we continue to support democratic processes in India and around the world. In line with this, we are bringing more transparency to election advertising online, and surfacing relevant information to help people better navigate the electoral process,” Google India Public Policy director Chetan Krishnaswamy said.

    Google will also make electoral information from the Election Commission and other authoritative sources easily discoverable on search for the upcoming election.

  • Facebook appoints Siddharth Banerjee as director-global sales organisation

    Facebook appoints Siddharth Banerjee as director-global sales organisation

    MUMBAI: Siddharth Banerjee, the ex- Vodafone EVP marketing, has moved on from the organisation and has joined Facebook India as director—global sales organisation.

    His role includes partnering with businesses to help them to achieve strong business outcomes by leading the verticals, agency relationships and solutioning teams for Facebook India. Banerjee comes with an experience of 19 years in marketing and sales.

    He initiated his career as the regional sales manager at Reckitt Benckiser and served the company for two years. His next move was at General Mills as the area sales manager. After working with the organisation for a year, he joined Unilever in 2003. He was appointed there as the area sales manager and after the span of two years he was elevated as the national marketing manager. Banerjee spearheaded many caps like regional marketing manager, global category director and country marketing director. After his 12 years of stint with Unilever, he joined Vodafone.

  • Hike eyes more funds in 2019

    Hike eyes more funds in 2019

    MUMBAI: Home-grown messaging app and India’s WhatsApp rival Hike has shut down its Total app which was launched in January 2018 as the company wants to just focus on keeping it simple for the masses, and will go back to the basics as a strategic move.

    Now, according to an ET Telecom report, Hike is eyeing more funds in 2019 and will start experimenting with monetisation models from 2020. The app will now primarily focus on messaging and stickers and will withdraw from other services such as payments.

    Since there is an interest on the consumer side in the country for short videos apps, the company is also expected to launch a separate app for content which may be on the same pages as video creating and sharing app Tiktok.

    As reports go, Hike did a lot of experimenting in the last year and half and added stuff at the cost of something else. As in the world of internet, things are very dynamic and products evolve quickly and in many cases, these products evolve away from the core. Therefore, Hike has decided to focus on its core which is to be ‘social’.

    So far, Hike has raised $261 million from investors, which includes Chinese multinational investment holding conglomerate Tencent Holdings Ltd, manufacturing company Foxconn Technology Group and the Bharti Group.

    Since its last fundraiser which was in the fourth quarter of 2016, it raised $175 million by led by Tencent and Foxconn at the valuation of $1.4 billion. Most of the funds from the last fundraiser remain available in hands of the company but in late 2019 or 2020, it will look to raise more funds.

    Like the last time where the company went on to explore in multiple directions and lost focus on its essential and core in order to evolve the product is something it will avoid doing with the raised funds in future.

    The idea here is to “focus on to simplifying the applications”, Hike will focus on stickers and voice and with that it will continue to work on privacy as a feature through its encryption technology in India.