ITV

Category: Social Media

  • Social Media Week releases list of eminent speakers for its 2014 edition

    Social Media Week releases list of eminent speakers for its 2014 edition

    MUMBAI: Approaching its third edition in India and second edition in Mumbai, Social Media Week (SMW) has announced key speakers, who are set to captivate the audience this September, in Mumbai. The line-up of speakers includes social media influencers, bloggers, politicians, authors and international experts, each of whom will share their views on the domain, through presentations panel discussions, debates, workshops, and more. Some of the experts expected at the event, include:

     

    • Rishi Jaitly: Head, Twitter India 
    • Vikram Menon: President & Country Head, OgilvyOne Worldwide, India
    • Anaggh Desai: Co- founder, 1+99 Experience Consulting
    • Mohandas Pai: Chairman, Manipal Group
    • Raheel Khursheed: Head of News, Politics & Govt @TwitterIndia
    • Kunal Jeswani: Chief Digital Officer, Ogilvy & Mather India
    • Navdeep Suri: India’s current Ambassador to the Arab Republic of Egypt
    • Sean Gardner: Forbes #1 Social Media Influencer, Author, Co-founder of the Huffington Post “Twitter Powerhouses Series”
    • Jeff Bullas: A Social Media Marketing Blogger, Strategist & Speaker, voted #14 Of Forbes Top 50 Social Media Power Influencer
    • Arvind Gupta: Hibernation Innovation Evangelist & The National Head of BJP’s IT Cell
    • Deepali Naair: CMO, Mahindra Holidays & Resorts India Limited
    • Prem Panicker: Managing Editor, Yahoo
    • Vasantha Kumar: Director Marketing & Communication India & South Asia, IBM
    • Viral Oza: MD,Nokia India Pvt. Ltd.
    • Richard Lui: Asian-American journalist and news anchor for MSNBC and NBC News
    • Sanjay Tripathy: Sr.EVP Marketing, Digital & E-commerce – HDFC Life

    *Complete list of Speakers

     

    Based on this year’s theme for SMW, ‘Social media for Social Change’, the renowned speakers will share their insights and knowledge through various sessions, including those on managing diplomacy through social media, social media and politics, building  a career in social media, and New age fight club – Social Media, Disruption & Viral.

     

    Rohit Varma, Founder & Managing Partner, R SQUARE Consulting Services Pvt Ltd, said, “­­­­­­I’m very excited to see many organization & brands from different industries coming on board to curate sessions and making it the biggest crowd-sourced festival. Look forward to the five days social media festivity. I’m quite sure that there is lot more awaiting the audience.”

     

    “Social media and digital impact are changing the way brands function today. As an organization, we are strong believers of this platform, and have leveraged it successfully for clients across categories. We are proud to be associated with SMW’s third stint in India, and look forward to engaging with marquee speakers at this platform, which connects people across borders and backgrounds; this year’s theme of the impact of social media on social change, will definitely bring to light, some interesting perspectives on how digital India thinks,” said, Nikhil Dey, President (Public Relations) at Genesis Burson-Marsteller.

     

    The growing momentum of the initiative reflects in the number of sponsors, partners and speakers, who have come forward to support the event. Companies such as Microsoft (City Support Sponsor), Germin8, Unmetric, KPMG and Wrangler are sponsoring SMW 2014.

     
    “As GroupM we are delighted to continue our association with SMW. After a successful opening year in Mumbai and Bangalore in 2013, SMW is lining up an exciting fare this year. As social media channels proliferate and become meeting grounds of brands and consumers, SMW provides a great platform for enhancing knowledge and sharing best practices,” CVL Srinivas, CEO GroupM South Asia

     

    In addition, SMW has partnered with leading media and integrated communication agencies, includingSocial@Ogilvy, chlorophyll, UB, TiE Mumbai, The Express Group, The Indian Networker, Construkt festival, mXm India, PageTraffic, AVID Learning, Yellow Seed Content Solutions, Fratelli wines and Steerttalk, to organise the event in India.

  • Content creators see value in social media data

    Content creators see value in social media data

    MUMBAI: Twitter, Facebook and television go hand in hand these days. The relationship between television and social media has been growing over the years. But does it have the potential to turn into a major revenue stream?

    Discussing this was a panel at TV.Nxt 2014 comprising Viacom18 Media VP and Colors commercial and digital head Vivek Srivastava, CNN International New Delhi bureau chief Ravi Agrawal, Nielsen India MD Prashant Singh, GroupM South Asia managing partner Tushar Vyas and Star India VP and digital marketing and CRM head Venke Sharma. The session was headed by Provocateur Advisory principal Paritosh Joshi.

    Firing up the session, Joshi asked Agrawal to share some insights as to how CNN evolved and now functions with the proliferation of social media since it was one of the early entrants into it. Agrawal highlighted that in the early 2000s, CNN had created a website called ireport.com where it invited people to click pictures and post from places where a journalist couldn’t be. “That’s when we saw that regular citizens can get the story before anyone can. We saw this even in the 2008 attack on the Taj Hotel in Mumbai, when the first few images that came were from the common people which were of superb quality. That became a great tool for us to tell stories from places unreachable to us,” he said. He went on to add that the notion of TV and social media being a new marriage is actually an old one in many parts of the world.

    While the possibility of getting a return path was natural for news, how does it work for fiction makers? Sharma started off by saying that there are people for whom entertainment is defined by buzzing topics and a fear of missing out. Talking about Star Plus’ hit show Diya Aur Baati Hum, he said that although it rates high on TAM ratings, it doesn’t garner the same on social media vis-a-vis Iss Pyaar Ko Kya Naam Du which doesn’t get the ratings but gets the buzz.

    Joshi went on to ask Vyas about the translation of social media into a source of revenue. Vyas said that social media works as a surrogate and is also an incremental data point. “We capitalise on the second screen behaviour and try and reach out to all set of audiences on various platforms. Social media is an incremental data over TV data,” he said.

    Nielsen had recently launched its Twitter TV ratings in the US for calculating data on TV shows on the social networking platform. Said Singh, “In this, we don’t count the number of tweets but rather the impressions. It is the GRP equivalent. Whether the market will decide to trade on it or to use it as another dimension against TV ratings is to be seen. But we believe that being able to measure impressions would be more and more important.”

    Talking about how the medium works in sync with the TV, Srivastava said that it is mostly important from a catch-up stand point in the media space. Facebook was to interact while not watching TV while Twitter was an accompaniment while watching TV. This was agreed upon by Sharma who said that Star had used Facebook to sharply target and get viewers to sample its latest Pro Kabaddi League.

    However, Agrawal pointed out that the capability of knowing how people react to your stories also puts the onus on journalists to be more careful and responsible.

    Joshi said that content makers are worried about the fact that the value of a viewer on TV is 100 times more than on digital. To this Vyas said that although it might be true in terms of absolute value, the audience on a platform like YouTube is higher than many other TV monetisation that is happening today. “If you look at advertising money, then digital is slowly reaching the top of the pyramid,” said Vyas.

    Star has set up its own listening hub to understand trends and draw actionable insights, highlighted Sharma. Agrawal ended the session by stating that drawing data from social media is also a danger. “It isn’t always a reflection of reality. The demographics that use social media are of a certain type and especially globally I would be slightly vary about extrapolating data from there,” he concluded.

  • 95% of the world’s online public conversation about TV is on Twitter: Rishi Jaitly

    95% of the world’s online public conversation about TV is on Twitter: Rishi Jaitly

    MUMBAI: The new trend that is creating waves in India these days is the usage of social media while watching television and specifically writing about television content on the platforms. Speaking about this growing trend was Twitter India market director Rishi Jaitly at the TV.Nxt conference in Mumbai.

     

    Jaitly said that Twitter believes that it is a realisation of the dream of the inventor of the printing press, Johan Guttenberg and today it has become a platform that has truly frictionless content consumption capability and frictionless content expression and publishing. This has led to it producing nearly 500 million tweets a day with 76 per cent users from mobile phones.

     

    He stresses that Twitter encourages people to think of it not as a website but as a mobile microphone which has led to 40 per cent people only consuming content but 60 per cent users consuming as well as contributing. “When you go on YouTube or Wikipedia, you don’t feel ‘oh I must upload a video’ or ‘oh I must edit this page’ but on Twitter people feel this need to tweet, which is fantastic!” says Jaitly.

     

    Recently, Twitter launched its analytics for everyone to track. This, because it has become important to know not just the reach but the ‘live reach’ of tweets as well. Jaitly highlights that 75 per cent of impressions are created within an hour of publishing a tweet.

     

    Talking about the relationship between television and Twitter he shared some statistics that during the Indian Premiere League, 75 per cent of tweets had been sent during the match. In the UK, 40 per cent of Twitter traffic in the evening is about TV and globally 95 per cent of the world’s online public conversation about TV is happening on Twitter.

     

    Research agency Nielsen found that shows that rate high, drive conversation on Twitter but a third of the time, buzz on Twitter can drive ratings. Two years ago, Nielsen came to the social media company saying that advertisers wanted to know how alive its audience was. So, Twitter offered its data set to create Nielsen Twitter TV ratings for shows in real time, every night.

     

    An added bonus to advertisers is that when viewers are engaged on Twitter while watching content, they are less likely to tune away during ads and more likely to recall them. Jaitly points out that the non-fiction entertainment genre is most conducive to public buzz due to its high engagement tactics such as voting or reaction to eliminations, led by sports and news and increasingly by drama and fiction.

     

    Jaitly compares his platform to a sofa, where everyone is watching TV together including the talent, anchor, brand and friends. “This 3D holistic experience is where we think the world is moving and when you optimise on that experience, you optimise for the success of your business,” he says. However, success on Twitter is about personifying oneself by having executives, talent, mascot and machines on the platform. This is why businessman Anand Mahindra is so popular and so is Homer Simpson, the character from the popular series The Simpsons, who tweets during off season and extends the life of the show. Says he, “You win on Twitter when you bring a collection of voices together and when you get your viewer to tweet, you convert him into a marketer.”

     

    According to him, even brands today are engaged in telling stories. “We believe media is moving to where audiences crave content that is personal, mobile and interactive,” he says.

     

    In India, its top priority is to drive growth. This is supported by advertisers and brands who want to be a part of Twitter conversations through its product ‘promoted tweets’. But it ensures that it doesn’t interfere in a user’s newsfeed. Meanwhile, adapting to the multiple languages of the country, it allows tweets in all Indian languages including translation.

  • Farewell, MSN Messenger

    Farewell, MSN Messenger

    MUMBAI: It was in the month of June when Google announced that it will shut Orkut down at the end of September 2014.

     

    And now, Microsoft’s Windows Live Messenger aka MSN Messenger will be switched off in China in October, marking an end to the 15-year-old service.

     

    The instant messenger was launched in 1999 as a simple text chat service and as a rival to AOL’s AIM service and ICQ. Till 2006, Microsoft released seven major versions and added features such as photo delivery, video calls and games as the technology developed.

     

    At its peak, MSN Messenger had 330 million users worldwide, as per reports.

     

    However, when the company purchased Skype for $8.5 billion in 2012 it spelled the beginning of the end for the MSN service. It was in 2012 end that Microsoft announced that Messenger and Skype services would merge in the first quarter of 2013, with users of Messenger client software moving to Skype.

     

    In January 2013, Microsoft had emailed Messenger users and informed them that with the exception of mainland China, the Messenger service would stop working on 15 March 2013 and users would not be able to sign in.

     

    Gigaom reports that the Tencent-owned company has over 200 million users in China. Following the rise of rival messenger platform QQ, MSN Messenger and Skype hopes to increase the competition in the country.

     

    After 31 October Chinese Messenger users too will need to use Skype, ending their relationship with the Messenger.

     

    Farewell, MSN Messenger.

  • Alia Bhatt becomes ‘Genius of the Year’

    Alia Bhatt becomes ‘Genius of the Year’

    MUMBAI: She tried altering India’s political landscape through ignorant replies during her appearance on the chat show Koffee with Karan. Bollywood actress Alia Bhatt then went on to become the reigning queen of santa-banta jokes on social media.

    But that hasn’t deterred the 21 year old who used her half witted comments into an opportunity to get back at everyone who laughed at her. In a new video put up by comedy group All India Backchod, the actress has truly become the ‘Genius of the Year.’

    The hilarious video begins with a short message- In 2014 a documentary crew followed ‘Alia Bhatt in the aftermath of her Koffee with Karan debacle.’ She is then seen visiting Dumb Belle Mental Gym which offers her to transform her from ‘Dolce and Gabbana to Smart like Shabana (Azmi)’

    Here, she is recommended a healthy diet consisting of newspapers and novels and is made to do away from junk food like Bollywood gossip. Her BMI (Brain Mein IQ) which was nearly nonexistent receives a boost of knowledge through music. Bhatt then finds herself again on the gossip show Koffee with Karan and stuns the cold soul host Johar with her sharp replies.

    The documentary also features other Bollywood actors like Arjun Kapoor, Parineeti Chopra, her father and filmmaker Mahesh Bhatt and mentor Karan Johar. Her two famous songs;

    ‘Saturday Saturday’ from Humpty Sharma Ki Dulhania has been changed to ‘Faraday Faraday’, while ‘Radha On The Dance Floor’ has been made into ‘Sodium On The Dance Floor’.

    Available online, it’s indeed a treat for both her fans and critics and is directed by Shakun Batra.

    Click here to watch the video

     

  • Gender discrimination apparent in comments on Pak artistes in Indian films, says Pak website

    Gender discrimination apparent in comments on Pak artistes in Indian films, says Pak website

    NEW DELHI: Even as several artistes from Pakistan are striking it rich in Bollywood, the social media in Pakistan is full of criticism about them.

     

    Two recent entrants are Fawad Afzal Khan in Khoobsoorat and Humaima Mallick in Raja Natwarlal.

     

    The response has been full of reproach.  Some pages on Facebook also have abusive remarks from their own country fellows especially Humaima Mallick who is facing discontentment for recording bold scenes in her upcoming movie with Imran Hashmi.

     

    The ‘horrendous condemnation’ on Humaima Mallick is reminder of Veena Malik’s social media trial from which she terribly failed to sustain, according to Pakistan’s MoreMag.

     

    Interestingly, Fawad Khan has received some praise from Pakistanis as he was already popular in the country. He has got some successful dramas in his fleet like Humsafar and Zindagi Gulzaar hai, with the latter being telecast on Zee’s Zindagi channel.

     

    Describing it as sad, MoreMag said the other reason may be gender discrimination.

     

    When Humaima kisses Imran Hashmi, she has to face outrage and there is a lot of hue and cry for not preserving the dignity of Pakistani culture but when Fawad does the same with Sonam Kapoor, people enjoy it, the website points out, referring to these as ‘patriarchal behaviours’.

     

    Imran Abbas with his charming and appealing looks also gained much popularity on social media especially with girls. With some of romantic scenes with Bipasha Basu, he definitely nailed it and therefore is enjoying healthy appreciation on social media. Some people also criticised him for being too bold.

     

    Social media is already a terrifying place for celebrities from all around the globe, whether it is for Bieber or Kim Kardashian, says the report, adding they all have been thrashed badly by the people for no considerable reason.

     

    ‘Social media has become a place where people dispose of all their frustrations,’ the report concludes.

  • Movies use social media to gain traction

    Movies use social media to gain traction

    NEW DELHI: At a time when feature films are lucky if they last one week at the theatres, the social media has made it possible for them to reach more people through mediums like YouTube, Twitter, Facebook and just plain e-mail.

     

    Two forthcoming movies have already broken records as far the popularity of their trailers on social media goes: Viacom18 Motion Pictures and Sanjay Leela Bhansali’s Mary Kom, and Red Chillies Entertainments and Farah Khan directed Happy New Year.  

    The trailer of Mary Kom has had a current viewership of over 4.3 million. The trailer of the biopic based on the life of the five-time World Championship and Olympic medalist is one of the most successful trailers of all time.

     

    Overwhelmed with the response, Omung Kumar who makes his directorial debut with the film said, “First we were overwhelmed with the response to the first look of the film. The trailer touched people and many people called to tell me that they cried after seeing it. The most touching response for me was from a lady from the north east, who had somehow found out my mobile number and called to say how seeing the trailer, she felt so proud and felt grateful for what it was attempting to do for women, sports and most importantly, people from the region.” 

    Priyanka Chopra who has enacted the title role said, “I was in shock after the response to the first look of the poster itself! I remember we were shooting in Turkey and I tweeted it and went back to shooting. By the time I came back, my phone was flooded with SMSs and over 3,500 Twitter messages loving it. I thought my phone would explode. The nicest response I got post the trailer was when Mary called me and said, `My kids saw you and thought it is me.’ For me, if I could convince a mother’s children despite not looking like her, it made me proud.” The biggest compliment that came the actress’ way however was from Farhan Akhtar when he said, `Mary ko Milkha ka salaam.”

    Producer Sanjay Leela Bhansali said, “Mary Kom’s story is an inspiring one that touched my heart. Not many films are based on biopics of living people, so this is a rare experiment. I am extremely proud of it.”

     
    Produced by Viacom18 Motion Pictures and Sanjay Leela Bhansali, Mary Kom stars Priyanka Chopra and Darshan Kumar in the lead. The movie will be released on 5 September.

     

    Red Chillies Entertainments claimed that the views of the trailer of its Happy New Year from all platforms crossed a record breaking number of four million in 24 hours.

     

    The first trailer to be launched on Facebook, became the most viewed movie trailer on Facebook Native Player across the globe with 1.5 million trailer views, 2.8 million post interaction and over 18 million FB users reached, and over 360,000 likes for the trailer which is the highest ever.

     

    On Twitter, it had 1.5 billion impressions only on 14 August and five hashtags trending of Happy New Year.

     

    It had over two million views across various YouTube partner channels. It became the first film to send a trailer via WhatsApp.

     

    The trailer on the DTH platform Tata Sky reached over 13 million subscribers and each one had to watch the channel 100 when they switched on their TV sets before they could go to any other channel of their choice.

     

    Airtel WAP had over 15 million visitors every day while over 300,000 fans received it via SMS service (missed call facility). Over 25,000 fans received the trailer via email.

    While most of the films opt for the conventional YouTube platform, the trailer of Happy New Year slated to release around Diwali was first launched on Facebook’s native video player using an application wherein the trailer was not only launched on the Facebook page of the film but also the timelines of all the users who subscribed to the app. 

     

    “In keeping with the tradition of innovation established by Red Chillies, we were delighted to launch the trailer of HNY for the first time across multiple platforms. This was also done to meet the demands of fans who are consuming talent in ways that suit them. This has given the trailer an unprecedented footprint and delighted the fans,” said RCE CEO Venky Mysore.

     

    The trailer was launched on the native video player of Twitter with personalised messages from the cast of the film. “Red Chillies and the cast of Happy New Year understand the value of developing live, personal and interactive connections with their audience, which is only possible on Twitter. From the entire cast and crew sharing every moment of film production on Twitter via their personal handles to their launching personalised trailers and posters on Twitter, Happy New Year has set a new national and global standard in the movie business,” said Twitter India market director Rishi Jaitley.

     

    The trailer was also launched on the conventional platform of YouTube on all channels of the partners (Music distributors T-Series and film distributors Yash Raj Films) of the film along with Red Chillies’ official channel.

  • AR Rahman’s gift to his fans on Independence day in collaboration with Qyuki.com

    AR Rahman’s gift to his fans on Independence day in collaboration with Qyuki.com

    MUMBAI: As an Independence Day gift to all his fans, Oscar winning music director A R Rahman has announced the launch of the official AR Rahman app. There are over 24 million AR Rahman fans across Facebook and Twitter who will now be able to follow AR Rahman through one interface. What’s more AR Rahman will be able to engage directly with his fans via the app with exclusive content and merchandise. Fans can either buy or complete challenges in the app to earn points to redeem against content and merchandize.

     

    The “A R Rahman”app has been created in collaboration with Qyuki.com, an online multi-channel network founded by A.R. Rahman, Shekhar Kapur and Samir Bangara. The app is already live on iOS and Android and has received outstanding reviews and ratings on both app stores (iTunes and Google Play) from users across the world with high traction on engagement levels. In the first day alone more than three thousand gigabytes (GB) of content were consumed via the app which was being downloaded at a rate of 300 downloads per second.

    Speaking on the launch of the app., Rahman said“This independence day I wanted to thank my fans for their support by offering them a new and convenient way to stay in touch with me and my music. I am looking forward to a more engaging experience with my friends and well-wishers. Salaams to the motherland!”

    Commenting on the launch Qyuki.com Co-founder & MD, Samir Bangara said “This app is a first in India and goes way beyond just music in terms of fan engagement. It’s an opportunity to know AR Rahman via his music, watch videos, read trivia, and win cool stuff. If you are one of the tens of millions of AR Rahman fans, this will be a hotline into his life”

    Some of the key features of the app include:

    • A consolidated social feed including Twitter and Facebook posts made directly by A R Rahman

    • Direct access to AR Rahman videos  as well as premium videos only available in the app

    • Exclusive Photos  

    • A Gamified experience through Challenges and rewards

    • Ability to buy cool AR Rahman merchandize

  • Twitter invites football fans to follow Premier League teams

    Twitter invites football fans to follow Premier League teams

    MUMBAI: The concluded FIFA World Cup saw 672 million tweets from around the globe being shared. Whilst memories of the World Cup begin to fade, the Premier League springs back into action today as Manchester United host Swansea City in the first match of the 2014-2015 season.

     

    With all 20 Premier League teams on Twitter, following each team will help fans to get closer to the action throughout the upcoming year. For India specific updates, fans can look out for updates from broadcaster Star Sport India’s Twitter handle.

     

    Arsenal is the most followed team in the premier league with 4.24 million followers followed closely by Chelsea football club with 4.18 million followers, Liverpool FC and Manchester United FC with 3 million followers each. The fifth in the list was Manchester City with 1.92 million followers.

     

    More than 60 per cent of premier league players are now on Twitter as well as two managers; Ronald Koeman of Southampton and Gary Monk of Swansea.

     

    Tottenham will begin the new season with 76 per cent of their first-team squad on Twitter – the highest of any Premier League team. However with the transfer window open until 1 September, it remains to be seen whether they will maintain that position into the autumn.

     

    Earlier this year, research from global Web Index highlighted that 57 per cent of Twitter football lovers in India said that football news breaks fastest on Twitter. Throughout the season, many of the best-known voices within the game tweet their observations and opinions, directly engaging with fans in real-time.