Viewpoint April’13 Issue

Is our national funny bone buried under a fear of offending, the need to play it safe, and a stale batch recipe for comedy? Our writers highlight the many ways humour can impact our ability to both communicate and comprehend. Click here to read this issue.

Content – King to commoner

As a copy/content writer I am supposed to be over the moon about how the whole world of marketing communications is screaming, “Content is King!” but in all these kingly celebrations, I wonder if the very king has become a commoner. PRactitioner Swetha P Venkataramani muses over how the very popularity of content could mean the death of quality content.

Content marketing, custom publishing, marketing copy, social media content, brand journalism, marketing content – the different names by which content that is churned out by communication agencies and departments is referred to are many. Most communication and content marketing gurus are proclaiming 2013 to be the year where almost every communication professional would turn into a content – or at least an online – write. While this is good news, it is hard to ignore the fact that content is now being overused and even abused. Every single piece of communication that an organization generates is called content, even if it serves no purpose! The true essence of content lies in its ability to connect with the audience – is the endless stream of mass produced content doing this? Unfortunately, we all know that the answer to this is most probably in the negative.

Life of Symbian

Having heard Nokia’s recent announcement that the goliath Pureview 808 (41 Megapixel) camera phone was the last phone with the Symbian Operating System (OS) and Symbian would be placed in “maintenance mode”, I decided to write an obituary for the only OS I had loyalty towards, and point out the errors in Nokia’s judgement that I believe led to the downfall of the OS.

The History

Symbian’s humble beginnings started with the OS EPOC which powered PDAs and it was a time when mobile devices were only used for making calls and playing snake. Psion, the developers of EPOC partnered with Nokia, Motorola and Ericsson to create Symbian which was eventually used to run on their phones. Although EPOC was initially a touch based OS (with a stylus), Symbian was polished to work with non-touchscreen phones. Ericsson and Nokia did bring out the first touch screen phones back in 2000 but with lack of interest seen in the market, further development was halted. Symbian and its competition, namely Blackberry, Windows Mobile and Palm OS, helped shape the smartphone market. By 2006 Symbian was acquired by Nokia and it then reached its peak with 73% of the market share in the same year. Nokia at that time considered the OS supreme and no other OS would be able to bring it down. Well until, as well all know, Apple’s iOS and Google’s Android took centre stage. So what went wrong you may ask? We’ll get to that.

Viewpoint January’13 Issue

The second issue of Viewpoint is out. In this issue, we look at the contentious issue of lobbying in India. We have contributions from Paranjoy Guha Thakurta, KN Shenoy and Satvik Varma with their perspectives from a policy, industry and legal standpoint, among others. Click here to read this issue.

Catalyzing young India through social media

When it comes to connecting with ‘Youngistan’ (or the country of the young), nothing is more important than communicating though social media, as it presents news and views in real time and has a wide impact.

Since the dawn of the internet era in the 90’s, India has slowly awakened to the new found craze for connecting with each other through their online avatars. Social media platforms like – Facebook, Linkedin, Twitter, Hi5, Xing, Slideshare, Blogs and others, have seen a prolific rise over the years. Today, companies, political parties, celebrities and others are trying to cash on this boom – to influence and gain popularity among this crucial demographic. However, there have been few hiccups on the way.

No more puffy clouds!

PRactitioner Ritu talks about all the confusing changes that word meanings are going through due to rapid technological advancements!

Cloud

Yes, it’s been almost two years that clouds have stopped meaning rains to me. No, not because the MET department is not entirely reliable and more often than not their forecasts are a failure. Also, not because the whole global warming phenomenon is severely impacting the monsoons. It’s because I started working for technology clients and soon learnt that technology has crept into my beautiful world.

Marketing with Big Data

Big Data

PRactitioner Shree breaks down Big Data and Big Data Analytics.

There is data, there is lots of data and then there is Big Data. I truly believe bigger is better, as long as it all makes sense. And for it to make all sense, there is something known as data analytics.

Today, in this world that is being ruled by the internet and communication, we have billions, trillions and now quintillions of data. According to an IBM survey, each day we end up generating 2.5 quintillions of data. Technically speaking, Big Data is data that is high on volume, velocity, variety and veracity. If the amount of data ranks quite high on this 4Vs parameter, then it is indeed Big Data.