Good Old TV Commercials

Saw a sweet campaign for a hosting service in India. It exudes wit, charm and personality although you need to know India to enjoy the  humour.

Good creativity always breaks clutter and lands a campaign right from where it can start a dialogue. These ads do just that.

Inventing on Priciple

Slightly long, but it'll be totally worth the hour you'd spend listening to this insightful talk.


Bret Victor - Inventing on Principle from CUSEC on Vimeo.

Why videos go viral?

Informative & Funny! Kevin Allocca  -YouTube's trends manager, shares his thoughts about silly web videos. And what makes some videos go viral.

Pinterest! Pinterest! Pinterest! - The new Facebook Annexe

Over the last month or so, Pinterest is all the rage and all over FB news feeds like a rash.

Google Trends for "Pinterest"

If Twitter is the modern day version of Ham Radio, What is Pinterest? Is it here to stay? What role does it play in our lives that other platforms don't?












To understand anything new, it's best seen through the eyes of the familiar. 

Pinterest is a free public gallery space/wall, where anyone can display, co-create and seamlessly share with their connections. Unlike Facebook "Likes, Comments, Shares" which happen in chronology and on personal pages, Pinterest allows concurrent interactions across boards of varied interests in shared spaces.

The Facebook integration has been a game changer for a platform that was dormant for most part of 2 years. It's now providing Facebook with an annexe of shared public spaces, something it didn't really have. I wouldn't be surprised if Facebook tries to acquire it soon.

For the "show me the money", Pinterest beautifully aids discovery across  social graphs at the very top and drives commerce as a referrer (the first of more innovative options to come).

Is Pinterest is here to stay. Thoughts?

What ails Indian Cricket and how to overcome it?

One of my favourite cricketers, delivers a simple but painstaking solution to get Indian cricket out of its downward spiral.

Given all the emphasis on T20, sometimes I wonder if we are too deep in the rut to ever climb out.

Echo Chambers, Information Discovery & Role of Weak Ties in Social Networks

Do social networks give you a more diverse perspective on the world through helping you see more people's opinions?
OR
Are they an echo chamber that just reinforces your opinions since the people you share with probably have similar opinions to your own?


Here's a gist of a rather longish Facebook paper on the diversity of information within networks:

• Information we consume and share on Facebook is actually much more diverse than conventional wisdom might suggest
• Facebook is not a echo chamber
• We are exposed to and spread more information from our distant contacts than our close friends.  Since these distant contacts tend to be different from us, the bulk of information we consume and share comes from people with different perspectives. 

The long version of the research paper is here

Designing for Social

Heard this a while ago at a Facebook Workshop and this simple sense check has stayed true for me till today.

Transcend Social By Design from concept to practice by asking 2 basic questions of the content, events, participation ideas etc.... you introduce into your conversations:

1. Why would people care?
2. Why would they share?

And take culture, context, a specific behavioral insight, purpose & equity of the brand to shortlist.