During my research at MICA on the 1984 Sikh riots, the most obvious property of a crowd kept popping up. The fact that crowds amplify sentiments. It’s only natural after all.

If one wants to be a part of the crowd or be heard in one, you have to be more extreme than them all. 

The result is that your group turns into a group of extremists, really. All raging to out-do the other and yet show loyalty to the group’s thought and cause.

The online world isn’t much different if you ask me. These rules of the crowd apply just as much.

People tend to react in extremes in the online world. They either love you or they hate you. This may be common in today’s world but it’s accentuated by the fact that online you’re competing for popularity, page views, subscribers, followers with only your words to stand for you. And since CAPS is considered bad manners, you’ve only got biting words at your disposal.

A dislike for a brand’s campaign can suddenly spiral into a I-hate-brand-X campaign with bloggers sporting buttons and hacking you down on twitter. After all, the stronger my point of view, the more peopel are bound to take me seriously. Plus the stronger my words, the more likely you are to read on.

Reacting vs Responding

With such little time left for reflection

with 20 tweets a minute

with 10 feeds updates an hour

you really have such little time to process information you read. And the constant need to be a part of the conversation and be one with th group means we’re all often reacting rather than responding.  (Amazon Fail)

Notice the sudden outrage at the Amazon story #AmazonFail

This is especially worrisome if you agree that  ”If things are happening too fast, you may not ever fully experience emotions about other people’s psychological states” (Twitter and Facebook could harm moral values, scientists warn)

This reaction is often exaggerated by social media socialites and turns outrage into a true blue e-riot.

Show-you-your-place syndrome

Now this is where the power gets to your head. The 66 odd subscribers I have and how I can use them to show this person/company/brand that I can ’screw their happiness’.

Outrage is more justice seeking and serves as a good warning (in my humble opinion). While the second one is plain vindictive.

Coke did this campaign with bloggers some time back where they asked them

 to give some of their home page to their new brand i9. In return they sent

 them a cool usb-fridge. To say thank you ofcourse.

Now outrage would be saying coke shouldn’t have done this. why buy bloggers off. unfair. boo.

But what really happened is plain vindictive -

Bloggers who were not a aprt of the campaign starting trashing coke left right and centre. Perhaps they were jealous. Perhaps they hated the idea of bloggers being bought. But then they weren’t being bought, right? so why all the fuss?

I love a company with a sense of humour so here are a few examples I came across that I’d wanna share…

Mable’s shows you this when the page’s not found. Quite cute.

Sample this. Dilmah tea has it’s CEO picture and a line that says “one CEO who makes his own tea”

Any others I don’t know about yet?

My first thought was that it’s interesting, but I wondered if it would be any good.

So I visited their winners page and am now eating my words

Sample this!

‘The baby’s fine,’ the midwife says, touching her hand. ‘Bit of a scare there, but he’s a little fighter. Have you decided on a name yet, Mrs Hitler?’

‘I love you,’ she says just before he places the pillow over her face and presses down, hard. As her cancer-gaunt body stills, he feels his heart break.

‘Aren’t you the musical one son’ said Dad. ‘Don’t know where you get it from.’ Mum’s blush rose as the postman passed the window, whistling tunefully.

‘I’m home’ I yelled, entering the house. No response. In the kitchen my wife sobbed and hugged our son. ‘Daddy’s dead’ she whispered, looking through me.

Visit the site for more.

I propose a short story contest on my blog. Lemme invite a judge. Who knows, there may be prizes

Wikipedia says: “ A tag cloud is a visual depiction of the word content of a site. Tags are usually single words and are typically listed alphabetically, and the importance of a tag is shown with font size or color.[1] Thus both finding a tag by alphabet and by popularity is possible. The tags are usually hyperlinks that lead to a collection of items that are associated with a tag.”

Brand Tags

Recently I was introduced to Brand Tags. Yes, I know it’s been around forever and most of you use it already… blah blah
For those who don’t know brandtags read on.
It’s a cool little site (experiment) which asks visitors to type in one word that they associate with a particular brand name. So if Colgate pops up you type in one word that you most relate to the brand (I said white).

You can also go through the brand list and see what people have to say about a brand. And it’s all shown to you in the form of a cool tag cloud like this one for casio ———————————->>>

There is an option for you to add your brand to the list to see what people have to say about it.

Wordle

I found wordle through Gautam and I think it’s very cool.

All you need to do it type out words and the ones that occur most in your write-up will be showcased prominently in your tag cloud. It’s fun and looks very cool.

It’s great for client presentations when you want to show brand perception findings. For example I can put the findings of a recent FGD done for a hospital to showcase what people generally think of hospitals-

PS: this is a wordle of this post

For as long as I can remember people have bemoaned the negative influence of the western world.

From asking the kids to leave the room when ‘the bold and the beautiful’ is on, to giving teenagers the stare when they’re watch Phoebe give birth to the children of her brother

Yes, western culture has influenced us. No, we’re not delivering our brothers’ babies.

Substituting punctuation with ‘like’ or whatever-ing ever unhandled-able situation; we are pretty American in our talk.

But just last night while watching Jimmy Kimmel Live on Star World I saw two videos which were picked right out of India.

Video 1: Dadagiri slap video

This is the one where a rather moronic TV host slaps a contestant, only to be slapped right back.

Video 2: Indian dance video

I’m sure plenty of American shows have picked up stuff that’s Indian and this isn’t the first time, but I still thought it was cool.

While I may not care for that awesome soap produced out of Taiwan, I am still open to watching something interesting on youtube irrespective of where it comes from.

Youtube’s influence on TV programming

So in a way, the internet is opening up a lot of cultures to the world and thereby perhaps influencing even TV programming and making it more open. (by ‘culture’ of course I don’t mean values and snake charmers, but simply a way of living)

So while a Texan farmer may not surf youtube; through his TV he might just get to watch programming inspired by the world. He might just gain a perspective that goes beyond ‘y’all’ and double negatives.

Everyone talks about a global culture, but what’s interesting is that it really does have a ripple effect that lasts beyond just the web. Making it a true ‘culture’ and not just a passing fad.

PS: i get that the dadagiri video is too silly to help me prove my point. Hoping you will overlook that

There are very few companies that seem to be making a concerted effort towards engaging with their online audience… perhaps it’s easier for companies whose business exists in the online space.

I’ve been pretty impressed with zappos.com. It started in 1999 (wikipedia) with zero sales and is today the largest footwear selling business online.

So here are a couple of things they’ve done online (and done well I might add)

• They have a blog.

• They also do cute and crazy videos called Zappos TV on youtube. Their video on ‘why do ppl work at zappos‘ is a fun way to impress potential employees.

• Their CEO is also on twitter and sends out regular tweets. This is a video of him asking an employee to slap him

• They also ran a contest recently where people had to make videos about what’s the craziest thing you can do with a shoe. They received some 17 video responses. It’s not much, but the energy around the brand is just so cool and fun.

The company of course is hugely popular because of their free shipping policy and some 365 day return policy. I haven’t bought anything from them since they don’t ship to India (bummer). But I sure do love the brand.

In tunnel advertising is the newest thing to hit the market is already being used by Kotak in the Delhi metro.

What is in-tunnel advertising
It is advertising inside tunnels where neatly lined and lit up screens provide a moving picture experience to those sitting inside the train.

More about it here.

Of course people are already complaining about how marketers never leave them alone. I for one am thankful for the entertainment it offers during the commute. For once the men will be distracted by the advertising and stop staring at women passengers. No?

What are you most likely to forward?