Klout-Brand Equation

Yes, it's indeed Klout and not Cloud. In the recent times Cloud computing has got lot of attention. But, I am not referring to that. It's KLOUT..... check it out. 

Here’s a bit about a company called Klout.  

Klout is a San Francisco based company that provides social media analytics that measures a users influence across their social network. The analysis is done on data collected from sites such as Twitter and Facebook  and measures the size of a person's network, the content created, and how other people interact with that content.  

Here’s how they do it :  

 Klout measures influence by using data points from Twitter, such as: following count, follower count, retweets, list memberships, how many spam/dead accounts are following you, how influential the people that retweet you are, and unique mentions. This information is blended with Facebook data such as comment, likes, and the number of friends in your network to come up with a "Klout Score" that measures a user's online influence.

What’s new:

Now a klout score will determine your access level to different brands on facebook pages. This could get you some perks that is of course if you have sufficient klout score. A company called Involver has teamed up with klout and developed an application, through which brands can tailor facebook experiences for different users depending on their klout scores. To quote a senior VP of Involver “We’ve taken Klout’s core business and brought it into our platform. The first application is a simple coupon-esque experience. A brand will be able to bring an application out of their Page, configure to deliver content to people above and below certain Klout scores, and then input whatever that content is”

The content can take various formats, like an extended trailer, more engaging pages, special discount offer. In fact the possibilities seem limitless. Now brands can maneuver into the right target audience. This will allow brands to access fans who really matter, and conversely people who are fans of brands will have to work hard to get there. The first brand to integrate this application is Audi USA. Starting from 22.06.2011.

There is a term called “like-gating” aka “fan-gating”, something all facebook users have experienced it sometime or the other. It’s simple, unless you ‘like’ a certain page, you won’t get to see the contents of the fan page. One can sense a paradigm shift to ‘klout-gating’.

My personal views:

This might be a game changer. Brands can customize by personalizing the facebook pages to different users based on their Klout score. Which simply means users with higher score gets better offers. Effectively brands can transform each user into brand ambassadors. Thus, this will get the consumers to play a bigger role with more involvement, after all who doesn’t want to be pampered a bit.

This can challenge the management 20-80-20 formula. Which means 20% of consumers account for 80% of a company’s revenues, and the other 80% percent of consumers account for 20% of a company’s revenues. If this venture of Klout catches on, thousands of brand fanatics will perhaps increase their activity on facebook, befriend more, to get a better klout score. Clearly the winners would be the brands who take it up. Not to forget increased activity on facebook will lead to bigger revenue for facebook too, as other companies would like to capitalize on this big traffic by strategically placing their ads. This brings branding at a greater level. Competition between brands has become competition between consumers too. I think it’s brilliant! Here's the link if you want to check out Klout 

Snapdeal.comnagar, Promotion or CSR?

Shivnagar a remote village in Uttar Pradesh has been rechristened to snapdeal.com nagar. Snapdeal.com is a year old company allowing consumers to get great deals through group buying. This online venture would develop the overall infrastructure including installing water pumps, developing local schools. It’s a cool CSR initiative. If snapdeal achieves what it has set out for, it will be a land mark in the history of CSR, keep in mind snapdeal is only a year old venture. CSR is not just giving back to the society, it’s a way to instill brand image too. But, after this news flash, many believe it is a promotional activity. I think one cannot just view this as a promotional activity. Sure, this will help snapdeal to greatly improve their public image, will certainly grab a lot of attention. But, why not, when they have ventured into something worthwhile, which even the government has failed to do so, they deserve a pat on the back. The various responses shows otherwise, people just see this as a promotional activity, but fail to see the benefits to the society. The cause of this reaction can be found in the roots of Indian culture, where modesty is held with the utmost esteem. You can do great things for the society, but you should keep it hush hush too, to show that you are modest, the best quality possible. But, if businesses strive for a pressing social issue, why shouldn’t it be acknowledged, and if businesses use it to leverage their own brand image, why not. Another thing I would like to point out, the villagers themselves agreed to change the name to snapdeal.com nagar from shivnagar, to show gratitude. Snapdeal.com didn’t force it on them. I think it’s a great move by this company, which is still in a nascent stage. Like I said before, if they achieve what they had set out for, it would indeed be a remarkable achievement. 

Startup Bazaar

Few weeks back I was at a start up convention in the IT Eden of India, Bangalore. It was held at Nimhans Convention Center. Organized by Siliconindia, which is a non-profit organization. There were about 100 start up companies, showcasing about 500 products and services offered by them. I am keen about start ups, so naturally was quite excited to be there. It was exhilarating to see so many start ups. Some looked very promising, some not so much. But, nevertheless it was quite an experience. 5 years back there was hardly any such event with start ups, even though Bangalore was spawning with many such business ventures. As readers would already have guessed almost all the companies were in the technology sector. Mainly web based and mobile phone applications. I was bit surprised to see that couple of companies are exclusively offering services on the Android platform, these companies don’t cater to any other platform. Great news for Google! It makes you wonder, how the biggies in the tech world are actually making way for the minnows to grow their business, contrary to popular belief that mostly the behemoths trying to swallow the SMEs. Most of these companies are lead by young Indians, hardly any one above the age of 40. No surprises there, the older generation is hardly comfortable with the modern gadgets. I will list out few companies along with their websites which grabbed my attention:

 Hakuna Matata is a company who develop various applications for smart phones, they specialize on Android platform. http://www.hakunamatata.in/

 Siliconembsys exclusively deals with Android, develops application for smart phones, tablets, PDAs. They provide QA/testing services as well. They enables OEMs to customize Android products. http://www.siliconembsys.com/

 Mobiwhiz Technologies again a mobile phone application developers, but they also offer courses in mobile testing. And yes Android platform is their specialty too! They also provide courses in Java, Linux and J2ME. http://mobiwhiz.in/

 Small Business Softwares India, is kind of Groupon in the Indian market space(virtual market space if you are a purist). Brings in small and medium business together at one place, where they can get a better deal. They also list various websites for consumers/businesses reference. I personally like this concept, their portals kind of offers most of the online functions needed by SMEs.http://smbsoftwares.in/

 160by2 free sms service company, their service helps you to retrieve all incoming texts for your company. Nothing special about it, but here’s the website http://www.160by2.com/

 Century Real Estate, well this company is not a start up, and they had been around for 25 years, but the reason I put it here is because it was good to see some one representing real estate. Which is pretty much booming in this country. http://www.centuryrealestate.in/

 HopSim, now here is an interesting company, although it’s not a new concept. They proved SIM card services, so that you can use your phone in 202 countries. Unused credit never expires is quite a catch. They have special offers for the euro zone too. I wonder how didn’t know about it when I was in Europe. Damn! Frequently changing SIM cards while travelling was quite a pain! http://hopsim.com/

 Quick Heal, Indian technologists have embarked upon computer security business. Pretty much like any other anti-virus softwares. But, they offered a 4 month trial CD at the venue. It was nicely done, as the moment you enter, you have the organizers(SiliconIndia) shove some documents and flyers towards you along with the CD. Nice! http://www.quickheal.co.in/

 Vesoft, real time technical analysis software, their services can be handy for day to day traders, they analyze in real time, gives you all prices at NSE. They even provide you with ‘buy’ and ‘sell’ tags to your stocks. Please don’t ask me if you can trust them, I cannot comment on that. http://www.vesoftinfo.in/

 Zven technologies, they provide various software services and products, banking softwares are a new offering from this company, along with ERP. http://www.zventech.com/

 OpCord, testing services, training and consulting. http://opcord.com/

 Xenis Infocom, a start up from Calcutta, it was a suprise you hardly hear any startups from that part of the country. They are webhosting , website design, graphics design company. Their website looks quite good. http://www.xenisinfocom.com/

 Vidteq, video maps, route generation, sms directions. Pretty cool. http://vidteq.com/

 Omillion, now this is a company I think has lot of potential, mainly because I am a big social media enthusiast. They monitor social media gives a feedback on how consumers across the web respond to different brands, products. If you are a company which needs social media monitoring, give them a call. Their analysis can be quite insightful and a handy tool for marketers. http://omillion.com/Home

 Hiremantra, they provide resume screening services, which can be quite handy. They integrate all job portals and professional networks and hands over the resume which fits the requirement. Quite cool, but don’t know viable their business model is. To have entire business entirely around resume screening, might not be luring many investors. http://hiremantra.com/

 eLagaan, files taxes for individuals, SMEs, provides digital signatures, helps in setting up businesses, registration of new companies in India and USA. http://elagaan.com/

 CMO Axis Outsourcing, interesting, they provide complete marketing services. http://www.cmoaxis.com/

 Glopore IMS, IT infrastructure management, provides training as well. http://www.gloporeims.com/

 SIliconindia, last but not the least had to mention them. They organized the event at Nimhans Convention Center, Bangalore. It’s a not for profit organization who take care of CSR activities for corporate. http://www.siliconindia.org/

Apart from these companies I have mentioned, there were plenty others, but it failed to get my attention. The big guns like Intel and Reliance was there to showcase their new offerings. Being the biggies as they are, I found it unnecessary to mention them, they already are sitting at the top, let the SMEs have their own show!

Disclaimer: The views expressed in this article are entirely of my own. I am not responsible for any consequences anyone faces due to the information give in this article. I would like to further bring into notice, that I am in no way associated with any of these companies.