So, we all know how awesome ‘The Social Network’ was. The posters were amazing, the trailers kept the anticipation levels on a high, and the final product was inspiring, sad, jubilant, and awesome, awesome, awesome. Of course, a movie about social network giant – Facebook, is inevitable to spawn memes across the internet. And this one is a mashup of Tom, creator of Myspace, and the Social Network poster.

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The following infographic is quite true in most respects. Given the fact that we spend most of our online time interacting with people who we never seem to interact physically, over social networks of different flavours and privacy labels. Do you agree?

via: Stormborn

We all love the Thesis WordPress theme, and its multi-functional layout which can be highly customised. And we also love the Facebook Like button, which is in a way Facebook’s answer to the Tweetmeme button. So, why not I show you how to incorporate the Facebook Like button in Thesis WordPress button.

To do this, all you need to do is to go to your custom_functions.php file and open it in an editor. You can have a backup just in case things don’t go according to plan. Now, once you have it opened in an editor [ or in your dashboard editor ], add the following code.

You can customise the layout of the Facebook like button by changing what I have inserted in the

Who the F needs another Social Network? @Microsoft -Seriously?

It all started for me when Google had something to offer. My classmates in Engineering College told me of a something called Orkut. It was fast becoming one of the emerging trendy keywords, and was supposedly the successor of email. The next generation of communication, as we call it, was here. It was late 2004 when I joined Orkut, and have been an active subscriber to it [ except for I deleted my account twice because of spam reasons ].

A few years went by, and my friends list exponentially increased till it was ready to explode. And then, in late 2007, I came to know of a something called Facebook. I was reluctant to join because of all the hassle involved to invite all my friends there, and importing contacts, and yes maintaining the account by participating in the discussions and replying to the posts. I had already been through quite a lot of other social networks like hi5, gazzag, myspace, bebo, multiply et al. My relation with all of the others remained limited to just a couple of months, as I retained my loyalty to orkut.

And then, something happened. All of a sudden, I heard all the social network gurus, the “in” crowd of the blogosphere – from Michael Arrington to Om Malik, John Chow to Darren Rowse- everyone was on Facebook. It was the place where everyone was there. And besides these people, my contact list from orkut had by now started sending me invites for Facebook. After a few reluctant logins to the Facebook, I got used to the interface. Long before I could realise, from celebrities to my local chai-walla to even my University professor – everyone was on Facebook.

Which brings me to this – Windows Live Planet. Really, who needs yet another Social Network in 2009? I do not. I am too old to keep shifting base. I am too used to the Blue and White interface to shift over to the Aero-Flow based Live presentation. I do not want my ‘space’ to look like I am living in an MSN World. And yes, I did check out the initial questionnaire, and it is filled with absolutely unfunny, non-sensical answers to some of the most badly placed questions. The only thing I liked about Live Planet was nothing.

One last thing, the Self-Cool image being posed on the homepage looks excruciating. And the tag-line – Match And Make New Friends – makes it feel like it is not a Social Network but a Matrimonial Matchmaker. The guy with the curly hair reminds me of Justin Guarini [ which is not a good thing ] and the forced usage of “Whats up” seems like a conscious attack to the teenage target audience. Also wtf is meant by the line: Find ur Twin?

I don’t know why I have so much negative about Live Planet. Hmm, may be because its 2009, and its TOO LATE for a Social Network to be born. But again, if I find everyone else is moving in that direction [ as in Windows Live Planet] , who am I stop? But do you really think people will adopt this new Social Network? My prediction- NO!

Morgan Stanley’s report ” How Teenagers Consume Media ” talks about the impact, reach and relevance of different forms of media on the target section of the population – the teens. The importance of this paper is the very fact that today’s teenagers will be evolving into tomorrow’s workforce and the ones who will be shaping tomorrow’s consumer market. This in itself means that the behaviour of the teenagers and their reaction towards media cannot be overlooked.

However, the report is written by a teenager, 15 year old Matthew Robson. The report reflects how a normal teenager perceives media of the current world spanning across traditional media like TV, radio and print, to new-age media like social networking websites, cellphones, game consoles etc. Although the discussion provided in the report does reflect teenage behaviour in a lot of sections, it has its shortcomings.

The basic problem with the report is that it is not a wide study on teenage behaviour and hence, market research figures are not reflected at all. Rather, the behaviours noted and reflected in this report are a biased sampling of the close friends and family of the writer. This certainly would not entirely represent the true behaviour of teenagers. Besides, the facts stated in the report should be quite obvious to market researchers who deal with actual facts and figures and carry out surveys based on age-groups or regions or income groups. The footnote of the report introduction states: While these trends will not necessarily surprise, their influence on TMT stocks cannot be underestimated. Now, if it takes a 15 year old for market researchers to realise such trends, I believe, we can see a lot more positions being made redundant.

Re-Analysing the Media analysis.
Radio: The popularity of traditional Radio or FM is still relevant inspite of internet radio stations and sites like Last.FM. The peak periods of radio listening are early morning – more so as a wake-up alarm, as a baathroom accomplice etc, in the car or bus to work, and in the evening on the way back home. Distribution of radio over FM transmitters have been reduced, and portable media devices such as a mobile phone or PMPs are where radio is being listened to. And in a country where Radio DJ are national celebrities and have shows running on National TV, can we discard the popularity of traditional radio?

Television: In the UK, due to services such as BBC iPlayer, Sky Plus and Virgin Record, and similar services offered by ITV, Channel 4 etc, prime-time is quite non-existent. BBC has no system of advertising based revenue. Whereas Channels like ITV and Channel 4 are freeview channels and completely rely on advertising based revenue system. With On-Demand viewing which enables users to skip advertisements, ad revenues are set to decline.
For teenagers, the trend of watching their favourite shows depend on
a) no. of televisions in their respective house
b) Availability of a computer with broadband. As most channels offer online catch-up facilities.
c)The channels subscribed for by the earning members of the family.
Since more than often, teens are not the earning members of the family,the final decision of what channels their TV is subscribed to is decided not by them, but by their parents or elders.

The choice of Virgin Media over Sky on the price criteria is another example of sample bias.
Sep 2008 figures: Sky has 9 million customers, which is almost thrice the size of Virgin Media, which holds the second place. Television viewing hours are again dependent on the demographic of teenagers selected.

Internet:
The popularity of social networking websites is evident amongst teenagers. While Facebook remains a favourite, Twitter seems to be not so popular amongst the teens. Even when Twitter occupies much of the attention in the internet buzz-zone, it is absent from the buzz-words amongst the teenagers, primarily because of lack of connectivity, or the cost of it. More of this will be discussed in a later post.

Much of the other information shared in the report regarding Newspaper, Viral Marketing, Cinema and Music is basic common sense stuff. Print media is struggling to get revenues; Viral Marketing works; Cinema has to look for other avenues to compete with Home Entertainment – hence 3d films, Movie experiences etc and Music industry keeps struggling with Piracy.

Please comment below and let me know your thoughts on the observations stated in this post. Thanks!

Image Courtesy: Service-Now’s Flickr Photostream

After the redesign of the social networking website giant Facebook went live on the 14th of March, the entire blogosphere as well as the users went berserk. The initial reaction was totally negative, with forums and groups on facebook itself showing negative poll results. ( In a poll on a ” Hate the New Facebook Look” group, out of 800,000 members who participated in the poll, 94% gave a thumbs-down to the new design, and only 5% liked it) The new design is being termed as “Twitter-look-a-like”, and indeed with the new news stream on a users home page showing updates which is very much like Twitter’s own followers page, there are some similarities between the two. No one can deny that Facebook is certainly bothered by the phenomenon that Twitter is turning out to be. And certainly because of CEO Mark Zuckerberg failed to buy out Twitter, Facebook’s new mission seems to be undermining Twitter.

But now almost after a week, when the smoke has faded away and users have already got accustomed to the new look or redesign of Facebook, here’s some reason to cheer up. Here are 5 reasons why I like the new Facebook and possibly you could as well. 

1. The News Feed can be filtered.

In the Home page, where we see the Twitter Like feed of the activities of the friend of a user, it displays all the activites of friends. This display can be filtered as well, based on Filters available, such as : Photos, Links, Videos etc. I have some more filters in my profile viz. YouTube, Twitter, Flixster, LivingSocial etc. If you have grouped your friends ( I have grouped them such as :-Social Network Contacts, University, School, Work etc.), then the NewsFeed could also display feed from only the members of those group.

2.Application on Bottom Bar

Very uncluttered look and organised. Only six of them are displayed, and the rest can be accessed by clicking on Applications. A sort of a drop down menu appears. This UI is much better than the previous version.

3. The Wall can be filtered as well

The Wall on the profile page can now be filtered to show posts by self and friends, just self, or just by friends. 

4. Friend Activities in HighLights

New Groups joined by friends to New photo uploads can also be accessed from the Highlights on the Right Sidebar on the HomePage

5. Updates and Invitations are shown on the Home Page

All invitations and updates etc, are visible directly on the Homepage unlike the previous version, where the Right Sidebar showed 5 updates awaiting etc. Lesser links to click.

So, there you go, 5 reasons to like the new Facebook. Tell me, do you agree?

I found this picture of Facebook Poke on some website which I don’t remember. But it is surely worth a giggle.

Hopefully you all will enjoy this one. Have a blast!!

Awright!!! It is finally here. Facebook IM. It is cool, it is handy and it’s almost non-existent, at least by the looks. It is really cool , coz you don’t have to actually browse away to some other application to chat with your buddies. And this is what you get. On your Facebook page, on the bottom right corner, you’d have noticed a change today. Yes, it is IM integrated into Facebook. See the screenshot below.

Unlike orkut, which just shows who’s online on GTalk, with that green dot beside your profile pic, Facebook IM is what it is!! A simple and functional IM within the social networking giant. It is very easy. You can check who among your buddies are online and well go ahead and strike a conversation. The functionality doesn’t work with IE 6 or below. But then, who’s using that? Works on Firefox and Flock just perfectly. Haven’t checked on Opera or Safari.

If you are facing any problem seeing Facebook Chat, here’s the official help page.

Inside Facebook has the details in their story here.

Check out Nick O Neill’s post as well on the new Facebook IM .

And for those who are still hungry, here’s the Official Facebook Blog Link titled “Now we’re talking“.

So you chat hungry people, enough reasons to throw around those emoticons. Oh did I mention, it is Emoticon READY!!! *wink* *wink* ;D