And just for a little motivation, Premium WordPress Themes are up for grabs worth 120$.

For the rules, hit the jump!!

1. To enter this competition, you will need to provide a link to this post, by copying the URL below and promoting it in your blog post.

[URL: Techkeyla Awesome 20 -Emerging Force of Tech Bloggers ]

2. Only English blogs please.

3.Only blogs related to technology, Social Media, Gadgets etc. We will scrutinise it thoroughly. Blogs catering to irrelevant categories will not be entertained.

4. Send in your nomination in the comments section with your blog URL, author’s twitter ID, and links to what you think your best 3 posts are. Also include the major categories of technology that your blog caters to – eg iPhone Apps, Android, facebook, WordPress, Web tricks etc.

5. All blogs who want to nominate themselves should have at least 50 posts.

6. You can definitely ask your blog followers to vote for your blog by commenting in the comments section mentioning your blog name, and why they want it to be in the list.

7. If you have more than one blog, you can still enter, provided it is not a sub-domain. I guess you should know what I mean by that.

8. If it is a multi-author tech blog, please give details of all authors.

9. The final poll list will be thrown out for open vote during the last week. And the best 20 with the greatest votes win.[ All previous votes will also be considered in this poll] In case, we are not able to find enough votes, the judgement of Tech Gurus @Techkeyla HQ will be final and binding.

10. Finally, in case of any clarification required, or should you have any questions, drop your comment below, or tweet us @techkeyla 

Also, we will be contacting potential nominees over the next couple of weeks informing them about this competition. So if you do receive a comment from us about this, spring into action and promote this competition to your readers so that they can vote for you!!

Also to be fair, we are not including ourselves in the Awesome 20 list. As sad as that sounds, you can show us your love by linking to us, and/or becoming a fan of techkeyla on Facebook [ Link: http://facebook.com/techkeyla]

And what is there to win?
GLORY, FAME and PRIDE.
Not only will your blog be mentioned and scrutinished thoroughly by the tech gurus at Techkeyla HQ, we will be offering our take on what is good, what is great and what is awesome about your blog. And not only that, we will also do a feature on what your blog should possibly change and what can it do to improve.

Finally, a Premium WordPress Theme also awaits you worth 100$. More details on that later.
With so much to win, the stakes are definitely high.
So what are you waiting for? Nominate your tech blog now.

Special tips:
Publicize and Promote this Father of a Blog competition on your Blog, on Twitter, Facebook and each and every social network you can think of. Digg it baby!! Digg it!! The race has begun!

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

In the latest blog post on Twitter, they have discussed how a certain manager, Tony La Russa has filed a lawsuit for impersonation of his name to create an account. Twitter, however has not agreed to pay any settlement for the lawsuit. To prevent occurence of any such future activities, Twitter will be rolling out identity checks termed as Verified Accounts. This check will show a tick mark next to the Profile name of a user, and will be performed on select users [comprising of public figures, officials, organisations etc.]

An important tip to check the identity of a Twitter user is to visit the URL linked in the user profile. Fake users often tend to use the Official URL of that particular user [searchable on Google]. If this particular URL links back to the twitter ID, it is certain, that the user is real and not a fake one.

Issues with this form of verification though, is that there are loads of users out there, who have shortened URLs on their profile, and these URLs lead to some dodgey website [often having an appended username at the tail] talking about affiliate marketing or money making on the internet in the next 2 hours.

Here is what they have to say about this.

The shortcode for Twitter in NZ is 8987 or TWTR. As always, Twittering over SMS is a standard rate message or deducted from your bundle and receiving notifications is free. If you’re not a Vodafone customer, don’t worry—we’re working on it.

Also, Twitter seems to be having their eyes now on to Australia. Happy Tweeting in the South!!

In the latest blog post by Twitter [The Replies Kerfuffle] , they have confirmed that the old @reply settings would not be brought back due to technical reasons and they have enlisted the product design and technical problems with the functionality. And excerpt is given below.

Even though only 3% of all Twitter accounts ever changed this setting away from the default, it was causing a strain and impacting other parts of the system. Every time someone wrote a reply Twitter had to check and see what each of their followers’ reply setting was and then manifest that tweet accordingly in their timeline—this was the most expensive work the database was doing and it was causing other features to degrade which lead to SMS delays, inconsistencies in following, fluctuations in direct message counts, and more. Ideally, we would redesign and rebuild this feature but there was no time, hence the sudden deploy.

For the entire post, visit the link here.

Initially, Twitter’s way of handling replies by users was set to three options:

1. See replies to and from people you follow.

2. See replies from followers as well anyone (i.e. all @ replies)

3. See no @replies at all.

Twitter has now removed these options and the only one available right now is the @replies to and from followers will be visible, and everything else will not be. Here is the post where Twitter announced this change (titled: Small Setting Update). Users have been complaining about the removal of the options. 

Well, if anyone is at all bothered by reading all the @replies, they could surely go to the settings and change their own personal twitter space from being ‘cluttered’ by @replies. But not any more, as it’s now only the way Twitter would want it to be. 

In another post today on the Twitter Blog (We Learned a Lot) , Twitter announced that they have received a lot of negative feedback on the change. But things were to remain unchanged. However, there would be a new functionality introduced called the ‘new improved version of the old @reply’

Here’s what they had to say:

First, we’re making a change such that any updates beginning with @username (that are not explicitly created by clicking on the reply icon) will be seen by everyone following that account. This will bring back some serendipity and discovery and we can do this very soon.

Second, we’ve started designing a new feature which will give folks far more control over what they see from the accounts they follow. This will be a per-user setting and it will take a bit longer to put together but not too long and we’re already working on it. 

Lets all hope we do get something improved.

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?