Blog by S.Swaminathan

....consumer generated media has become an important source of brand information for marketers....

Consumer generated media cannot be controlled. However, it can be listened to and joined in a way that provides marketers rich detail about brand perception and a channel through which to directly comm...

Andrew B. Smith has this full memo of Ray Ozzie, CTO of Microsoft  on the future of software and how it will impact consumers. 

Here are some interesting points from the memo on how he sees the future of software as a service:

Key Tenets

Today there are three key tenets that are driving fund...

Joseph Jaffe writes:

History (and future) of Media in 4 simple steps

1. One to Many - Shotgun approach; spray and pray; status quo; norm
2. One to One - Peppers and Rogers; full of promise; didn't really live up to expectations
3. One from one - the story of search; credited to GM O Connell; certainly has live...

Harvard Business School Working Knowledge has an interesting article on this topic:

Call it the dominance trap: The larger a company's market share, the greater the risk it will take its customers for granted. As the money flows in, management begins confusing customer profitability with customer loy...

Here are some excerpts on this topic from Forrester :

• "Catch-up TV" generates even more revenue. No one wants to be left out of the water-cooler talk about Gabrielle's outrageous flirtation on last night's Desperate Housewives episode. Instead of stimulating time-shifting, Forrester believe...

It looks like Google is suddenly getting serious about MOBILE and this effort, called "Local for Mobile" is serious indeed.  For anyone that's ever lamented the fact that all but the most powerful handheld devices can't handle the memory intensive Google Maps API, the new application ...

I had  written  a few weeks back about the emerging trends in music.  One of the trends that was identified was "music everywhere". Devices like iPods are redefining the way we hear and consume music.  I guess this now happening to news too, in India. Now, you can liste...

Marshall Lager writes:

Businesses have gotten the message that wireless will be increasingly important to all areas of operation, including CRM. Even back in 2004, "Mobilizing the Enterprise," an IDC survey of its mobile advisory council (a group of early-adopter businesses that had mobiliz...

AT Kearney has just released a report on mobile communication trends amongst consumers across the countries ( India, for some reason has not been included in spite of being one of the fastest growing mobile markets in the world!)

The findings, based on interviews with mobile users in 21 countries, re...

eMarketer and the Word of Mouth Marketing Association (WOMMA) have released a new report.

According to the report, the top ten reasons why word of mouth marketing is gaining momentum is that:
1. The consumer is in control
2. There is a growing distrust of advertising messages
3. Empowered consumers are ...