As we go about our daily lives we all come across stuff that others may find useful or interesting. This hyperlocal information may range from a small local activity to a great find on the TV or even a rare opinion on a current topic. The way I look at it, if you think you’re witnessing something that holds relevance beyond your family and friends, it’s hyperlocal!
For example, here’s a peek at my last three hyperlocal conversations.
As I am writing this post, Ishan Sharma takes the wicket of Matthew Hayden in India’s ongoing Adelaide test match against Australia. This event instantly became the subject of conversation. (Relevance: india wide)
After TATA’s Nano for the masses, there’s now a laptop for the masses – HCL’s MiLeap at a price of Rs. 13,990. I hear it’s available at the local Croma electronics store in Pune. Do you think it will gain traction? (Relevance: india wide and local)
The Save Pune Traffic Movement (yahoo group: sptm-sunrise) has started an experiment with the Kothrud Traffic Police. They need volunteers to hold a “follow all rules” sign at Athavale Chowk near Nal Stop from 8:30 am to 8:45 am, for a week or so. My mother reports that last weekend the SPTM volunteers along with the police caught close to 150 violators over 2 hours! (Relevance: traffic fearing residents of Pune)
Well, that’s from me on one Saturday morning.
If you’re stopping by this page, give us a peek at your last hyperlocal conversation.
Cheers to the era of an hyperlocal Web!
Categories: Anjali · India · News · Pune · blogging · trends · web
Tagged: cars, conversations, cricket, hyperlocal, laptops, local news, pune news, pune traffic, social organizations
Update: Timethief points out that Matt has clarified the official wordpress stand on ads on the WordPress forums in the past (September 6th, 2006). WordPress.com has been displaying ads as part of content served to irregular readers of wordpress.com. In my opinion, 80% of the wordpress blogs out there receive a significant portion of their traffic from irregular readers who find the blog either through a search engine or through a referring site. It’s the top 20% of the blogs that enjoy loyal readership and can afford to either be ad-free or control the ads shown on their blogs.
In order to judge the general feeling out there, I’d like to request you to vote on whether you would pay to remove ads from your wordpress.com blog.
My own opinion is that I’d rather pay to remove ads so that I can focus on building a loyal readership over time from the 80% who discover my blog. What this also means is that I am opting to host myself. WordPress.com need (speculation) the additional revenue from advertising in order to support the “free” nature of wordpress.com. Nothing individual bloggers can pay them will actually cover up for the revenue lost per blog if they got rid of the advertising.
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Categories: advertising · blogging · business · wordpress
Tagged: adsense, advertisement, advertising, wordpress, wordpress.com
Nokia, Samsung and Sony Ericsson are excited about the potential of m-blogging in the Metros according to this article in the Economic Times. The article is bullish about the future of m-blogging but does not really put across any hard facts.
Notice the fact that of the consumers who opt for a GPRS-enabled handheld, less than one in 4 opt for GPRS from their mobile provider. Only the carriers have themselves to blame for the current trend. I believe that poor support for GPRS services and awareness of applications for the service are to blame.
There are over 156 million mobile subscribers in India. According to industry estimates, around 10% of mobile subscribers in metros use GPRS facility and 2-3% in tier II and III cities have hooked on to GPRS facility, which allows fast internet access on mobiles. Approximately 40-45% phones sold in India are GPRS enabled. According to IDC, in India the sale of camera phones is registering around 25% quarter-on-quarter growth.
Globally there are 200 million bloggers. Industry estimates put 100,000 as the figure for India. (According to Blog Herald, there are 1.2 million bloggers in India). And the number is growing. “The number of m-bloggers is fast growing though the trend is just an year old,” says Nokia’s Mr Taneja. Nokia N series has m-blogging feature to capture the potential of this segment.
Categories: blogging · business · gprs · mobile computing · nokia · technology
I have reason to celebrate my blog today! WordPress.com has endorsed my blog for the keywords “business” and “gprs”. Thank you, whoever you are, bot or other wise.
The occasion reminds me of a quote I picked up from the movie Layer Cake.
“The art of doing business lies in being a good middle-man“.
How do you interpret it? I would love to hear from you.
Other posts on business on Sukshma.
Other posts on gprs on Sukshma.
Categories: India · blogging · business · quotes
Click on each link to pull up the Google Trends report.
- In India, Movies have always been more popular than TV. The trend is almost always the reverse in all the other countries where both searches are popular.
- Rang De Basanti was a lot more popular than Kabhi Alvida Na Kehna.
- Blogs are more popular than newspapers with the online community in India. Only a few other countries exhibit this trend. Update: The trend report for the search term ‘blog’ versus ‘newspaper’ refutes this conclusion, look at the comments for more on using Google Trends reliably.
- BSNL and AirTel are the most searched of telecom providers in India. Hutch is a close third and is very popular in West Bengal, while AirTel rules the North.
- Searches for Naukri edge out searches for Monster by a close margin. Both trend lines reveal a lot more Indians are going online to look for jobs.
- Shah Rukh Khan is more searched than Aamir Khan by online users. Interestingly, more searches for Shah Rukh Khan originated from Rabat, Morocco, than Delhi, India. Amitabh Bachchan does not make much of a dent here. Update: Prateek also suggests that one take into account different ways of spelling – e.g. ‘Shah Rukh’ also becomes ‘Shahrukh’.
- Sachin Tendulkar beats Rahul Dravid as far as online trends go… Dhoni makes a surprise climb up the ranks.
- The online community can’t decide between Sonia Gandhi and Manmohan Singh. On the day of Singh’s appointment to the PM’ship of India, the trend was very different. Pervez Musharraf is eclipsed by the turbaned Indian Prime Minister.
- Only for a little while – Football was more popular than Cricket. You guessed it right, the timing coincided with the FIFA world cup, 2006.
- Searches for the keyword Matrimony outnumbered searches for Shaadi. Update: Prateek also suggests having a look at the report for ‘marriage ‘ and ‘wedding’ which are much higher than the other two terms.
- Mutual Funds are more popular than Shares. The search volumes are the highest in India. Update: The report on ’stocks’ reveals one more story. In contrast to the rest of the world, the online populace from India still prefer Mutual Funds.
- Karan Johar will be happy to hear that he has finally overtaken Mithun as far as online searches go!
- IIM’s are catching up to the IIT’s in popularity.
- While global interest in GPRS is declining, GPRS interest in India remains just about the same for the last 3 years. Meanwhile, interest in AirTel keeps going climbing. Is India going to be over GPRS even before it can catch on?
- Tandoor is just as popular as Chaat or Halwa. Of course, Chaat Cafe (San Jose) has both Chaat and Tandoor, something you won’t see often in India! Update: Prateek points out that a report comparing ‘tandoori’, ‘tandoor’, ‘chaat’, ‘halwa’ would be more on target with tandoori coming out on top.
- Goa is much more popular than Himachal, search volumes predict a lot of tourists from the UK in Goa this year.
- Google searchers search for India more than its rival China. The pleasures of democracy
or is this the Baidu effect?
Inspired by: Micro Persuasion: 25 things I learned from Google Trends.
Disclaimer: Google Trends is only a tool. Any conclusions you can draw from the trend reports is at your own risk.
Categories: AirTel · India · blogging · bollywood · business · gprs · humor · kitchen · leisure · mobile computing · movies · music · sports · technology · trends
