Date Archives April 2020

Is Facebook’s Free Basics the Jio 3.0?

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On 22nd April 2020, Reliance Industries Limited , Jio Platforms Limited and Facebook Inc. announced the signing of binding agreements for an investment of ₹ 43,574 crore by Facebook into Jio Platforms at 9.99% equity stake on a fully diluted basis.

Facebook currently has over 700 million Indian users on three of it’s platforms – Facebook.com, Instagram & WhatsApp; while  Jio provides connectivity to 388 million-plus subscribers in India. That is why this strategic investment by Facebook in Jio is talked about as probably the largest strategic investment for a minority stake anywhere in the world. To understand this deal better & the impact of this deal in Indian telecom & digital space, let’s break it into 4 parts.

1. Free Basics – Facebook’s Failed Dream

This is not the first time Facebook has expressed it’s interest in India’s massive & rapidly growing digital market. Earlier on 10th Feb. 2015, Facebook had made it’s interest in India evident by launching internet.org in India in partnership with Reliance Mobile.

Through this launch, Facebook wanted to provide free access to basic online services in India to get millions of Indians online. This ‘Free Basics‘ campaign failed due to digital & telecom activists & public’s argument about the intricacies of the country’s telecoms policy & net neutrality drafted by the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI). You can read more about the arguments & concerns about internet.org on Nikhil Pahwa (Founder & Editor, Medianama)’s post where he outlines his reservations about what Facebook was proposing.

2. Jio 1.0 – The Smart Gamble

While Free Basics & Net Neutrality was dominating the telecom debate, parallelly Jio was working on launching their 4G Mobile Data services in India. Jio soft launched on 27th December 2015 with a beta for its partners and employees, and became publicly available on 5th September 2016.

During the Reliance AGM 2016, Mukesh Ambani, Chairman and MD, Reliance Industries, dedicated Jio to India & 120 crore Indians. He spoke at length about the Digital Revolution, Jio Network, Jio Applications & Launch Tariffs. The Jio services were officially rolled-out for all on 5th September 2016 – under the name of ‘Welcome Offer’ – free to use until December 31, 2016. Jio later extended the welcome offer till March 2017. This bold, smart & strategic move by Jio was the beginning of disruption in Indian telecom industry & the penetration of internet to grassroots.

After Jio’s freebies, incumbent operators Bharti Airtel, Vodafone and others approached TRAI in Oct. 2016 against free call service being offered by Jio, calling the tariff plan predatory, discriminatory and non-compliant to present rules. TRAI ruled in favour of Jio stating that tariff plans of the new player (Jio) are compliant to existing rules and not discriminatory. This resulted in other telecom operators offering discriminatory tariff to individual customers within the same class to retain those customers who were using MNP to port to Jio. After Jio’s complaint, TRAI barred discriminatory tariffs to same set of subscribers.

3. Jio 2.0 – Let’s make some money!

With freebies after freebies, in 2017 Jio started charging it’s users with plan starting at ₹ 309 (Offering 1 GB data per day with a validity of 84 days). This resulted in data war between all telecom operators & customers were benefiting the most of it. In 2018, Jio had around 280 Mn users & it was the only profitable telecom operator in India. In July 2018, Jio had announced plans to launch Jio Fiber, which was commercially rolled out on 5th September 2019. Mukesh Ambani in Reliance Industries’ August 2019 AGM launched – Jio Giga Fiber, Jio set top box, and First Day First show in a major digital push to make Jio India’s largest network.

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When more & more no. of users joined this digital revolution in India, telecom operators started increasing their tariffs. In Oct. 2019, Jio went back on its three-year-old promise to keep ‘Free Lifetime Voice Calls’ and started charging for outgoing calls made to rival networks – Airtel, Vodafone, Idea and BSNL – at 6 paise/minute.

In Dec. 2019, Jio increased its tariff by up to 40%.

In Feb 2020, the Big 3 telcos – Jio, Airtel & Vodafone, appeared to have buried their past differences & opposed Trai’s tariff plan transparency.

4. Jio 3.0 – Risk of Monopoly?

Jio’s acceptance of Facebook’s friend request is exciting, but there is a risk of a monopoly! There is a fear that Jio-3.0 could be FreeBasics-2.0.

This deal is going to unlock mutual interests of Facebook & Reliance with Facebook dominating the messenger platform (WhatsApp), Social Network (Facebook & Instagram) & Payment Space (WhatsApp) while Reliance dominating Telecom Space (Jio), Marketplace (Reliance Retail, Jio Mart, Ajio), Entertainment (JioCinema, Saavn, JioTV). This deal puts them in a much better & competitive position compared to their rivals like Amazon, Walmart (FlipKart), PayTm, Google Pay etc. Clearly it’s a WIN-WIN deal for both RIL & Facebook.

The big question is – is this deal going to be re-entry of FreeBasics in India & Jio going back to Jio 1.0 to offer free internet services & making money while charging users data pricing differentiation between those companies which are on board with Jio 3.0 & Facebook and those which are not?

Didn’t realise that it has become such a long post so ending it on a lighter note with my tweet from 2016.

Let me know what you think about this deal in comments below.

Top 5 predictions in Digital Marketing space due to COVID-19

Digital Marketing Trends

Coronavirus has affected all businesses; large, medium and small.

At our digital marketing agency (4AM Digital), we are analyzing how COVID-19 is changing people’s behaviour, digital trends & economic impacts. All this behavioural change is impacting how the brands & organizations are approaching their digital marketing strategy & marketing budgets.

If you are a digital marketer or a brand, here are the 5 Digital marketing trends to focus on during & post COVID-19 pandemic.

1. Personalized Marketing


The technology surrounding personalization, CX, and social CRMs will continue to develop and improve at a rapid pace. Companies need to become even more data-driven and tech-focused, deploying CRM/CX management platforms and unified martech stacks that can power the hyper-personalization today’s consumers require.

2. Social SEO & VEO (Voice Engine Optimization)


SEO and social media can no longer be regarded as entirely separate disciplines. While traditional SEO is built around keywords, the same principles are now being applied to Social Media Optimization (SMO) in the form of hashtags, keywords, and trending phrases.

The goal of Voice Engine Optimization ‘VEO’ is to optimize your content to be among the top results in a user’s query. However, unlike text-based SERPs, a voice search will only yield one answer—so the stakes are very high!

3. Social eCommerce


Social media isn’t anymore just an online forum to chat, browse, and share—it’s now a place to shop. Social platforms are striving to evolve into full-on marketplaces with native shoppable features. In the push toward social ecommerce, Instagram is leading the charge, but we also see Pinterest and Snapchat going in similar directions.

4. Augmented Reality (AR)


Augmented Reality and Virtual Reality are often lumped together—but AR is superseding its VR counterpart. Augmented Reality (AR) is among the most futuristic trends in digital marketing. AR isn’t limited to games and entertainment—it drives purchase behavior. Today, roughly 50% of consumers would be more likely to shop at retailers that offer AR/VR experiences.

5. Real-Time Marketing


Live streaming, or the transmission of live video, has taken the world by storm. Consumers crave live content, so marketing is now happening in-the-moment. 80% would rather watch a brand’s live video than read a blog, making this trend imperative from a marketing standpoint.

Twitter Shares Key Video Stats And Best Practices to Maximize Engagement

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You might have heard this earlier, but video is the best performing content type across all social platforms – and Twitter is no exception.

There are over 2 billion video views on Twitter each day, which is 67% YoY growth according to Twitter internal data.

As per Twitter 👇

Tweets with video attracted 10x more engagements than Tweets without video.

Twitter has published its latest findings on video engagement within tweets and here’s the summary of data-driven best practices for Twitter video ads:

1. Keep it short & simple

Videos with length at or under 15 seconds create the highest branding impact.

 


2. Include product and people

    • Open your video with your product to increase positive interest by 24% and click intent by 34%.

    • Show the human connection. When videos show a positive human interaction or human desire for a product, there’s a 40% increase in overall response.

    • Bring the brand back. Displaying your brand for more than half of the video resulted in a 25% increase in aided brand recall and a 21% increase in message recall.

 

3. Use visual cues

    • Clearly position your logo.

  • Incorporate a sound-off strategy to capture on-the-go mobile viewers, and use captions to drive a 28% longer view time.

What’s New In Digital This Week? 13th-19th April 2020

New Updates in Digital

Let’s have a look at the latest updates in the field of social media & digital world in the week of 13th-19th April 2020.

  • Facebook is testing longer-lasting stories, with an option to keep stories active for 3 days.
  • Facebook adds new options to mute group members for longer periods of time.
  • Facebook launches new app for Apple watch to help stay in touch with close connections.
  • Instagram updates IGTV app and adds new IGTV preview option for stories. Instagram’s also adding a new hands-free recording mode to provide new capture options.
  • Instagram is Testing a New ‘Challenge’ Sticker to Prompt User Engagement.
  • Instagram’s working on an option to simulcast Instagram live streams to Facebook. Also, Instagram live streams can now be viewed on the web.
  • Instagram’s working on an option to simulcast Instagram live streams to Facebook. Also, Instagram live streams can now be viewed on the web.
  • YouTube tests ‘Video Chapters’ to skip through to relevant sections in a video.

 

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How to watch Instagram live streams on desktop and web

Instagram

Instagram has recently started rolling out few features for desktop/web version which were earlier exclusive to mobile app. Last week they had rolled out access to Direct Message (DM) via web version – www.instagram.com & now they are giving users the option to watch Instagram live streams on web.

If you are wondering how to watch Instagram live streams on desktop and web; it’s very easy.

There are two ways to watch the Instagram live streams on the web:
1. Login to instagram.com on your browser & then serach for the user; on user’s profile you would see live icon (if they are live), click on the icon & you would enter the live stream.

2. You can directly go to live streams if you enter URL in below format :
www.instagram.com/UserHandle/Live

This desktop access to live stream also unlocks an important element for all creators – a separate URL for their live broadcasts. That means that when they do go live, they can now cross-promote their stream on other platforms, with a direct link, as opposed to simply directing their fans to head over to Instagram to check out their stream.

It’ll be interesting to see how many users ends up using DM & live stream feature via desktop, and whether more creators consider Instagram streaming as a result of the added option.

What’s New In Digital This Week? 6th-12th April 2020

New Updates in Digital

Introducing #WhatsNewInDigital, a weekly series of what changed in digital in last week.

Let’s have a look at the latest updates in the field of social media & digital world in the week of 6th-12th April 2020.

 

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How to try ‘The New Facebook’ – web interface with dark mode

Facebook New Updates in Digital

Back at F8 2019, Facebook announced the social network plans to push out a massive redesign called ‘The New Facebook’. It’s an user interface (UI) update which places a bigger emphasis on Groups and Events – two of the biggest reasons people visit Facebook on a daily basis.

The Android app started receiving the new interface almost immediately in 2019. For the past few days, Facebook has started to roll out ‘The New Facebook’ for desktop for selected users and along with it comes a new dark mode option. Many users have reported that they got prompted by Facebook to try out the new interface.

After clicking on Try it, the features are highlighted.

Once the user clicks on Next, they get asked if they’d like to use the white or dark layout.

The choice is also available under the quick settings accessible from the top right avatar.

Once you switch to dark mode, this is how the new facebook.com looks like.

Some of the other highlights of the new UI are :

  • It rearranges and simplifies Facebook’s interface, makes it easier to open Messenger conversations, and drops in new icons and buttons in header bar.
  • There is bigger emphasis on Groups and Events – two of the biggest reasons people visit Facebook on a daily basis.
  • I observed that the News Feed is featured way less in The New Facebook.
  • ‘Sponsored’ feature has become more prominent on Top Right side.
  • Position of ‘Shortcut’ & ‘Explore’ have been swapped to give more emphasis on Groups, Events & Marketplace.

If you do not like the new Facebook interface, you can switch to the classic Facebook anytime. Just click or tap your profile picture in the upper-right of the page to open the quick menu, then select “Switch to Classic Facebook.” Facebook actually shows you how to do this when you first turn on the new design, but it’s worth pointing out in case you forgot or didn’t catch where the setting was.

What’s New In Digital This Week? 26TH APRIL – 3RD MAY 2020

New Updates in Digital

Let’s have a look at the latest updates in the field of social media & digital world in the week of 26th April – 3rd May 2020.

  • Facebook expands access to option to transfer your photos and videos to Google Photos
  • Facebook is testing a ‘Hit Me Up’ sticker to prompt message interaction from Stories
  • Instagram adds live donations feature for fundraising via Instagram Live
  • Instagram is working on “DM Me” Sticker
  • Instagram is working on choices of Chat Color.
  • Instagram is Adding Some New Font Types for Stories.
  • LinkedIn added new Video Intro and Interview Assessment Tools to improve digital recruitment
  • Google makes multi-participant video streaming platform Meet free to all users

 

 

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