nadheera.com/blog launched in new domain

Hi all,

Thank you very much for reading for 6+ months. I'm continuing my blog in  www.nnulk.blogspot.com - new address and a new layout that gives me lot more options when posting all your favourite articles.

So please visit www.nnulk.blogspot.com and enjoy reading....

Facebook blog : You will no longer make phone calls or email

Official Facebook blog has a post written by it's Engineer Joel Seligstein  saying you will no longer use phones or email after Facebook introduces the new messaging system.

He further says that there will not be any CC, BCC, Subject lines in the new system. It will be totally free so that it is as fast as you can imagine.

Another feature is that it can send a message as email, IM, text or any medium. You simply have to select which type. It will look like a general inbox that has all types of messages.

The coolest he says is no need of knowing your friends phone number or the email address. Knowing his name would simply connect you to him.  

Do you still say it's not a threat to email?

Facebook recruits 3 Software Engineers of Email service Zenbe

There were lots of arguments to my articles of Facebook email saying Facebook will not be any problem to existing emails like Gmail, Yahoo.


Some commented on my Facebook status quoting Mark Zuckerberg " It's not email". You were right - He said just that - I have that video in my last post.

For all those who says "its not going to be an issue", What do you say about this news about Facebook acquiring talent from the email start up company Zenbe. Here is part of their company blog it self -

Congratulations Facebook!

November 16th, 2010 by Alan Chung · comments · http://blog.zenbe.com/lswvw

You may have heard this week that Facebook is launching a new unified messaging product. We here at Zenbe are happy to have played a small role in this: a few months ago, three of our engineers joined Facebook as part of a talent acquisition. We believe that messaging and collaboration on the web are on the cusp of a new wave of innovation, and we¹re excited to be playing a role in that.

 Do you think Mark Zuckerberg recruited this Email experts from Zenbe just to make a messaging system? Isnt it going to be a challenge to ordinary email like Gmail, Yahoo, Hotmail, AOL as it can replace them as a communication system?

Market Segmentation Online 4 : What type of Internet time waster are you?

[This is the simplified version of an E-Marketing article I wrote for work blog. You can find the link in previous E-marketing posts]


All dudes and dudettes wasting their time online can be separated to 6 different parts based on the time you spend online & your activity. They are

• Simplifiers - Use internet for a specific task like googling for some assignment, paying CIMA fees...etc
• Surfers - Comes online to see whats new. For e.g."Who's in a relationship with whom"...etc.
• Connectors - Comes online to connect with communities - Mainly the Facebookers. People who have FB as your home page
• Bargainers - Comes online to find good deals. E.g. Whats cheapest in ODEL...etc
• Routiners - Comes online primarily to read stuff (Like reading my blog)
• Sportsters - Same like routiners, But comes online for Sports & Entertainment mainly - I know loads of people using internet primarily to visit cricinfo or Elakiri.com which are sports & entertainment sites

Classification by time spent and other details given below

You know who you are than any of us. So vote in the poll, what category you are in?

Market Segmentation Online : 3. Segmentation Bases

Online marketing is typically the same as Traditional marketing in terms of the bases. Only exception is that there are numerous different bases that could be adopted in online marketing.


Segmenting bases are


1. Demographics
E.g.Age, Income, Gender, Education level, ethnicity

Following are some basic demographics on Linked - In

2. Geo-graphics
This is basically the segmentation by location.
E.g. City, Village, State, Country, Region..etc.
Google Analytics provides a very good tool with which you can even track the city of your site visitors (In Sri Lanka - Only Colombo and Kandy Possible, But in US hundreds of cities possible)
Given below are geographic data about Facebook users.

3. Psychographics
Activation, Interests, opinions, Personality, Values...etc.

4. Behaviour with respect to the Product
 Usage, Benefits sought, Brand loyalty, user status..etc.


Will be discussed in detail in the next E-Marketing post.


Apart from this basic bases, even combined bases like geo-demographics could be used.


Or as i said above numerous bases like "Budget" can be used.


These bases are specially important in Search Engine Optimization and online market research. For e.g. Check out how people visited social networking sites -

Next we shall discuss Market segmentation by behaviour in detail - The most important of the four bases.

E Marketing 6 : Market Segmentation Online : 1.Basic Markets

There are two tiers of marketing strategy 1. Segmentation, Targeting, Positioning or STP Marketing. Second is 4Ps with CRM strategy (We will discuss in the future.) Segmenting is the first of those 1st tier strategies.

Lets discuss online market segmentation.

 

First post about segmenting is about the three basic markets that both sell and buy to each other. They are Businesses, Governments and consumers.

1. Business Market
Contains the businesses and institutions. In the most biggest market in internet because many firms are present online than consumers. This is why B2B activity online is only second to B2C.
For e.g.

1. DHL - maintains a database of its' corporate clients. And the clients can login to their companies account and see where their package is.

2. A web designing company will directly target the Business Market. 

2. Government Market

 

This is applicable to many developed countries, where governments purchase online. Not very much applicable to Sri Lanka yet. But take a country like US - US govt. is the worlds largest buyer of goods and service (http://www.sba.gov/contractingopportunities/index.html)

But businesses willing to target govt market will have unique challenges like rules,paperwork..etc.

Joke - Knowing someone with surname "Rajapakshe" can be of help in Sri Lanka, Still you have to be careful with govt, since we all know about what happened to Hi-Corp deal.

3. Consumer Market

Is the biggest ever market. And the market potential is unlimited. Majority of products target this market for its capacity. The success stories of online marketing directed at consumers are Amazon, Ebay, 1-800 Flowers and Kapruka, Topjobs.lk and gossiplankanews.

We will next talk about examples to all these three markets selling to each other. i.e. B2B, B2C, B2G, C2B, C2G, C2C - so on and so forth examples.

Other Factors effecting consumer behaviour online

We have so far discussed 2 main factors effecting consumer behaviour online. Let's discuss the rest.

3. Legal context
There are numerous laws that overrule consumers in the internet. They range from privacy laws, data security laws, Trademark laws, patents..etc. Their buying patern on a web site maybe effected by them.
For e.g. Kazaa.com which was very famous for downloading music - had less amount of hits after Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) sued thousands of illegal consumers. But it saw many consumers getting used to legal purchasing of music through iTunes concept of apple computers.

Police raiding of 4 shops in Unity Plaza - Bamabalapitiya in 2008 - Afterwards there was a huge increase in software sales in the country.

4. Individual Differences
Consumers vary by Age, sex, income, education, location and various others ways.
For e.g.

• Adults make just as many calls, but text less often than teens.
• Internet user population is 60% Teens and 40% Adults -But Latest research - Older adults using social networks nearly doubled in the past year (www.pewinternet.com)
• Online shoppers are more price oriented
• Males use more internet than females

Following table shows American Internet accessibility data (because others countries are not readily available)

When developing consumer websites all these differences has to be addressed. The way to address will be discusssed in the later posts on online market segmentation.

Are women paid less in corporates?

My interest came from Business Today article (Originally Harvard Business Review) on women employees being afraid to negotiate salary on interviews. It said that they have this inferiority complex of disadvantage due to their sex on getting selected for a job.
Reality in Sri Lanka differs on the levels of employment. On executive and upper levels I haven't heard or do not know about such under payments. Even on middle level jobs they are paid even. For e.g. Secretarial or clerk.
In very down levels there maybe complications due to strength..etc.
In a conservative society like in Sri Lanka, one big concern in selecting females for employment is their safety and facility issues. I know one owner of an IT company who said "NO GIRL PLS.I DO NOT HAVE ENOUGH FACILITIES FOR YOU". And one of my cousins told me today how hard it was for her to come home after doing some extra work in office till 8PM on a Poya day. Guys do not have this safety issue and employers tend to under favor girls because of this. This two reasons might lead to underpayment if there are any.
Open for you to give your info and comment...