Twitter launches Tweet-Share via Direct Messages

Twitter just showed me a note saying that I can now share a tweet privately by DMing it directly from twitter. See below for the screenshot.

In addition to improved customer (advertiser) care - looks like they are doing a lot to improve the platform and to gain more advertising & investments.

Photo/Video sharing kills Facebook & grows Twitter

In one of my posts in last October titled  "Facebook "Share" button is going to be the next big thing" I explained how Facebook strategically gave more prominence to Photo&video shares through the timeline view. In a recent post titled "Is engagement higher for Facebook photos?" i proved with stats how this has made sharing of a photo or a video get higher engagement than a text update.

Outcome of this strategy was heavy sharing of images which resulted in the emergence of photo sharing Facebook pages such as "Trust me,Im an Engineer", "Ads of the world", "Kajuwaththa eksath"(Local) , "Loweth ne" (Local) and the culture of edited photo sharing in the form of memes.

This has also made the data consumption higher for Facebook usage and the requirement of certain minimum speeds to access Facebook (Some android phones will need long Facebook app load times). But the most important and a vital result of highlighting photos is the negligence to text based updates.  As given in the post "Is engagement higher for Facebook photos?", Facebook users are three times less likely to respond to a text only update now.

We have passed the era of text status updates of good and bad moments of life and getting dozens of comments from Friends and Family. Now a text status update in Facebook receives very low attention. This outcome is killing Facebook by driving users to microblogging platforms like Twitter where even a text based update can make a lot of impact. Do you think this can kill Facebook? Will Facebook understand the consequences and try to rectify it? Please feel free to comment your opinion below...

Why Yoshitha Rajapakshe on FB SLmemes page is so significant?

Whole Sri Lankan online community was talking about one thing yesterday. President's son and his girl friend commenting on a meme in Sri Lankan Memes Facebook page about them.

The meme was about an astrologist predicting the president that his about to become a grandfather, MR saying his kids dont even have girlfriends & then showing pics of Yoshitha,his girlfriend, some baby. Its a superb meme anyways. (If anyone wants to see the meme,pls comment below i will send the link)

Within few minutes President's sons girlfriend has commented phrasing the meme (in the meme language), followed by Presidnets son himself commenting saying "HILARIOUS". This was a first time that we noticed a highlevel VIP personally commenting on a public forum. Both of them commented in a very light way, showing the PR qualities of the President.

This isn't something that we have seen in Sri Lanka so far. But is a common phenomenon in other matured internet markets like India or even US where celebrities & VIPs comment, tweet like normal people in the communities. I assume one of the reasons why India has a huge followership in Twitter than Sri Lanka is because their celebrities are actively on Twitter. I know certain Sri Lankan girls who have joined twitter,just to follow their bollywood celebrities in India and some of them have even got replies from the likes of Shah Rukh Khan on Twitter (Do you see the pas coming out? #IfYouKnowWhatIMeanMeme)

This kind of celebrity/VIP participation on social networks can lead to increase in community members for Sri Lanka - my point is that after hearing the news

• More people will want to join Facebook and 
• More people will want to be active on this pages to interact with their celebrities
• Will encourage more celebrities/VIPs to come on board social media and interact with their fans

for e.g.Increase in Facebook and specially an increase in Twitter users since celebrities in Twitter are easily reached than in Facebook.  Such an increase would mean better internet atmosphere with much more local content around the web. Will Yoshitha commenting on Facebook meme be the turning point of Sri Lankan celebrities/VIPs in social communities?

Next up : "Cold war between popular Sri Lankan Facebook 'share' pages"

Is engagement higher for Facebook photos?

I was so curious about this after my only text status update today morning only drew 9-10 likes. Whereas one of the photos i uploaded got 200+ likes few days back. I gave some serious research in to what gets more activity on Facebook.

Here's data i extracted from three different studies done by three digital marketing agencies.

Type/Study	Web Liquid	Momentus Media	Jon Loomer Digital
Photos	0.37%	0.21%	0.76%
Text only	0.21%	0.09%	0.29%
Videos	0.31%	0.11%	0.30%
Link	0.15%	0.07%	0.35%

As clearly shown, photos gets more attention. But

what can be the possible reasons for this?

Facebook timeline
FB timeline gives more prominence to photos because of its boxy layout.

Facebook share button/link
As i predicted in October 2011, after making the "SHARE" link prominent Facebook images became very popular. Viral image formats like memes became massive trends. Viral groups like "Kajuwaththa Eksath" became a hit among FB users.




Increasing internet usage(speeds&data)
Specially in countries like Sri Lanka,those who surfed Facebook through mobiles are now getting in to high speed connections. Only text status updates were popular during those days but now everyone can afford data for images and its faster.

How will it effect me?

Individual users - Think before you update your status,If you have resources & time,get in to a photo update. 

Brands - More emphasis on photos & other interesting content is needed. Brands should focus on giving a graphical picture of all they want to communicate on Facebook.

What do you think? Do you think Facebook will try to do something to save text only status update because micro blogging services like Twitter will build upon this advantage? 

Does Google remember your search history?

Yes. I know its scary.

Only exception is if you are not logged in to Gmail or any other service. Came across the topic while going through SL memes,there was this one "If someone remember everything we search in Google - we are screwed". And i enlightened them finally giving a link to see what they have searched.

When you are logged in to Gmail (Part of Google) or any other Google service (For eg.Google docs,Google drive, youtube or even Google reader) all your Google searches are recorded. 

When you sign up to a Google service you give in your consent for all your searches to be remembered.

But this cant do major harm - As i know it helps advertisers target their Google ads better - showing you ads you will be interested in. Like one of the Google adwords promotion said "best ads can be a search result).

Another plus point is that you are able to go back to your searches. For e.g. one day while travelling i listened to this awesome song and googled the lyrics through my Android phone, But totally forgot about it afterwards. About 2 days later when i was infront of the PC i wanted to download the song - And Google search history came to my rescue.

How to view my Google web history - Log in to Gmail. Click on my account button below Google+ profile. Click on products. Click on Google web history - DAMN!

What do you think? Is it good or bad? Feel free to comment below with your opinion.

Rockmelt Browser Facebook message SPAM

Previously i warned Facebookers of the Rihanna & Kim Kardarshian links - This time it's about a very subtle spamming by the Facebook dedicated browser called "Rockmelt".

As i heard Rockmelt is not a bad browser. It's a modern, Facebook dedicated browser which is getting popular. It's unbelievable to see such a good product using bad promotional methods like below.

Once you use Rockmelt through Facebook, they take authentication and sends a message to your Facebook friends like the one below.

And if you don't accept they send you a reminder in two days like below.

I personally do not use Rockmelt but got a lot of messaged like the above. Feel free to share whether Rockmelt is as good as they promote it...

Meme's used in Sri Lankan protests against UNHRC

It's amazing to see how online world influences the physical world since it is expected the other way around. Recently Sri Lankan protestors against UN human rights commission has used  meme's as slogan boards. See below

It says USA - Y U NO TABLE RESOLUTION ON YOURSELF?

I predict pretty soon we see them in Lipton square, In Cricket matches and in every other demonstration in Sri Lanka held for different reasons. 

Meme culture hits Sri Lanka

With the likes of 9GAG meme's had been the talk of the day in other online markets. Usually all trends come to Sri Lanka late but meme's have really been faster - probably because of faster internet growth these days. I would also blame the Sri Lankan expats for accelerating meme arrival in Sri Lanka ( @Binku xD)

An internet meme is an idea that is virally propogated through the internet. It can be a hyperlink, picture, video or even a small word or phrase. The spread is through social networking sites, blogs, email.etc,.Most popular being photo memes since they are easily shareable. Currently there are many meme generators with commonly used memes to which you can put a caption. One is http://memegenerator.net/.

One of the most popular memes this days are "LOTR Boromirs - One does not simply", "Success baby meme", "Obama - Not bad meme", "Facebook girl meme", "Barney Stinson - True story meme" .etc. Some of them are directly taken from famous movie,TV shows. For .e.g. Boromir saying "One does not simply walk in to Morodor" in Council of Elrond in Lord of the Rings.

Internationally meme sites of likes of 9GAG are very popular. Locally we have only the "Sri Lankan memes" FB page but its growing quite fast. 6000 fans in mere 3 weeks is quite astonishing without any kind of commercial advertising. A barrier i see for Sri Lankan memes to reach mass internet population in Sri Lanka is that certain movie & TV show memes' are better enjoyed when one has actually seen the feature. For e.g. If you assume 20% of internet users in Sri Lanka have seen Lord of the Rings, its less than 1% who have seen How i met your mother - so memes of that origin might not be enjoyed by many.

Despite all that, Sri Lankan meme FB page is really happening these days, specially on Cricket match days. Admins are doing a great job with all the filtering & coordination. Hats-off to anyone doing the page.

So - start memeing if you haven't already! Feel free to share your thoughts on meme culture in Sri Lanka by commenting below....

CB Series : Lessons for Business & Life

Kohli screamed "Im the future of India", Chandimal whispered the same about Sri Lanka (via Cricinfo), Dilshan,Mahela & Australia prevailed - After a long time Sri Lankan cricket fans have something to be happy about even though we screwed the 3rd final. Well - even losing is ok if you learn lessons from it. below are some of the things i take back from Cricket -

Mahela : Leadership is key
See what a drastic change captaincy did to the side. In business it's the same - You need to take out bad leaders and find the best person who can drive results. Good teams can perform under bad leaders is a misconception.


Dilshan : Right man doing the right job
ESPN Cricinfo ‏ @ESPNcricinfo 

Dilshan last ODI series before becoming captain: 500 runs. First series after stepping down: 503 runs. In between: 440 runs in 21 matches

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5:35 PM - 8 Mar 12 via TweetDeck · Details

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Numbers above says it all - If you give wrong responsibilities in business to the wrong, he not only screw new work, But also what he was doing best. Dilshan used to be one of the most lethal openers & see what wrong responsibilities did to him. Glad he's back.


Kohli & Team India : Performing under pressure 

Amitabh Bachchan ‏ @SrBachchan 

T 668 - Virat Kohli, you have played the innings of your life .. back against the wall, pressure of loss and elimination, and you win !!

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7:02 PM - 28 Feb 12 via web · Details

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Some might argue it's productive but i think if India played in the same aggression through out the series they would have even won the cup. In business also - there are guys who perform really well with deadlines but are very unproductive otherwise. I think someone has to be consistent in performance whether there is pressure or not.

Sri Lankan team losing easy matches : Perfectionism
As @amisampath pointed out in a conversation - We lost the first final because we were bowling very lethargically when Australia was batting in the first innings. Same with the 3rd final in which we could have "all out" Australia for 180-190 & scored even 230 easily. The team wasn't just perfecting performance. Same way you need to be perfect when closing jobs assigned in business very importantly sales.

Feel free to share your thoughts...