50 Shades of Grey Blackberry subtle advertising effectiveness

Its the talk of the town - well at least in Sri Lankan twittersphere. She was the pioneer in driving the hype for the book in Twitter and i was given  a chance to glance through the pages.

Following is the part about Blackberry - Dont know if the author E.L.James(Female) got paid for it or just added to show prestige of Grey using a Blackberry.

In a time where RIM is going down the drain, having doubts about aquisition and this "Blackberry going down" news is all over the media, she tweeted this

hey guys..does anybody know how much a BlackBerry bold is in Sri Lanka??
— Pabasara Palletanne (@Lovely_Paba) August 7, 2012

And i asked her whether it was because of the book, following is the tweet and thats enough for me to prove the effectiveness of advertising. Period.

After seeing my tweet.. @nnulk: (on phone) i know why you wanted a BlackBerry..Christian grey has it! Me:NO! My subconcious: HELL YEAH! :D
— Pabasara Palletanne (@Lovely_Paba) August 8, 2012

Sudden increase of questions/polls in Facebook Sri Lanka

Just a quick posting to get an idea about the trend - Were you active enough to notice sudden burst of questions on your newsfeed last few days? You can see up to 4-5 questions at any given time in the newsfeed ranging from "Best school", "Best telco" to "Best Country" questions.

Some of the questions are like (Updated)
Vote for your country?
To which relign do u belong?
Whats the best mobile operator in Sri Lanka?
Whats your operating system?
What place do you prefer for shopping for work wear?

This surge in questions were even noticed and highlighted by users.

What is your religion? poll in FB and there are people who has ticked in for Buddhism as well.
— Yoshitha Kulatunga (@yoshrox) July 24, 2012

Pls post other questions as you see in Facebook Sri Lanka...

Facebook questions has been there for a long time and such a sudden increase is surprising. What caused this? Facebook themselves pushing this feature? Any idea?

Facebook groups new "Seen by" feature

Last week Facebook announced the new "seen by" feature on groups - pretty useful when you are using Facebook groups for day to day communication. It is basically a record of how many saw your posts in a Facebook group like given below.

This is similar to the "seen at" feature in Facebook chat. This feature makes groups more compatible for day to day communication needs. Like the example given where you want to communicate football practices to the whole team and the post indicates how many saw the notice. This also makes Facebook more consistent for communication. (Can be annoying for some - tough life :P )

This and the recent feature "voice" (Will explain in a seperate post - Enables you to comment as an admin or a fan in Facebook page easily) are targeted at power users who are active on Facebook. But the normal users Facebook activity decline (as explained by "Photo/Video sharing kills Facebook & grows Twitter") continues and hope they come up with features targeting them. 

Do you think "Seen by" is useful? Feel free to comment below with your thoughts...

Facebook promoting "Close friends" to increase activity

Did you see Facebook asking you to star your closest friends to one list called "Close friends" recently? Did you add your close friends and got loads of notifications of all their activity? And then switched off notifications on closest friends? If NO - you are gonna go thru the whole thing soon - so read on

As i explained in few of my previous posts - "Photo/Video sharing kills Facebook & grows Twitter", Facebook is losing activity due to the popularity of micro blogging platforms like Twitter where there is hyper activity. Another reason for this is the old Facebook users are now having considerable amount of friends&share pages and they no longer find the news feed relevant. In order to increase momentum and to make the news feed more relevant Facebook has started pushing "Friends lists" recently.

You will see a window on top asking you to star your closest friends. Facebook suggests close family and friends, giving you the option to select like given below.

Once selected - they go to the friend list "Close friends". Only pain is that by default Facebook starts sending you notifications for every action they do on Facebook (Like,comment,photo upload.etc). Worse if you are on mobile and much worse if you are on notifications via SMS like below.

How to remove Facebook close friends notifications?

1. Go to your Facebook home
2. See on your left side - There's a set of pages you admin, followed by groups and followed by friends' lists. Under the friends list should be "Close friends" category. Click on that
3. On your rights side you will see a button called "Notifications" - tick that off.

Now you will get notified without being a pain as mobile notifications or SMS

Do you think this can make Facebook survive? Did you go thru the same "Close friends" add and remove notifications drama? Feel free to share your experiences...

How to hard reset Samsung Galaxy Tab & Vendor hypocicy

Few weeks back,my Samsung Galaxy Tab started showing this error message "app.calendar is not responding".etc. It keeps coming,you cant even go to settings. I searched for the error in the net, there was not much help. So thought of going to the official Samsung repair centre in Bambalapitiya. I had already gone there to replace my battery so i knew the place.

They said there is a software jam and quoted Rs.4000 to do the following.

1. With the device off, press and hold Volume Up and Power buttons.

2. Release the Power button when you see the Samsung logo, but continue to hold Volume Up until the recovery screen appears.

3. Use the Volume buttons to navigate the menu and select wipe data / factory reset. Press Home to choose the selection

4. Press volume up to continue - Tab will continue its resetting process. You just need to wait for about 3-5 minutes.

End of the process, I had my tab just as when it was purchased. The process took maximum 5 minutes and few pressing of button, for which the Samsung dealer in Sri Lanka charges Rs.4000. To make things uglier its not Samsung but a local agent of Samsung that is running the repair centre who charges unreasonable prices like this knowing the users are ignorant and have no other place to go.

My advice to all Samsung users in Sri Lanka - double check if you are getting some repair done, if you are not on warranty period - pls do a Google search about the fault or show it to someone you know - If you know about gadgets please contact me. Lets not let hardware vendors to spoil innocent customers.  

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"