Pla{N}ET: A Word on Social Media

Randi Zuckerberg, marketing director at Facebook has been personally visiting the Word Economic Forum at Davos since last year. Interviewed almost by every media station present there & participating in almost all media debates – this alone shows how attractive the prospect of being on the social media has become from a business point of view.

Let’s Talk Numbers

In India, though this only makes up about 2.5% of the total Facebook users and that’s about 2% of the Indian population, the numbers have grown from 13 million in September, 2010 to 20 million in February, 2011.Which makes up 27% of the online Indian population. 47% out of this are between 18-24 years and 32% between 24-35 years of age.

Speaking to NDTV at Davos in 2010, Randi Zuckerberg said that India is a huge market (we all know that now). Hitting all the right notes as the marketing head of FB, she talked about Bollywood , Cricket (and yes, also how two Facebook employees got married in Goa… yippie!!). But more importantly, she also mentioned the US elections, the Iran elections & elections in India, and discussed how we as a generation that is interested to learn more about what’s happening around us can benefit considerably from social networking platforms like Facebook. Talking specifically about India, she said that the big idea in digital media is going to be in mobile technology.

Getting Online – The Advantages

In the age of information, surrounded by different kinds of communication tools, we are bombarded with news of all kinds, from all around. So it becomes all the more important to restrict ourselves to what’s relevant for us. The social network gives you the privilege to take charge of your content and that’s the reason why focus on local matter is going to increase in the future. With the power to filter information you can make yourself more efficient.

Social Media Marketing – The Indian Scenario

Social media marketing in India, like anything else, is dominated by Bollywood & Cricket right now. More so, by Bollywood. Celebs started using blogs, facebook and twitter to connect with their fans directly. For example, Salman Khan – always reticent with the media and always giving tongue in cheek replies to the scribes at press conferences found a wonderful way to enhance his brand value – Twitter. He often posts very personal moments of his life but of course only the ones he wants to share with his followers.

One of Khan's Tweets

Aamir Khan is another example from the entertainment world who uses blogs & his Facebook page to create buzz about his forthcoming films. He was probably the first one in India to do a live video chat on Facebook around the release of his 2009 flick, 3 Idiots. Filmmaker Onir sponsored almost his entire 2011 film ‘I AM’ by arranging finance from people on social media and in return, offering them credit in co-production.

There are also examples of celebs who did not realize the power of this medium and ended up shooting themselves in the foot – like Lalit Modi and Shashi Tharoor.

Social media marketing is still a concept in its nascent stage in India but has huge potential to upset the traditional marketing platforms like television, radio etc. Also with the advent of 3G, a whole new field is now open. However, the real test would be – that how effective social media can prove in benefiting start ups & other small ventures, and not just entities who are already well established. Also, in India we haven’t had a Justin Bieber or a Lady Gaga, whose phenomenon is incomplete without the digital media.

With American musician & actor Justin Timberlake buying stakes in MySpace in order to revitalize the ailing site, and Facebook teaming up with Microsoft’s Skype, social media is the place where the action is going to be.

PS: This post was originally published at - http://wordonsocialmedia.com/blog/?p=367#more-367 on July 6, 2011.

Facebook Vs Google: Instant Hit(s)

If personal fortune is any indication of how successful your business is, then very recently, it was reported that Facebook’s Mark Zuckerberg is now richer than the Google bosses – Larry Page & Sergey Brin.

However what if we talk purely about the contributions that the respective ‘organisations’ have made to its ‘consumers’. Is it even fair to compare Facebook & Google considering the nature of their services? Its like comparing NOKIA, whose major revenue comes from telecom services, with Samsung Electronics, which is just one of the subsidiary arms of the Samsung group . So relatively, Nokia maybe a leader in mobile devices, but as an organization Samsung is much larger.

Despite that, why the ‘Facebook VS Google’ debate still seems relevant is purely due to their environment – the virtual world. The internet is still an unorganized space where things have just started to jostle up. There are no written rules, no blanket like censorship. Nothing is defined here. Web has its own language, its own grammar. For users, internet is a single handed communication tool.

So, while Google opened up the world on a ‘window’, Facebook has taken it to the next level by making the web aggressively interactive. We are not just fence sitters anymore, we knowingly or unknowingly, are actively participating in shaping up the future. Opinion makers are not in television studios or on the radio. They are at home, sitting in their chairs. If anybody still has a doubt about its potency, just Google ‘Arab spring’ and read up how, and where else the revolution book flace…haha..took place!!

A 2009 Nielsen Media Research report indicate degrees of consumer trust in different kinds of advertising. It suggests that “consumer comments posted online” is the second largest form of advertising that helps in building a brand, next only to “word of mouth”. This speaks volumes about how the things have changed in the past few years. Two way communication has balanced out the market dynamics like never before.

The more open a market gets, the more competitive it becomes. In an era full with communication tools, our attention span has been compressed significantly. Instant information, instant entertainment, instant action – who doesn’t want access to those needs in this age? Of course, the answer lies within that discourse itself.

So how many of you have heard about ‘Google+’ already? Surely not those who still only listen to radio or watch television. ‘Google+ Project’ , still in its testing phase, is Google’s attempt at social networking service that could threaten to eat up in the share of the biggest fish in the pond. The ‘Facebook VS Google’ debate may finally be settled then. Will Google succeed like Gmail did in unsettling Yahoo & Hotmail? Only you will tell!

Here's a quick look of Google Plus - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xwnJ5Bl4kLI

This post was originally published at http://wordonsocialmedia.com/blog/?p=349#more-349 on July 4, 2011.

The Social Network: Angry Young Men

The things you own end up owning you - Tyler Durden (David Fincher’s Fight Club)

I started using Facebook like anybody else. Just like that! I never post personal photographs (except my display), or my personal feelings & when someone else put that notorious tag on a personal snap, I delete it. But I also found it a good way to be in touch with ‘friends’ (and a killer of a time pass!). In a span of few days, you get addicted to it & start logging in as many times as you would to check your email, maybe more than that.

One can share pictures & be in touch online without using FB. Though there are two things that immediately come to mind which make Facebook addictive – navigating through other people’s pros & ‘status update’. Afterall, a good business idea is – which is able to ‘generate a need’.

You write your snide bullshit from a dark room because that’s what the angry do nowadays - Erica Albright (David Fincher’s The Social Network)

social network

David Fincher’s The Social Network is more about people & the environment driving them than about the story happening due to them.

Mark Zuckerberg is a Harvard student, obsessed with the idea of exclusivity, which is established right from the opening scene where he is discussing getting into the ‘best’ student club at Harvard – the Final Club, with his girlfriend. What follows is a break up & from there on Zuckerberg uses his latent faculties to get back at people closest to him, emotionally.

Fincher’s Zuckerberg is a genius who’s “trying hard to be an asshole”. Sharp, motivated, focussed, go getter , carefree, agitated, arrogant, obsessed. Genius nonetheless. He is like Hirani’s Rancho, only a twisted one. Perhaps, a flesh & blood Rancho.

Eduardo Saverin – Zuckerberg’s best friend is like most of us – he sees wrong around him & doesn’t want to get engaged with it but, as he too wants to be an achiever, he ignores and moves on with life. Whenever something significant occurs in his college life, Saverin refers to his father – “what would he think?”.

Zuckerberg is the product of environment, Saverin – the result of it.

Sean Parker is a guy who does networking. Using his flamboyant confidence, he establishes connections with the right people. He’d know your pulse rate if you are sitting at the table across him. Parker breezes in & out of business meetings, charging the environment & infecting it by planting seeds of ‘big thinking’ into the fertile minds – “Drop “the”. Just “Facebook”. It’s cleaner” – that’s all he brings to the table as investment. That’s his asset! When he is around you don’t need to sniff to get high, it’s in the air…just breath!! Sean Parker implies the importance of middlemen in the world of private profit. But he is no gangster, he is the guerilla capitalist!!

"I'm the CEO bitch...that's what I want for you"

The difference between Saverin & Sean Parker is – ‘Harvard education’. While commenting generally on the education system in the scene where Winklevoss brothers go to meet their Harvard director, I think, Fincher specifically suggests the outcome of exclusivist education through Eduardo Saverin. He tells Parker – “I like standing next to you, Sean… it makes me look so tough.”

On the other hand, Winklevoss brothers & Divya Narendra are not as brilliant as Zuckerberg or as savvy as Parker, but they are dedicated. They know – a team is important because a leader can’t accomplish on his own, and not vice versa. All wealthy & well resourced people are not first rate assholes. Unlike Saverin, they try to be ethical but the rowing competition proves too much for them.

Winklevoss twins

The whole rowing competiton sequence is very symbolic. Winklevoss brothers finish second in the tournament. The post competition party shows how anyone who is not an achiever (and here achiever means numero uno) is treated by people. Inspite of finishing second in the race, Winklevoss brothers feel humiliated & the mention of Facebook’s success at the party only make them lesser “gentlemen” from then on.

The Social Network is a morality tale – its basically about our obsession with achievement or rather, our fixation with the perception of it. The movie cleverly jumps back and forth between deposition scenes and sequences leading to the invention of Facebook. Aaron Sorkin’s solid & layered screenplay keeps you on the edge & engaged in the drama and, also provides more than a few sharp, biting lines.

Fincher has always used music tastefully. The Social Network is no different. Whether it’s the first meeting between Parker and Zuckerberg-Saverin or the night club scene with Zuckerberg & Parker or, the night scene in the dorm when Zuckerberg first gets the idea of FaceMash. Or the last Beatles song. It’s killer!

In a world where the usage of ‘moral’ in your vocabulary could be LOLed at, and the word ‘practical’ has become most functional – Mark Zuckerberg is a hero, though fallen.

Behind every successful man there is a woman – Zuckerberg comes out as a cold & an obsessively ambitious genius who just couldn’t get Erica Albright out of his mind. And that’s what qualifies him to be a protagonist in this story.

love trigger

PS: the post was originally published on Passion for Cinema on November 15th, 2010 - http://passionforcinema.com/the-social-network-angry-young-men/ )

Ku**e…hum tera khoon pee jayenge…Peepli [Live] – A Reaction

mango people...banana democracy

[SPOILER ALERT]

Most underdog films chart a certain graph, and in the end – victory against all odds leaves you filled with hope. Peepli [Live] sucks blood out of that idea & injects it into the darker side of struggle. It leaves its protagonist, a farmer, defeated. No victory, no hope. Just dark, inescapable reality of lakhs of poor in our country. Here, the dog doesn’t have its day, he remains a dog. You & I probably couldn’t have felt this on an emotional level if a certain Aamir Khan had not decided to put his might & will behind a film whose approach is inclined more towards docudrama than a mainstream Hindi film.

Hence, opening with 500-600 prints is nothing short of an achievement for a film like this.

Peepli [Live] takes a dig almost at everyone it features. Politicians have been lampooned millions of times, to the point of bafflement. Of all the characters, Anusha Rizvi portrays the politicians & bureaucrats in the most cold fashion way and, fairly so. The establishment deserve a strict treatment if it doesn’t deliver. Its the media it hits the most hard though. In an age where all our knowledge, information & opinions are influenced by one form of mass media or other, a reality check is important. Peepli [Live] can be called that reality check. In fact, I’m a little surprised by how well the Indian media have taken the film, across board. Its probably because it comes from a person of their fraternity. Criticism from within the tribe is always taken notice of if its healthy. This is another achievement of the film.

You don’t need to pick up stones for making your point. Anything driven commercially sees the practical side of the business first. You & me contribute to the content we see on television. We make their TRPs. We make DT sell. For news media, advertisers are obviously crucial. If we as the viewers/readers decide to spend Rs.10 or Rs.15 on a news daily instead of a Rs.3 or Rs.5, the editorial would depend less on the advertisers which means more newsworthy stories. Same goes for television. We spend an extra Rs. 50 for a more comfortable seat in a multiplex but not on news magazines & journals. We would spend an extra Rs. 20 on our favorite flavored ice cream but haggle over Rs.5 with a rickshaw puller who exhausts himself day in & day out, on roads, which administration fail to mend and for which, tyre manufacturing companies make specially designed wheels so the ride is less bumpier.

One one hand there is Nandita Malik representing English television news media who is unwilling to go & cover ‘the Natha story’ as she thinks that’s not her forte, but on being prodded by her editor reaches Peepli anyway. Once there, she handles her work professionally to the point of being crude. On other hand, there is Deepak who represents the Hindi television news media who also, is unwilling to cover the story because he doesn’t see enough potential for sensation in it. He promises even more sensational stories to his editor, but goes to Peepli nonetheless. And then there is Rakesh – Peepli’s Jan Morcha’s journalist who originally breaks the story of ‘Natha’s suicide’ & unwittingly sends the whole system in a tizzy.Eventually, getting disillusioned by his profession, and ending up in Natha’s shoes.

The parallel sub plot of Mehto – an extremely under nourished farmer who probably also unable to pay his loans, is always shown digging the ground for mud & taking that mud to sell, is according to me the most hard hitting Bollywood representation of poverty in India since the now much celebrated Swades scene where Shahrukh Khan, returning from a farmer’s house, encounters a 10-12 yrs old boy on a railway station selling water.

digging his own grave

Peepli [Live] is a depressing showcase of our people. It doesn’t uplift the mood by talking of hope. It takes leave of the viewer on a very brutal & cold note.

In its last 10 minutes, the layered humourous dimension of the reality slides away abruptly. First time in the film you don’t find anything funny about Natha’s appearance. Covered in mud, he sits as still as ‘dead’ at a construction site like hundreds others around him. His existence is irrelevant to us – the beneficiaries of the economic opportunities in the post liberalized India. This is nothing particularly sinful as he might be doing the same if he had been on this side of the divide. Take no moral offence. Its not the classical rich VS poor debate. It’s the haves & have nots issue. Same nation, different (or no) opportunities.

Natha’s story is a story that needed to be told. Its not as skilled as one would have liked it to be but it still works hugely because its played straight & sticks to being a human story. And probably that’s the reason why it still lingers on to your mind long after its over. Natha remains silent, almost in the whole film. He doesn’t have any say in affairs concerning his family or even in his ‘suicide’. He is a guy who has given in to the circumstances & readily gets convinced about giving up on his life as well. His brother Budhia on the other hand, driven by circumstances cowardly asks Natha for the sacrifice.

poverty perks

The film rightly doesn’t take a moral high ground. The young man doesn’t have the time to look back in anger anymore. He gets busy making most out of the emerging markets before he can figure out what concerns him. The film makes you feel guilty anyhow but without a smirk. So instead of shrugging away the responsibility at the back of your head, you are able to find an emotional connect with the story & that works, because at least then you react as a participant. We might not come out of Peepli[Live] all changed but I feel that’s not the idea. Its meant to refresh us about the issues of unattended India. We may not stop eating that favorite ice lolly of ours, but we just might not argue with that rickshaw wallah anymore.

a brilliant effort

Anusha Rizvi & her team deserve a pat on their backs for making Peepli [Live] as it has been made. The casting & music of the film is bang on. It’s heartening to see such a film doing good business at the box office. The film owes its commercial success to the brand called Aamir Khan, to a large extent. He and UTV deserve a couple of hundred from your pocket for delivering yet again.

Go, pay a price… & forget the popcorn this time!

P.S : (This post was originally published on PassionForCinema on August 19th, 2010 -

http://passionforcinema.com/kue-hum-tera-khoon-pee-jayenge-peepli-live-a-reaction/ )

Once upon a time in Tarantino occupied cinema

“As a 14-year-old boy I remember saying to myself when I am a director I want to make movies that will make other people want to make movies.” – Quentin Tarantino

(SPOILER ALERT)

I watched Quentin Tarantino’s Inglourious Basterd’s for the first time when it came out last year, and I didn’t think very highly of it as a Tarantino fan. I, like any other Tarantino fan went in to be ‘smartly entertained’. The buzz around the film was already strong & when you say buzz these days it means what the net is saying. I had read all kinds of reviews & opinions abt the movie – some said it was Tarantino’s best since Pulp Fiction, some said its not as good (really, ‘reviews’ & opinionated pieces in all kinds of media & esp. the internet before the release of a movie is killing the purpose of watching movies. So much is said abt the film before its release that I feel most of the times we miss what the filmmaker is trying to do, and it has started to put me off as a viewer. I hate the fact that I’ve become compulsive with the practice myself. At times it just sucks the excitement out of the movie).

Anyway couple of months back I got Inglourious Basterds on my system & watched it in patches. Few days later I again did the same, and few days later I ended up watching the whole movie & have been watching it every now & then, since. I realize this only now that with Inglourious Basterds, Tarantino consciously or sub-consciously didn’t try to be an adventurist like he was in Reservoir Dogs, Pulp Fiction or the Kill Bill films. Here he doesn’t show his craft, he shows his control over it.

The first sequence between Colonel Hans Landa & LaPadite which came across as plain though engaging in the first viewing is the sequence which I now end up watching almost everytime I’m on my system & my internet is down.I realize that it was its subtlety that I mistook as ‘plain’. Both the actors in the scene are superb. Hans Landa’s intensity is established through the performance of the guy playing LaPadite.Indesribeable!…the scene cud be an indication of how the film is going to unfold to you as a viewer – gradually.

opening sequence

The Bar scene is my second best in the film – throughout the whole scene you want to shoot the Nazi ‘King Kong’ in his balls but before that you want to see how’d he crack the lie of Lt. Hicox who is in town ,in disguise, on a mission to assassinate Hitler. ‘King Kong ’ is Hans Landa with ideology. He is committed to the policies of Third Reich. He is very sharp & unlike Landa he is not very smart & unlike Landa, he has got character. His confidence is just too unsettling for Lt. Hicox who doesn’t know how to handle him. Tarantino makes you feel the tension without injecting background music throughout the scene. But the tension reaches you as if you are in the bar with them.

And then there is the whole sequence at the film theatre. It just shows Tarantino’s passion for cinema. The cold blooded assassination of Tarantino’s Hitler takes place there. Its symbolic in more ways than one.

Violence is always grand in Tarantino movies but the characters unleashing the violence are intentionally calm. And Tarantino’s violence comes coated in some kind of philosophy – mostly it’s the theory of vengeance that drives his protagonists. In Pulp Fiction, Jules justifies his violence by quoting the Bible everytime he goes for a kill – “And I will strike down upon thee with great vengeance and furious anger…”, only to derive a new meaning of the same biblical passage at the ‘end’ of the film. The Bride in Kill Bill again justifies her violence based on the philosophy of vengeance (“Revenge is a dish best served cold”). Its the Dogs who don’t really justify their violence but they are dogs & they die like one.

Tarantino couldn’t have asked for a better plot than getting back at Nazis. The Basterds’ violence is justified not just by history but also by dozens movies based on the Holocaust & the violence of the Nazis shown in them. I know many people are put off by the violence in Tarantino movies probably coz its too detailed & in your face and they think its there just for the sake of it. Yes, its there for the sake of entertainment. Tarantino is not a preacher, he is like Jules – he speaks with commitment & then pulls the trigger. And he does that smartly without ideating. Tarantino uses violence as a larger-than-life tool. He knows its for an art form whose prime purpose is to engage through entertainment. There is always an element of humour in his films. That’s why his Hitler, no matter as twisted as always, is comical. Those who take films in any other way miss the ‘pulp’ in it. Expecting ‘sensitive treatment’ from his films is foolish coz you are missing the whole point then – hardcore sensory entertainment. He wants you take films as films . Get inspired only if you are a filmmaker!

Inglourious Basterds fictionalises the violence of the Jews thru the Basterds & shows the Nazis being tortured. There are lots of movies made about the cruelities Jews faced under the Nazis & stories related to the Holocaust. Almost all show the the Nazis torturing the Jews, all show violence of the Nazis but unlike the other Holocaust/Nazi films, the audience here cheers the torture while rooting for the Basterds. Violence is used as a strategy by both the Nazis & the Basterds but the violence of the Basterds seem justified. Aldo Raine is almost Hitler-like in his ways. The baseball bat with which the Bear Jew beats his victims to death could have been a Nazi smashing a Jewish head. The ‘bat’ remains the same, the ‘head’ changes. We dont cheer for the Nazis but we do for the Basterds. This is very interesting. On concept level , its just changing the label & turning the idea on its head.

Colonel Hans Landa, the character which has been played with effortless brilliance by actor Christoph Waltz – makes a Nazi accessible & very watchable probably for the first time, on screen. Tarantino treats him as a human being. I feel the thing that gives films of filmmakers like Tarantino & Scorsese so much of repeat value is their treatment of characters. Their inspection of the human mind irrespective of how those characters are slotted conventionally.

Christoph Waltz - brilliant!

The Last Temptation of the Christ is my favourite Scorsese film. I think its his most raw. Based on a book of the same name by Nikos Kazantzakis, the film portrays Jesus Christ unlike in any of the other Jesus Christ movies I have ever seen. It shows him as a complex human being, fighting his desires to achieve what he thinks is his duty towards God. Willem Dafoe as Scorsese’ Jesus Christ is bang on. Its one of my favourite performances of all times. Conventionally, Prophets, God men & especially Jesus Christ are not shown struggling spiritually. How can they? They are supposed to be spiritual, naturally. But in The Last Temptation, Jesus Christ’s main struggle is actually spiritual – ” He used to jump on me like a wild bird and dig His claws into my head”. Jesus struggles against the desires he ‘shudn’t’ succumb to, just like you & me would if we were so spiritually inclined.

Though you don’t really ‘feel’ for Tarantino’s characters. Maybe that’s coz they are always comical in some way. You are just interested in watching them behave the way they do. You don’t care about their story. You just want to see them perform in every circumstance.

That is a tasty burger! - Pulp Fiction(1994)

Colonel Hans Landa is one such creation. He actually doesn’t have an ideology unlike the Nazi in the film who refuses to divulge into any information about the German army on being asked by Aldo Raine & ends up being killed by the Bear Jew. Hans Landa is a man with a taste for finer things in life – he would prefer a glass of dairy milk over some wine, he would tell you to wait for the cream for strudel & ask for the verdict after you have it, his smoking pipe would be bigger than yours. He wants the Congressional medal, property on Nantucket Island. Hans Landa is essentially a bureaucrat in uniform with a mind of a politician, only, he is acutely hypocrite.

Tarantino is known for the lines his characters speak – dialogues. Why these dialogues work so well & become memorable could well be coz they blend so perfectly with the life of the character speaking them, causing sparks in your senses as a viewer – probably a thought that you could connect with but never knew how to express it simply coz you & your life is not as edgy as of the characters in Tarantino films & two, coz you are not a filmmaker.

I’d like to finish with this Ingourious Basterds trailer. I think this is an apt teaser for the film..gives just the right rush…

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uKPIj5Kk2M0

P.S : (This post was originally published on PassionForCinema on May 4th, 2010 - http://passionforcinema.com/once-upon-a-time-in-tarantino-occupied-cinema/ )