Why online communities die

Even the mighty Facebook, the world’s third largest ‘country’, and one that constantly gets press as an addiction, is no longer impregnable. A recent survey found US teens are ditching Facebook for Instagram; the latter has become the most preferred social network for the teenagers. Reports predicting Facebook’s demise have been surfacing for many years, variously […]

Building online communities: Questions to ask before creating one

Back in the nineties, online communities organically grew around gaming, particularly around the gaming consoles from Sega, Nintendo and Sony. Users would spend hours discussing new games, hacks and tricks and gameplay for the most popular games of the day. Right from those days of Bulletin Board Services (BBS), Usenet newsgroups and IRC, consumer brands in general and Internet companies […]

How Flipkart bungled its Big Billion Day: lessons for marketers

We are sorry to interrupt our regular programming to bring you this special post on a few critical marketing lessons from Flipkart’s ‘Big Billion Day’ fiasco. In this post, we observe how the basic rules of services marketing and brand building were ignored in conducting Monday’s event. This surprises us, as we simultaneously acknowledge and appreciate the enormous time, money and […]