Social Media Exodus

Being a student of marketing and finance at graduate level, I understand the importance of social media marketing for big brands and small businesses, however there has been an increasing trend of exodus and exile from social media. This does not come as a surprise as people are facing the problem of information overload with posts and tweets coming in every minute.

Don’t get me wrong - Facebook and Twitter are wonderful tools for both businesses and individuals but it’s the exploitation of these services with spam that makes them irritating at times. Just like Spam marketing emails burst out during the email era, Facebook is seeing a similar trend. Mails which in those days were meant to be “forwarded” to friends are now pictures and memes which are meant to be shared.

We as individuals are spending too much time on Facebook and other social media platforms than we should. We have become social media zombies and we need our “daily pill” like Sara Goldfarb from Requiem For a Dream or else we feel disconnected. It’s the same for marketers using Facebook as a tool. There is too much clutter. Also, how many of engaged prospects actually turn into customers is the real question. I am sure many of them do - but is the time spent worth it?

Microsoft's restart - Windows 8

I have been reading a lot about the rave reviews that Windows 8 has been getting over the past few days and I have been giving thought to Microsoft's strategy in making the Windows 8 experience. It is increasingly clear from the past few years that ecosystems in general are going to be much more relevant in the tech world than an operating system itself, and while I still think that we are not living in a post PC era but we are living in one where all devices stay in sync with each other and therefore in that perspective, I can say that Microsoft's Windows 8 is headed in the right direction.

As an Apple fan, I too criticized Windows 8 as it adopted a schizophrenic UI with the Modern UI while still supporting the legacy apps and in some ways the mainstream tech reviewers are correct in saying that Windows 8 has a learning curve to which most people would throw criticisms. 

However I think we should see the long term "outlook" of Microsoft's approach. Microsoft has been a company whose software is used by the most number of people around the world. Apple mobile devices may be popular but desktop machines are on the high end of the spectrum which cannot be bought my most. It is this factor that makes Microsoft a big innovator. The mass market will use what Microsoft gives them - and this time it's an OS that says "Hey, it's time to move to the touch screen". Historically Microsoft has always given very good support to legacy software and hardware (try playing Doom 2 on a Windows 7 machine and it will still work) and so the explorer and the legacy UI is here to stay.