Social media and web 2.0 have resulted in a flood of information and local brands have had no way to track or measure their presence. Brand managers are clueless and really really need help. I had in the past checked out an open source initiative…code name Tattler that offered an open source topic monitoring tool for today’s Web. What Tattler does is that it finds and aggregates content from the Web on the topics you want, using semantic Web technologies, it mines news, websites, blogs, multimedia sites, and other social media like Twitter, to find mentions of the issues most relevant to a journalist, researcher, advocate or communications professional. It rides of Drupal by the way:-) not too fond of it
Closer to home though, is the launch of a new platform from the team that brought Ushahidi to the world…sounds like copy for a trailer Swift River. Apart from the fact that the first app riding off Swift River – Sweeper App looks gorgeous, the platform addresses the need for an “easy” to set up and self managed platform, that sorts me out quite beautifully. I also like the fact that right off the gun, there is an obvious business model to it, though the pricing etc is yet to be put up. There’s no guessing what am going to deploy…!
From the horses mouth, SwiftRiver is a free and open source platform that helps people make sense of a lot of information in a short amount of time. The SwiftRiver platform was born out of the need to understand and act upon a wave of massive amounts of crisis data that tends to overwhelm in the first 24 hours of a disaster. Since then, there has been a great deal of interest in this tool for other industries, such as news rooms and brand monitoring groups. continue reading »
As telecommunications spread, the line between rich and poor countries gets further blurred. The Vice President of Multimedia & Systems Integration at Ericsson Sub-Saharan Africa, Sanjay Kaul, predicts that Africa will reach the same connectivity as the rest of the world by 2020. But to get there new business models must be in place.
The recent mobile price wars have sparked a lively debate both on and offline with people aligning themselves along various schools of thought, trying to dissect the moves by the three underdogs – Zain, Orange and Yu. While most of the discussions are from a consumer perspective, where cheaper may be considered better, we need to look at the ecosystem that has become part of our daily lives more closely to appreciate the factors at play and perhaps project what the space will look like in another five years.
Orange today announced the lowest on net tariff of Ksh 2/- and slashed its off net tariff to Ksh 4/- for its GSM customers following the revision of interconnection rates by the Communications Commission of Kenya. The new tariff also comes with an additional benefit of free calls from 10 a.m. – 5 p.m. for only Ksh 100 top up per month across all Orange networks such as Orange mobile, Orange wireless and Telkom Fixed (landline).
Effective today midnight, both Orange GSM post and pre- paid customers will enjoy a new call and SMS rates of Ksh 2.00 per minute for calls and Kshs 1 for SMS whereas calls to other networks will be charged at Ksh 4/- per minute and Ksh 2/- per SMS respectively. continue reading »
It may feel abit dumb to start off like this…but any kiosk owner will tell you this. If you all stock the same nyanya skuma, you will be left with no recourse but to compete on price. The kaching comes with setting yourself apart…I would stop here and have you call me and pay me to walk you back to the school of basics but am in a good mood today.
Like I told you before, you better stop this price war maneno or you will all soon go out of business or best bet see massive hemorrhages on your bottom line. Micheal Joseph has said time and again – he has investors to take care of, and I have to agree with him on that point, coz I would expect a divided on my shares, if I had bought like 1 million of those “papers” when the country was going green and this not alluding to the referendum. My boy Rene is willing to take a hit for the next 5 years because he has a big brother with deep pockets. Deep pockets get depleted, and if your strategy doesn’t work out, you will be out of a job – tail tucked and the Kenya operation will be spun to some other hapless investor with big visions and their head in the clouds, with grand plans of a turnaround. Rene was on Business Daily explaining their strategy…you will remember the Vuka tariff that was discontinued…hmmm
Bwana Atul of Yu, jumped over the cliff late last night and put it out that they too had “amuad” and dunked prices to 5cts per second or more directly 3 bob per minute and 50cts per sms on onnet messaging.
Mickael Ghossein has been quiet thus far after the sparing between the Pinks, Greens and Blacks, but I kinda guess he too is thinking of their new lower price point. I am sorely hoping that his decisions will have a good measure of thought and not some knee jerk reflex. continue reading »
Just a day after launching the “industry-shaking” low cross-network charges, Zain Kenya is accusing competitor Safaricom of sabotage. The company has written to the Communications Commission of Kenya, asking the regulator to stop Safaricom from “abusing dominance” by offering only limited capacity for cross network calls coming from the Zain network. “Our customers are experiencing congestion and call set up issues when they call Safaricom and not when calling Zain. This is purely for the simple reason that our main competitor has been delaying the capacity increase request from our side to accommodate the incremental traffic coming from us after we launched our new offer in the market,” said Mr. Rene Meza, Zain Kenya Managing Director. continue reading »
Technology doesn’t exist for its own sake, if it did, it would die a rather quick death from lack of adoption that would see it maintain relevance. Mobile has morphed into a lifestyle with many consumers not giving a second thought to the technology that powers it, not that they should anyway. But as it morphs into a lifestyle, it creates a new playground for interaction which many brands are yet to catch on, still basking in familiar old school methods of engagement.
The opportunity here is very real and would offer great benefits for the first mover. Brands need to start developing and implementing mobile strategies if they are to engage their consumers on a personal level. The battle for mindshare and eventually consumer purses will be won by the brands that will offer truly compelling and personalized experiences. continue reading »
Mbugua Njihia – the mind of is a personal soapbox: views, opinions and thoughts reflected here can be ingested and regurgitated in support of knowledge sharing.
