My Info-graphic Resume

This one is new to me. How would I put my resume in an interactive way? What details should be added and how should they be categorized?  what theme should i follow? 

After an intensive thought process, I decided  to create simple website for the Resume. I thought its better this way to categorize and  project a very clear picture of myself.

This website contains a timeline for my educational background, a work cloud for my interests and direct links to LinkedIn and Twitter.

Here is the link to my resume built on HTML5 on wix.com

www.wix.com/ramanacr/resume

(PDF Version : http://dl.dropbox.com/u/49215374/Ramana_Ramkumar_HW6.pdf) 

Social Media - Business Model

How do Social media companies make money ?


One of the most popular traditional monetizing model is Freemium. LinkedIn uses this model for making money from its members. This model offers additional features for the premium members and earn revenue.
I would like to give an overview of some of the evolving new revenue models adapted by social media industry.

Display Ads :  One of the most popular and successful model which involves featured Ads on the popular pages. These Ads are based on the search keywords used on search engines (Google, Bing, Yahoo). For every click made on that Ad, revenue is generated. Display Ads can be more specific for each user. Google terms this as Narrow casting. Here, Google targets specific group of people based on their Geographic location, search trends and user behavior patterns. Advantage of narrow casting is higher click through rate and the Ads is of user's interest and cannot be ignored completely.

Virtual Money: Facebook and Zynga is a very vivid example of this model. The online gaming platform on social media enables users to give virtual gifts or virtual money which are in turn purchased using real money. Thus this huge network of online gamers are exploited to generate revenue using virtual attributes. Farmville is a well known games using this model.

Buying virtual gifts on Farmville , Mobwars, Mafia etc, involves real cash from the users. Social media has integrated this with the paypal and other popular payment methods to harvest money out of massively played online gaming sector.


Checkin and Rate (B2B) :  Data related to user checkin and rating on places are exploited on a large scale. Lot of business need this data for improving their business and hence tie up with popular social media companies such as twitter, Foursquare and Facebook to collect this data. This is a typical B2B model that benefits both the local business and twitter or any social media partner.



Finally, to sum up this blog

"Every post,tweet, like and comment is worth a dollar"

 

I will discuss more about the business models of various companies in the social media environment going forward.

                                                                                                                            to be continued....

Network Analysis and CRM

So, Why do a Network Analysis?

In my previous blog I had given a surface analysis of social media and social network analysis. Now, I will get a bit deeper on  to the applications of Network analysis. One of the major application is in customer relationship management.

Major objective of network analysis is to study the behavior pattern through visual representation. Not just stopping with that, identify the gaps in the relations and look for possible solutions to improve. For example learning the behavior trends of customers to any product can help the company increase its customer relations.

Social media is the buzz now. Twitter or Facebook  is a huge source of customer data. Gathering these data and building a network will help in making effective business decisions. We can understand the trend based on various regions and hence use network analysis to focus on any specific region or target a particular group of customers.

One major concept in network analysis is centrality. Understanding this measure will help us finding the location of the node and gives us a an insight about the who the leaders are, who the peripheral players are , who is the leader in the network and who the connectors are?

Thus, knowing the customer behavior pattern by analyzing a network map is the key to success in sustaining the existing customers and expand the customer base.










Happy tweeting, blogging, posting and what not! :)

Social Media

Social Media, It has become an integral part in our life.With the penetration of internet social media has expanded itself across the globe and served as a common platform for people to connect.

Social Network analysis helps us to view and analyze the social relationship and behavior.Social network graph gives a visual image of various connections between the nodes grouped under some metrics.
Two main entities in a social network diagram are

• Nodes: Individual objects/actors in the social network
• Ties: Relationship between the nodes

A typical social network of twitter is shown below.

Why do we need this social network analysis?

 The growth and the impact of social media is rapid and huge.Hence this analysis finds its applications in organizational behavior, inter-organizational relations, the spread of contagious diseases, mental health, social support, the diffusion of information and animal social organization.

Some of the software applications for network analysis are,

• UCINET
• KRACKPLOT 
• ANTHROPAC
• FATCAT
• NEGOPY
• StOCNET
• GRADAP 2
• PREPSTAR
• PSPAR
• IKNOW
• BLANCHE
• VISONE
• PAJEK
• NETVIZ

Good or bad, we are building strong relationship with each other through a virtual network and social media analysis is exploiting the same in all possible ways.

Happy blogging, posting, tweeting and what not.. :)

A step closer to GA

Two amazing sessions last week which i would like to summarize below.

Working on homework assignement-1, I got a little comfortable using the Google Analytics tool. I explored as much as possible to understand the tool before working on the assignment.

So two main aspects I understood were the mechanical aspects that includes the time line and the other metrics such as bounce rate, page views, exit rate that contribute to the Analytical aspects.The time frame can be set using the calender feature which gives us the privilege on selecting the time frame we intend to see the data from. Upon freezing a time window and looking at the data pattern, we have to start answering intriguing questions about the pattern.

One major notion that nailed me is " Bounce rate by itself is not a good metric for decision making". Very true, in my opinion, various combinations such as Bounce rate + time spent on page + content of the page together play an important role in decision making,

That being said, I witnessed a great informative session on Wednesday where every team presented their suggestions and findings on Homework-1. I was amazed to look at innovative recommendations made on analysis through the same data. Main points i learnt were,

1. Understand your client requirements
2. Know the target audience
3. Justify your recommendations

I hope we did a good job with our Homework assignment-1. With all the inputs and feedback I believe we can do better in the assignments going forward.

Keep blogging, posting, tweeting and what not :)

BI to me..

Been two classes, brainstorming ones, too much of information had been discussed and i admit, i am completely new to this subject.

Business Intelligence is interesting and is vast. I would like to put down my thoughts about BI and predictive analyses here.

Too many videos and stuffs had been tweeted and posted already ,  To me BI is making some meaning or value out of numbers. How meaningful it is and how can it be used in the business transformation is all that matters.

It is a combination of

• Statistics
• Technology
• Strategies
• Business process

Most impressive topic was ‘Predictive Analysis’. I see them in my mails box every day, e-mails from Amazon giving me an option of what I might like to shop based on my previous purchases. I learnt more about this predictive analyses through web.

What is Predictive analytics?

Analyze trend or pattern in both historic and current data to identify opportunities. It is used for predicting the present and shape the future. It involves application of advanced algorithms and statistical technique to build a model.

This video explains it all,

Okay, now this is fascinating me. On the other hand, it is overwhelming when I think about the infrastructure this demands.

I look forward to learning more in the coming sessions.