07/10/2013

Future of the Digital: A Vision Statement by Facebook India Head | ISBInsight

ISBInsight
Flagship research quarterly of the Indian School of Business (ISB)

Future of the Digital: A Vision Statement by Facebook India Head

Kirthiga Reddy, Head, Facebook India delivering the key note address at ISBs Digital Summit 2013

Presenting the keynote industry feature during the Digital Summit 2013 at the Indian School of Business (ISB), Kirthiga Reddy, Head of Operations for FacebookIndia explained the strides made thus far and the collective journey ahead, in the digital space. During a trip to the Everest base camp in 2012, Reddy was able to upload and share photos along the trek on her Facebook homepage. The ability to perform this operation in one of the remotest corners of the planet elucidates the power and reach of the social media as a direct consequence of the digital avenue. In her words, the thrill of seeing the top of the world with the naked eye facilitates the understanding of digital now, versus the digital future. From personal stories like learning about first steps of a friends baby to global issues like empowering a people to be courageous enough to launch the Arab Spring, digital media has changed peoples lives by helping them discover issues that matter to them the most. Having established the baseline in terms of the relevance and impact of digital today on our lives, Reddy then spoke about its future. She illuminated the extent to which our lives are intertwined with the digital future by laying out five specific strengths of the digital sphere. Mobile

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Future of the Digital: A Vision Statement by Facebook India Head | ISBInsight

The impact of mobile on digital is so profound that the two words are almost synonymous with each other. For the first time in 2013, the amount of time people spent in front of their television sets equaled the time spent on their mobile devices. Whether it is advertisements or banking transactions, there has been an incredible shift in the mode of operations since the advent of mobile digital media. Reddy opined that one of the reasons for the exponential growth of the usage of mobile devices is their ability to offer the user a sense of timelessness. That is, the world can now be accessed from the comforts of our living rooms, while travelling, or even literally from the top of the world, on the Everest. Given the high usage of internet on mobile devices, the paradigm of internet penetration rate has shifted focus as well. In 2011, for the first time more people were accessing the internet on their phones than on desktops. As a result, it is only befitting that Facebook employ its Mobile First, Mobile Best approach to counter the mobile blitz. Innovation and Information Not just the ability to access information, but the amount of information itself has increased astronomically since the advent of digital media. The point is driven home by a statistic Reddy shared from a Wall Street Journal article. From the beginning of time till 2003, five billion gigabytes of data were generated. Today, it takes ten minutes to generate the same volume. In todays world, there is interaction and movement of information in the form of people, books etc from one place to another. If the speed of this movement is contrasted with that of bytes of information, the latter is much faster, and sometimes far more efficient. This fact was critical to Facebooks early learning: information must be harnessed to meet the customers needs. The earliest Facebook adopters were limited in their capabilities to post photographs on their homepages. Subsequently, the company acknowledged that the rate at which profile pictures were been changed was far greater than expected and ensured the necessary capabilities were enhanced. In this regard, changes were made after looking at raw and broad customer trends. Personalization The flipside of the responding to the broad trends coin is providing a personalized and customized customer experience. On the one hand, due to the barrage of information users are exposed to on a daily basis, it has become increasingly difficult to capture a customers attention. On the other, getting the message across has become easier through a targeted approach. To illustrate, Reddy gave the example of how Samsung and Nokia studied their existing customer base and developed strategies to ascertain their behaviour and interest in some of the newer products the respective companies were rolling out. Personalization can be applied to a variety of verticals. For instance, a mobile music application can target segments of the population with similar interests and attract them using a personalized message. The power of digital also makes it possible to marry the offline with the online. Businesses have now
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Future of the Digital: A Vision Statement by Facebook India Head | ISBInsight

become increasingly local in their ability to understand their customers needs. Equalizing A very powerful attribute of digital is its capacity to equalize its users. The ability to communicate with people keeping all socio-economic barriers aside encourages and empowers freedom of expression. Reddy gives the example of how all the chefs in a particular restaurant were limited in their abilities to read and write but they knew how to use their phone, and thus, Facebook. The ability to market an idea or a product through the digital medium ensures a much larger audience in terms of reach and magnitude than traditional methodologies. A fledgling entrepreneurial venture has the ability to grow into a flourishing business because there is substantial demand for the product in another part of the country or even the world. Future of Digital The most important aspect of the digital revolution is access to the internet. Reddy commended the efforts of companies like Samsung and Nokia for making mobile devices affordable and as a result easier to access. She predicted that as a result of the digital revolution, networks will be far stronger and robust five years from today, thus connecting the next five billion people across the planet. Access to the internet facilitates access to information and thereby opportunity, which research suggests is strongly correlated with job creation and subsequently GDP growth. And this is a position societies across the globe aspire to reach. Uma Ganti of the PGP Class of 2014 compiled this post for ISBInsight. This entry was posted in Knowledge Session and tagged Digital Media, e-marketing, Mobile Marketing, Networked Economy on September 25, 2013 [http://blogs.isb.edu/isbinsight/future-of-the-digital-avision-statement-by-facebook-india-head/] .

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