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While browsing Facebook I  came across Nokia Pakistan Page and found a spelling error in a picture showing Nokia’s latest smartphones. The image, which can be seen above shows spelling of “beautiful” as “beutiful“.

Admin of a page having a fan base of over 1 million should get images reviewed before uploading.

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Jazz Jazba introduces Facebook Zero in Pakistan, a lightweight and free-of-cost Social Networking interface that allows you to keep in contact with your Friends on Facebook.

Just log on to 0.facebook.com from your cellphone, and get connected to the free and fast version of the most popular Social Network on this planet!

More details on http://jazba.com.pk/services/facebook-zero.

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The page has been kicked off with a competition to enhance the celerbation of what many on facebook are calling the green-wash. The idea behind the competition is about nations support the team in green.

They are asking the supporters to join us and “Be the force behind team Pakistan” by telling the world that “WE are team Pakistan”.

If you want to be the force behind team pakistan you just have to register yourself with us. This will give you 1000 points or 1 entry into the competition. Every time you nominate a friend of yours to be the force behind pakistan team, you score 100 points if the friend accepts your request. If you are able to convince 10 people you will get 1000 points and another entry in the competition. Every 10 people you can recruit to support this cause will give you an additional entry into the Lucky Draw

The big prize is an an all paid trip to Abu Dhabi for 5 lucky winners to witness the Final T20 between Pakistan and England.

The post Mobilink Jazz Launches Facebook Page, Competition to Celebrate Team Pakistan’s Victory appeared first on TelecomPK.

Wateen has started Wateen Scouts, an exciting contest on its Facebook Page. Wateen is aiming to find Pakistanis can not only identify the problems around them, but possess the necessary initiative to do something about it in order to bring a positive change.

Anyone can take part in the contest by simply hitting ‘Like’ on the Wateen FB Page. This will take you to a page which will ask your name, email, phone, age, institute and city. The next page consists a  a short form which asks three simple questions:

1. Whats your idea?
2. Explain your idea?
3. How will you execute it?

The idea to change should mention the problem, how are you planning to cure the problem and how will it benefit to the community. The contest asks users to focus on the problems which affect their

• Family;
• Community; or
• City

So hurry up and try join Wateen Scouts if you are brimming with confidence and know that you are the one who can solve the problems of your community and bring a positive change.

The post Wateen Scouts – Encouraging ideas for change appeared first on TelecomPK.

But if you look in the details, it is evident that you should think twice before submitting your snaps and sensitive information. Your snaps can be downloaded by anyone!

To participate in the contest, anyone can send their photo  to zongbeautycontest@gmail.com or upload it directly on Facebook. The page is receiving massive response right from start of the competition. The prizes to be won are as follows:

Rules – Click to enlarge

Another point worth noting is the absence of judgement criteria and the judges in the rules pertaining to this competition. Moreover, the last point in the rules states that:

The information you provide will only be used by and for Zong

Couple it with another point in the rules

Also send your contact number, house address and city name in the email

The issue arising from these two statements is that privacy of contestants’ data cannot be assured as it is being sent to an email id which is on a free email service instead of a corporate Zong Email.

Moreover, the Zong landing image for this contest (inserted above) asks participants to send pics on Zong page or email, so even if a contestant uploads a pic on the page it may land in wrong hands.

Conclusion

Think twice before giving away your snaps and sensitive credentials for the small gifts on offer.

Such negligence on the page of a corporate company is unheard off, here are some suggestions for Zong’s marketing team to ponder on:

1. Rules regarding any competition should be carefully drafted
2. Corporate email id (xxx@zong.com.pk) should be used to ensure credibility
3. Only the winning contestants should have been asked to disclose such their credential details for delivery of prizes
4. Judging criteria and judges should be made clear

The post Alert: Zong Beauty Contest – Don’t Share Your Data! appeared first on TelecomPK.

A company official who requested anonymity confirmed that Ufone – in consultation with Research in Motion (RIM), the Canada-based manufacturer of BlackBerry – has installed a content filtering solution which restricts access to specific Facebook pages banned by the local authorities.

The development will help restore some confidence among BlackBerry users in Pakistan who were hit by a week long blackout of services including the infamous BB messenger and, unlike their foreign counterparts, were not compensated by RIM. Blackberry had announced it is offering free apps worth £63 to appease customers hit by its three-day global blackout. It is worth mentioning that BlackBerry’s app world is a service that is currently not available in Pakistan.

The content filtering solution may also help restore customer confidence in the device, as many BlackBerry users were looking to switch to other platforms like Apple’s iPhone or Android-powered devices as entire BlackBerry services are not available in the country.

It is much expected that other cellular operators will also suite and put specific content filter in place to make Facebook and Twitter Apps on their networks online.

The post Ufone Restores BlackBerry Facebook and Twitter Apps appeared first on TelecomPK.

Overview

Over the past decade, the telecom industry has been challenged by rapidly changing consumer demand and new market entrants that innovated to use open platforms to meet these rapidly changing needs. Needless to say, this alone has altered the future and face of communication drastically, away from traditional two way interpersonal conversations.

Traditional telecommunication providers (Telco’s) are fast losing market share, attention and an audience that could have once been there own. This is due to many reasons – it may be their own incompetence over the years as many disregard customer service and after sales interaction. But more than anything else from the internal side, it is an external breakthrough in the entire industry – and the consumers are loving it.

Internet-enabled communication models are the greatest threat to Telco’s around the world, one that is robbing them of existing and potential customers with quick sharing models. It remains to be seen if Telco’s can fight back and possibly find new opportunities for growth in a rapidly changing ecosystem which they cannot control. It is not simply a case of understanding and adapting to the new technology, but more about become experts with the extensive shift in communication behavior among users.

The new generation of digitally aware consumers now place Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, MySpace and other social networking web sites as their primary source of communication media. They are fueled by the increasingly affordable mobile internet (internet enabled) multimedia devices, high broadband penetration and of course growing acceptance of social software. All this is playing into the unsung needs of enthusiastic users, creative advertisers, CPG companies and small-to-medium enterprise Companies adaptive of social media save up my utilizing it to reach an engaged audience, building loyalty and staying in touch with partners, customers, suppliers and employees that are geographically dispersed.

There are two notable shifts in communication trends; the first being a change in patterns – from two way, point-to-point conversations to collaborative group-to-group communications. The second social networking phenomenon is reflected in the level of control over the communication environment as we see a transition towards open internet platform providers and away from Telco’s. The change was brought about by reasons stated above such as greater penetration of wireless communication networks and broadband services; including cheaper tech and open standards.

This brings the opportunity of innovative business models which have altered the competitive landscape in communications. These include:

Open and Free – Considered to be the biggest threats towards traditional services, this model offers one on one communication through an open internet platform. The most well known example in the market is Skype.

Gated Communities – Unlike the preceding model, they focus on a controlled environment and interaction with groups of similar interests and motives. It allows multiple communications instead of one on one within telecom controlled environments. Companies and professionals looking for reliable and secure communication environments are led by operator led collaboration services. Notable examples include the Premium accounts on LinkedIn and XING.

Shared Social Spaces (SSS) – Easily the most popular model followed by Facebook & MySpace, it facilitates collaboration on the open internet and become favored platforms of integrated communication. They trail with a communication infrastructure already in place, posing as a threat to Telco’s by creating cost and capacity issues for network providers with gaining a tremendous audience share.

Recommendations

In the short-term, traditional models are likely to maintain dominance as the industries across the globe slowly make their transition to more collaborative and open models of communication. But experts like myself believe that a significant shift can be expected in the long run; a shift towards models that facilitate sharing and collaboration due repeated instances of SSS attracting a more impactful and significant share of communication time. Between these two terms, I would advise Telco’s to begin laying the foundations towards a more open and freely collaborative future.

Step 1, Start by taking advantage of the window of opportunity in mobile social networking; use existing infrastructure (technical economies of scale) to cater to the B2B market and bolster capabilities to serve their evolving broadband communication needs.

Step 2, Acquire or partner (with players like Facebook, Twitter, MySpace and Skype) to proactively innovate the facilities customers will require for success.

Step 3, Generate additional revenue by enabling untapped participants in to your companies’ value chain access.

Step 4, Capture value from third party traffic by developing a business model around the concept.

Step 5, Work towards reducing the overall cost delivering high bandwidth content to users by fully utilizing computing and network infrastructure optimization techniques.

Over the long term, Telco’s should align the organization with the reality of change and begin to embrace two-way and many-to-many conversations to contribute towards the broader definitions of communication. They should have also have worked towards creating a fully integrated experience across fixed and internet mobile like PTCL’s Smart TV.

The C-Level leaders across Telco’s must accept these changes and prepare now, or risk being left behind in the rat race. They should educate themselves, into recognizing the speed and magnitude with which communication trends have shifted for the long term and prepare now to make brave changes to battle IT companies and information providers, vying for a the biggest chunk of communication time.

This post is also published at PMB. The author Babar Javed is the Managing Director of Mission Centenarian, health & fitness company founded in 2007, which comprises of a network of personal trainers in Karachi. He also works as the Marketing Director for Epoch Creatives (Pvt.) Ltd. and Program Director at the BodyBeat Recreational Centre (Pvt.) Ltd. Prior to all this, GlaxoSmithKline, Play TV & UBL Fund Managers had to put up with him. His key interests lie in saving the world, eliminating fat people, universal healthcare, free compulsory education & powering everything mechanical with green energy. For more information on his professional experience, visit his public LinkedIn Profile: http://www.linkedin.com/in/babarjaved

The post The Telecom Industry – Challenges & Solutions appeared first on TelecomPK.

In a country where the literacy rate is estimated at only slightly above half of the entire population and the lowest 40 per cent have less than one-fourth share in total household income, many question the efficacy of digital media as part of the marketing mix.

But that is the exact perception Symmetry Digital is determined to change with the launch of Digital Minds – a competition initiated by the company to inculcate the ‘digital mindset’ at grassroots level.

The competition, an industry initiative spanning over the next two months, targets the youth of Karachi in a bid that once the students involved in the contest graduate from universities and join the workforce, they will be able to act as catalysts for the promotion of digital marketing – a ‘smarter, cheaper and more measurable’ choice for advertisers, according to one expert.

To ‘internet’ and beyond

“The concept of digital media has been completely misunderstood in Pakistan,” said Adil Ahmed, the Chief Operating Officer of Symmetry Digital. He explained that people assume that the digital medium is restricted to the internet and fail to take into account other platforms – mobile phones, for example.

Cellular subscriptions have crossed the 99 million mark during the last financial year. “People do not realise this but the number of Facebook users in Pakistan has also increased to 2.5 million from the mere 0.25 million recorded in December 2008,” highlighted Ahmed.

However, according to the man behind one of the largest digital media agencies in the country, the mindset in Pakistan has not been able to evolve beyond the traditionally accepted mediums of marketing. “Since digital marketing is not being properly taught at local universities, the market cannot move beyond a certain penetration point,” contended Ahmed.

He may have a point as even the handful of courses that are taught on the subject focus on e-commerce and the internet. ‘Out-of-home’ digital platforms, for instance, are unheard of in Pakistan. These include interactive LED screens and augmented digital kiosks among other innovative mechanisms to communicate with the target market.

Hence, Digital Minds aims to fill the void by offering participants the opportunity to design innovative marketing plans that are either solely based on digital media or rely on it heavily.

Targeting

“The most important aspect of digital media is the ability to target a specific market,” declared the head of online strategy at a local media group.

Meanwhile, Ahmed termed the digital medium much more ‘measurable’ than, for example, television. “While we are not pushing for a complete digitisation of advertising, it must be realised that a suitable marketing mix is essential to achieve the desired results,” he maintained.

With companies constantly seeking to cut costs, reassessing the feasibility of above-the-line advertising tools deserves merit as not only are these techniques more expensive, their results are very difficult to measure since potential customers are targeted across the board, in a blanket attempt to capture attention.

Although there exists tremendous potential to capitalise on demographic data collected through digital interfaces, Ahmed pointed out that many companies in Pakistan have not made the effort to boost sales by tracking behavioural characteristics or psychographics.

“It is estimated by many that less than two per cent of the entire advertising expenditure is incurred on online campaigns – although there is no empirical research to back this figure,” he concluded.

via The Express Tribune

Marketeers and others reading this here, do you agree with the notion set above? What are your views about Digital Media in Pakistan? Do you see it growing?

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The Pakistan Telecommunication Authority (PTA) has blocked Facebook over a competition encouraging its users to post caricatures of Prophet Mohammad (PBUH) on the social networking site.

Earlier in the day, the LHC ordered authorities to block Facebook until May 31.

The depiction of any prophet is strictly prohibited in Islam as blasphemous and Muslims across the world staged angry protests over the publication of satirical cartoons of the Prophet Mohammed in European newspapers in 2006.

Controversy erupted in the conservative Muslim country last month when a Facebook user set up a page called “Draw Mohammed Day”, inviting people to send in their caricatures of the Muslim prophet on May 20.

The move angered thousands of young people and Muslim faithful in Pakistan, unleashing an online campaign and isolated protests that grabbed the government’s attention and the controversial page was blocked on Tuesday.

But a group of lawyers went a step further Wednesday and petitioned the court to order a blanket ban on Facebook in Pakistan.

Justice Ejaz Chaudhry of the Lahore High Court directed the Pakistan Telecommunications Authority (PTA) to block Facebook until May 31, when the court will open a detailed hearing into the case.

The PTA Director told the court the government has already blocked the particular link. About complete ban, he said internet services could face problems if the complete website was banned.

However, the court ordered complete ban till May 31.

A large number of religious clerics, students and lawyers were present in the courtroom.

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