Karthik S | beastoftraal.com

Hippo, Mast Kalandar and lessons in sampling and social communications

October 20, 2011 by Karthik S

A couple of weeks ago, I had tweeted (and Facebooked. And Google+ed) about how I prefer Aliva over Hippo for casual munching. I had tried Hippo when they had launched and didn’t seem to like it as much as I liked their…

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Real-time? Really?

October 17, 2011 by Karthik S

Two days ago, I wanted to buy a birthday gift for my son. He wanted a video game, like most kids of his age – he turned 8 today, incidentally. He had seen a couple of gaming consoles at his friends’ place…

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The incestuous nature of self-praise on Twitter Retweets

October 8, 2011 by Karthik S

The Twitter world is usually split right at the center over one interesting point – why do people retweet the compliments they get? It seems particularly odd when celebrities do it and do it with alarming regularity. Here’s an example from Chetan…

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5 specific instances of social communication and how brands can deal with them

September 28, 2011 by Karthik S

One of the most basic facets of social media is that it is a many-to-many communication mode and such conversations impact and affect many more people than the 2 people who may actually be in the conversation, simply because such a conversation…

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Digital is NOT social

September 20, 2011 by Karthik S

Considering the fact that a lot of people have started using ‘digital’ and ‘social’ interchangeably, let me try and make sense out of this misguided practice. To start with, digital is not the same as social. At best, social could be a…

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Social business? What Leela Group of hotels did is social business!

September 12, 2011 by Karthik S

If you’ve been reading this blog long enough, you’d remember the post on Leela Palace (Bangalore), a 5 star hotel, turning away a cyclist citing a policy that does not allow cycles inside its premises! This was back in March 2010. A…

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Brand bashing by social media stars – a perspective

September 10, 2011 by Karthik S

After writing about Pantene last weekend, I also happened to notice some possible social media missteps by Yash Raj Films’ youth film division, Y Films, where they called a film critic ‘idiot’. On Twitter, in full public glare. One of the aftermaths…

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