Two new Facebook communities by media houses

Observed these two communities on Facebook recently created by Times of India (TOI) and ABP (The largest media group in eastern India) and felt like doing a quick post.

It’s the age of social media and print media houses have realized that they will lose connect with new readers if they are not what is now called ‘social’, i.e. active and effective on social networking sites (Facebook, Twitter, Instagram etc).

TOI being one of the smartest in the business, had started being social long back. ABP being the quintessential Bengali-run business, has realized it much later. They have set up a division called ABP Digital to spearhead their digital initiatives.

TOI has recently started a Facebook community called ‘Kolkotha’ and has been widely promoting it on Times of India, Ei Samay (its Bengali daily) and other publications may be. The community is dedicated to unleashing the talkative Bengali Kolkatan share his/ her endless thoughts on selected subjects. However, it doesn’t proclaim to be meant for only the Bengali. Anyone game for talking is welcome.

ABP had probably made a quick note of it and it soon followed in opening a similar themed Facebook community called ‘ABP Tumi Na Thakle’. However, having said that ABP is a laggard in anything digital, Tumi Na Thakle has turned out to be more engaging than TOI Kolkotha.

How? Simple- TNK is bringing up more things for discussion and setting the patrons thinking and responding (by patron I mean someone who ‘like’s a community on Facebook). And that’s precisely meeting its objective. Whereas Kokotha has been running its 15-word story contest for quite some time and doing nothing else (Remember, in the super fast world of digital, even two weeks can be ‘quite some time’) .

ABP is connecting to basic elements of Bengali persona- Sense of humour, sentiment, passion- through its posts on the community wall with nicely done creatives. Its creatives have a bright yellow & black colour palette, whereas Kolkotha has a palette full of dull shades aiming to give its creatives a vintage touch. To me, the TNK creatives are more appealing.

Here are some of the creatives from ABP Tumi Na Thakle and TOI Kolkotha.

The popular pun 'DiPuDa', which sounds like someone elder 

called 'Dipu', means Bengali's eternal favourite holiday destinations- 

Digha, Puri and Darjeeling.

Wish to come back again on this sometime in near future.

  

#TOI #ABP #Kolkotha #ABPTumiNaThakle #KolkataConnect #BengaliConnect #TalkativeBengali 

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The Ask Me Foodies Meet-up

Ask Me is the newbie in online local search space. It differentiates itself by marrying deals, classified ads and e-commerce along with a dial-in service on a single web platform called www.askme.com. It calls itself “A disruptive new age consumer brand” which “Helps users to have access to hyper-local information 24X7”.

As food is no. 1 search category on Ask Me and happens to be a wonderfully interactive topic, to create buzz the Ask Me team has been holding meet-ups with local foodies in various cities, starting with and Jaipur. The Kolkata leg, which was the thirteenth in the series, was held on 12^th July at The Corner Courtyard. A large bunch of foodies (food bloggers, Zomato reviewers, members of Facebook group Kolkata Foodies etc) gathered to attend it on the Sunday afternoon.

To make it effective, the event was designed with was more of a mix of interaction and interesting contests than one-sided brand talk. The innovative décor of the venue (recreating an old house with courtyard, where it was actually held, decorated with bookracks and nice wall pieces, with old world charm all over it) helped make it informal and let the audience feel at ease. Randeep Kaur, Senior Manager Marketing (who sent out email invitations herself) helmed the presentation and she kept joking about making the ‘boring’ presentation ‘short’. Well, boring it was not; on the contrary, colourful and informative in a precise manner.

Let’s see what’s in Ask Me for a visitor. It’s primarily a local search service, so you can search for anything like contact details of mobile phone and electronic goods dealers, salons, professional institutes, restaurants and clinics. To engage with its target audience, it has built communities of popular topics- Fashion, travel, wellness, education, gadgets and weddings. They are packed with useful information and interactivity. For example the Fashion community lets a member create lookbooks, upload blogs, images, contextual videos; Travel talks about Bollywood travel destinations, i.e. locations where popular Hindi movies were shot, travel deals; Education has expert hangouts and Wedding has planning tools. It is also a deal aggregator, so you can find select deals from various sources featuring. Visit the site to find out more.  

The site lists more than 2 lakh restaurants & food joints and is present in more than 150

cities in with over 5.5 million listings. They claimed that there are many cities which were yet to have a Zomato and footprint.

To hook foodies they have soft launched a Food Ambassador programme (It’s not yet launched online). Here a foodie can write 10 fresh reviews and get a meal voucher for two and refer foodie friends to get bonus vouchers. He/ she can keep writing and getting meal/ shopping/ movie/ spa vouchers. Cool, no?

There are two ongoing series on the site-

In the Food section, there is 1000 Best places to Eat- Food experts Rocky and Mayur visit various restaurants and food joints across the country to pick names for the list of 1000.  A member can upload a video review of a restaurant. If it is liked by them, the member gets a chance to meet them.

The travel section has none other than Vir Sanghvi helming The Great Indian Safari where he brings to you choicest travel destinations in and abroad which appeals to various travel needs (annual vacations to weekend gateways) and all members in the family.

The audience got served a constant supply of a no. of finger foods (mostly veg though) and mocktails during the meet, including thin crust pizza slices and chicken satay which I liked.

The cheerful emcee engaged the audience in between sessions. The topic of favourite street food and its location expectedly fetched the highest response and it had to be wrapped up as it seemed endless. I was a little amused as some of the names weren’t street food/ drink, like Doodh Cola at Balwant Singh’s Dhaba or kochuri at Putiram.

Big reviewer on Zomato and food blogger Rajdeep talks as another big reviewer Rounak looks on

Presentation over, chef Chayan and Surojit from the restaurant took us through a session on food plating which showed how to present food in a house party. It was followed by two rounds of a food plating contest participated by audience members.

Food plating session on

Food plating contest- round 1

Food plating contest- round 2

A plate in the contest

Another interesting contest came up next where a participant had to taste a soup just prepared by the chefs and list out its ingredients. Those with most no. correct entries won.

It ended with a small buffet with live pasta (vegetarian again!) and cakes (cheesecake and chocolate cake). I, like many, loved the cheesecake and polished off a few. It just flew off the plate whenever it was refilled.

 The cheesecake

Overall an engaging meet-up where I met new foodies and foodie friends and had a good time over food. Looking forward to the online experience.

#Askme  #AskmeFoodiesMeetup

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A teaser

Liked this teaser on Facebook. Any guess what it is about?

The new serial novels in Robbar

Loved the two new serial novels by Swapnamoy Chakraborty and Ashok Kumar Mukhopadhyay started in the last issue in Robbar - the complimentary Sunday magazine distributed with Sangbad Pratidin (Read my earlier post No Sunday without Robbar).

Swapnamoy's Holdey Golap starts in 1995 in the AIR office in Kolkata. Aniket, the producer of Health and Science shows, is seriously pondering over letters that regularly come in from remote corners of Bengal bearing sex-related personal queries. He is taking a pathbreaking and one of the boldest ever initiatives to produce a show to address the queries in a place as conservative and archaic as Akashvani.

I like Swapnamoy's writing. He is a leading name among this generation's authors.

Ashok Kumar Mukhopadhyay's Aat-ta Naw-tar Surjyo starts long ago, in 1964, in a village called Joypur, near Mogra in Hooghly district, with the story of a struggling family man - Nibaran Chandra . It has an earthy feel.

Keenly waiting to read the next issue for these two.

You can read the issue online here.

Srabanti and Ananya - most searched on KC

Srabanti (Picture on top) tops as the most-searched celebrity on Kolkata Curry, closely followed by Ananya Chatterjee (Picture above), as the blog traffic analysis by Blogger.com shows! And it's happening for the last few months. A true reflection of how their work is working for them in the popularity charts.

Ananya: the most searched

The blog stats showed an interesting insight: Ananya Chatterjee, the national award-winning actress from the city is not only the most-searched celebrity on this blog since May, 2010, her name is the 'Most searched keyword' leading to my blog during this period too! And no other keyword is even close to being comparable. The second keyword counts far less than even half of the count of Ananya.

Naturally the only dedicated post Ananya- the glam avatar has fetched the highest view among text-based posts during the said period.

When I first saw Ananya in a television series called Chena Mukher Sari years back, I found her acting skill impressive and thought she had potential. Mentioned her as one of the faces from television that deserves a big screen break in another post named Search for new faces in 2007 when she had hardly made a mark, having appeared in films like Tok Jhal Mishti, Raat Barota Paanch and Aamra.

Thus the insight is thoroughly pleasing indeed.

Kolkata on Twitter I

Twitter is increasingly becoming a regular interaction platform for the who's who of Kolkata. Just spotted a well-known distributor-exhibitor-actor's tweet to the best known film & TV production and distribution house of the city (Twitter ID in co.'s name, though the partners have their own IDs and tweet regularly) suggesting to shift a well-awaited film by an acclaimed Bengali filmmaker starring a superstar to shift the release date from December '10 to avoid a clash with the Feluda release and a love story (Bengali). Such interactions happen generally on mobile, if not in person.

One also gets to know knows who attended which party, saw which play or movie with who (at home or theatre), who ditched who on a promise etc. Not to mention lots of pleasantries regularly exchanged among the entertainment fraternity of Kolkata in tweets. So you can experience the vibes. A curious development indeed.

A hot debate on Facebook

Indranil Roy, a noted journalist of Ananda Bazar Parika, wrote on Facebook about taking a lesson from Raj Kumar Hirani showed in the making of '3 Idiots' in its recently released DVD........and it sparked a red-hot debate participated by producers, directors, actors of Kolkata, beside others (including yours truly).

Follow it here and drop your take in the comments section below.

Kolkata on social media

You get to know the result of an ongoing football match sitting at your desk, the accident that just took place a few kilometres away from your office, the current state of mind of a dear friend, see beautiful photographs of the day just shot by a friend or e-friend, know about an eagerly-awaited film's group just formed, join it and interact with its makers, and apart from all this and more, read the comments posted to a post by the member's friends and join the conversation......on Facebook that has hooked Kolkata. Orkut is passe.

You get to know what your favourite film stars are doing now: when and what Priyanka is shooting, when Konkona is lazing, Raima Sen is travelling, when Karan Johar is feeling exhausted after a rigorous gym session and what Bipasha is eating. You know when a star goes to the gym to shed the little weight she put on, how another is promoting his film, more interestingly what Abhishek is telling Bipasha or Priyanka and Amitabh Bachchan are telling the world. Closer home you get regular updates from Jeet about his work and life and Mahendra Soni about his films.......on Tweeter. And you don't get to know a large chunk of it in traditional media (Rather you get to read the tweets of a celeb in the morning newspaper, that you have already read last evening ). It's addictive to be in Tweeter if you wanna closely follow the celebs.

A long-delayed post. But now onwards Facebook and Tweeter, the faces of social media, will feature regularly at this space, about their Kolkata connection and otherwise.

Thana Theke Aschhi

Thana Theke Aaschhi- Saron Dutta's screen adaptation of the Bengali drama of the same name written by Ajit Gangopadhyay sixty years ago, featuring Ajitesh Bandopadhyay and Tripti Mitra, and not a remake of the well-known Uttam Kumar film, also of the same name, as revealed by the director, is hitting the theatres on 29 January.

While the Facebook group on the film, a thriller, is uncannily silent (No discussions by any of the 216 memners, not even by the producer who's the admin), with the solo thread posted by me last July requesting a character sketch, the latest addition there are the stills. Perhaps the makers didn't find a better way to promote it on Facebook. Bangla cinema, especially alternative cinema, really needs a social media consultant. It does make sense to make the best of this emerging media platform at hardly any cost, thereby suiting the tiny promotional budget of alternative cinema.

Here's some select stills.

Cinemania- the new Facebook group

Have been looking forward to a cinema group for quite some time in Facebook where some sensible, regular discussions on cinema take place. Just joined this group called Cinemania on an invitation from a friend. The first look is satisfactory. The emphasis is on Bangla cinema was something I liked a lot.