What ‘Calibra’ mean for Marketers?

Facebook announced it is launching a financial subsidiary in 2020 called Calibra that will include a digital wallet offered as a standalone app and built into WhatsApp and Messenger. The digital wallet will enable global users to make financial transactions using Libra, the newly formed currency powered by Blockchain technology backed by Facebook and a number of leading financial, technology and venture capital organizations, including Mastercard, Uber, PayPal and Andreessen Horowitz. Libra will be governed by the Libra Association, formed to promote adoption of the currency and developer platform.

Facebook is still in the early stages of this effort. Addressing privacy concerns, the company has said it will not share user account information or financial data with a third party without a user’s consent. Facebook also said Calibra’s user data would not be used for ad targeting on Facebook’s platforms. That doesn’t mean there won’t be implications for an advertiser. Even without using Calibra’s data for ad targeting purposes, Facebook expects its move into the cryptocurrency market will have a positive impact on ad revenue.

Marketers are paying attention to the cross-border payment capabilities Facebook’s Calibra will offer. It’s a way for Facebook to bring e-commerce into developing countries, where they don’t have stable currencies or means to pay. Whether or not Facebook will be able to drive global e-commerce within its apps via Calibra depends entirely on the success of the Libra cryptocurrency it is helping to develop.

Data privacy issues, customer trust issues, regulatory uncertainty, the absence of China and many other strict Cryptocurrencies regulated countries, other competing but more mature ‘good enough’ technologies are all great barriers that Facebook needs to overcome. Creating a way for worldwide users to engage with brands — and purchase from them regardless of their geographic location — could dramatically impact Facebook’s business model and further cement its dominance as a social platform. But, it’s not going to be smooth sailing for Facebook in the coming months.

Much is riding on the success of the Libra cryptocurrency for Facebook. But, should it succeeds, marketers are ready for the added e-commerce and customer experience possibilities it could provide. It’s a way Facebook can keep users inside of its platforms — Instagram, Facebook, WhatsApp — longer, while, at the same time, increasing conversion rates for e-commerce advertisers because of the expectation will be that consumers will be checking out using the Libra coins, and it will be all one seamless experience.

Know about Chatbots

Messaging platforms are coming of age, and chatbots are all the rage now, they are touted as the next app like wave in communication industry. Artificial Intelligence (AI) and Machine Learning (ML) are advancing by the day, there is a layer of it being added to everything we know, smart cars, smart homes, smart shoes and of course messengers have become platforms on which commerce and brand communications are being built now.

There are three key drivers shaping the market for chatbots. Firstly, large communication technology companies from the likes of Facebook, Amazon, Microsoft and Google are making it conducive for building chat based products, they have opened up their respective messaging platforms for developers to build and innovate on top of it. Even Apple has announced APIs for Siri, a move to allow developers into what has been a walled garden so far. So to say, chatbots are no longer standalone products but part of an ecosystem just like how apps are built and distributed on app stores.

Secondly, there's a rising usage of Messengers over traditional SMSes; recently, Zuckerberg announced that 60 billion messages are sent over Facebook Messenger and WhatsApp every day, together they are thrice bigger than the 20 billion SMS sent. WeChat in China has set an impeccable precedence to show the world how a thriving metamarket can be built within a chat app. WeChat is more like a virtual hypermarket on top of which others businesses have built stores through chat apps.  

Third macro factor driving the rise of chatbots is the Gen next's growing preference to chat based interfaces. Messaging has surpassed social media to become the preferred method of communication for millennial. Mary Meeker's research shows that 69 percent of millennial prefer web/internet chat, social media, and messaging to other channels such as talking on phone or IVRS. In past decade we saw brands enabling customers to do everything online, from ordering pizzas with emojis to banking with hash tags, we have seen it all. Chatbots is the emerging new world order.

All of this gives genuine reasons for marketers to consider investing their time and efforts to build chatbots and make it an effective means to allure new wave of customers their way. Chat apps/ bots is not a magic wand one can wave to make a product or service awesome. In foreseeable future, chatbots are only likely to be another customer touch point or an interface to existing business, it can perhaps slowly replace the load on IVRS and Email based customer support.

Chatbots are slowly evolving into an enabler, a digital concierge. But that evolution comes with a subset of challenges, one of them is the multi-agent problem. Consider this, Google's upcoming messenger Allo allows user to add @Google in a group chat and invoke it for getting answers or to get things done. Besides the multi-agent problem, there's another task for marketers to grapple with, to ensure a seamless experience for people using chatbots and smart assistants. 

Communication is a tough business:the way a message is written is not how people preceive it. Just like humans have selective distortion problems, bots have context and natural language processing (NLP) problems. For now, the only jobs chatbots can take away are that of a few helpless souls working at call centres with pseudo American names and a fake accent.

Eight Technical Moguls without a Degree

In India, parents and most children give top priority to education. However, what the world of tech entrepreneurs has taught us is that one always need not have the best of education to become a millionaire. There have been numerous examples in the field of technology where geeks have managed to develop something new and taken the world by storm.

The best examples are Bill Gates and Mark Zuckerberg who never finished their education and dropped out of the best universities to start their companies to make not just Millions, but Billions of Dollars. Here are eight tech heads who are doing exceptionally well without a degree. Steve Jobs, dropping out at the age of 19, he made what Apple is today. Sadly cancer got the best of him, but then never stopped him to create the iPod and then the iPhone, till finally he gave up to the illness.

Bill Gates, the richest man in the world dropped out of college at the age of 20 and made Microsoft a leading PC and laptop OS brand. Michael Dell, left college at the age of 19 and worked his way to make a brand, which has supplied everything from Desktops to servers to the world. Evan Williams, left education when he was just 20 and worked hard to make billions of dollars, and a web social platform (Twitter) loved by all.

Travis Kalanick, Uber founder dropped out of college at the age of 21. Uber is not just a concept available in USA. Countries like India and Australia also have Uber. People do not call for a taxi or cab now; they call for an Uber and Travis. Larry Ellison shifted his focus from education to work when he was just 20. He successfully runs Oracle and also is as billionaire. Jan Koum dropped out of college at the age of 21 and founded Whatsapp. Mark Zuckerberg, the billionaire dropped out of college at the age of 21 and made the biggest social network in the form of Facebook.

Lessons from Indian Weddings

Preparing for a wedding in the family exposes one to the informal sector. There is an army of people working on various aspects of the wedding and it is an alive and thriving economy with various kinds of players. There is management excellence, skill and specialization, process orientation and quality checks. There is also an appalling lack of financial strategy and cash is king.

First, if one allows entrepreneurs into an activity, one creates a thriving ecosystem of ideas, innovation and specialization. From the caterer to the florist, decorator to the mehandi artist, each one has extended the range of products and services that they offer, so they are able to thrive in the competitive marketplace and offer value that they can charge for. The list of things they do is too long and a far cry from the simple weddings of the past.

Rituals that were long forgotten have made a comeback, dug out by an enthusiastic wedding planner who will arrange it in minutest detail. Weddings have become an industry run by this set of entrepreneurs. Second, an informal market hurts both buyer and seller. A florist, who has managed to get enlisted with a large hotel, can charge a bomb for the décor, while an informal artist who is unknown scrambles to find mandates, even at a fraction of cost.

Third, it is tough to find the basis for pricing when products and services are so customized. The sellers ensure that standardization is shunned wherever possible. From invitations that will be custom designed, to garlands that will be strung to match, every service provider will persuade the buyer to customize. Fourth, it is amusing to see how this market uses technology. Whatsapp dominates the scene, with image and videos flowing up and down all through the planning process.

Fifth, most of the service providers suffer from poor money management practices. Working capital is a big headache. Sixth, every one of them hates taxes. The demand side of the wedding market is driven by the cash rich tax evaders. In an age when taking a break from work to meet friends and relatives is so sought after, weddings offer the perfect opportunity for image crafting at one end and thanksgiving on the other and all things in between.