Since last few days a debate about Net Neutrality is going on among Netizens. Airtel Zero, TRI, Government, DOT, Flipkart, Inertnet.org, Facebook and Reliance geo are the important entities involved into this. Let’s see what the case is.

The public infrastructure should be equally accessible to everyone. Irrespective of gender, nationality, or wealth a person should be able to access the same which others can. This is the fundamental of Net Neutrality. Internet should not be governed and controlled by anyone and you should not be forced to see or not to see any content on the Internet. The Free Internet is a term related to accessibility of it and not Cost.

Now we know the ideology of equality and Neutrality exists in theory only. Be it temple, roads, air or water the richer have more privilege then the poorer, or at least one would have to settle with less or no choices. You love to drink Pepsi but still you will have to settle with Coke, why? Because you get it “free” with the burger you are buying. Though it is not free, you are already paying cost of soft drink in burger only. But you still will have to buy it because you are forced to pay for it. In some cases you can buy Pepsi as well but at additional cost. And again only if they sell both.

That is what Airtel Zero, Facebook’s Internet.org and Reliance Geo is doing.

They are offering free internet access to users. But finally we know not even meals are free how Internet can be. There are many apps, websites, stores and Internet based companies selling their products and services online. The Telcos and these so called “Free Internet” providers charge these companies. Companies would be paying to be accessible on the Internet and against which the Telcos will block their competitors or will charge users if they use them. Like on Facebook’s free internet you will access Bing for free and that way Microsfot would fulfill their dream of being “No 1” Search engine. Or may be on telcos’ free internet you will be able to access Flipkart.com for free and wont be able to access amazon.in or will have to pay to use it. Mind will they will block hundreds and thousands of smaller sites as well during this.

The primary rules of Net Neutrality are:

1. All sites and services must be equally accessible
2. All sites must be accessible at same speed
3. The cost of access must be same for each site

But none of the big or small companies are in mood of following this.

There are multiple views and consequences of this and here are my thoughts on it.

• Cash reach Companies would be able to block competitors and this way will kill competition
• There are chances Internet Startups having less cash in their pocket wont be able to compete for bandwidth. So this kills Startups and young entrepreneur with less financial backup.
• Users are getting free internet access but wont have many choices. Will have to settle with whatever they are receiving
• There are chances free internet plans would be slower and will open up a new consumer segment who gets used to Internet and will move to faster, paid plans.
• Free internet will help Internet companies increasing their customer base and revenue.
• Companies would be diverting their marketing money to block competition so advertisement segment may impact adversely
• As competition is removed there are chances of buyers receiving inferior quality of products and services

Flipkart.com was part of Airtel Zero actually and after being criticized heavily, Just in 48 hours Flipkart has started talking about Net Neutrality. Telcos are really being hungry eating out superb revenue flow of Internet based companies and trying out all the ways to do so. When and how? It is just matter of time.

In the society where the access to god is even not neutral, how can we talk on Net Neutrality.

While passing by the journey we come across a point where the roads get diverged and both the paths lead to its desired destinations having their own advantages and disadvantages. In that case we are left with a little option to ask the other people passing by about which path we should take for a better result!

The same happened with us while we were re-branding from Indies to Milople. We re-branded ourselves successfully on website. We were almost done until we reached at a diverging point. The point was social media. Yes, the most important aspect of Marketing and branding for any IT or non IT Company. Social media can make or break your re-branding strategy and online presence.

We have planned differently for Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Google+, Youtube and other social media platforms as target audience and needs are different for all these. We decided to merge our multiple profiles into single page but the tough question was what to do with HR profile which manages recruitment, events and other HR related activities. While target customer segment of Milople is quite different, it also needs to be in live touch with college grades and Young professionals. We also organize an HR event named “Avishkar” to engage with young graduates. We understand this would be case with many of the IT and Non IT companies as well and hence here is excerpts of our discussion and conclusion.

Considerations:

Audience: An IT company’s target audience on HR front comprises of Students, IT geeks and developers. So, posts such as Current openings, latest digital news gather more engagement then that of corporate posts. Considering students and early developers as target audience, will they be interested in Technology and corporate posts? Obviously yes, since both the segments will be curious in knowing the latest news related to HR, their favorite area updates and overall information about the company. So, providing separate pages for HR and technical areas will make them distributed leaving nowhere with half-information. Single page solves the problem as needed information gets available at single platform itself.

Event post: Milople like few other major IT Companies conducts IT-fest/Tech-fest events in order to encourage students in their favorite area of expertise. From company’s perspective, it’s an HR cum branding event. Infosys has got AAGAAZ, TCS has got SHAASTRA, and we have AVISHKAR. So, whether to have a separate Facebook page of these particular event was the next question! It looks good at first sight. Separate page will have overall branding of the event. All the posts related to the event would be made available on a single page and many other boons, too. But, the question is for how long will you make your Facebook event page active with the posts? During the season of events, we will be having a perfect flow of the posts. But, what once the event is over? What will we post? Will the likers still like the post if it’s not related to event? To answer this question we came up with the solution to make event posting on the single corporate page itself and create a Facebook event for the same. Doing this will make the audience know about the event and they will even get additional information such as company details, HR news, technical knowledge etc.

Data Analysis: The most important and crucial analysis of having a single page. We can track posts, its reach and user-engagement. Accordingly, conclude on the following points:

• Which type of post fetches more “likes”?
• Best suited time for posting according to post reach
• What’s the overall user engagement of the page?
• Who are our active users?
• Segment the right target audience

Postings: Sometimes it happens (especially when you are dealing with product side) that one of your products is updated and we need to show the updated benefits on Facebook. If we are managing multiple pages then same post needs to be done on multiple pages such as corporate page, customer page and even the technical page of that particular domain. This results into division of reach resulting into decrement of the post visibility. Moreover, the common likers of the above mentioned pages might get irritated and leave the page. So, maintaining single page will solve the above issue. But, single page is liked by everyone – Whether student mass will accept these kind of post? Whether it will attract rising developers? Most probably yes, because seeing today’s world people are more attracted towards practical knowledge then that available from books.

SEO: When a company has its presence of different verticals such as Ecommerce, Web and software, Mobile apps, Magento etc. it becomes difficult to maintain single Facebook page from SEO’s perspective. Because single page will have diversified post with none of the two posts having same keywords in sequence. Now, it becomes tough for Google while ranking company’s Facebook page. Whereas, the same is not the case if you are into single vertical (say for example Magento) or have multiple Facebook page. Here, each page will have its own uniqueness and thus it will become a cake walk for a company from SEO’s perspective.

At the end of the day it doesn’t matter whether a company maintains single Facebook page or multiple pages. What matters most is the user-engagement, the conversions and the reach. Infosys maintains a single page whereas Congnizant have multiple pages. But, both the companies are successful in their own takes. Finally, we took decision of maintaining a single Facebook page with name Milople after a crazy, long discussion. The above mentioned facts were all discussed in that meeting which we thought should be passed by and thus marked this blog. And yes one more thing, there was one valid point from brand’s perspective: “It’s good to have 25k likes on a single page then to have 5k likes on 5 different pages ;)”

Note: I Thank all my fellow Miloplers tobe part of this discussion and specially Het Vaghela for drafting this post.