“Nenjukulle,” a Tamil song composed by the Oscar-winning musician A.R. Rahman, seems poised to be this season’s breakout social media hit, days after it was first broadcast on Nov. 3 during “Unplugged,” a program on MTV India.

Sung by 24-year-old Shakthisree Gopalan, the mellifluous song features in the Tamil film “Kadal,” which is directed and produced by Mani Ratnam and is slated for a December release.

The lyrics were penned by the Tamil poet and lyricist Vairamuthu. The opening lines of the song roughly translate to:

In my heart
I’ve tied you

In my heart
I’ve tied you
I don’t know in which direction my day rose?

You gave me a sweet glance
And this heart of mine became a mirror glazed by water

A five-minute video posted on the MTV India Web site, featuring Ms. Gopalan and Mr. Rahman, accompanied by an orchestra, was viewed over 139,000 times by Monday evening and received 44,000 likes on Facebook.

Ms. Gopalan, a relative newcomer, has also co-sung the title song of the Bollywood film “Jab Tak Hai Jaan,” starring Shah Rukh Khan, which comes out Tuesday.

The fast-growing popularity of “Nenjukulle” is reminiscent of the success of “Why This Kolaveri Di” last year, a Tamil song interlaced with bits of English, which ultimately became an international sensation. Whether an all-Tamil song can create the same magic remains to be seen.

No doubt about it, Gangnam style has been the biggest popular culture phenomenon in 2012.

What it tells about the current state of popular culture?

1. There is always demand for a catchy pop song.
You can debate about the artistic and musical merits of PSY, but you cannot deny that structurally it is typical and effective pop song. All the elements of the perfect summer jam are there: catchy chorus, shout-outs to sexy ladies and the signature dance which you can perform even after few pints. Gangnam Style is just the Macarena for 2012. Or Ketchup Song, Lambada… You catch my drift.

This brings us also to the important point about YouTube. The Internet might have revolutionized the distribution and the traditional business model of the music. It has not as much changed people´s taste for music. Although major record labels are struggling, there is still huge demand for mainstream music. If you watch top 10 of the most watched music videos in YouTube, they are all from major label artists. PSY was huge in South Korea before Gangnam style and hardly a rookie, having released his first album already in 2001.

Gangnam style would probably be not as big hit without YouTube, but it would have been hit nevertheless. You will always have gatekeepers in popular culture. The gatekeepers just might not be the same ones as before.

2. The cultural focus shifts to Asia
If you watch any new Hollywood movie, you are more than likely to see one (or all) of the following things:

a) One or more of the characters are Asian-origin (i.e. wife of Bruce Willis is Chinese in The Looper)
b) There are cultural references to Asia (i.e. Chinese gambling dens in Premium Rush)
c) The film takes place in certain Asian country (i.e. Bourne Legacy scenes in Manila)

The main reason for this is naturally the rising importance of Asian countries as the target market for Hollywood movies. As a movie producer, you have to take Asian countries in account to maximize profits and to secure investments in the future.

This cultural exchange is not unilateral. As the western companies concentrate more on Asia to keep afloat, especially the western teenagers consume more Asian culture to find their own thing and to differentiate from their predecessors.

Peculiar thing happened few years back in Finland. The teenagers started to dig everything Japanese. Whether it was J-Pop, Manga, Anime or the weird costumes. The cultural glue was the interest to everything Japanese. The same person might go to see heavy metal and dance act on same week, as long it was Japanese.

This goes against of my traditional view of how subcultures emerge. As a teenager I consumed popular culture that was majorly from USA. However it was more about certain genres than geographical areas.

K-Pop phenomenon was already making major waves before Gangnam style and something big was bound to happen. Gangnam style was just the most western-friendly, uniquely odd and the catchiest song to break into global mainstream. As a western listener you do not necessarily know where Gangnam is, or what oppa means but you can nevertheless get into singing the chorus and doing the horse-dance.

3. Ready for remix, build for parody, made for mash-up.
There used to be app for that. Nowadays there is Gangnam Style –parody for that. Even in North Korea. Here is the Singaporean version:

With current digital tools and democratization of technology, it is easier to become active culture participant. Parody is the highest form of flattery. If it has not been remixed, it does not exist. Gangnam style is the perfect song to make mash-ups on. As the money from music business now comes from different sources than traditional record sales, you have to do more than just good songs. You have to create miniature social movements, where people can participate.

Also our view of idols has evolved. When before the idol was someone you could not reach, nowadays you can just tweet to your favorite artist. And as record sales decline, the probability is just getting higher that the idol will actually respond as well. Reflecting to that PSY, who is self-proclaimed “fat father of two”, might just be the perfect idol type for the new century. At least compared to the polished superhumans of traditional broadcast era.

Will PSY be able to match the success of Gangnam style?
Most likely not.
Has he already left a permanent mark in popular culture?
Most likely.

“Job Search” behind the search for love. Also, I just noticed the “69″ inside the train. Nice touch, PSY, nice touch.

Do I sound exasperated? That’s because I am. I like “Gangnam Style”—it’s funny, it’s catchy, and the horse-dance is good exercise. I don’t get how it got so viral, but anything that viral always leaves people wondering. What I’m sick of is less the song itself being repeated over and over and over and over again—and over and over again—it’s more the way people have been talking about it, here in South Korea.

Did I mention that one of South Korea’s biggest newspapers, Chosun Ilbo, wrote those journalistic pieces on “Gangnam Style”‘s effects on babies and soccer players? Sure, Chosun Ilbo is reputed to encourage people’s national pride in different measures and styles—this time with “Gangnam Style”—but its headlines are a pretty good indicator of what’s lacking in the mainstream talk surrounding the new K-pop syndrome.

For one, the talk is pretty shallow. Feel-good achievements of PSY’s “Gangnam Style” appear nightly on the evening news—PSY appearing on MTV, breaking the Guinness World Records for the most number of YouTube likes (sorry LMFAO), and more. And viewers are able to feel good about the news because PSY’s achievements are Korean achievements. So two, the talk surrounding “Gangnam Style” very often has nationalist undertones. K-pop debates usually do, although there’s not much Koreanness to the actual music.

Why don’t we talk about something interesting? I’ve heard enough of how popular and supercalifragiawesome “Gangnam Style” is. Why don’t we talk about the difference between PSY and Girls’ Generation and Wonder Girls? Why did the vacuous Girls fail where PSY didn’t? (Did my question already give the answer away?) Why don’t we analyze the nuanced messages of “Gangnam Style,” the way the Atlantic did? Why don’t we discuss its successes, but also its foreseeable limitations, and how to improve upon them for the future of K-pop? Why don’t we talk about K-pop music, instead of K-pop nation?

Personally, what I’d like to talk about the most is the irony of it all. The video mocks the hollow materialism of Gangnam Style, but by becoming a viral hit, it itself has become a powerful tool in the pursuit of riches. I don’t mean the song’s royalties—it has garnered relatively little, less than $3,300,000—but I mean the marketing companies, countless TV shows, and even PSY himself, who is the new face of LG’s LTE advertisement “U+ Style.” There’s even a new book called “Gangnam Style,” which has none of the nuanced subversiveness of the video. It talks about different rich people, and how to start thinking like them—like “Gangnam Style”—and get rich ourselves.

The Atlantic article that I mentioned before includes an out-of-character quotation from PSY, and I’ll restate it here. “Human society is so hollow, and even while filming [the music video] I felt pathetic. Each frame by frame was hollow.” Does Jaesang Park have Gangnam Style, or what?

P.S. Sorry about the Korean links. I promise they’re links to legitimate articles, not random sites with Asian characters that look like zeroes and stick-figures. 

It’s Wednesday, we’re halfway through the week and it won’t be long before the weekend, hooray! So to beat the mid-week blues I thought I’d share with you one my favourite virals of all time….Sneezing Panda!!

This panda is just TOO CUUUUUUUUUTE!!!

Does anybody else think that this is just the cutest thing ever?? Watching a panda at the zoo can mesmerise you for hours….but when this video hit the youtube waves, it just went absolutely wild.  Originally uploaded over 5 years ago in November 06, this video has garnered 127,888,734 hits…..and counting! Madness!

And here’s my cute baby picture of the day:

Cute Babies and Cute Dogs....awwwwwww!

Hugs and Kisses

Derek x

derek@ineligibleforgreatness.com

Be sure to add your own predictions here or on our open thread, where Mashable readers have been sharing their own ideas for what might lay ahead in the New Year.

1. Facebook Growth Plateaus, but Engagement Continues to Surge

With more than 800 million users, Facebook is running into a nice problem to have: There are only so many more people to add. While the site will continue to grow in emerging markets that are only now getting online, Mark Zuckerberg has shifted the conversation to sharing and engagement, arguing that sharing on Facebook grows exponentially and that users will double the amount they share each year.

That sharing is driving users to spend more time on site — the average Facebook user now spends nearlyseven-and-a-half hours on the site each month, up from four-and-a-half hours just two years ago. With the arrival of Timeline, increased focus on media and entertainment consumption, and continued growth in social games, engagement will surge even further in 2012.

2. New Social Metrics for Ads Gain Adoption

The “death of the page view” as a meaningful metric has long been predicted, but never seems to materialize. While I don’t see that happening in 2012 either, I do see the rise of new metrics that measure social engagement and price advertising and sponsorship dollars accordingly.

We’ve already seen the likes of Klout and Ad.ly develop business models around charging for influence. More recently, Starcom MediaVest Group, a subsidiary of Publicis, teamed up with ShareThis to pilot a new metric for ad buying that values content based on how often content is shared and how impactful those shares are. While 2012 won’t see traditional models like CPM and CPC advertising thrown out the window, look for new metrics to make a meaningful impact as sharing becomes central to more media companies.

3. YouTube Gains Popularity in the Living Room

While Google TV has been widely dubbed a flop, the company is planning on a full-fledged reboot in 2012 and is optimistic to say the least. Google-owned YouTube will undoubtedly be a default “channel” on all of those devices. At the same time, YouTube is investing heavily in premium programming, as well as designing user experiences for the big screen. When you combine these two forces — not to mention the prospect of an Apple TV and other emerging players in the connected TV space — YouTube is poised to disrupt the television landscape. We’ll likely get a glimpse at what lies ahead for YouTube in the living room next week at CES, where the company is set to host a press conference.

4. A Meaningful Second Tier of Social Networks Emerges

I’ve often said that social media is no longer about “the next Facebook or Twitter.” While I think that remains true, for the first time in several years there’s a meaningful second tier of social networks emerging.

In 2011, sites like Pinterest and Tumblr experienced hockey stick growth, going from niche to mainstream in short order. In 2012, additional services like Instagram, Quora and Path are positioned to carve out significant audiences as users look for more personalized and curated experiences than the top tier social networks can deliver. Google+ will also continue to make noise as the search giant pulls more levers to try and make its biggest social bet to date pay off.

5. Celebs Pour Money Into Social Media Startups

It might be easy to dismiss the current surge of investments in startups by celebrities as a signal of another bubble. However, unlike the last bubble, many of those celebrity investors now have audiences of millions online that they can turn into users of the products and services they invest in. When there’s a strong brand fit — like Kim Kardashian and ShoeDazzle — the celebrity investment and integration can directly drive growth and revenue.

With more traditional areas for investment languishing, startup valuations remaining frothy and social media continuing to expand, look for celebs to keep allocating a portion of their wealth toward startup investments. Here’s a look at some of the celebrities currently invested in startups:

6. Social Media Security Threats Go Mobile

New phishing and malware scams emerge on the web every day. With smartphone adoption continuing to rise and smartphone users continuing to adopt apps and social media on their devices, the same threats of the web are now arriving on mobile phones — and they may actually be amplified.

For example, security firm Trusteer estimates that “mobile users accessing phishing websites are three times more likely to submit their login info than desktop users,” as a result of scams being harder to spot. The rise of mobile ad networks and third-party app stores also represent new risks.

7. Social Fuels Ecommerce Renaissance

While social media has emerged as a viable way for retailers to gain followers and broadcast deals, making social central to the shopping experience is still a largely untapped way to drive sales and increase margins. In 2012, look for more businesses to setup shop within the walls of Facebook, personalize their ecommerce sites based on your “taste graph” from Facebook and Twitter, and increase participation in communities like Tumblr and Pinterest where users organically share their purchases and wish lists. It’s also an area that’s starting to see big investment dollars flow in from the likes of Marc Andreessen.

Read more at Mashable

If I Die lets “you” post a final message to your wall and loved one when you’re dead. After installing the app, you choose three “trustees” (Facebook friends) who are charged with verifying your death. Users can then record videos or craft any number of Facebook posts to be published posthumously. When your trustees confirm your death, your messages can be published all at once to your Facebook wall or released on a designated schedule.

It might be a little morbid to start recording farewell messages, but Wilook, the Israel-based company behind the app, built the app because nobody really knows when death will come: “We all have things to say and don’t necessarily have the audience with the patience to hear us,” says Eran Alfonta, the app’s co-founder and CEO. “Actually we all want to leave something behind, we all want to leave a stamp behind us.”

Alfonta got the idea when two of his married friends traveled to Italy without their children and narrowly escaped a fatal car crash with a truck. “They stopped aside and drank water and relaxed and started speaking between themselves: ‘Oh my god, what would happen to the kids if something happened to me?’” They asked Alfonta to create a website where they could record something secret to their kids that would only be sent if they died.

People have been leaving posthumous messages for a long time. Why should a Facebook app replace pen and paper or a recorded video? Facebook provided a way to verify your death with “trustees” but it also guaranteed a delivery mechanism. Too many times a letter can sit unread in a desk, but If I Die ensures a message reaches its destination.

It also allows messages to come out on a schedule. For example, when one user was diagnosed with cancer, she started recording videos for her daughter to be posted on her birthday every year until she was 18.

In a way, If I Die gives its users a measure of social media immortality. Even when they die, their profiles can live on, posting comments and sending personal messages for as long as they have messages to send.

If I Die currently only publishes to a user’s public profile, but the team is working on features to allow for discrete messages and even messages that can be sent to people not on Facebook. The public postings will be free to use, though the discrete messages will work on an annual subscription model, Alfonta says.

While the team is tight-lipped on how many users it has, Alfonta said they expected to hit 100,000 users within a couple of months. Death is clearly on our social minds and Alfonta is no exception. “Oh my god, yes,” he says, when asked if he’s used If I Die to record his own parting messages. “I have four kids and a lovely wife and I left each one of them a message. I hope to live long and prosper but if something happens to me then I think there will be some excellent surprises for my kids, some touching messages.”

Read more at Mashable

According to the study results, 60% associated with website accessing amount is created through search services (search engine) and over 90% associated with web users just click on the very first search result. In case your website seems at the top of the outcomes list, it would be much more likely to draw in accessing of users. This particular shows the significance of optimizing websites in order that research services think it is easily – which is known as the word SEO (Seo). If this phase is done properly and completely, SEO will help you increase both number of users and traffic.

SEO is the work that required a lot effort and time. Even though market has advanced tools with high costs, but there’s also totally free resources that can help a person (webmasters), save effort.

1.      Google Webmaster  Tools:

Google always supply their real fans with totally free however worthwhile programs and Search engines Webmaster Resources is one of them. This is an online support (account needed) that provides a detailed report about the “visibility” of your web site in Google, like the state index, broken hyperlink, site accessing queries and several features that really help webmasters improve the visibility for websites in search engines like robots.txt environment and sitemap. It can even examine malware as well as speed associated with access to your website.

2.       Search engines Analytics:

Another tool through Google that almost all current website owners know: Google Analytics (GA). GA is really a tool for monitoring and analyzing website. In this case, GA requires you to add a script into your web page — only website owners can do this. For a valuable achievement, GA supply the statistics associated with website accessing, it helps a person analyze important aspects of website content and users in order to have the suitable strategy.Two free resources from Google show you exactly how Google look at your website as well as how to take advantage of the number-one search service.

3.   Yahoo Site Internet explorer:

Creating hyperlinks is an important part of improving rankings. There are a number of link evaluation tools such as Link Analysis, Link Assistant and Back-link Watch. However, there are no resources which can are efficiently because Yahoo’s Site Internet explorer, it not just find hyperlinks referring to your site but also place an order list through their importance.

In addition to link analysis, Website Explorer has a feature that will help you improve SEO ability for Yahoo’s which is much like Google Website owner Tools.

4. Microsoft IIS Search engine optimization Toolkit:

This SEO Device is a big one of the giant corporation Microsoft. This tool is only installed on the actual IIS 7 Internet server, however , you can use it to analyze any remote website (no internet server running on IIS Seven is required also it can work with Apache internet server running on Linux system).IIS SEO Toolkit consists of the Site Analysis, Robots Exclusion, Sitemaps and Site Indexes that allows you to analyze detailed website and gives suggestions, automatic robot and sitemap modifying tools. With the Toolkit, you can make your website content much friendlier with other research services.

5 . Sitemap Generator AuditMyPC:

To climb up to the first page associated with search engine, your website should turn out to be familiar to services like Google search engine. An important way of this is to produce a sitemap to your website and show itself to find services.

There are many tools to produce site chart, of which the AuditPC Sitemap Generator is probably the best: it’s an online service which can run in the browser (Java required) and an unlimited number of Webpages.

6. SEO Toolbar:

The additional libraries with regard to Firefox supplies a complete SEO kit on a toolbar, including the rank check (Google PR, Alexa Rank), website as well as keyword analysis, competition website comparison and several other useful features.

Search engines also has an identical tool with regard to users associated with Google Chrome browser: Website SEO Tools extension. This particular open Stainless Library gives you general details about the Search engine optimization of the website in a window.

7. Yahoo YSlow:

This is additionally plug-in to associated with Firefox integrating with the Firebug device. YSlow analyzes web pages and information in the web page elements while offering recommendations to enhance speed in addition to providing tools for pace analysis such as JSLint or Smush.this.

8. Xenu Hyperlink Sleuth:

This little application runs on all variations of Home windows (desktop environment, not machine environment). It is well designed and simple to use, it’s the ability to quickly detect broken links (mistake 404) in your website. Therefore, Xenu provides you a lot useful information to help you in search engine advertising.

9. SocialMention:

This particular online providers search in blogs and small blogs, forums, question-answer webpages, social networks, diary events as well as news to calculate information related to your brand or even keywords one enters.

10. Website Grader:

This online service steps website marketing overall performance. It provides a score based on information for example website traffic, SEO, website recognition in social networks and other specialized parameters. It also offers fundamental tips to enhance web promotion.

This is a quote from an expert: “SEO cannot bring immediate results. It can take months as well as years to put a website in high rankings searching services. People who want to do SEO job ought to be patient as well as interested, they have to explore brand new techniques and earn understanding to succeed”.

Even before how the use of viral videos was vastly registered on YouTube, probably the most widely used source which is becoming visited through millions of on the internet visitors every day to search movies for any kind of info they want. Online marketers soon clutched this chance and began posting videos in order to get the message viral. Because competition increased, the demand for content grew, and entrepreneurs started creating attractive as well as eye catching videos in order to make them go virus-like.

However, there are many factors to consider if your objective is to go through virus-like marketing. To be able to create a video to have a opportunity at becoming viral it needed to have a few or all of the subsequent characteristics:

Your own video must be:

• Original

• Fascinating

• Dramatic

• Eye catching and enormously attractive

• Unexpected

• Funny / Mysterious

The viral video clip varies from the other types of online marketing video in terms of its area. Viral videos can only perform most optimally when they are embedded to locations other than the company’s site. The fundamental objective of a viral video is to improve market reach. The company’s objective behind a viral video is to achieve to many audience and therefore the internet marketer will try to embed the viral videos in many various sites to achieve as wide selection of audience as possible.

Even though viral videos can get you to millions of viewers, there are also some drawbacks at the rear of this strategy, most of which are jotted below;

• Few online marketers concern embedding a viral video on external sites as once a video is embedded away from company’s website the company totally loses manage over this for example there is no control on the surrounding text, the surrounding photos and ads. If you allow your video to be watched anyplace, you have to think about that viewers may see your logo and messaging place adjacent along with less tasty images etc.

• It is also very difficult to track the success of viral videos as you can’t identify regardless of whether your video reached your target audience or not. You might get a higher number of views but it is not enough to consider the amount of views only. In order for your video clip to be considered a viral success, it is essential to know that whether or not you were noticed by the appropriate audience that is almost impossible to trace. However, in case your video is hosted on a video clip sharing website like YouTube, you can evaluate the comments your video gets to get an idea of the level of “buzz” your viral video have produced, however it is still difficult to determine its impact on driving on the internet traffic to your site.

This is why virus-like video is best suited for internet marketing campaigns aimed to create brand-building and buzz-making and to achieve to many audience.

Now the other side of the story is that her parents paid Ark Music Factory (the company who recorded the song and video) over $4000 to make this song and turn it into an overnight success. After all the comments of abuse came in, they sued Ark Music for exploiting their daughter but didn’t they kind of ask for it? By April the video had gained over 100 million views on YouTube but it had to be taken down because of the lawsuit. Black said to Fox News that if she would walk by in a corridor they would say ‘oh hey Rebecca, guess what day it is’ and then snigger.

I believe that if she was properly being bullied then that would’ve been tough. No one deserves to be bullied. If it was a bit of teasing then what did she expect? She can’t have possibly thought when she was recording the song and filming the video that it was a legitimately good song. She wanted the attention. She wanted to be famous, and fast. She got it. She was popular all over twitter and other internet tools and was even in a Katy Perry music video.

That brings me back to my question, do you feel sorry for her? Leave a comment below!

When Justin Timberlake was slated to host another week of Saturday Night Live, you just knew we were going to be treated with another awesome SNL Digital Short.

Well folks, they did not disappoint!

Justin Timberlake and Andy Samberg were at it again, this time in a sequel video of their viral hit “Dick in My Box”.

In celebration of Mother’s Day, here’s their new video “Mother Lover”

If the video is not working, go to NBC or Hulu’s official website. If you’re in Canada, Globaltv.com has the video.

As reported yesterday, Samberg will be hosting a SNL special on May 17th dedicated to these Digital Shorts.

Exhibit:

A – The Cake topped with “Rum Balls.” For a more formal portrait, see this photo:

and for an idea of the layers and scale of the cake:

B – Nose appears larger in pictures taken with point-and-shoot camera at arm’s length

C – Can you put on some makeup and do your hair, for Pete’s Sake? It’s Easter Eve!!!

D- Can’t afford real artwork? Try magnets instead.

E – This photo
Someone “stumbled it” on my former blog and MB was an instant viral hit (LOL) – but, alas, now that the blog no longer exists, it is back to obscurity for MB.

F – Wacky Packages are always lots of fun, especially on Easter. VC got some in his Easter basket. Here we have Glutton mustard and Burpsi Cola. Remember back in the old days when they were called Wacky Paks???

G – Note on phone reminding us not to make any long distance calls without using calling card. AT&T – thanks for your pushy sales tactics and for not delivering as promised. That’ll show you! Damned if I am going to use this phone to place any long distance calls via your lame-a$$ carrier.

Anyone else finding it hard to get back in the swing of things? *head falls on keyboard*

Know any tween/teen girls who would like a cute shirt? There is still time to enter my giveaway.

If you enjoyed reading this post, please consider clicking through and leaving a comment. Much Obliged