Ju Ju Ju

At a young age, Naveen Jain has always been sympathetic towards the less fortunate people. Poverty and lack of education are the problems facing his countrymen in India and with this in mind, he promised to extend support to those in need in the future.

Hard work, determination and patience were the virtues that made Jain one of the most successful and wealthiest businessmen in America. Once on top, he remembered his pledge of helping the less fortunate. He continuously supports people and organizations that work for education, poverty reduction, quality healthcare, and children’s welfare. Scholarships have been given to business, engineering and computer science freshmen students of the University of Washington.

Currently, Naveen Jain heads Intelius, a successful online information service provider that he founded in 2003 and that has now gained ten million clients. To encourage his employees to take up the act of giving, he initiated the Employee Giving Program where employees were taught to give cash to their favorite charities. He also established the Employee Volunteer Program, where his personnel became actively involved in charitable organizations in their local communities. In connection with this, Intelius annually provides 12 hours of paid time off for qualified employees who want to spend time with their chosen charities.

The loyalty of his personnel, as well as their passion to improve their communities, has made Naveen Jain thankful. According to him, the virtue of giving has made him and his employees more inspired to work hard and to donate more. The philanthropic activities of Intellius have made the Puget Sound Business Journal include them in their list of the top 15 Corporate Philanthropists.

To be the best neighbor to those around him has been Jain’s goal. According to him, the measurement of one’s success is when the surrounding communities are flourishing and productive. He has constantly carried with him his commitment to help the less fortunate.

Social media marketing has existed for more than a decade and a half now. What was seen as a minor deviation from traditional forms of marketing has now become an industry its own right. Today Internet marketing is such a broad term that comprises of several other forms of marketing like email marketing, article marketing, social media marketing, blog marketing, PPC, etc. While some of these forms have truly shown that they are here to stay; like PPC and Email marketing, other hyped forms like social media marketing are showing their first signs of cracking.

What brings us to this discussion is whether people can actually be marketed in a social network set up. Social network users come to the websites for a purpose - to chill and hangout. Does marketing to such an audience work in the first place? It is like teaching a kid ABC when she is busy playing with her barbie.

Another important point to be understood is that any form of marketing takes a lot of trial and error. In that case, the returns on understanding the new medium is not worth it if the medium ceases to exist in a few years. The Internet has seen the birth, glory and death of companies far too quickly. Very few companies have existed for more than a decade in this industry. That being the case, are we sure that social media is here to stay in the long run.

There are doubts regarding this. According to a recent study by a popular market research firm, social networks are on the decline. Apart from LinkedIn, the social network for Professionals, most other social networks including Twitter, MySpace and Bebo are seeing massive negative growths. Friendfeed, another popular social network acquired by Google has seen a 28% fall last month alone.