PraveenL

2 Sides of the Social Media Coin

2010-06-12T03:17:00.001+05:30

For everyone who comes online anywhere in the world even for as less as 5 minutes a day would be aware of Social Media Marketing as a phenomenon. The buzz world today is Social Media Marketing. From Big brand like Ebay to aspiring start ups like Adgully all are today trying to engage users through Social platforms primarily Facebook. In fact what started as a complex combination, of optimizing efforts on a number of sites like stumble, Digg, Twitter etc, has become focused on optimizing efforts on one platform named Facebook.

Facebook has become the Web in itself. In fact Facebook is even better and people are trying various means to make the most of it. Working on a Facebook campaign is seemingly simple. You create a Fan page, get people to like the page, integrate the Facebook activity to your website and vise-verse, maybe also create some interesting App and there you go, you are a hit on Facebook. Simple? Not quite!

I have been watching (and writing too) a lot of brands trying to make an impact on Facebook with the Indian audience, and have noticed both sides of Social Media Marketing, the Real and the Fake, being practiced. Let us have a look at two examples:

An E-tailing company selling high end fashion garments and Grohe Shower. Both have websites to sell products. Both are into selling high end lifestyle products. Both have Facebook Fan page too. Both have good number of Fans on Facebook. But for someone who is following both these Fan pages, it is not difficult to spot the difference between the approaches and identify the 'Real' and the 'Fake'.

On one page you see products being shown as posts and people seemingly liking and commenting about goodness of the same, and on the other page you see people being encouraged to become volunteers to experience the product, first hand. On one page you can see post after post having exactly the same number of 'Comments' and 'Likes' and on the other page you can see the variety in consumer expression. On one page there is a well thought out Social Media Campaign and on the other there is complete lack of creativity.

Creating a successful Facebook campaign requires a lot of involvement, patience, and creativity. It requires truthfulness towards the idea of engaging with the consumers. From the moment I landed on the Grohe Facebook fan page to the time I received my gift (Hand-shower), the Grohe campaign has impressed me. The ideation, the communication and moderation on the page, the frequency and language of emails and finally the actual delivery of the promised gift, have all been flawless. Hats off to the team that is managing this campaign.

Since the beginning, for the common man, Internet has made a mark as a Free, Fair and Transparent medium. Even today it works best that way !!

5 ways to make an impact with Web design

2010-04-26T15:19:00.000+05:30

Express while conceptualizing:
Be fully self expressive when you are thinking about the page to be created. How a web page needs to come up, cannot be ever documented. It can only be explained by dramatizing, and acting. Facial expressions combined with hand movements and Voice are the best tools for explaining a wireframe to the designer.

Look for Benchmarks in the physical world:

The primary instinct of a designer is to Google for benchmarks, search for templates or look at award winning websites to benchmarks for the job at hand. My experience says that designers who look at the physical world around them, the workspace, the roads outside, the kids room at home and the clouds in the sky: come up with the best designs, because Nature shows which colours create harmony and which distract!

Do not copy Vectors/clip-arts:

Google image search throws 1,230,000 results for 'vector shopping cart'. You cant create an impact by choosing the best out of these, but the art is in integrating your main design theme with a cart symbol if you are creating a Shopping site. Be original, even if it takes that couple of extra hours at work.

Identify the key elements:

This is the most important aspect in creating an impact with web designs. Websites are made up of key elements: A Shopping website has key elements like the Cart, Categories, Search and Price/Discount depictions. A Education website has Key elements like the Classes, Subjects covered, Tests and teaching modules. The Design must make it easy for the users to identify the section that they are browsing at any point of time.

Create a package:

When a designer sets out on creating web pages, the thought is usually limited to the pages that are to be made. One must always look at the complete packaging rather than the pages that are to be created. There is much more to a website than the pages that people browse. There are elements like System generated mails, Promotional mailers, Social media pages, Widgets, Banner ads, Partnership icons and more. The designs need to be thought through to take care of the complete package, and not only the pages.

For people looking to read about creating usable interfaces for TV, here is the link to my last years post.

Impact of Social Media on E-commerce search results.

2010-04-18T15:30:00.000+05:30

E-commerce is growing in India. Existing sites are getting more traffic. New Websites are acquiring new users. New product categories are getting sold online. Logistics companies are creating separate divisions to cater to E-tail orders. Newer ways of selling online are being experimented with and many new online shopping companies are likely to come up in the next one year.

In spite of a lot of product categories coming in to play, there will still be the top categories like, Electronics, Jewelery, Books and a couple more that each E-tailer would like to have in the portfolio. The fact that there are common vendors and sources for products across sites in India, is also not in for any major change in the near future. Another thing which is not going to change soon is the fact that most people will continue to search for products on Google before entering a shopping site.

For people who are into E-commerce business but think of people engagement features as a waste of time must read the next paragraph.

In a Scenario when most product descriptions look alike, there are chances of your page being left out of the results display by Google. Google has the result indexed in its data, but it uses a duplicate-content filter method so the display of the page will largely depend on the extent of Original/ different content on that page. Hence you loose out if you only have the manufacturer-supplied copy, on the product page.

When user reviews augment catalog and product descriptions, it increases the crawl-ability of the product pages and also improves the display placement of the product. It is like outsourcing your copy-writing to the users and getting it done for free.

User Reviews not only serve the purpose of SEO, they also add to other factors like trustworthiness of website, that contribute to conversions.

4 things Facebook must do to Facebook Groups!

2009-12-20T17:24:00.001+05:30

The fun and Utility of Social sites, like Facebook is that they help bring the physical world closer, virtually. People become part of sites like FB not only to stay connected with their existing contacts, but also to find and connect with people who they would like to get back in touch.

Recently I became part of a group, on Facebook, started to reunite our School time batch mates. FB, with its international popularity and now with more than 350 million users sure that within no time 20 of our old time mates became part of this group.

This was the first time that I actually started using the Groups feature on FB. Somehow FB seems to have no focus on making the Groups feature ‘great’. There are many things that FB product team seems to have missed out on. A person like me, who also uses LinkedIn extensively, can clearly see the primitiveness of the FB groups feature.

4 things that FB needs to add to the groups feature are:

1. An option to be notified of any activity, within the group at the time of joining the Group.

2. The notifications can be separate for the nano-expressions, uploads and joining, like:
Discussion Board post
Wall post
Pictures uploading
Link uploading
Event Creation
New Members

To enable members to choose what they want to be notified about.

3. Settings for groups should be adjustable for all the individual groups that I become part of.

4. Ability for group members to create a conversation or ‘group chat’ using the FB chat application.

Small differences in the usability aspect of a website make features hits or misses. LinkedIn groups see a lot of activity because someone has given a thought on making them active. Most of the FB groups eventually turn dormant, and some basic notifications, implemented correctly, can turn this around.

5 things that Facebook can do more! Part I

2009-08-11T19:53:00.016+05:30

Facebook have acquired Friendfeed, even as I was planning to write 'what FB can do more' as I hinted in my previous post, the last in the series on Social Media Monitoring. The context of my thought was more from the wish-list perspective. Things that come to the mind while using the platform. Things that could increase the usage by me and people who I interact with.

What I am talking are small things that make a difference. Facebook already has a lot of these small functionalities, that make it such a popular SN platform.

Lets begin with the most used feature on Facebook; The Status updates. This is where most of the interesting conversations begin. You would have noted that FB shrinks the whole conversation thread if there are more than 3 comments on a status. This is where the first of the 'Mores' can be created. People often click on View all comments link, opening the conversation thread. Two requirements that originate due to this are:

1. There is no way the user can close the displayed conversation.

2. Users also wish to go back to some interesting conversations, but it is difficult to do so, due to the unending flow of Updates from the friends.

Things that facebook can do, to make the above simple:

1. There can be an Up arrow on the top of the opened conversations, that can shrink-back the opened conversation.

2. There can be a 'bookmark' icon that would bookmark conversations that a user might find interesting.

3. These bookmarked conversations can be viewed on the Users Profile page, where currently Facebook offers the tabs to view updates from Self, Self+friends and Friends only. Adding this tab would definitely improve the usability and the feature can be extended by giving people the option to group bookmarks.

Part II coming up in a few days.

4th post on Social Media Monitoring: Facebook

2009-07-23T17:57:00.005+05:30

Now that Facebook has become the hottest social network, it’s time to pay attention to the conversations that happen there. You can do this with Facebook Lexicon (you need to login to see it) that creates a trend graph for different words and (two-word) phrases on Facebook Walls. The FB site says that Lexicon does not look at personal messages, invitations, or any other private user-to-user communications like one-on-one chat.
Reaching Lexicon in itself is a bit of a task. You need to click on the Advertising link in the footer. Here is what all you monitor once you are there:

•Dashboard Shows the number of unique users for the search keyword, the percentage of the Facebook user base that mentioned it, and the total number of posts.
•Demographics Show trends over time, based on users characteristics like age, gender and country.
•Maps display locations within different countries. Currently limited to the US, Great Britain, and Canada.
•Sentiment display the like or dislike for a given topic.
•Associations is like related topics.
•Pulse is an interesting feature that shows the Interests like Music, Movies, TV Shows, Books etc of people discussing the topic/keyword searched. Example: You can have a count of people who like listening to 'Madonna' among those talking about 'Swine flu', for a date range.

Its not a very good tool and certainly stands no where near the effort that products like Twitter(my previous post) have put in to facilitate SMM.

That's a good idea...a series on What Facebook can do more? Coming up next...on a browser near you :-)

'Birdwatching' in SMM: Monitoring Twitter

2009-07-15T13:11:00.012+05:30

I had promised a post on monitoring Twitter and Facebook, in my last post. I have however decided to break it into two posts to keep it short and simple.

Twitter's growth is due to the power it holds in connecting people without much effort. Its simple as an SMS and the kind of virality it can ignite is tremendous. This has made it important for you to pay attention to what is being said about, you and your products, on this micro-blogging service. The product team at Twitter had the foresight to create an elaborate search mechanism for people to 'monitor' activity on Twitter.

On the footer you can click the Search link to use the official search engine. You can subscribe to the RSS feed of the search as well. There is an option for Advanced Search which is clearly created to facilitate monitoring. The best part of this all is the Search Operators . These are phrases that if used as a search keyword act as short-cut to advance search. For example : you can search for "Rediff :(" to get results for tweets containing "Rediff" with a negative attitude.

There are other services like TweetBeep (http://www.tweetbeep.com) , Tweetscan(http://www.tweetscan.com/), Monitter (http://monitter.com/) also, that facilitate your SMM activity. Sideline(http://sideline.yahoo.com/) is another good tool that allows you to create a keyword group so that you can monitor more than one keywords in one go. BackTweets(http://backtweets.com/) can be used to monitor tweets with links to your site that are "hidden" inside of shortened URLs.

There is immense power that Social media has and services like Twitter can make or break a product or service if the owner does not Factor in SMM. A simple example in the attached screen shot explains that. If you look closely at the attached image you can see a link on the right navigation that says "Twitter these results".
It has become extremely easy to spread the word now..good or bad.. is just a matter of an emoticon ;-).

And as far as Ego Surfing on Twitter is concerned, Tweetdeck

gives you the option to see the tweets which mention your name, even if you maintain multiple personalities. My friend Rajeev, who uses Twitter extensively, is quite satisfied with Tweetdeck.

The Facebook post is coming up next. Happy 'birdwatching' to all.

The 5 'Mention types' in Social Media Monitoring

2009-07-13T12:18:00.008+05:30

Executing SMM for the strategising (as discussed in the last weeks post) is not a simple and one time activity. It requires a deep knowledge of all the "Mention types" that constitute the UGC(User Generated Content) and understanding of how to prioritise and categorise then. I am trying to put them in the simplest possible way to understand and also some means of 'Monitoring' the same.

News
Media News can be best tracked on news.google.com. It works like search where you can enter your company name, sort the results by date published and then subscribe to the RSS feed. You can get RSS updates of any news items that mention you or your products.

Blogs
http://www.ysearchblog.com/ from yahoo and http://blogsearch.google.com/ help you find the stories that mentions you or your products. You can get alerts to matching stories via email or RSS. Blog search will not miss out on mentions that would be difficult to find in the news and ordinary search.

Tracking blog-posts often does not reveal the full conversations. The blog post might be positive, but those leaving comments could attack your reputation. Services such as Bloppy (http://www.bloppy.info/), Commentful(http://www.commentful.blogflux.com/), co.mments.com (http://www.co.mments.com/), Twingly (http://www.twingly.com/), BackType(http://www.backtype.com/) track the comments left on blogs. You can search for your brand and subscribe to the RSS feed for instant updates. Blogpulse’s conversation tracker is a tool to track who’s linking to the blog post about you or your products.

A step ahead in this process is to not only track the 'news' or 'Blogs' but also the ones that becomes 'popular'. Sites such as Digg, Reddit, Stumbleupon will help you keep a track through search for stories that match you or your products. You can subscribe to the resulting RSS feed and you’ll know about any story on these sites mentions you or your products–or your rivals.

Bookmarks
Thanks to online bookmarking services such as del.icio.us(http://www.delicious.com/), Diigo(http://www.Diigo.com/), Furl(http://www.furl.net/), Mister Wong(http://Mister-Wong.com/ is Europes no.1 service) and Blinklist(http://www.blinklist.com/ , I use blinklist ever since i started bookmarking) many people are sharing their bookmarks online. subscribing to the RSS feeds from such services makes it easy to track whenever someone bookmarks a web page that includes mention of you or your products.

Social Media News
Technorati (http://www.technorati.com/) is one of the best options for tracking social media sites. It offers Real-time search engine for blogs that tracks what is current and popular. It Offers the ability to search blog postings using a tag library, list your blog, and Custom RSS feeds let you get quick updates on any blog that refers to you or your products.

Forums & Message Boards
Message boards and forums not only paved the way for social networking, they still attract a lot of people to interact. Many a times the most important interactions take place in a forum discussion and if you are not keeping track of F&MBs you could miss on vital information. BoardTracker and BoardReader are two extremly good tools to monitor posts, topics, and actual forum names.

Photos, videos, Tags, Job listings and finacial mentions etc are the other "Mention types" that need to be monitored. A SMM program cannot be complete without taking care of all these.

I will publish the third part of this SMM post in a couple of days and talk about the largest UGC generators like Twitter and Facebook.

Social Media Monitoring: Whistle and the Torch

2009-07-09T20:04:00.002+05:30

Most of us not only consume Social media content, we are the content. Every morning when we change our status msg on FB, every time we tweet a cup of coffee and every time we comment on a job switch, we consume and create social media content.
From the level of just being a distraction at work (or studies), it has reached the strategic screens of many company's think tanks. All this content has reached a level that has started impacting the way companies approach the WWW. The time for "Social Media Monitoring" has really come.
What is SMM?
In simple words it is digging into all the User generated content on Social networking sites and blogs and analyze who is taking what about you or your product. It is the process of analyzing, understanding, and responding to conversations about brands, products, reputation and end user opinion in the WWW's Social platforms.
What elements are involved in SMM:
Viewing or tracking conversations and updates in real time.
Check for trends and analyze them.
Determine and segregate these on basis (a)locations (b)demographics (c)other specific criteria
Determine and segregate these on basis (a)sentiments +ve, -ve (b)repetition (c)other specific criteria
Identify influence r/s or Community Nodes(people)
Devising a response strategy: To blow a whistle(raise an alarm) or to be the torch (Lead the way in reputation building)
What after the analysis?
You can opt to react/respond/reply/comment on both negative and positive outcomes of the reports in the following manner
Gauge the necessity of a statement from the company's CEO/PR/Marketing.
Make Product improvements or do bug fixings.
Product innovations or new revenue streams can be created.

Oh yes!. If you are a blogger like me who doesn't blog for money, you can do 'Ego surfing'. Believe me its interesting.

Hammer the Jet !

2009-07-01T15:44:00.021+05:30

When dear friends Suneet Manchanda and Akhilesh Kumar updated their Facebook status with a link to bid on a private jet flight, I was impressed. It made me think 'if I do so, who will I become equal to, among the known people in India', so I asked Suneet and the answer (conversation pic is attached) made me go wow!!

Auctions the world over:
Since the time Ebay was founded, back in 1995, it has been the world leader in the online auctions domain, with an exhaustive list of items and categories as compared to any of it's competitions. Now Ebay has a number of specialty Verticals and also many regional sites in different countries. The amount of user traffic that Ebay generates has prompted a lot of API integrated bidding applications to help people and companies reap profits out of Ebay.Ebay also operates as Ebay.in. Although the Indian site nowhere matches the Ebay.com site in its outlook, the categories are same on both the sites and the focus also generic at both the places. Another large international auctions site http://www.ubid.com/ also has similar categories and focus in terms of the products available. The site however has a nice positioning by saying "Excess inventory from worlds leading brands".

Auctions in India:Most Indian sites that do Ecommerce in India also have an auctions platform. The categories and products available are nearly the same as on the likes of Ebay. Indiatimes used to have an Auctions site as well that was launched in 2002-03. For people who are not aware that http://www.auctions.indiatimes.com/ is no longer operational, let me tell you that this happened very recently, some 3 months back. The auctions link now redirects to the Shopping homepage! In its early days Indiatimes Auctions did not have much to offer apart from the newness of the concept in India. They tried to innovate with things like fancy timings for auctions (Late night Auctions etc), slowly graduating to offering Air tickets @ 1 Rs Auction and then creating some wonderful propositions for its users. Now this is all over.
In this not so happening scenario when you come across an idea that catches your eyes, it deserves a place on PraveeL. The http://www.tradus.in/ homepage is strikingly different from most of the others found in the www. It shows the differentiator (Experiences money can't buy)upfront as a visual, and the whole page is absolutely neat and clutter-free. The help tools are also perfectly placed and the whole bidding process is also quite user friendly like most of the other products from IBIBO.Hope they continue to retain the user interest after a good first impression. Hey Guys! What about "A night out with Katrina @ Rs1" ...No, that would sound like all the actor meet-up offers that are abundantly available.

For your Eyes only...Ears too

2009-06-23T17:36:00.008+05:30

Google has touched nearly all our organs by dominating the search and other web utilities the way they have. This they have done partly by indulging in research and partly by making some smart acquisitions, to give us products and services that are addictive.
Google has made in excess of 50 acquisitions till date (I came across one of the compilations here) and have added value to the way we can use the web for our advantage. Some time in July 2007 Google acquired a company called GrandCentral Communications. Now nearly two years later Google is preparing itself to touch our 'Ears' with Google Voice. The recent articles that have been written on this subject suggest that we could soon hear each other through Google!

As the Google Voice official site suggests that "Google Voice is a service that gives you one number for all your phones, voicemail that is easy as email, and many enhanced calling features like call blocking and screening, voicemail transcripts, call conferencing, international calls, and more. Google Voice is currently available for GrandCentral users only, but will be open to new users soon. We expect to have the service ready for new users in a matter of weeks, and are focused on opening it as soon as possible.
For existing GrandCentral user:- Over the next few days, instructions will appear at the top of your inbox on how to upgrade your GrandCentral account to Google Voice. Thanks for your patience."

Google has also been working on creating mobile sync applications (another subject that I plan to take up soon) for some time now and if Google launches these two services as a combination, it will surely touch our Ears. And people who look to critisize Google might as well 'pull' their Ears!!

IPTV-Creating Usable interfaces

2009-04-21T23:12:00.007+05:30

The best part of working as a Product manager is that you get equal chances to replicate or create. If you are working on a pure play web application then you get many benchmark products or portions that you can replicate, but if you are working on a relatively newer platforms like IPTV, then you have to create. It is extremely hard to find information on usability in newer domains.

For the past year or so I have had the opportunity to work on creating IPTV applications that work essentially on web technologies (HTML, CSS, and JS) that are displayed on a television through a STB (set-top-box) usually running a custom browser based on Mozilla.

What are we talking about ?

We are talking about applications that are based on web technologies running through a STB Browser, that has very limited capabilities as compared to your desktop browser, and are displayed on a TV screen instead of a computer monitor, and you use a remote control to navigate them instead of a keyboard and a mouse.

What are the look and feel issues that matter?

There are some basic but very important differences compared to the web.

1. Screen size: Although Television screens are larger than computer screens they have a lower resolution. You get very little real estate per screen as scrolls do not go really well on a TV screen. In case you have to keep the CRT monitor size into consideration as well then you loose another 20% of the available width and height.

2. Pixels shapes: TV pixels have a larger width making them rectangular in shape. So the designer needs to keep in mind that a circular button could end up looking like an Oval instead. This is a small factor that can change the whole characteristic of the design.

3. Flickering and fonts: Thin horizontal lines vibrate or flicker on CRT monitors because frames are made of interlaced fields. You have to use thick lines to avoid this effect. This also plays an important part when you need to display text on the screen. Font sizes lesser than 14 seem to flicker more and larger font sizes are also advised because of the increased reading distance (TVs are vied from a significant distance in a room). The font styles that are from the Sans Serif family look more stable as the letters do not bleed into each other.

4. Colours: The colour choice is restricted to a smaller range of colours on a TV because colours like Red bleed/bloat on most TV screens. Text is best presented in Black on a White background. Also avoid using bright colours next to each other. The control(or Selection) also displays a background colour as it moves from one control to another on the screen. This also needs to be factored in so that it doesn't' become an eyesore.

5. Sound: Websites also use sound but Television viewers expect sound as integral part of any thing they watch. You need to find ways and means to use Speech to be integrated into the navigation.

6. PIP: Avoid placing important text of information in the 'picture in picture' area of the TV.

7. Pictures: Do not use the pictures that you have clicked for a website for your TV application. Take new high resolution images. Its also advisable to use these images in the progressive format of JPG as this helps them to load along with the page on the TV screen.

How to make this design work?

Once you are able to create a layout and design that looks cool on a TV screen you need to make it work as well. This is what you need to keep in mind...

1. Navigation: There is no TV in the world that is navigated using a Mouse. The navigation tool for TV is the remote control. You also have to deal with the fact that the Cursor point is also defined in case of TV applications and it is the first action control from the top. This becomes more important in applications like shopping on TV where you have to show a variety of feature/ functionality on a single screen and the agenda is to make the buying process simple for the users.

2. Javascript and CSS: Versions of JS and CSS beyond the 1.2 and 1 respectively wont work. If you are well versed with these, you would be able to quickly adapt yourself to the limitations that the STB browsers present.

3. Functions: You would not be able to use even the common 'mouse-over' function. The 'on-click' would work though.

4. Flash: I have yet to come across a STB browser that supports Flash. Most of the browsers are also incapable of supporting Ajax functions like Div.

Is there a way to make this easier?

Ease of creation is in the ability to view what is being created. There are a couple of Emulators that reproduce what you are seeing on a computer screen to look the way it will on a TV screen. Use them at every step to avoid replicating mistakes. One such interesting tool is provided by the Virgin Media for its digital TV content partners.

Note: All images shown in this post are copyright protected property of Aksh Optifibre Ltd.

Two Good !

2009-04-15T16:49:00.003+05:30

When Rajeev logged on to his Blogger dashboard today afternoon, I was sitting by his side and was pleasantly surprised to see two small picture icons alongside the Blogs name. I ran across to my seat and loged-in to see if Google had done it for me too?

I mouse'd over and the tool-tip was precise enough to explain the features. The impulsive blogger that I am, Google seemed to have presented this specially for me. Now I could either place my posts through my Mobile, or I could write Blogger a mail.

Mobile: Google asks you to send a verification code to go@blogger.com. Once Google is convinced that you are the owner of this Blog, you can simply post your thoughts through SMS (सरल मोबाइल सबमिसन ). Great!!

Email: You can simply create a mail of what you wish to publish on your blog. Your subject line will be treated as the post Title. This one also works in a flash. You press the send button on your mail and refresh the blog page, you will see the post. Awesome!!
I put in this post from mail :-)

If you publish from your mail, you just need to ensure that your signature does not become a part of the post unless you wish it to be...like below.....
--
Praveen Lohani
http://www.linkedin.com/in/praveenlohani
9818442666
--
Google team please note: you missed out on this aspect!!

Get the click where you want it.

2009-04-14T21:31:00.002+05:30

The simplicity of the way Google creates and popularises most of its products and services can be again seen by the way they have announced the Inserting images, in Gmail in their official blog.

All users who have logged in to Gmail for the last couple of days would have noticed the subtle link at the left bottom portion of the log out page. Google team knows exactly how to make the users click the link they want.

The feature is essentialy the same thing that most bloggers would be used to, for inserting images in their blogs.

However this has made creating interesting messages easier, and all reciepents can look forward to messages that have images as part of the story (mail) rather than as attachments after the story.

Recession की राह !!!

2009-03-24T17:14:00.006+05:30

Who did the Down Down Down Down song??
Yes Chris Brown......but the context he sang the song was not what I intend to write here.

Everyone who reads this page can immediately recall at least 2 friends or acquaintances who have been floored by the current period of recession. (Oh now this can be a funny viral game on Facebook: I know 2 people floored..how many do you know?......will play it some other time though..)

Experiencing a recession is 3-way:- you read about it, you see it happening and you feel it personally. Thankfully, this post has the third part missing yet ;-).

Reading:

You have it in the newspapers. You have news-feeds filling your inbox and you have your corporate monthly magazine talking about the cost cutting measures. Its apparently across industries. There are companies that have been reported to have layed-off people and there are others that are yet not publicized. I came across this list that has well-known names on a blog (and we thought Internet companies like TIL were the worst hit)

Seeing:
This is what prompted me to write this post. Be prepared to see what you will only see here. Linkedin is the largest professional networking site we all know, and has become significantly populated with Indian Professioanls.

I recently received a Free gift from one of the top professionals that i have worked with. This was the offer for availing this persons services FOC! Can you believe this? A very well articulated mail sent to all of this person's contacts. Amazing. This is how you 'SEE' recession.

Incidently a couple of days later, I got a message from GOD himself. I got it at a Delhi crossing. Everyone who has been going from IIT towards Vasant Vihar, would know that the whole stretch is in a mess. I stopped at the Signal next to the VV Depot, and you would not believe what I saw. I saw this work under process board put by the PWD with GOD's Message on it.....

Moral of the Story: दो मैं से एक छोरो ! आलस्य या नौकरी !! .......and prey to GOD that you have enough work that you can do the whole day :-)

V-Day to C-Day...E-Com to C-Com

2009-02-19T12:56:00.005+05:30

William Shakespeare said “They do not love that do not show their love...”

No wonder each year as 14th of Feb inches closer, the willingness to express and express it in a distinct, loving and at times outrageous ways by the youth provides the media with enough content to add pages to print.

All through the year there were news of Moral policing from different parts of the country. We have been treated with some fantastic drama being unfolded from 'Bar Bharo' to Lathi charges to the photos of Armed police, guarding love struck couples in gardens.

The 'Chaddi Campaign' has been the highlight of this Valentine season. Ram Sene chief Mr Muthalik now has the potential to be the biggest Lingerie dealer in the country. He can get the 'Pink Chaddi' Brand patented and sell Chaddis at a huge discount globally.
This V-Day was indeed C-Day courtesy Mr Muthalik....

So where does this C-Comm come from.

Here. What are the top selling products globally as Valentines day gifts?

Jewelry holds the number one position followed by Eating out and Health & Beauty Spas. Clothing including Lingerie comes at number four and is ahead of Flowers at five. This is followed by Confections/Candy, Stuffed Animals and Cards.

But this year was different in the Indian context. If you are a regular visitor to the Indian on-line shopping platforms like Indiatimes shopping and Rediff shopping you would not have missed the Naughty gifts being sold on the shops. One of the leading vendors to these sites has confirmed to me “at least 4 lac Rupees worth of Rose Panty has been sold in the Valentine week”. Isn't it amazing? The Global number four category nearly became number one in V Day E-Comm.

Thanks Mr Muthalik :-)

Nano Expressions?

2008-02-01T14:09:00.000+05:30

I have been pondering on writing a post on User self-expression for quite some time now…only that I was not getting the right start. Finally I got it when this term ‘Nano Expression’ cropped up in my head ( and now I realize why I should have written this post before Auto Expo happened, however people who are on my G-talk would vouch that I had put the term up on my status message long before Mr Ratan Tata showcased his little marvel.)

The credit for getting this term in my head goes to Saarthak the RJ on Hit Radio here in Delhi and the usage of the term is for chat messengers and community websites.

The status messages present the best form of user self expression that one can think of. Ever since Gtalk and Yahoo etc. gave the functionality of writing a text status message in place of the standard; Available, Idle, busy etc, the users have become completely self expressive.

From displaying age old quotes, to announcing a new post on one’s blog, to wish friends on various occasions, to expressing what’s going on at the work place…people have been smart in using the space provided for status messages.

Taking the real thing forward, we all are now aware that Social networks are a raze and one of the biggest reason for it is that they give ample chance for User Self-expression.

The superiority of Facebook and Myspace has been debated a lot but Myspace has always been considered better because it lets the users have more control over their pages, giving it a freedom-loving personal appeal that continues to this day.
Friendster, never got that. But Facebook has now opened the floodgates to allow extreme user self-expression by making a lot of functionality changes and promoting widget and application inclusion by users.

There are a lot of features that one can put in this category that I call ‘Nano-Expressions’, for instant:

The Profile names and nick names
The Status messages
The Mood messages
The Profile Urls
The Scraps
The photo comments
Tags

Every one has a poet and a writer within us and given the slightest of chance, we express…that’s so good about us humans!!!

Own team or Outsourcing

2007-10-14T19:10:00.000+05:30

Being a regular visitor to Linkedin, I came across an interesting question on the subject that was haunting all of us at Extramarks, day and night. The question was "What hurdles have you faced in Off-shoring / Outsourcing Software Services?"
After nearly six months of development and having missed 2 launch dates we were still encountering bugs in most of the modules on the site. So much so that after one of my last meetings with our tech partners, I had no other option than to get creative and express my anguish in form of this status message on G talk (Ram kaho Rehman kaho...Atul Kaho ya Alim !!)
We have since then expanded our own tech team to 6, and every single day I regret not doing this earlier.
This post would not convey anything until I give two small examples of how comparing an own team and an Outsourced team is like comparing Indian and Australian Cricket teams :-)
1. It took Kundan just 1 day to integrate and put in place the Virality module, which the outsourced team took 10 days to even understand. Not to forget that the quality and neatness of the code were just no match at all.
2. Jaspal customised for us the FCK editor that you can now use to Ask and Answer questions, in a couple of hours!! This had been pending with the outsource team since day 1 of the development process.

Coming back to where I started this post (the Linkedin Question), the asker might not have yet decided on the best answer for it yet, but I feel this is what makes all the difference: Ownership

Gmail : Collaborative video

2007-08-30T17:01:00.000+05:30

Its amazing how Google does things so simply. I did not need to go to You Tube and search for this. When I logged on to Gmail today, then right besides my user name, I saw this link. Using Google and its various services, and using then with eyes open, teach you many lessons in web usability. Yes, and talking about 'new look' Orkut would be stale news,I know.
On hindsight, if we are able to put even a minuscule percentage of this learning into the making of new products like Extramarks, it would be enough.

The Gmail Official blog has published this fantastic video.
Official Gmail Blog: Watch the final Gmail collaborative video

Sexy at Sixty! Why Not?

2007-08-15T23:22:00.000+05:30

When I started this Blog, my idea was to write on topics that covered various aspects and Features / Functionalities of web products. So can I write an the Independence Day Post?
Why not?India being a land of festivals and occasions, it gives the marketing and design teams in all Internet companies to establish a connection with the audience of varied interests and needs. I have seen, and have been part of, promotions ranging from Rakhi to Valentine’s Day and Diwali to New Year’s Day and many more. I remember once during my Indiatimes days, we discussed the possibility to auction the largest bouquet of Flowers, online, to create a world record!

So, I thought let me see what the designers across the country have been up to, on this Independence Day! It was heartening to see that most sites have decorated their homepages to express their joy and freedom.
The Shopping verticals of Indiatimes, Rediff and Sify did not carry any significant Independence Day related offers although the portals had subtle design depictions of the tricolour. Ebay India’s special promotion somewhere low down on the homepage did not make any sense.Google and Yahoo are always good at modifying the logos for any occasion, and this time it was no different.

Travel sites MakeMyTrip and Yatra offered special deals, which was heartening to see. MMT depicted the Indian spirit nicely prompting people to take a long Independence Day break. Ixigo, the travel search aggregator’s logo design was neatly done.

Sites in the Networking and User Content domain looked all ready and there for the occasion. BigAdda homepage looked great but Orkut was very creative. Peaking of special offers, Sulekha is running an Independence Day best blog contest.

Pure-play classifieds sites did not seem interested in the Independence Day! Matrimonial sites, Shaadi, BharatMatrimony, and Jobsites, Monster India and Clickjobs were celebrating. Naukri looked complacent with even the new product Brijj not showing any signs of celebration!

However, the expression that impressed me the most today was the headline “Sixty, Getting Sexier” in the Times of India, that I have titled my Independence Day post, likewise. And yes, the Idea of writing an ‘Independence Day Post’ was given by dear friend, Vivek Rastogi ‘Chacha’ (not Nehru!).

Victory for Bollywood ?

2007-08-02T13:29:00.000+05:30

The two things that have the biggest potential to equally rock and shock India are Bollywood and Cricket. On Tuesday afternoon, the Indian team beat England and Sanjay Dutt got a six year jail term. It did not take much work, on the TV remote, to see which one was hotter; the Indian team's win or the Jail term!

Well, TV channels, barring a few like NDTV, have a sheep mentality. What I was waiting for was the next morning newspapers. I wanted to see which of the two events takes the prime spot in the newspapers, the next morning.

On Wednesday morning it was pretty clear that the BCCI has indeed been successful in making Indian cricket a not- so- happening entity in our lives. Although the HT had the 2 rightmost columns on the front page mentioning the Indian victory, the more circulated TOI had no space for the 'win' in the first half of the front page!

Indeed its a victory for Bollywood. Whether its also a victory for the Indian judicial system, is another matter.

My Soul Patch!

2007-07-21T21:08:00.000+05:30

This started when we first decided upon roping in Mr Pijush Datta to be our design consultant for Extramarks. This guy is a typical Ad agency ex. One feature that stands out, the moment you see him, is his facial hair. He wears this small patch of beard under his lips.

The second time Pijush visited us I decided this beauty spot could adorn my face too.
So there I was within, a week’s time I had this beauty spot on me. My wife liked it and my daughter was thrilled as it grew and started showing prominently on my face. To my surprise even our chairman complemented me for being stylish!

As this beauty spot became prominent confusion crept in. Some one called it a ‘goti’, some couldn’t name it and I started calling it‘stubble’. In my quest to look for an end to this confusion I took refuge in the internet.

This beauty spot is called a Soul Patch and Google throws about 556,000 for soul patch beard in 0.10 seconds. A Soul Patch is a small patch of facial hair just below the lower lip and above the chin as per the Wikipedia

I also know now, that it has a close relation with music as The Soul Patch came to prominence in the 1950s and 1960s and was a style of beard popular with beatniks (a member or follower of the Beat Generation) and jazz artists. Jazz trumpeters in particular preferred the soul patch because it provided comfort when using a trumpet mouthpiece.

The patch has been famous for centuries. William Shakespeare sported a Soul Patch beneath his famous moustache and there is an Annual world championship in 12 Beard & Moustache Categories.

D.H. Lawrence rightly said "How beautiful maleness is, if it finds its right expression"……….the pictures below are a perfect example :-)

LinkedIn IPO

2007-07-08T18:52:00.000+05:30

Reuters has reported that LinkedIn is headed for an IPO. This will make it one of the first social networks to go public. The company claims to have 12 million users, and is likely to have $100 million in revenue by 2008.

LinkedIn was founded by Reid Hoffman in the year 2003 and he managed the company as the founding CEO for the first four years before moving to his role as Chairman and President, Products in February this year.

LinkedIn is located in Mountain View, California and is funded by world-class investors including Sequoia Capital, Greylock, the European Founders Fund, and Bessemer Venture Partners

In December 2006, Xing , the so-called “LinkedIn of Europe”, raised 35.7 million Euros in an IPO. Compare this to the Infoedge IPO, which helped Info Edge raise Rs 170 crore.

The LinkedIn Blog however does not have a mention of this story. I would write more about the Blog in my next post.

Delhi Autos dot com!

2007-07-02T18:47:00.000+05:30

Indian is embracing the Internet well now. As we read reports from IAMAI and other sources that the Internet penetration and usage is increasing at a good rate, we are encountering the word 'dot com' more often in our day to day lives.

The newspapers are covering the Internet better, there are TV shows and there are FMCG brands creating brand/segment specific websites to increase the customer interaction. Whats interesting is that you are getting to see the word 'dot com' at places where you would expect it the least. On the back of Autos in Delhi, for instance.

The first time I noticed it was when I saw a sticker of mouthshut on an auto, while I was driving down to my office. Some weeks later I saw another one. This time it was oktatabyebye, which is the blogsite of the travel portal MMT.

I am sceptical if any kind of milage (in terms of customer acquisition) is derived out of such promotion. However I am forced to think that there could be some juice in it as more and more sites are using the 'Autos Back' to publicise their urls.

Thanks to my Nokia N70, you can see what I clicked, on my way to the office.

Helped by a 'Halwaii'

2007-06-06T11:58:00.000+05:30

In these last few years of creating and managing Internet products, I usually had a tough time explaining my 'work' to people and friends in general. Internet is, still to a majority of people, nothing more than Email and Chat. However a lot of kids would tell you that they know Google, Yahoo and Wikipedia.
I might sound like I live in a far off village somewhere in the Himalayas, but no, I am in New Delhi and that too in the heart of the city in South Delhi, however the setting is a mix of modern day apartments and an adjoining semi-urban residential colony.
Last evening, everything changed! Thanks to the neighbourhood Halwaii (sweet shop owner).
I was at Madhuvan Sweets to buy Kadai Paneer to have it for dinner. It usually takes 10 minutes to get it packed, so I was just standing idle waiting for my food to arrive. I heard the shop owner talk to another person, and was immediately drawn near as I heard the word 'Search'.
Bunty (the shop-owner) was expressing his inability to find a machine for producing 'Vark'. Vark is a thin silver foil that is edible and is used to decorate traditional Indian sweets. He said he had searched and explored all resources on the Internet. I became even more interested and as I thought I can really contribute, I suggested him a few sites like Globalsources, but he knew it all.
With people like Bunty looking at Internet as a utility, people like Praveen can enjoy the 'Kadai Paneer' and have a 'Rasmalai' too!!

Fly for less!!

2007-05-28T16:37:00.000+05:30

I would now wait for this one. Travel portals in India like Yatra, Indiatimes, MMT, Cleartrip, would be looking to implement this sort of a service for their users soon......
I am talking about YAPTA which is a clear disruption in the online travel space. Yapta does a lot of things for its users:

Gives alerts on Price Drops!
Tags exactly the flights that you want to track.
Gives refund if the price drops!!
Tracks prices of all flights at 1 place

The user needs to,

dowload the Yapta Tagger. Whether you have already purchased a ticket or are just starting your travel planning
All the trips are stored in theYapta account so the user can glance at all the latest prices in one location.
User enters the confirmation code and Yapta will then track prices on that flight and alert the user if eligible for a refund.

Launched as beta Yapta currently works with the following sites...
Alaska Airlines Northwest Airlines American Airlines Orbitz
Continental Southwest Airlines Delta Air Lines Ted Airlines
Expedia Travelocity Frontier Airlines United Airlines JetBlue US

Lets see when something like this comes up in India.

Enough of Google Search?

2007-05-24T12:32:00.000+05:30

Some days back I read a post on the Read Write Web, that spoke about numerous search engines as alternates to Google. Frankly speaking, I could never, even in my dreams, comprehend that there were so many of them, in different categories.
This prompted me to post a question on LinkedIn . The responders showed a clear inclination and liking for Google Search. However some very interesting viewpoints came across:

"If there is a reason for overtaking Google, it should be in the usage of Natural language as a search facility. Natural Query Language (NQL) has the power to ask questions like you would do in real life. Plus the fact that the wording can be interpreted for its true meaning. There are already E-commerce websites, that use NQL Like www.landsend.com. They use easyask as their engine. We just have to wait for the first general search site to come up with something like that" (Bart Schouw Business Development Manager at Progress Software BV)
and
"I often need to find pretty obscure information, and Google doesn't always suffice. So I use two tools: -- Firefox browser has a built-in search box with multiple browsers. This lets you quickly check results on many different engines, including specialized engines like IMDB, Lonely Planet, Food Network, etc. It saves a lot of time, I've found" (Sandra Niehaus User Experience Architect at Closed Loop Marketing)

You can have a look at all th responses to this question.

Coming back to the ReadWrite web's post on search engines, I am giving a list that was there with some additions to it.

www.accoona.com
www.aftervote.com
www.agent55.com
www.allth.at
www.answerbus.com
www.blabline.com
www.blinkx.com
www.blogdigger.com
www.bookhitch.com
www.bookmach.com
www.chacha.com
www.clipblast.com
www.clusty.com
www.infactsolutions.com/projects/coghog/demo.htm
www.collarity.com
www.congoo.com
www.crossengine.com
www.en.cydral.com
www.decipho.com
www.deepy.com
www.ditto.com
www.dogpile.com
www.exalead.com/search
http://www.factbites.com/
www.farecast.com
www.faroo.com
www.fasterplease.com
http://www.feedminer.com/
http://www.feedster.com/
http://www.filangy.com/
www.findalternative.com
http://www.findforward.com/
http://www.findsounds.com/
http://www.fisssh.com/
http://www.fybersearch.com/
www.genieknows.com
http://www.gigablast.com/
http://www.girafa.com/
http://www.gnosh.org/
http://www.golexa.com/
http://www.goshme.com/
http://www.goyams.com/
http://www.grokker.com/
http://www.gruuve.com/
http://www.hakia.com/
http://hypersearch.webhop.org.90.seekdotnet.com
http://www.iboogie.com/
http://www.icerocket.com/
www.indeed.com
http://www.info.com/
http://www.ixquick.com/
www.izito.com
http://www.kartoo.com/
http://www.kooltorch.com/
www.kosmix.com
www.ktorrents.com
http://www.lexxe.com/
http://www.lijit.com/
http://www.like.com/
http://www.liveplasma.com/
http://www.local.com/
www.looksmart.com
www.luxuriousgear.com
http://www.mamma.com/
www.medgle.com
http://www.mnemo.org/
http://www.mojeek.com/
http://www.mooter.com/
www.mp3realm.org
http://www.mrquery.com/
http://www.msdewey.com/
http://www.msfreckles.com/
http://www.gonutshell.com/
http://www.omgili.com/
www.oddpath.com
www.opinmind.com
http://www.pagebull.com/
http://www.peekyou.com/
www.picsearch.com
www.pipl.com
http://www.planetsearch.com/
http://www.podzinger.com/
http://www.polymeta.com/
http://www.prase.us/
http://www.purevideo.com/
http://www.qksearch.com/
www.querycat.com
www.kids.quintura.com
http://www.quintura.com/
www.recruit.net
http://www.redzee.com/
www.labs.systemone.at/retrievr/
www.searchbigdaddy.com
www.scroogle.org
http://www.searchbots.net/
www.searchgive.com
http://www.searchkindly.org/
http://www.searchles.com/
http://www.searchtheweb2.com/
http://www.seeit.com/
www.seekful.com
http://www.sidekiq.com/
www.sidestep.com
www.slideshow.zmpgroup.com/
http://www.slifter.com/
http://www.sphere.com/
http://www.sproose.com/
www.sputtr.com/
http://www.srchr.com/
www.strategicboard.com
www.summize.com
http://www.surfwax.com/
http://www.swamii.com/
http://www.thefind.com/
http://www.trexy.com/
http://www.turboscout.com/
http://www.twerq.com/
www.ulinkx.com
http://www.url.com/
www.vivisimo.com
www.en.wasalive.com
http://www.web20searchengine.com/
http://www.webbrain.com/
http://www.whonu.com/
http://www.wikio.com/
www.wink.com
http://www.wisenut.com/
http://www.yoono.com/
www.yufind.com
http://www.zabasearch.com/
www.zotspot.com
www.zuula.com
www.zoominfo.com

Work in progress :-)

2007-05-14T18:53:00.000+05:30

I have been extremely busy with my new assignment. Oh! did I forget to write that ihave changed jobs.

Yups have moved out of Hindustantimes.com and have become part of an ambitious internet startup, whose parent company is Cleave Global e-services.

We are working on developing a Social Network of Indian students (Class 6-12). We are likely to name the website http://www.extramarks.com/ (Alok's idea).

Anyways, its been quite hective as we are building it from scratch. The PRDs are ready and the tech team is working of the same. The following chart will give a fair idea of waht all it is likely to have.

Bageshwar and the nearby places: Map

2007-04-14T10:41:00.000+05:30

I have tried to embedd the map with Jamkhitola in the centre. Although it is not mentioned in this map but Jamkhitola is exactly between Bageshwar and Baijnath. Please take your cursor on the map and as the cursor turns into a thumbnail drag the map (right or left) to locate other places in the vicinity of Bageshwar .
If you continue to go towards bottom left (follow NH 87 and then NH 24), you would reach Delhi.

हमारा पैतृक घर: Our native Home

2007-04-08T11:52:00.000+05:30

After walking for nearly 2 hours we finally reached Jamkhitola. There was our 2 'Chachis', 2 ealderly ladies, 3 little girls to greet us. We drank water from the natural source of water called 'Dhara' and felt immediately relaxed.

This house is at least 100 years old. Its amazing even without any sort of maintenence its in good shape!

The house looks very elegant from the sides. Notice the lock on the 'Sangal', its been there for a long time now.

The unmaintained lawns have a lot of thorny bushes, I still managed to get to pose on the boundry wall.

Nandini seems to be enjoying the company of the milk providers.
Mona experiences the mub floor and walls, and the alpana on the door enterence looks great.

पहुंच गए: End of the Motor road.

2007-04-05T18:43:00.000+05:30

After spending nearly 7 hours in the jeep we reached Kwerali. The motorable road ends here. We started on-foot from Kwerali.

We were fortunate to get two mules who carried our luggage. One of the mules was unwilling and after it's throwing the bags twice we finally were ready to start the 'Walk'
Both me and Jibda were pretty relaxed once the bags were on their way!
.... चलो अब बैग नहीं उठाने पड़ेंगे...:-)

The view from the Kwerali School is awesome!
.....but we had to follow the mules....

....and click the fresh pine trees !!

Chami village is quite populated and the land is fertile. We walked past the beautiful wheat fields. Never thought step-farming could make the scene so beautiful

माँ और दीदी भी धीरे -धीरे चलते रहे, दृश्य का आनंद लेते हुए.

हिमालय: The first sight of the Himalayas

2007-04-05T17:45:00.000+05:30

As we moved ahead leaving the river behind, we had still a lot of distance to cover.....

The kids were however enjoying the ride in this 'Tata Spacio'

नंदिनी भी मजे मैं है.

When you see such sights , you forget the tiredness!

Wow!! See the snow behind us.

गोमती नदी: The river Gomati

2007-04-01T16:52:00.000+05:30

As we moved ahead after the Neembu-Pani, we came across the beautiful River flowing down the hills. first i tried to take a few snaps while sitting on the front seat of the moving Jeep, and endedup clicking some locals.
The valley and the land looked extremely fertile.

Children asked us to stop the jeep and got down for a photograph.

....फोटो खिचाने के लिए मैं भी बहुत उत्सुक था!!

चले On our way!

2007-04-01T14:49:00.000+05:30

As we prepared to leave Haldwani for Bageshwar, children ate 'poori-aaloo'.

The roads are surprisingly smooth and we cruised @ nearly50Kmph....

........the jeep was also in good condition and was spacious too.

हम रास्ते मैं रुके भी और नीम्बू पानी पिया!

Jamkhitola

2007-03-31T23:06:00.000+05:30

After a wait of 36 Years, I got the luck to visit "Jamkhitola" our native village. A village in the foothills of Himalayas, in the Bageshwar district of the North Indian state of Uttarakhand.
This is the place where my father Lt. Shri Devi Datt Lohani was born and brought-up, and from where he got the nector of spirituality, truth and hard-work running in his veins.
I can write this now because thats the 'power' of the soil that is "Jamkhitola".