Year: 2008

  • London

    Edward Rutherford

    This is the second time I’m reading this book. A lot of book descriptions have the words epic, saga, spanning centuries and generations etc. But to truly understand all of that you have to check out this book, for its scale and scope is truly massive.
    The tale starts from the time before the island of Great Britain was formed, ends in 1997 and in its expanse weaves a tapestry that contains the story of generations of families and events in history that they’ve been part of. Its amazing how, throughout history, the same characteristics are brought out – not just of people, but of the city too.
    A lot of cities have a rich history, but very few of them manage to give the visitor or inhabitant a sense of history. I’ve never been to London, possibly never will, but I’m sure it’s one of those places which would give one glimpses of life as it happened centuries before.

  • Book Values

    Three mails in my inbox, all relating to an interest of mine – reading, but at three levels of engaging me. The easiest one to discuss is Rediff Books, which in a very matter of fact way gave me a list of books, including a 10 day MBA, how to save Income Tax, and ‘The Chronicles of Narnai’ (sic). It informed me that I had expressed an interest in receiving such information. I did? Reading, I’d say is a great vertical for a social network, but Rediff Books doesn’t seem to think so.

    The second mail was from Shelfari, which gives me a status on what people in my network are doing. Now, I had signed up on Shelfari a while back, and had updated it for quite a while. My old blog even had a shelf I’d found cute. But somewhere down the line, its interface and utility ceased to interest me. I got quite irritated with their search which never managed to find my friends for me, only for me to get a mail from them later, not by them finding me, but on how they found this an interesting site, and wanted me to join. That was around the time that i became a Facebook fan, and found Visual Bookshelf. And why was that? Because Shelfari’s app on Facebook refused to work for me inspite of several tries. Now, to be fair, I might have been a rare case since I see a lot of people using it.

    The interesting news last week, was Amazon’s acquisition of Shelfari, which leads to a strange relationship with its competitor, Library Thing. I noticed from the second link that the UI has been improved considerably, but they’d lost me way before I could experience that.The effects of such a partnership would be beneficial to both parties, as Shelfari gains from the scale of Amazon and its users, and Amazon gains a community that it couls scale up and synergise very effectively with its current services. Amazon is doing some interesting stuff, most prominent of which would be Kindle.

    And that brings me to my favourite utility in this vertical – Visual Bookshelf. The biggest advantage I have is that I get to share it with all my friends on Facebook, and it automatically adds the friends who use the same app. It also means that I get to share a review on my newsfeed, so even those who don’t use the app can read it. VB’s mails to me are pretty simple – it tells me the status of the books I have added, and gives me an option to change it, it lets me know what my friends have added, and in a way I found very appealing, lets me know what the team is working on, and that’s some pretty interesting stuff.

    But there is another app I’m considering to give a spin, and that’s ‘Books iRead’, from weRead, a team based in Bangalore. Its page on FB informs me that it has more than 6.5 lakh users, 25 of whom are friends. I read recently that it had been acquired by Lulu. Not exactly the Amazon kind of deal, although I couldn’t help but wonder whether the guys who should’ve actually done a tie up with weRead long ago should’ve been another Bangalore based online bookstore start up – Flipkart. It could’ve been perhaps as simple as me reviewing a book on Books iRead, a friend reading it and deciding to buy it, and Flipkart offering an option to buy. Now, Flipkart is doing some reasonably good work, and I loved the way they  first caught my attention, but this would be a good context to remind them that they haven’t gotten back to me on Dublin, a book I’d asked for! But don’t worry, none of the online guys in India have, so there’s reason to cheer. Sigh!! 😐

    until next time, Read India

  • Last Tweak

    See that homemade banner on your right? That was what kept me busy this weekend. A few mails, a few comments, and a lot of GTalk s gave me a feeling that the two sets of audience don’t necessarily like the ‘other’ type of content that appears on the site. So I have decided to shift the ‘brants’ content to its own separate space within the site.

    And therefore, those who wish to get only the personal blog content can continue with this feed, and those who like to read my take on brands and social media can check out the other space, and add one more feed. For the ‘only brants’ readers, I’m sorry for coming up with new feeds every fortnight, I promise not to inconvenience you further. 🙂

    until next time, last tweak, for quite sometime 😉

  • Herbs and Spice

    We’d already been to the first version, a couple of streets off CMH Road, and while it had a Euro cafe setting complete with a blackboard menu, we weren’t convinced enough to visit again. But when we heard there was a revamped version elsewhere in Indiranagar, we thought we should drop in.

    The new version is on 80ft Road, right at the junction of 12th Main and 100 ft Road, above Planet M. The ambience is definitely better here, and there are comfortable seating options for large and small groups. The menu is considerably more than the old version, and offers a more complete spread, including a variety of salads, main course, and desserts. There’s beer too!! If you’re going later than 8 pm, you might like to reserve, since it was quite crowded.

    We were however, disappointed, with the absence of a non-veg soup. So we started with a cream of broccoli soup, which after a by-two division turned out to be only a very small quantity. This was to be a recurring theme. To be fair, they did give us some breads, on the house.

    For the main course, we ordered a ‘Fusilli with chicken, bell peppers, mushroom and basil pesto’ and a ‘Grilled whole Indian salmon with a cherry tomato sauce’. I don’t know if it had anything to with the fish or the Indian part of it, but it took them 40 minutes to serve us. And unfortunately, it really wasn’t worth the wait. The fusilli with chicken was quite okay, and flavoured well, but the fish was a disaster!! A sacrifice both the fish as well as us could’ve done without. The quantity was meagre, and in a long time, I actually left a restaurant with a ‘nowhere near full’ stomach. Well, I did sulk and avoid dessert, but the quantity, or rather, the lack of it, had really put me off.

    They made us wait quite a bit for the bill. Pretty dumb, since there were at least two groups waiting for a table. All of the above cost us over Rs.800, which was just way too much for what we got.

    Photos at Zomato

  • Communities and Brandstreams

    Last week, I’d written about transparency in organisations, and touched upon something that’d force transparency on them – conversations about them. While conversations can happen on the organisation itself, I believe the brand will also act as a starting point in many conversations. A transparent organisation will transfer some positive equity to the brand and vice versa. What comes first is a good chicken-and-egg question. Whether they can exist independent of each other is also a good thought.

    Since I have written on organisations, I’ll veer towards the brand this time. There is a good article here on what brands should consider before jumping into the ‘create communities’ game. But then, brand associations should never be restricted to communities, it can be as basic as listening in on conversations that happen not just on the brand itself, but the specific and generic categories it belongs to.  Moreover, communities don’t need to be very rigid in the way they operate. Check out Dell’s efforts here. The second half of this article also succeeds in conveying this fabulously. In a convenience driven, information overloaded consumer’s mind, it is difficult for the ‘four times a year’, ‘when we feel we have to communicate something’ TVC-print-outdoor campaign that many brands follow, to find a place.

    So, what are brands doing? From small businesses that give ‘prewards‘, to FMCG giants that attempt buzz marketing, everything is being tried. Some succeed, and some are questioned. What the last link, Nike shows is that brands cannot escape now with lip service. They have to be true.

    Which brings me to possibilities. Quite sometime back, I’d read this post about user generated advertising and product wikis, a sort of the brand’s lifestream, if you will. I found it a very refreshing thought, even thought Heekya (via Mashable) might be a good tool to start the journey, and was happy to read a tangential post  here. Please note that, though the second article uses ‘brandstreaming’ it is more to do with engaging the community through social media. Its still interesting though.

    But the best read I saw on this subject would be this post by Chris Brogan. I think it offers a great way for brands to balance their ‘official’ presence online with all the user generated stuff that’s bound to exist. But I’d still say community building has to start at home, i.e. organisation.

    until next time, start your brandstream..