• Married but Available

    Abhijit Bhaduri

    “Mediocre but Arrogant” seems to have preceded this, but its a read in itself. As the author says, this is not a sequel. I’m not sure whether Five Point Someone came before this, but its difficult to miss the similarity in the context and the writing style – racy, with a bit of ‘philosophy’ thrown in. It had been quite a while since I finished a book in one go – and this one almost succeeded, so, to me, there is no question on entertainment value.
    The premise of an MBA in his first job, and the ups and downs he faces, the things he has to learn – not just about his career but also about life in general, from people and his own experiences, as he moves ahead in different stages of life, is something I could identify with, at least in patches.
    A reasonably good snacky read with no pretensions.

  • Blockheading

    He was asked to write about the blogger’s block. How could he explain, that, on some days the words just flowed, and one could write without a pause. More importantly, how could he explain, that on some days the ideas and the stories just seemed to dry up, and there were only pauses. Like today.

    until next time, clear hai? 😉

  • Search Advances

    So, Twitter seems to be getting serious about its real time search capabilities. According to various reports, all of which seemed to have emerged from this source, Twitter’s new VP of Operations, Santosh Jayaram, has said that Twitter Search will soon be doing two things in addition to what it does now

    • it will crawl the links that people tweet
    • it will sort results by its reputation ranking system

    The ranking algorithm is going to be very interesting, because unlike, say, Google’s search algorithm, this would have to work at two levels – one, similar to Google’s Page Rank to ascertain the site quality, and two, the reputation of the person sharing the link. So, it’d be interesting to see which one would come on top, assuming the same story – me, sharing a TechCrunch link, or Mike Arrington sharing a link to this blog. 😉 Mashable had earlier written about an alternate  Twitter search service called Tweefind that uses various parameters to rank a person. The eternal debate about what should make a better twitter rank just got more interesting. 🙂

    RWW has connected the above happening to an interesting change that happened at Twitter recently – Twitter replacing tinyurl with bit.ly as the default url shortening service. According to an earlier article on the same site, bit.ly does more than just shorten a url, it “analyzes the page being linked to, pulls out the key concepts discussed on that page, and then provides real-time statistics about where the link is being shared and how many people are clicking on it.” Now, isn’t that interesting??!! When talking about the crawling of links, its hard not to think about the various services I’d written about earlier, (Krumlr, Fleck etc) which work on a delicious+twitter principle – use the delicious method of tagging and then share to twitter. I wonder, if at some stage, this is the kind of semantic association that Twitter would want to build on top of the crawling spiders, or will the machines take care of this too?

    The impact of all this on Google remains to be seen. Google is also looking over its shoulder to another hyped up participant in the ring – Wolfram Alpha, which is yet to make a debut. But there are speculations that they are on top of that situation. Anyway, Google must be doing something, they always do, that’s what makes them so dangerous. Since it already indexes tweets, adding real time shouldn’t be a big deal. A greasemonkey script does that for me!! But with the addition of Search inside GMail, the possibilities of that + Google Profiles + Friend Connect (and Gtalk status sharing) in creating a human layer  on top of the existing search is interesting. Their Searchology event has brought out a lot of new stuff  –

    • Search Options – a collection of tools that help you wean out the information you are really looking for, and view it in the way you want to. Essentially you can now tweak Google Search some more to your preferences.
    • Wonder wheel – it clusters search information
    • Rich Snippets – In addition to the info that currently gets displayed in a search item, there will be a line that sums up the result – eg. ratings for restaurants. It has asked publishers for their cooperation in adopting microformats to create this structured data.
    • Google Squared – As per the post, it “doesn’t find webpages about your topic — instead, it automatically fetches and organizes facts from across the Internet.” Its description does remind me of a certain yet to be launched search engine 🙂
    • Search will also indicate whether a site is optimised for mobile devices, and will consider location when delivering search results. (Google Suggest bringing in results from local places for say, restaurants)

    Some excellent live coverage happened at Search Engine Land.

    Meanwhile, a small detour for Microsoft and Facebook. Microsoft claimed recently that its going to become “more disruptive in search.” Facebook recently opened its stream API but also cut off the RSS feed for the updates. I used to make use of it in at least a couple of places. 🙁 It also acknowledged Indian users by making itself available in 6 Indian languages. I wonder where Facebook figures in these search battles. Does the opening of the stream API mean that we will soon have a real time status search mechanism? But how useful will that be when a lot of users prefer to keep their profiles walled (like FB itself)? But its interesting to note that many geeks also auto update their FB statuses with their twitter ones thanks to many available services. FB is quite an aggregator too, in its own way, so I wonder if we’ll get to see a search that shows Twitter + FB statuses, and the videos, pages, shared links and comments content on FB. Meanwhile, on real time, alerts now happen as pop ups. 😐

    The last couple of days also saw new versions of a couple of existing players – One Riot now indexes and groups link shares on Twitter and Digg. It also allows you to dig further into the data- numbers, who shared it first etc  and then share it on the two services. Tweetmeme is launching an enhanced search version which lets you filter results by age, category, channel and also shows how many times result has been tweeted.

    To me, real time is only one of the things that makes Twitter’s foray into search interesting. After all, when I search for real time links to a story on Twitter, I don’t think an Ad Sense like mechanism will work for revenue. So it is the combination of semantics, sentiment analysis, and real-time data that makes this Twitter development seem like a huge leap (when it happens). Google seems to be working on making more sense of data, than real time, or semantics. Can that be taken as actually walking the talk when they claim that search is still in its infancy and there’s a lot of room for existing and new players? Twitter and the new services don’t have the scale of indexed pages that Google has, and Google doesn’t have real time. For now, its interesting how all of these services actually work out complementing each other, as shown by the comparison here.

    I have to admit, with all the connecting that was happening on Twitter, I was hoping that a revolutionary model (of revenue and web behaviour) would evolve. The current developments, though a lot of it is still conjecture, are not as over whelming as I’d hoped for. Its an organic evolution of sorts – semantic, real time, social web. Perhaps it is only the beginning.

    until next time, the search is on…

  • Juley

    In my mind, I can still hear that Ladakhi greeting, though its been a few days since our return from Leh. There are stories of mountains and mountains of stories I could tell you. Of the trip that almost didn’t start because the taxi service got the day and month right, and booked us a cab for 2010!! Of the Delhi weather which over delivered on the warm welcome premise at 40 deg C.

    Of the jovial captain of the Leh flight, who said that one third of our trip cost would be ‘made up’ by the first view of Leh. Of him being proven right by a sight so magical that one could hear a collective gasp as the lofty snowy peaks were seen for the first time through the windows. Of the mountains that for one moment looked the magnificent phenomena they were, and in another looked like clay models that kids made for school exhibitions.  Of another statement the captain delivered on – a free camel ride, he called it – the landing at the Kushok Bakula Rimpoche Airport.

    Of being on a high already and wondering whether one would be hit by the much written about high altitude sickness. Of being phlegmatic while popping pills and drinking bitter cough syrup at the first sign of phlegm. Of wandering through streets where tiny wrinkled old people chanted with prayer wheels in hand, and the next generation listened to heavy metal and peddled rock bands’ skull tees. Of wandering up mazes to see the ruins of the old palace and then lazing in the relatively palatial comforts of the hotel. Of waking up at dawn and setting out on journeys in which every view was click worthy, of getting tired of clicking and relying on the video mode far too much, even as the mind captured images. Of the visit to the gurudwara, where one was caught between the twin pleasures of the awesome sweet tea and the warmth from the cup.

    Of gazing at the mighty river that spawned a civilisation, and wondering how much has changed for the nomadic tribes that live in tents and roam about with their Dzo (a hybrid of yak and cow). Of the noisy rush of air as one climbed up mountains to gompas (monasteries) that awed you with their silence. Of glass cases that carefully and lovingly stored centuries old manuscripts and a realisation of the tiny timeframe of six years of blogging. Of the excitement of staying in a tent, quickly followed by the realisation of how exactly one could feeze to death, and then feeling an intense thankfulness for one’s supple and warm bed companion, despite the rubbery exterior -the hot water bag.

    Of boarding passes that got you to 35000 ft in no time, and mountain passes at half the height that made you crawl for almost three hours to get to them. Of being driven up narrow mountain roads, slipping on snow every now and then, and wondering if your final destination was going to be up or down. Of pitying the military guys who lived in the severe cold, and then muttering at them for making decisions that cost us an entire day. Of creating yellow snow after getting tired of holes in the ground and portable loos that cleared up the blocked sinuses in no time!! Of seeing a lake at 13500 ft- Pangong, shared by two countries, that competed with the sky for the shades of blue that could be displayed. Of a heavy snow fall that forced one to get out of the comforts of the push back seats in the vehicle and attempt to push the vehicle, which pushed back!! Of the disappointment of knowing that nature took only a few minutes to shatter one’s well laid plans. Of begging and pleading and cajoling cops to let us through after the official closing time.

    But most importantly, of the wonderful wonderful person who took it upon himself to make sure that we got to see all the sights we wanted to – Tsewang. He, who confessed after much questioning, that he was having his first meal of the day at 3 pm after driving 9 straight hours through horrible conditions at altitudes above 14000 ft.  And then proceeded to drive up to Khardung La, the world’s highest motorable road at 18380 ft-  all in a day’s work, he said. Nothing I said or did could assuage my guilt.

    The long journeys through the mountainscape pushed random thoughts into my head- of heaven, and whether living at such high altitudes meant that one was closer to God. 🙂 Of whether the milieu that nature offered in these places instilled the compassion and concern for fellow humans, that I saw in many around, and if that was the secret behind the peaceful and happy faces, despite the hard conditions and lack of even common facilities in several places. The great heights and its citizens gave me perspectives and a sense of harmony that I still seem to be carrying with me, hoping that the daily grind won’t take it away.

    As I looked at Leh before I stepped into the airplane, I realised that this might be the only time I’d visit this place. I also realised that perhaps my memories would fade, and I might forget the images I could now easily recollect in my mind. But I like to think that there’s one picture that will never go away – the lofty peaks of the mighty Himalayas, glistening with snow, and a light breeze that causes the flags at the monastery to flutter silently, all of this can only make up the background for the innocent, peaceful joy on Tsewang’s face as he plays with the Lama kids, and as he sees me approaching, he  asks me with his customary smile, if I’m ready to continue the journey.

    until next time, a daily lama

    PS. You can catch a few photos here.

    collage1

  • The evolution of Content Marketing

    A few weeks back, the eMarketer released some statistics about the kind of web advertisements that elicit reactions from readers.

    emarketer

    Clearly, the crowd likes to see ‘advertisements’ within content – I think advertorials would be a subset of that. This trend is all the more prominent in the younger audience, when the demographic profiles of the respondents are considered. (check out the statistics here)

    The graph shows that advertising in content is also ahead of sponsored search links, perhaps because the human writer would obviously have a larger sense of context than the ad serving Google. More importantly, there is a trust factor involved when the ‘advertising’ comes from a ‘known’ blogger/writer. There have always been debates about bloggers ‘selling out’ and plugging products/services, but sponsored posts are a reality, and so long as the disclaimers and the disclosures are in place, I am quite okay with that. I’m quite sure that if the concerned blogger gets greedy, the crowd will straighten him out in time.

    Content marketing is definitely different from traditional marketing/PR and raises interesting scenarios for all three parties involved – advertisers, publishers and consumers. Before you go further, I’d suggest reading up Chris Brogan’s (slightly old but) informative post about content marketing.

    The advertisers could range from large brands – products or services, to those serving niche sections. Trendwatching had written recently about sellsumers –

    SELLSUMERS: Whether it’s selling their insights to corporations, hawking their creative output to fellow consumers, or renting out unused assets, consumers will increasingly become SELLSUMERS, too. Made possible by the online revolution’s great democratization of demand and supply, and further fueled by a global recession that leaves consumers strapped for cash, the SELLSUMERS phenomenon is yet another manifestation of the mega-trend that is ‘consumer participation’.

    Advertisers would have to figure out if they want to establish and maintain their own content marketing platform, or rely on on a network of entities like sellsumers – that could be individuals or a content marketing service that aggregates independent websites/bloggers, or encourage their regular consumers (/prosumers) to speak about a brand they use, or just support activities/communities and hope for good word of mouth. Perhaps it could be a combination of any or all of the above, with a different objective (a brand goal or a sales goal),  and different measurement criteria for each. In any case, this could prove a great way for brands to explore their long tails of products/services and communication too. It would also mean that brands would have to work harder to ensure that they reach the desired audience in the desired way, in an increasingly fragmented media landscape.

    Publishers, as mentioned above, could be the brands themselves or sellsumers  – individuals or a network. Perhaps newspapers could explore this as a revenue stream, since they’ve always been content aggregators with specialist columnists. The existing social networks are trying to evolve a revenue model out of this. Celebrities could build up an audience across social networks and create an endorsement 2.0 version. For any of the above, the key would be to establish and maintain a set of users, with whom they have an equity- a social capital, to whom they can provide a value, even when they’re doing content marketing. In essence, while the old publishers used their reach for any advertiser who could pay the required price, the new publishers would have to be focused and would have to live with the involvement of consumers in who they sell the reach to, and how.

    The end consumers will seek out networks they can trust, ones which can provides non intrusive ways of connecting them to the product/service they might have an interest in. They would play an active role in creating and maintaining relevant publishers and networks, by ensuring that they are trustworthy sources of information.

    Going forward, it is possible that all the entities we see on the web now, including us, will play all these roles at various times. Unlike the clearly demarcated advertiser-publisher-consumer system we have now, the new systems would be more fluid, with flexible options for all parties. The standards and norms of content marketing need to evolve. Perhaps the disruption we are seeing now, with the decline of traditional media and rise of social web is a prelude to this flexible system.

    until next time, role play