• “What will you do when the money goes?”

    Even as stories abound about a Google acquisition of Twitter, Adage had a story on how Google is already making money out of tweets. According to the article, Google is offering ad units that display the client’s five most recent tweets across the AdSense network. The link leads straight to the client’s twitter account, and the campaign is measurable by the increase in follower count. One could say that Twitter gets some publicity out of this, but its obviously not getting any money.

    The ad network Federated Media recently launched ExecTweets, a site that aggregates tweets from business executives. The site is sponsored by Microsoft. With a twitter account, you can join the conversation, receive tweets from the community and vote for tweets and execs. At least on this one, Twitter will make some money.

    Since we have mentioned two biggies, might as well mention the third too, though what they’re doing is different from the above. Sideline is the desktop app from Yahoo, that runs via the AdobeAIR platform. It can do custom search groups, advanced queries and auto refreshes by pulling in data from tweets. There are other services that offer similar features, but maybe there’s more coming. And it does promise 20% more awesomeness. 🙂 On a tangent, a service called Say Tweet, which I have used in my personal blog to display my Twitter status, does give a sense of what Yahoo could do with Flickr and Twitter.

    In addition to the biggies above who’re using Twitter, there are numerous applications and services being built based on Twitter, and several others inspired by Twitter. A few examples. Tinker, from advertising and publishing network Glam Media, allows users to track real time conversations (from facebook and Twitter) happening around TV shows, entertainment events, conferences, and so on. It gives information on events by showing most followed and most discussed streams, popular events, and on trends with charts and historical data.  It also has embeddable widgets, which can be used to view a feed as well as update. They already have advertising and featured events and have further monetisation plans. iList Micro, from the iList service that alllows you to broadcast your listing to friends across networks, is the Twitter version and uses the hashtags #ihave and #iwant to create a simple process of classifieds. I have already mentoned Yammer (which now offers integration with Twitter), and Blellow in earlier posts, which are renditions of Twitter for more niche/enterprise uses, there’s also status.net arriving in a couple of months time.

    In spite of the several ways in which business are using Twitter, and the potential, I actually get worried when such services pop up on a regular basis, because I fear that when each service figures out a revenue model, one door could possibly be closing for Twitter itself. For instance, recently Jeremiah Owyang had a good post on social CRM being the future of Twitter, and within a few days, I read about Salesforce adding Twitter analytics to its CRM offering, and about CoTweet, a part marketing-part CRM tool.

    Twitter hasn’t been idle. From experimenting with advertising on profile pages (for third party and own apps, free for now) to tweaking title tags for better Google results, to hiring a concierge for celebrities (yes, really!) a lot is being done. And there’s also a new homepage design (limited roll out) which gives more prominence for the search function and increases homepage stickiness. It will also display popular trending topics (like in the current search homepage). (Hmm, perhaps one ad every 5 items, I wouldn’t mind that when i search)

    With the new funding, perhaps they have enough money in the bank to wait, watch new services, and incorporate the popular ones into their own functionality, in order to provide a diverse and robust service to all kinds of users.  Twitter is so open ended that it is different things to different people, but I wonder if identifying a few areas that they’d want to develop for revenues is of prime importance now. What I’m worried about is other services staking out potential revenue models, and whether addition of features towards no particular intent might result in everyone else but them making money out of these very features. But hey, maybe they have a plan. 🙂

    until next time, tweet dreams

    PS. the lyrics of the song mentioned in the title 🙂

  • Paths of Glory

    Jeffrey Archer

    Every time I start an Archer book, I expect to be entertained and to be made to think, and it always happens so. This one is no different. I simply loved the humour that Archer retains throughout the book.
    But it is a bit different in on another front. It is based on a true story, but one as nail biting as the works of fiction that Archer has written in the past.
    Set in an age of adventure and explorations, when men had not yet reached the South Pole and the Himalayas, it is the story of George Mallory, a gifted man with an extraordinary dream, and if you were to acknowledge that he fulfilled his dream, another equally great name would be taken off history books. A wonderful tale that is as much about Mallory’s love for Ruth- his wife and the only woman he’s ever loved, as it is about his dream.
    After I read this book, I began to wonder how many such Mallory s exist in the annals of history, or just hidden behind the names that actually appear. Must read! Trivia: Mallory’s close associate Finch, who is a prominent character in the book, is the father of Peter Finch, the first actor to win an Academy Award posthumously. The second happens to be Heath Ledger, for The Joker, an all time favourite character.
    Speaking of trivia, do read the ‘Post 1924’ section at the end of the book. The last entry is bound to put a smile on your face. 🙂

  • Gramin

    Gramin will go down in archives as the first veg restaurant to written about on this blog. Before going further, let me reassure readers that I’m too chicken to go veg, this is just an aberration caused by super villainess D, who, with a malicious smile, ignored her bitter half ,  and chose the weekend’s dining spot.

    Gramin is located in Raheja Arcade. This is on the road that goes from Forum to National Games Village. When coming from the MG Road direction, it’d be best to take a left after the Tata Indicom office, and then, at the very end get on the road leading towards Forum. Raheja Arcade will then fall on the left, just before the Forum junction, and you can find parking on the service lane right after the building.

    Gramin gets quite crowded after about 7.45, so unless you want to wait, its best to get there before that. It has two floors – ground and mezzanine, and the decor matches the ‘gramin’ theme of the place. Compact seating arrangements, I prefer the mezz floor.

    We started with a Banjara Paneer Tikka starter. There were only two soup options, but that was compensated by lots of starter options. The tikka was not too spicy and came with an amazing chutney. We also had a masala butter milk and a sweet lassi. I had wanted a kala khatta but they had run out of it. The lassi was very sweet and thick, thoroughly enjoyable. The buttermilk was quite spicy, but if spice is what you want, then I’d recommend the Hari mirch soda, its quite awesome.

    The starter had about 6 pieces and so we only ordered a single dish for the main course. That was the paneer onion chatka and it was a reasonably good choice, though i liked the bhurji we’ve had earlier, better. To go with that, we ordered a butter methi roti, and a stuffed kulcha. The kulcha was a bit burnt, but the methi roti was quite good, with quite a large quantity of butter.

    And thus ended the sabzi outing. It cost us just over Rs.300. Gramin is a must try for all veggie Bangaloreans, they serve some excellent food. Its okay for the non veggies to give in once in a while too. We shall meat again soon! 😉

    Gramin, 20-21, Raheja Arcade, Koramangala 7th Block. Ph: 41104104

    Menu and Photos at Zomato

  • Ends and beginnings

    Work took me someplace where I normally wouldn’t be found – an AOL (Art Of Living) discourse. While I have nothing against those who choose that path, I don’t see myself there. Standing there, as a non participant while a few thousand listened and performed yoga, I thought I got a few pointers to what made them a part of this movement. One was a feeling of belonging to a community that had the same wavelength and subscribed to the same thought processes and the other was a meaning, a purpose that the movement gave to their life.

    Since it was an official event, I got dropped back at home, and in the process got to do something that i rarely get to do – forget the road, the traffic and the world ahead and soak in the effect of humanity passing by. I don’t know if you enjoy what could be uncharitably labelled gawking, but if you pause and consider that each face, and each expression contains a story, maybe you’d enjoy it like you do.

    I passed Resthouse Road on the way, and saw Pecos and Guzzler’s Inn, not places I frequent, but places that are ‘tagged’ in my memories of Bangalore from the time I came here. As i proceeded down Brigade Road, i also saw the signage of Vaayu, a lounge bar, and thought I could see a difference in the crowd that each catered to. I realised that after a while, after a few generations had passed, Bangalore’s character most likely wouldn’t include Pecos, although we would, in our denial of mortality, not think of it that way now.

    I reached home, and after the obligatory channel flipping settled down to Rocky Balboa, the comfort of a ‘seen before many times’ movie that will let your thoughts drift and you still wouldn’t feel left out. I never thought I’d quote from a Rocky movie, but it seemed to fit in

    Ya know they always say if you live in one place long enough, you are that place.

    It stuck to me when I watched Delhi 6 the next evening. An old woman comes back to her country-city-locality to die in peace, in a place that she’s familiar and comfortable with, and finds that the place has remained unchanged, but the people haven’t. And it took me back to this post that I had written a while back – on Cochin and the cosmopolitan place it was becoming.

    So, where will I be comfortable finally – Bangalore, where I have now spent 6 years (almost to the day) and where I will (at some point in time) have lived long enough to ‘be the place’, Cochin, which I refuse to let go of, whose memories I guard like a treasure- the chaotic, humid, gets-on-your-nerves place that I consider my home, or someplace new that the cosmos has in store for me. A place which gives me a sense of belonging. A set of people who matter to me and who I matter to. And that’s where this stream of consciousness ends.

    The cosmos is listening. From the list of 143 songs in the list, on ‘shuffle’ mode, it has suddenly chosen Daughtry’s Home.

    until next time, are we on the same home page? 🙂

  • Just Business?

    A few days back, LinkedIn added a feature that I’d asked for the last time I wrote about the service – the ability to add RSS feeds to groups. Depending on the functionality enabled by your group manager in any group, you could add a site/feed that fits the group profile and all the members could benefit. From the comments on the page, there seem to be a few implementation issues. Vijay, who manages the Digital Marketing India group on LinkedIn (the one I most actively participate in) has added a few feeds, but we’re yet to play with it much 🙂

    He also pointed me to this interview with Allen Blue, a LinkedIn co-founder. Allen mentions in the interview that ‘groups’ is the most exciting thing they’re working on now, though they seem to be doing things to limit the functionality of the groups. He also says that (among others) he’s impressed with Ning and Facebook. Will come back to that in a bit.

    I am wondering if this feeds functionality will also be made available to company webpages. For now the pages are pretty impressive, with a whole lot of data being provided. But there are possibilities – like allowing page managers to create an RSS feed of news about the company, which any user could subscribe to and be updated. (a Google alert approach). They could also allow multimedia uploads (haven’t seen any yet) and more interactivity. In short, become the second interface of the company, right after their corporate site – what brands are doing with Facebook fan pages, only on LinkedIn it will be more of a serious interaction.

    Ning has been making waves and I have been seeing a lot of people utilising it to make networks. As of Sep 08, it had 2955000 users and a YOY growth rate of 251% (LinkedIn was right behind at 193%) (via StartUp meme) But (at least) for now, I don’t see it operating in the same space as LinkedIn, since Ning is more on building groups around common interests, and that’s only one of the things LinkedIn does.

    The real action will happen when Xing, the European business network will start deriving some synergy from its recent acquisition – SocialMedian. Towards the second half of 2008, Xing had 7 million users as against LinkedIn’s 12 million, and was making profits. Though I’ve not come across a lot of Xing users in India, even LinkedIn is not an ancient phenomenon here. So there’s definitely time to catch up. Xing has most of the functionality that LinkedIn has, but more importantly has a brilliant resource in Social Median, and its implementation of Facebook Connect. During its acquisition, the then CEO had said that Social Median, with its news gathering (from 19000 sources) and custom filtering was a perfect fit for Xing. I couldn’t agree more. The value it could add to the individual and the groups he/she is part of is tremendous. This is an area that LinkedIn has not fully tapped.

    Meanwhile, the service that I thought might be a good buy for LinkedIn – Yammer, recently announced that Twitter updates can now be imported into Yammer. When I had written about Yammer first, I had mentioned a ‘bridge’ between Yammer and Twitter. This move has solved part of it, for me the more important part is the (filtered) Yammer updates going into Twitter, and come to think of it, LinkedIn. But of course, this is connected a lot with an organisation’s levels of transparency.

    And if all this wasn’t enough, we now have a new player – Blellow. TC called it a Yammer meets LinkedIn meets Twitter entity. Blellow describes itself as a productivity microblog, that  allows users to collaborate, find jobs and solve problems via a Twitter like interface with ‘followers’ and ‘following’, private messaging, @ replies, (the question here is ‘What are you working on?’) Where it differs from Twitter is that updates can go upto 300 characters, users are organised into groups, and there are threaded discussions. One can create a profile, form groups based on projects or interests, ask questions in groups and give ‘kudos’ for answers that help (a rating mechanism), post jobs (for a price), plan meetups..  From the looks of it, its a great niche package for freelancers and people looking for quick help in specific fields, maybe LinkedIn could acquire and scale up? 🙂

    With the personal-professional lines blurring, the Xing-SocialMedian-Facebook Connect association is something LinkedIn should be looking closely at. It either has to get an equally strong partner or develop features and data portability by itself, and perhaps acquire services that complement its own services.

    until next time, mind your business 😀