Author Archive

Over my next few posts, I am going to write about the businesses Twitter, Wolfram Alpha, Bing, and one of our very Indian platform (let’s leave the name for the future!)

Twitter

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Let’s have a poll to start off with. And let’s keep it simple – in life there cannot be 2 ways of looking at things. So just think of things objectively when you take this poll!

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Yes, a lot of us in this world faced the brunt of the recession. But little did we know that this was predicted way back in 2006.

Peter Schiff, an American Economic Commentator, had predicted the recession, and its exact cause, in 2006, while he was just laughed off, by a lot of other speculators. At that point of time there was just a speculation of a recession, but it was just a minority that felt so. What is interesting is not just that Peter Schiff predicted the recession, but the accuracy with which he predicted things. continue

One thing you know when Google launches a new application is that there is something very exciting in store. Something is going to change in this world. There is going to be a newer and better way of doing things. Their brand has got so much of the words “refreshing change” attached to it all over, making it really special. However, it isn’t just a joke to come up with such a power brand. It requires a systematic well planned out strategy. Here is what I think went right for them strategically.
The first thing that Google did absolutely right was get the product perfectly right. Internet is huge. Search Engines were there even before Google. But Google through its superior technology was one step ahead of competition each time. This is how they managed to enter the internet, making some space out of nowhere, and opening up a completely new dimension to the world of Internet. continue

My previous post on FIP brought in some debate – some in the comments section, and some on my GTalk. Well, at that stage, I was just playing the Devil’s Advocate. I ended my last post saying I would bring out the negatives of having an FIP in the world. Over the last 3 weeks or so, I had put up a Google Blog Alert for the words “Fake IPL Player”, which gave me an alert when top bloggers wrote about FIP. I got loads of such alerts. And given that FIP chose to be a hypocrite this week by going back on his word, most recent blogs were anti FIP. continue

No. This is not a post that will try and analyze who Fake IPL Player is. My post is about what Fake IPL Player (FIP) has done, what FIP has stirred, and what this means.

For those who don’t yet know, Fake IPL Player is a blog that is describing the scenes inside the Kolkata Knight Riders’ dressing room. The FIP blog has become a huge hit in India especially (92% of the viewership comes from India). It managed to get a traffic rank of around 10000 all over the world (and 261 now in India in terms of viewership). (For reference, google.com is Numero Uno). Around 0.02% of the world internet users have read the FIP blog. All in a matter of a few weeks. continue

Download the IPL Predictor

There are just a few matches left. Nothing is certain, apart from the fact that Delhi is in (and that Kolkata is out!). continue

In a recent report from Hitwise about Search Engine Market shares, Google took up 72% of the online search market jumping 5% from last year. Yahoo’s worldwide market share was 16%, while MSN was at around 6% and Ask got 4%.

Google has gone up by 5% percentage points from last year, at an expense of both Yahoo and MSN. While this is great news for Google, many people believe that Google is its own biggest threat. Let’s see why. Google has gone far ahead in arranging the information on the internet. They clearly break the barrier between the internet and information. But what’s dangerous for them is that they, by having broken this difficult barrier quite efficiently, have opened up a range of opportunities, one level beyond what they do. continue

So what’s the answer? As Maximus rightly pointed it out – it’s all in the margins. To understand more clearly, let’s just rethink what a distribution for a product is.

Distribution is the technique which helps the supplier of a product dissipate the product effectively through various channels in hope of improving his reach to all potential and existing customers, while dropping of a margin at each channel that he takes. continue

I was in the Inorbit Mall at Malad, Mumbai yesterday. I had an experience there; most people would call it a very ordinary experience, while for me it reminded me of a simple lesson I learnt at college.

To give a bit of a background, I travel quite a bit to reach my work place every day, and need quite a bit of change to painlessly complete my travel. So whenever possible, I try and get some change into my purse.. continue