Category: Internet

Social Networks – The Future

I posted an answer on Social Networks on LinkedIn.

Hi,

Looks like no one can have enough of Social Networks.

In my opinion, the entire wave of networks would keep on flooding the Internet. Pertinent question would be which network would survive in the long term.

Lets not even go into reasons why these networks are created in the first place.

Things that would keep one social network ahead of another are

1. Network Effect: The network with most number of people would eventually win. People would have to join the network with most people and most people would join a network because the network has most people on it. Saw this in action with Orkut in India.

2. Repeat Visitors: Once a social network grows beyond its novelty factor, a lot of people simply stop coming back. Network should have something that attracts people back. LinkedIn: Professionals. Facebook: Applications.

If I need to talk to my friends and other random people about something, I can create a blog, I can comment on other blogs. I can send SMS, emails, call for real. The utility of a social network for daily chores is simply absent. Networks would have to offer more than just dating, friendship, music etc.

3. Offering: A network should give me something that is hard to find (or do) in real life. For example LinkedIn. This is something (access to people with IQ :D) that I cant get in real life. No popular network apart from LinkedIn offers this to me.

Apart from these three, if few networks have to emerge as winners, they need to take care of following

1. Regional networks: Even though Internet does not have any boundaries as such, currently we have different networks dominating different geographies. Friendster – Asia, mySpace – US, Orkut – India and Brazil.

Obviously the reason for this spatial distribution is real connections (you invite, join and interact with social networks where your real-life friends are and most of your real-life friends live close to you)

2. Interest Areas: End of the day you join a network and stay there because you are interested in something and you want to connect to people with similar interests and want their opinions.

Myspace could connect all musicians, Linkedin could connect all professionals etc. The social network that can do this first would end up as a winner in my opinion.

If I was to compare professional interests, FaceBook with its applications is a move in that direction but it still lacks seriousness for a QnA network and more importantly it does not have the kind of people LinkedIn has. Similarly if I was to compare music interests, Myspace and FaceBook are still not there.

In my opinion, social networks are like any other commodity. In the long run, we would have one or two major players with chunk of the market share. And the networks that can aggregate interest areas and geographic spread would emerge as winners in long term.

Regards,
SG

Long Time No See

Been a long time since I posted something. Quite a few things are happening.

Sensex touched 19000.

Realized that photograpy is INDEED very difficult.

Saw a raod accident for the first time.

A very good friend made me realize that blogging is not only about connecting with people.

A very good friend (philosopher and guide) is getting married. Yes I am talking about you 😉

Realized that snapfish is one of the rare Internet services that I like and will extensively use in future.

Marketing Apple

Marketing Apple is about 5 pages long pdf that talks about things that have worked at Apple. I respect that company for all those wonderful marketing ideas and how they create hype before a product is even launched. I think its an interesting read for any one looking out for marketing ideas and new products.
 
However I disagree with one of the observations. Point 2 says "Never be First to Market".
 
I strongly disagree. Ok Apple was never first to market but that doesnt mean being first to market would not work. Todays world is like a flush. The first player comes and customers flock the way water rushes when the plug is pulled. And to complete the analogy, once a customer is hooked, the switching costs are too high to let any customer go. Once you enroll at MDI, you can not tihnk about enorolling at a better BSchool – cos you have paid so much and any other BSchool is only marginally better.
 
They could have talked about solving a problem easier and better and faster. iPod worked becuase it was part cult and it solved the problem of moving around with music better than any other player in the market (check out iPod launch videos on youtube).
 
So basically create something that is attractive, easy for cusotmers to join and has high switching cost for customers.
 
I more or less agree with the other observations.
 
Any comments … ?
 
P.S.: Talking is way too easy. Getting an idea and opening an enterprise is way too difficult 🙁

Billboards on Virtual Earth !!!

Its been a long time since I have been thinking about a career in advertising … I know I wont be any good but I want one shot at it. Was reading things related to advertisements when I came across yet another new concept in advertising … Billboards on Virtual Earth. They place virtual billboards on Google Earth and Virtual Earth.

We have seen ads everywhere ..

In the movies … starting with Forrest Gump to Cast Away to The Truman Show
In homes … Hangars, Carry Bags
In shops … well loads of them
On roads … billboards, traffic lights etc
On products … logos, punch lines
On internet … banner ads, pop ups, minisites
On email … like this one
On software … DAP, Web Accelerators etc
On blogs … 🙂

Its everywhere. Add to the list Google Earth.

BrightGIS is offering spaces on Google Earth, ofcourse for a fee. Awesome concept .. !!!!

P.S.: Got this story from http://adverlab.blogspot.com/index.html. This is a very good resource for people interested in adverts.

Of chain letters, bad luck and misfortunes

Since I spend a bit too much time on internet, my email address is common knowledge and thus I get a huge number of chain letters. A typical letter asks me to forward the same to 7 guys on average (some even want me to send it to 10,000 people). They further proclaim that if I indeed send it to all those people, I shall be rewarded and if I don’t, I shall rot in hell and face the wrath of misfortunes and bad lucks for my next seven lives.

Needless to say, I haven’t forwarded a single chain letter ever and may be this is the sole reason for all my miseries? May be it’s about time I started forwarding those letters, add my name to I-am-stupid list and wait for the luck gods to shower the blessings ????

119 and counting … !!!!

There is a phenomenon called Orkut. Phenomenon because every internet user I know in India is hooked onto it.

Today I logged in Orkut.com after about 15 days and this is the message I got …

you have more friends to consider, please accept or decline the ones shown

WOW… I dint know that apart from 119 friends I have on Orkut, there could be more people interested in knowing me. There are 11 people waiting to add me and as the message says… “there are more people waiting to add me”.

I dont have ‘female’ as my gender, nor I have some hot pic and I havent said that I own a ferrai … Somethings wrong … 😀

And now … Google NoteBook


Welcome to yet another service from Google. Google Notebook. Google Notebook is a nifty little tool that can be used to keep notes !

I don’t know about other people but I have a habit of saving my thoughts all the time. I have an assorted collection of text files, doc files, html files, chits, post-its and what not with all my notes and random thoughts on em. I was wondering how to organize them. Yesterday only I saved a few as drafts on this very blog. Google Notebook might be the answer …

The installation is easy. You download a 140 odd Kb file from their server, install it and you are done. It also informs that you can uninstall it from Add/Remove Programs any time you want and on top of everything else, it’s very small and fast.

One of the best things about Google Notebook is universal accessibility. You could save your notes and view them anywhere in the world. All you need is Microsoft Internet Explorer and a Google Account. Once a notebook is created, it’s kept as private and no one has an access to the. Of course these notebooks can be made public also. You can just send an url to a public notebook to other people and let them view your notebook. My public notebook is located here.

However, Notebook is still in the Beta stage and they are working on it. Few features are still under development. Search – the backbone, is not functional as yet. They say “Search will be available in a few days”.

Yet another handy tool from Google and yet another reason I want to work with them someday 🙂

Close Eyes, Click, Open Eyes, Guess

There is no end to what people can do. There are so many people with gifts of thought and expression. Everyone remembers the Red Paper Clip guy and the Million $$$$ Home Page. This one is up there along with those two.

So the concept is, you load the page, close your eyes, move the mouse around, open your eyes, and guess which one of the million little mouse images is yours. I tried a few times and I was unable to locate my pointer even once. May be you will get lucky?

Close Eyes, Click, Open Eyes, Guess

And for all those lazy ones, who do not want to visit the page, here is a sample …

Ofcourse it wont work if your pointer is customized and you are using something other than the default mouse pointer (which I did when I was unable to guess my pointer after a few shots).

what are words that mean love that start with the letter “O”?

I think when I type. I have’nt typed for quite some time now and I have’nt thought for quite some time now. There is no reason for not thinking/typing but here I am.

So I was idling on the internet and I was looking at the search engine queries that people use to find my blog and I came across this wonderful query. Someone actually typed a query “what are words that mean love that start with the letter “O”? including the quotes and the trailing question mark.

Coming to psychoanalysis, the guy/gal must have been a techie. I have reasons to believe this. One he used quotes et al and Second s/he used Dogpile.com. Considering the fact that only 0.8% of people use Dogpile to search the web, I can safely quote him/her as techie.

This link refers to the original query and results. My blog is listed at number 13.

Hats Off !!!!

Million Dollar Home Page vs Crorepati Page

The concept is simple. You register a fancy domain name. Make a 1000 x 1000 grid. Put individual pixels for sale and you get a million. Cool and Easy.

A student [Alex Tew] in UK created the original Million Dollar Home Page and got famous. I have to salute him for the amazing amount of creativity and thought process behind the concept.

As always, since it is an easy way to get rich and famous at the same time, people were bound to copy it and here it is… An indian homemaker has copied it and hosted her own indian thought-about creative concept at Crorepati Page. Well done my friend. I am very tempted to put my very own million rupee page on the internet. I think I would do it on saurabhgarg.com …

I copied this from the Crorepati Page …

And lastly, who am I?

My name is Sunaina Bansal, and I am married to my loving husband, Karan. I am a homemaker. In addition, I am highly educated and like to think creatively, and be aware of the many milestones that man (and woman!) has achieved today. And it is this awareness and the accompanying confidence that helped me create my concept. I sincerely hope that this influences the online Internet community in India and contributes to the growth of Internet marketing. And that it also influences more women to try the Internet, which also adds to the online community and enormously benefits the companies that advertise on my website. I hope I gain your support.”

And here are my honest uncalled for opinion on that …
1. You do not get creative if you steal the idea. You have not created the concept. You have just copied it from the web. EDITED LATER: She has given due credits to the original Million Dollar Page and I accept my mistake.
2. Growth of internet marketing? I have serious doubts.
3. Benefits companies that advertise on your website? Yet again … doubts !!!!

I wish people would start thinking originally and stop passing other people’s idea as theirs. And if you have to copy it, how about giving the original ones some credit? EDITED LATER: Yet again, I am at mistake. 🙁

EDITED LATER
Unlike a lot of other people, here someone actually took an initive to reply to the email. My sincert apologies to Sunaina. I was at mistake by being rude.

Here is the reply I sent her …

Hi Sunaina,

I dont know if this would reach you or not … (hope this does)

Few things first…

The about us page on your website do NOT say anywhere that it was Alex Tew. Well, now it does (just checked) but the day I posted, it wasn’t there. I am not saying that you have added it after I wrote about it but I might have missed it the first time. Hope this clarifies things and reason for my posting it.

I do not call gmail a imitation of hotmail because they do not take credit for being the original email service. They just say that it’s yet another email service of course with a change.

Talking about your website and internet marketing, I seriously have my doubts on it. You can have testimonials but I REALLY REALLY think that websites like Alex’s and your’s do not contribute towards it. Well this is just a personal opinion. I am not convinced.

I agree to the fact that yes internet marketing is growing leaps and bounds; it is the next big thing. If you realized, internet marketing is getting more and more personalized with companies like Google (with their adsense program) targeting people for selected keywords. Your website is opposite. It is in effect is a potpourri of advertisers who think yours is a good website/idea. A website like yours, it’s like a classified page on a newspaper (well worse than that – newspapers at least categorize information, your website doesn’t even do that. You allocate space based on the preference). So for a person lets say searching for ipod, your website is a bad idea. He can see a list of 1000 advertisers and their services but he hardly can spot an ipod ad. Whereas a website that has a simple page on music is better.

Talking from advertiser’s point of view, they would not give you money to place on your page. They would not get their target audience from your website. Please ask them the number of hits they get from google adsense or link exchange and compare with hits from your website. You would be surprised.

Further, I agree that they are getting more than 250 hit per day but once you get more people to advertise on your website, the number of hits is bound to reduce. I might be wrong but these are my personal opinions. I would be glad if you could prove me wrong. I would love to see more stats once your website get that millionth pixel sold.

If you get offended by it, please accept my apologies. I was just trying to say that, like everyone else, all you did was copied an idea and posted in online for reaping quick buck because I don’t see it as the answer to cyber marketing.

As far as spreading the mantra is concerned, I am trying to ! I am connected with friends etc just through my blog that hardly attracts about 5 visitors per day. I wanted them to read about your website and I posted it.

I sincerely apologize for being very rude. Trust me it’s not in my nature to be rude or negative. I appeared negative but I think you could have guessed the reason. I am real pissed off with a lot of people trying to pass off as genuine inventions. Your case is an exception. You have given Alex credit and I think that is more than enough for me.

In the end, thanks a lot for at least taking time off to reply. I have written to lots of other Indian ideas that are passed off as original without eliciting even acknowledgement for the email. I would edit my post and please accept my apologies yet again.

Regards,
Saurabh

P.S.: Do I get a spot on your website for free ;)?