If somebody walks up to you in this holiday season and asks this question “How would you calculate the carbon footprint of a banner ad”; you should immediately check what he has been drinking. And if you are one of those adventurous types, order one of that for yourself. Because it has to be some really strong stuff that makes ones mind wander in such directions.
But this is precisely what Don Carli of Sustainable Advertising Partnership is trying to figure out. Carbon footprint, as most of you would be aware, is a measure of the impact of human activities on the environment. Don’s organization is trying to bring the advertisers and the supply chain (for all kinds of media, such as print, online, TV) together to come up with best practices for advertising; best practices that would address the challenges of sustainability and make the ads more “green”, so to speak.
Don has been involved in such initiatives for over four years now (at least, that’s what his LinkedIn profile tells me) and since it’s highly unlikely that he has been constantly inebriated all these years, you have to take his question a bit more seriously. Personally, I don’t think it’s important. If I’ve to make a list of all the stuff for which we need to reduce the carbon footprint, “banner ads” perhaps won’t figure among the first hundred billion entries in the list. But Don apparently belongs to the group of folks who believe in the age old saying that ‘every bit saved makes it a bit more’ (or words to that effect). So let’s give this question a shot.
To calculate the carbon footprint of a banner ad, we have to measure the energy consumed at each stage of the supply chain for creating, storing and serving the ad. So what exactly is the “supply chain” for serving the banner ads? Lets see who are the players involved:
1. The Advertiser
2. The creative agency (these folks design and develop the “creatives” or display ads)
3. The Ad agency (they work as the intermediary between the advertisers and publishers/ ad network)
4. The Ad network (someone like Yahoo or Double Click, who has got a pool of publishers)
5. The Publisher
6. The Content delivery network (someone like Akamai, who stores these creative closer to the end users location)
7. The ISP (and the entire internet infrastructure that brings the data to you)
8. The end user
Wow! It’s kind of mind boggling to think of all the systems that are used to serve the ad. For example, take the case of only one of the players in the supply chain, the ad network. It should have systems that help advertisers manage campaigns, book ads, view reports. Additionally, it should have systems to forecast traffic, run pricing models, log events and software to rotate banner ads, if required. All these applications, would most probably, be running on their separate servers (sometimes multiple servers for one application). So how exactly we track the energy consumed by one ad through all these systems.
But hang on a minute. We can make our task much simpler. The end objective is to see if we can reduce the carbon footprint of the banner ad by some optimization in the creative i.e. either by reducing the size of the ad or by optimizing the way it’s served. So we should only consider the systems that are affected by the type or size of the ad. For example, the pricing server would be unaffected by the size of the ad and so would a lot of other systems in the entire supply chain.
Most of the systems in the supply chain would only have a reference to the creative. The actual creative is perhaps used by only a handful of systems. So let’s see in what all systems the creative actually “consumes energy”
1. Systems used by creative agency to create the ads
2. Datacenters by content delivery network that stores the ads
3. Network bandwidth for serving the ads
4. Processing power consumed on users machine when the ad is displayed.
So if we know the average carbon footprint per processing power of the machine, we can allocate some of that to the banner ad depending on how much processing power it takes or how much bandwidth it consumes. In other words
Carbon footprint of banner ad = (Carbon footprint of the server or pc) * (processing power or bandwidth consumed by the banner ad)/ (processing power of the server or pc).
Calculate this for all the systems mentioned above and feel free to use the expression 'Voila' once you get there.
And here comes a disclaimer. Those who have read about cost accounting methods would quickly point out that the “allocation” method described above is perhaps not the optimal way to measure something. But looking at the abstract nature of the problem, this is the best I could think of.
Sunday, December 30, 2007
Thursday, December 6, 2007
How does LinkedIn generates “people you may know” list?
My Google Analytics reports tell me that there is quite a significant number of people landing on my blog by searching this phrase in Google: How does LinkedIn generates “people you may know” list?. Well, I just mentioned this in passing in one of my earlier posts. That post, I don’t think, would have satisfied the Google searchers and with all probability would have left them with a serious urge to kick my and Google’s posterior.
So in order to save my ass (I don’t care what you do with Google’s), let me give this question a shot. Just to clarify I don’t have any inside information about the algorithm LinkedIn uses, this is merely my speculation.
Sometime back, one of my fellow networkers in LinkedIn asked the exact same question in the Q&A section. I, just like the United States marines, came to the rescue on that occasion. Here is my response to that question, produced verbatim for your benefit.
“If I had to develop this, I would use the following criteria to determine a potential connection for you
1) Attended same school/ universities (higher weight if you graduated in the same year),
2) Worked in the same firm (worked during the same period),
3) Number of shared connections,
4) Linkedin history of contacts between you and them
5) Contact list imported from outlook/ gmail etc. (These people were perhaps not part of linkedin when you imported the contact list; but they have joined the network since then).
Not sure what's the exact algorithm linkedin uses though.”
Let me add a couple of clarifications since I’ve taken the answer out of context. On point-4, I was referring to the people who might have applied to your job posting on LinkedIn in past or who would have privately replied to your questions and got a response in return.
Although I’m not sure what algorithm LinkedIn uses, I won’t be surprised if only thing it does is the last point I mentioned. This is a source of confusion to many people, when LinkedIn shows up the names from their address books in gmail/ outlook in the “people you may know” section.
Updated:
Looking back at my answer, I feel I can add a few more factors in the algorithm.
6) Look for members who have the same zip/area code as you. This has to be used in combination with other factors; such as employment history. For example, I definitely don't know everyone in Bangalore and may not know a lot of people in Yahoo!. But when you use my location and employment history in conjunction, chances are I would know the person who works in Yahoo, Bangalore.
7) This is similar to pint #4. LinkedIn should also look for other members activities to see if they would be a potential contact for you. If someone is visiting your profile frequently, chances are he might know you and can be considered as a potential contact for you (this is kind of back tracking). LinkedIn in recent time has started tracking this activity; although they don't always display the name of the person who visited your profile.
So we have all these factors that would help LinkedIn determine a potential connection for you. Again we can make a guess as to how LinkedIn would be doing the processing. They would perhaps start with your first level contacts and then traverse through your network graph calculating the "homophily" score between you and other members. The homophily (not to be confused with homophile)score would be a weighted sum of all these factors.
Once LinkedIn has identified all the factors, all they have to do is to keep tweaking the weights assigned to these for calculating the score. The obvious way to measure the effectiveness of this algorithm is to track how many times members follow these links and add those suggested "people you may know" to their network.
One subtle point is, to have a "wow" experience, members who are more degrees away from you might be ranked higher than someone who is already a 2nd or 3rd degree contact.
And before I close this topic, just to remind you is that this is my idea of how LinkedIn might be doing it. The actual implementation could be completely different.
So now that I’ve quenched your thirst for knowledge, you can perhaps go back to doing more productive work and searching for other important things in Google; say, for example, Lindsay Lohan pictures.
So in order to save my ass (I don’t care what you do with Google’s), let me give this question a shot. Just to clarify I don’t have any inside information about the algorithm LinkedIn uses, this is merely my speculation.
Sometime back, one of my fellow networkers in LinkedIn asked the exact same question in the Q&A section. I, just like the United States marines, came to the rescue on that occasion. Here is my response to that question, produced verbatim for your benefit.
“If I had to develop this, I would use the following criteria to determine a potential connection for you
1) Attended same school/ universities (higher weight if you graduated in the same year),
2) Worked in the same firm (worked during the same period),
3) Number of shared connections,
4) Linkedin history of contacts between you and them
5) Contact list imported from outlook/ gmail etc. (These people were perhaps not part of linkedin when you imported the contact list; but they have joined the network since then).
Not sure what's the exact algorithm linkedin uses though.”
Let me add a couple of clarifications since I’ve taken the answer out of context. On point-4, I was referring to the people who might have applied to your job posting on LinkedIn in past or who would have privately replied to your questions and got a response in return.
Although I’m not sure what algorithm LinkedIn uses, I won’t be surprised if only thing it does is the last point I mentioned. This is a source of confusion to many people, when LinkedIn shows up the names from their address books in gmail/ outlook in the “people you may know” section.
Updated:
Looking back at my answer, I feel I can add a few more factors in the algorithm.
6) Look for members who have the same zip/area code as you. This has to be used in combination with other factors; such as employment history. For example, I definitely don't know everyone in Bangalore and may not know a lot of people in Yahoo!. But when you use my location and employment history in conjunction, chances are I would know the person who works in Yahoo, Bangalore.
7) This is similar to pint #4. LinkedIn should also look for other members activities to see if they would be a potential contact for you. If someone is visiting your profile frequently, chances are he might know you and can be considered as a potential contact for you (this is kind of back tracking). LinkedIn in recent time has started tracking this activity; although they don't always display the name of the person who visited your profile.
So we have all these factors that would help LinkedIn determine a potential connection for you. Again we can make a guess as to how LinkedIn would be doing the processing. They would perhaps start with your first level contacts and then traverse through your network graph calculating the "homophily" score between you and other members. The homophily (not to be confused with homophile)score would be a weighted sum of all these factors.
Once LinkedIn has identified all the factors, all they have to do is to keep tweaking the weights assigned to these for calculating the score. The obvious way to measure the effectiveness of this algorithm is to track how many times members follow these links and add those suggested "people you may know" to their network.
One subtle point is, to have a "wow" experience, members who are more degrees away from you might be ranked higher than someone who is already a 2nd or 3rd degree contact.
And before I close this topic, just to remind you is that this is my idea of how LinkedIn might be doing it. The actual implementation could be completely different.
So now that I’ve quenched your thirst for knowledge, you can perhaps go back to doing more productive work and searching for other important things in Google; say, for example, Lindsay Lohan pictures.
Bubble 2.0?
It is now for quite some time that a few industry experts are predicting another dot com bubble. So it was very interesting to come across this optimistic piece “What Bubble?” by Harry Gold.
Harry looks at the positive growth trend of internet ad revenue and concludes that there is actually no bubble. To quote Harry, “Wow! If that doesn't say it all and validate the hot air we've been blowing all year, I don't know what does….Just look at this growth trend:.”
It’s refreshing to see such a positive outlook, but why I’m still a bit skeptical about his conclusion. Let’s reproduce the image from his article:
-- Source: Interactive Advertising Bureau, 2007 –
Harry seems to have got it right, isn’t it? There is indeed a very significant positive growth trend for past few quarters. But before we start jumping in joy, let’s take a quick look at the Ad revenue growth trend in 2000. Do you remember when exactly the first dot-com bubble burst? It was March 13, 2000 i.e. 1st quarter of 2000. What was the Ad revenue trend before that? Well, again a very significant upward trend. Although, it’s difficult to get the numbers from the graph, the slope looks much steeper in 1999 than it is now. In fact the Ad revenue spends didn’t go down till 3rd quarter of 2000. So the downward trend in the ad spent is actually an aftermath of the bubble not the cause. Harry seems to have got the causality reversed in his equation. Perhaps he would have written a similar article in 2000 saying “What Bubble?”.
Another source for Harry’s positive outlook is an eMarketer report predicting the Ad revenue for future. We, of course, need to take such predictions with a pinch of salt. One of the methods commonly used in such predictions is the use of historical data, and as I’ve mentioned above it’s difficult to predict some drastic event just by looking at the history. One wonders why these folks were not able to predict the first bubble burst.
So what is my view on this? I feel the industry is again heading towards a major shake up. The major players like Google, Yahoo would definitely make it through; but some of the new players might find it difficult to survive. The warning signs are no where more evident than the social networking space. MySpace was valued $15bn in 2006. Facebook is similarly valued at $15bn by Microsoft recently (Yeah, I know the common argument that it was not a valuation, but strategic investment. Although I’m not sure what kind of strategy it was to flush money down the drain). Again we are going back to the days where firms are valued just by page views or user base. On last count there were around 137 million social networking sites (give or take a few); all of them relying on “network externality” effect to win the space. One wonders how many of them are going to make it through.
And by the way when we are on this subject, look at Harry’s article again to see the optimistic predictions by the eMarketer about this space. “Social-networking advertising numbers, currently being revised by eMarketer, are expected to increase from $900 million in 2007 to $2.5 billion in 2011.”. So $2.5bn annual revenue to be shared between all these players; some of them are valued at $15bn.. hmmn.. interesting.
Having said all that, I hope Harry is right and I’m wrong. I was not part of the industry when the first bubble burst (If memory serves one right, I was learning to write “hello world” programs in Java). But this time I earn my bread and butter here. So nobody will be happier if Harry’s optimistic views turn out to be right.
Harry looks at the positive growth trend of internet ad revenue and concludes that there is actually no bubble. To quote Harry, “Wow! If that doesn't say it all and validate the hot air we've been blowing all year, I don't know what does….Just look at this growth trend:.”
It’s refreshing to see such a positive outlook, but why I’m still a bit skeptical about his conclusion. Let’s reproduce the image from his article:
-- Source: Interactive Advertising Bureau, 2007 –
Harry seems to have got it right, isn’t it? There is indeed a very significant positive growth trend for past few quarters. But before we start jumping in joy, let’s take a quick look at the Ad revenue growth trend in 2000. Do you remember when exactly the first dot-com bubble burst? It was March 13, 2000 i.e. 1st quarter of 2000. What was the Ad revenue trend before that? Well, again a very significant upward trend. Although, it’s difficult to get the numbers from the graph, the slope looks much steeper in 1999 than it is now. In fact the Ad revenue spends didn’t go down till 3rd quarter of 2000. So the downward trend in the ad spent is actually an aftermath of the bubble not the cause. Harry seems to have got the causality reversed in his equation. Perhaps he would have written a similar article in 2000 saying “What Bubble?”.
Another source for Harry’s positive outlook is an eMarketer report predicting the Ad revenue for future. We, of course, need to take such predictions with a pinch of salt. One of the methods commonly used in such predictions is the use of historical data, and as I’ve mentioned above it’s difficult to predict some drastic event just by looking at the history. One wonders why these folks were not able to predict the first bubble burst.
So what is my view on this? I feel the industry is again heading towards a major shake up. The major players like Google, Yahoo would definitely make it through; but some of the new players might find it difficult to survive. The warning signs are no where more evident than the social networking space. MySpace was valued $15bn in 2006. Facebook is similarly valued at $15bn by Microsoft recently (Yeah, I know the common argument that it was not a valuation, but strategic investment. Although I’m not sure what kind of strategy it was to flush money down the drain). Again we are going back to the days where firms are valued just by page views or user base. On last count there were around 137 million social networking sites (give or take a few); all of them relying on “network externality” effect to win the space. One wonders how many of them are going to make it through.
And by the way when we are on this subject, look at Harry’s article again to see the optimistic predictions by the eMarketer about this space. “Social-networking advertising numbers, currently being revised by eMarketer, are expected to increase from $900 million in 2007 to $2.5 billion in 2011.”. So $2.5bn annual revenue to be shared between all these players; some of them are valued at $15bn.. hmmn.. interesting.
Having said all that, I hope Harry is right and I’m wrong. I was not part of the industry when the first bubble burst (If memory serves one right, I was learning to write “hello world” programs in Java). But this time I earn my bread and butter here. So nobody will be happier if Harry’s optimistic views turn out to be right.
Tuesday, November 27, 2007
The curious case of Infusion Pumps & Human Resource Jobs
For some reason, Google is extremely keen on selling me pumps; and not just any ordinary pump, they want me to buy syringe pumps, infusion pumps, grinder pumps and dosing pumps. Honestly, I’ve very little idea about what to do with those.
I’m of course talking about the Ads Google shows me; not in the search result page, but in Gmail. Google uses its Adsense product’s “analytical ability” to serve “contextual ads” in Gmail pages. Note the use of quotes in my previous sentence; because after observing these ads for a few days I’m seriously beginning to doubt Google’s ability to analyze the context of the page.
To be fair to Google, it’s extremely difficult to separate noise from the actual content in an email message. In fact this is one of the three main reasons why most of the other email service providers have decided not to show contextual ads along with email messages (the other two being the misplaced privacy concerns and the lack of commercial intent of users while reading an email). My initial thought was that Google was showing me some random ads (“run-of-network” ads, as they are affectionately called) in messages for which it can’t extract the context.
Unfortunately, a few hours of careful observation revealed that this is not the case. Google shows me these ads for pumps whenever I open a particular mail. It’s a forward from one of my friends, with the subject “When your colleague is on leave”. It has an attachment showing images of the pranks you can play on your colleagues. The mail is not a great one for people who hate practical jokes, but it has its positive sides; viz. it doesn’t have any reference to pumps. But Google apparently thinks that the best way to spend your time, when your colleague is on leave, is to go on a shopping frenzy and buy as many pumps as you can. Similarly, whenever I open a mail that has pictures of my nephew, Google quickly interprets that I’m a suitable candidate for “Human Resource Jobs”. I’m clearly missing the link here, but definitely these are not random ads. These ads are tied to the email message by some weird logic that Adsense uses.
As a matter of fact, even in the cases where the context of the mail is pretty obvious, Google does an extremely poor job of showing relevant Ads. Just because a friend is asking me the contact number of someone in Andhra Bank, doesn’t imply that I’m interested in ICICI Bank Jobs or, say, the weather forecast in Hyderabad. Not sure what kind of CTR Google gets for these Ads, but my guess is it would be very negligible.
So what should Google do to monetize Gmail? They, of course, insist on projecting a user friendly image (they should do something about the loading time of Gmail though), which means the usual banners ads are ruled out. This is where you wonder, when Google is actually going to aggregate all the data it has been collecting about the users across various applications. I had an Orkut account (note the past tense). So they know where I live, which should tell them that I would be more interested in Bangalore weather. They have all my search trends, my web history; they know what kind of blogs I’ve subscribed to in my Google reader. So why insist on showing contextual ads in Gmail that doesn’t make any sense.
When exactly are they going to use all this information to deliver highly targeted ads to me? If they want to start serving such ads, Gmail (or Orkut) should be an ideal place to start. That’s because a user considers his Inbox or his profile page as his own little private space and most probably wouldn’t mind seeing individually targeted ads there. At least these ads would be more relevant to me than the ones about pumps.
I’m of course talking about the Ads Google shows me; not in the search result page, but in Gmail. Google uses its Adsense product’s “analytical ability” to serve “contextual ads” in Gmail pages. Note the use of quotes in my previous sentence; because after observing these ads for a few days I’m seriously beginning to doubt Google’s ability to analyze the context of the page.
To be fair to Google, it’s extremely difficult to separate noise from the actual content in an email message. In fact this is one of the three main reasons why most of the other email service providers have decided not to show contextual ads along with email messages (the other two being the misplaced privacy concerns and the lack of commercial intent of users while reading an email). My initial thought was that Google was showing me some random ads (“run-of-network” ads, as they are affectionately called) in messages for which it can’t extract the context.
Unfortunately, a few hours of careful observation revealed that this is not the case. Google shows me these ads for pumps whenever I open a particular mail. It’s a forward from one of my friends, with the subject “When your colleague is on leave”. It has an attachment showing images of the pranks you can play on your colleagues. The mail is not a great one for people who hate practical jokes, but it has its positive sides; viz. it doesn’t have any reference to pumps. But Google apparently thinks that the best way to spend your time, when your colleague is on leave, is to go on a shopping frenzy and buy as many pumps as you can. Similarly, whenever I open a mail that has pictures of my nephew, Google quickly interprets that I’m a suitable candidate for “Human Resource Jobs”. I’m clearly missing the link here, but definitely these are not random ads. These ads are tied to the email message by some weird logic that Adsense uses.
As a matter of fact, even in the cases where the context of the mail is pretty obvious, Google does an extremely poor job of showing relevant Ads. Just because a friend is asking me the contact number of someone in Andhra Bank, doesn’t imply that I’m interested in ICICI Bank Jobs or, say, the weather forecast in Hyderabad. Not sure what kind of CTR Google gets for these Ads, but my guess is it would be very negligible.
So what should Google do to monetize Gmail? They, of course, insist on projecting a user friendly image (they should do something about the loading time of Gmail though), which means the usual banners ads are ruled out. This is where you wonder, when Google is actually going to aggregate all the data it has been collecting about the users across various applications. I had an Orkut account (note the past tense). So they know where I live, which should tell them that I would be more interested in Bangalore weather. They have all my search trends, my web history; they know what kind of blogs I’ve subscribed to in my Google reader. So why insist on showing contextual ads in Gmail that doesn’t make any sense.
When exactly are they going to use all this information to deliver highly targeted ads to me? If they want to start serving such ads, Gmail (or Orkut) should be an ideal place to start. That’s because a user considers his Inbox or his profile page as his own little private space and most probably wouldn’t mind seeing individually targeted ads there. At least these ads would be more relevant to me than the ones about pumps.
Monday, October 8, 2007
The Office Jerk - (The Trip Planner)
Just imagine this scenario; you have managed to avoid OJ for one whole week. You are sitting at your desk, working on some interesting task and finally beginning to think that life is actually not that bad at all; when you suddenly hear foot steps behind you. You fear for the worst, close your eyes and pray to God. But its one of those instances which push you more towards becoming an atheist. The dreaded conversation starts…
OJ: Hey man.. how are you doing mate.
M: As a matter of fact, I was doing very well.
OJ: I was really busy last week man, couldn’t catch up with you.
M: The good old days…
OJ: What?
M: Nothing. I was just thinking of something. Did you say you were busy? Got some new project?
OJ: You have to start thinking beyond these mundane activities.. there are plenty of people to take care of these things.. I was involved in something far more important.
M: which is?
OJ: I’m completely in charge of planning a trip for the team. You know for celebrating our last quarter results.
M: Oh! That’s great. Must be really challenging work. So have you finalized a location yet?
OJ: Absolutely, that’s what I’ve been trying to do for last 3 weeks. We are going to go to Kushinagar
M: Err.. never heard of that place. Why did you finalize that one?
OJ: I’ve seen all the other tourist places nearby. So this is the only one missing from my travel diary..
M: Oh! But didn’t you visit the other places just to find out which one is suitable for the trip? (decided not to add “at company's expense”)
OJ: Yes, and they are all good.. but now I’ve seen them all. This is the only one I couldn’t visit..
M: Gotcha! So now everything is done, right? We are all set.
OJ: Gee, Man. If everyone has an attitude like you, nothing will ever get done in this company. Now my real work begins.. I’ve to come up with a list of people who are allowed to go on the trip.
M: Err.. but I thought our entire project team is going.
OJ: Holy mother of God!! Do you want this company to go bankrupt? Jesus … We are celebrating the last quarter’s result, so only people who joined before that can go. See this list, I’ve removed the names of the three people who joined this month.
M: That surely would save us from bankruptcy…. But hold on, didn’t this girl join the team last week. How come she is on the trip?
OJ: Ah! I thought it would give her a nice chance to mix-up with the team..
M: What about the three guys, who joined just two weeks back?
OJ: What about them? They already know our names…
M: Right!! So this trip planning must be taking a lot of your time
OJ: Yes, but I’m also working on other things simultaneously. For example, I’m planning this knowledge sharing session for the team..
M: (chocked on the coffee, which prompted OJ to pat him on the back.. a completely disgusting experience) Knowledge sharing session? I didn’t know that you have some exclusive product or process knowledge.
OJ: Small mind.. small thoughts.. think beyond these things man. My knowledge sharing session is about something way way more important.
M: do I even dare to ask?
OJ: You remember that personal trip I took to US two months back?
M: How can I forget? I’ve heard about it so many times that it feels like I was there.
OJ: Exactly, this is what I want the entire team to feel. They should know how to deal with challenges while traveling abroad. At the end of it, they will be as capable as me.
M: Didn’t you actually get mugged couple of times in that trip?
OJ: So? What’s your point?
M: Nothing.. I just think this session is not required. Entire team now knows everything about the trip. I mean what you ate, where you slept, what you wore. We know it all.
OJ: But there can never be too much of a good thing. So I’ll again give you guys all the details… and besides that, the new girl has missed most my narrations.
M: Right, the poor girl. Anyway I think you can go now..
OJ: Why? You don’t like me here.
M: No no.. I absolutely enjoy it. I just noticed that the new girl is back from her coffee break, so you might want to get back to the mentoring you have been doing for last few days..
OJ: Oh.. cool.. thanks mate.. see you again..
M: I can hardly wait..
OJ: Hey man.. how are you doing mate.
M: As a matter of fact, I was doing very well.
OJ: I was really busy last week man, couldn’t catch up with you.
M: The good old days…
OJ: What?
M: Nothing. I was just thinking of something. Did you say you were busy? Got some new project?
OJ: You have to start thinking beyond these mundane activities.. there are plenty of people to take care of these things.. I was involved in something far more important.
M: which is?
OJ: I’m completely in charge of planning a trip for the team. You know for celebrating our last quarter results.
M: Oh! That’s great. Must be really challenging work. So have you finalized a location yet?
OJ: Absolutely, that’s what I’ve been trying to do for last 3 weeks. We are going to go to Kushinagar
M: Err.. never heard of that place. Why did you finalize that one?
OJ: I’ve seen all the other tourist places nearby. So this is the only one missing from my travel diary..
M: Oh! But didn’t you visit the other places just to find out which one is suitable for the trip? (decided not to add “at company's expense”)
OJ: Yes, and they are all good.. but now I’ve seen them all. This is the only one I couldn’t visit..
M: Gotcha! So now everything is done, right? We are all set.
OJ: Gee, Man. If everyone has an attitude like you, nothing will ever get done in this company. Now my real work begins.. I’ve to come up with a list of people who are allowed to go on the trip.
M: Err.. but I thought our entire project team is going.
OJ: Holy mother of God!! Do you want this company to go bankrupt? Jesus … We are celebrating the last quarter’s result, so only people who joined before that can go. See this list, I’ve removed the names of the three people who joined this month.
M: That surely would save us from bankruptcy…. But hold on, didn’t this girl join the team last week. How come she is on the trip?
OJ: Ah! I thought it would give her a nice chance to mix-up with the team..
M: What about the three guys, who joined just two weeks back?
OJ: What about them? They already know our names…
M: Right!! So this trip planning must be taking a lot of your time
OJ: Yes, but I’m also working on other things simultaneously. For example, I’m planning this knowledge sharing session for the team..
M: (chocked on the coffee, which prompted OJ to pat him on the back.. a completely disgusting experience) Knowledge sharing session? I didn’t know that you have some exclusive product or process knowledge.
OJ: Small mind.. small thoughts.. think beyond these things man. My knowledge sharing session is about something way way more important.
M: do I even dare to ask?
OJ: You remember that personal trip I took to US two months back?
M: How can I forget? I’ve heard about it so many times that it feels like I was there.
OJ: Exactly, this is what I want the entire team to feel. They should know how to deal with challenges while traveling abroad. At the end of it, they will be as capable as me.
M: Didn’t you actually get mugged couple of times in that trip?
OJ: So? What’s your point?
M: Nothing.. I just think this session is not required. Entire team now knows everything about the trip. I mean what you ate, where you slept, what you wore. We know it all.
OJ: But there can never be too much of a good thing. So I’ll again give you guys all the details… and besides that, the new girl has missed most my narrations.
M: Right, the poor girl. Anyway I think you can go now..
OJ: Why? You don’t like me here.
M: No no.. I absolutely enjoy it. I just noticed that the new girl is back from her coffee break, so you might want to get back to the mentoring you have been doing for last few days..
OJ: Oh.. cool.. thanks mate.. see you again..
M: I can hardly wait..
Sunday, October 7, 2007
Youmint: How refreshingly unoriginal
The site claims: “YouMint is a unique social utility that connects you with people around you”.
So what is their “unique” concept? You register with their site, invite friends to register, grow your network. Then you receive ads on your mobile, you not only get paid for these ads; you also get paid when someone in your network receives an ad.
Sounds familiar? Yes, around 6 months back, mGinger started this business model in India. Paying consumers for seeing ads was not something entirely new. But what mGinger brought into Indian market is this concept of incentivizing the users for building a network.
Within 2 months of the launch of mGinger, many other such sites came up, claiming to do exactly the same thing. Even the names of these sites were just a minor variation of mGinger. Some of these folks even wrote blogs claiming that mGinger was fake (I’m not going to mention the names or provide any links here. Those guys don’t deserve any publicity). They tried to “steal” users from mGinger by offering to pay more for each ad. Unsurprisingly, most of these guys vanished after a while; whereas mGinger still continues to get mentioned in the press. (For example here, here and here)
It’s not surprising in business world to see people blindly copying others. But you would expect these folks to at least think about a decent strategy before challenging the existing players. Take the example of Youmint now. Here are the 3 things they are promising. Let’s see how “unique” and clever their strategy is.
1) Get paid when you or your network receive Ads.
This is the crux of the business model (you’ll see why) and it’s a direct copy of mGinger concept. As per Youmint
- What you get each time you get a promo SMS – Rs 0.20
- What you get when a friend you referred get a promo – Rs 0.10
- What you get when a friend of the friend you referred gets a promo – Rs 0.05
They don’t even bother to offer a different amount.
And in the house rules section, they mention
“And you need to have a minimum of Rs 300 in your account for us to cut you a cheque”
The “Rs. 300” part is again taken from mGinger.
Ask these guys, why they chose these numbers, I’m sure they won’t have a convincing answer.
2) Get paid when your referrals join Youmint.
Ah! Something new here. But as you’ll realize quickly, the money you get from this is not even going to buy you a decent meal. If you invite 20 friends and each of them, in turn, invite 20 other (a highly optimistic scenario) you’ll get only one time payment of Rs 110. Take a more realistic estimate. You invite 10 friends and each of them in turn invite 10 others, you’ll end up getting Rs 30 only.
So, on the face of it, even though Youmint looks to be doing something different, the users will soon realize that this is merely a window dressing.
3) Send “Free SMS” to your network.
mGinger has cleverly avoided stepping into any areas that would be seen as a threat to the telecom providers. Unfortunately, Youmint seem to have ignored the angle. If you allow, your users to send free SMS, you are cutting the revenue of the mobile service providers.
I don’t think they are going to take this lightly.
Most of these services buy bulk SMS packs from MSPs. So one SMS might cost them almost half of what it costs the regular users. What Youmint is trying to do is to get the advertisers sponsor these SMSs. Advertisers would be willing to do this, because the cost of the SMS is already much lower; whereas they perhaps would be unwilling to sponsor a regular SMS. I think we can guess the reaction of the MSPs.
In the end, one more point to these guys. Here is what they have mentioned in the FAQ section
“So basically, you make enough to at least cover your mobile bill (and perhaps a coffee for us for coming up with this great idea!)”
Guys, isn’t it bad enough that you are just blatantly copying someone’s idea, do you now have to go around claiming that you came up with it in the first place? Lets hope you guys survive long enough to have that coffee though.
So what is their “unique” concept? You register with their site, invite friends to register, grow your network. Then you receive ads on your mobile, you not only get paid for these ads; you also get paid when someone in your network receives an ad.
Sounds familiar? Yes, around 6 months back, mGinger started this business model in India. Paying consumers for seeing ads was not something entirely new. But what mGinger brought into Indian market is this concept of incentivizing the users for building a network.
Within 2 months of the launch of mGinger, many other such sites came up, claiming to do exactly the same thing. Even the names of these sites were just a minor variation of mGinger. Some of these folks even wrote blogs claiming that mGinger was fake (I’m not going to mention the names or provide any links here. Those guys don’t deserve any publicity). They tried to “steal” users from mGinger by offering to pay more for each ad. Unsurprisingly, most of these guys vanished after a while; whereas mGinger still continues to get mentioned in the press. (For example here, here and here)
It’s not surprising in business world to see people blindly copying others. But you would expect these folks to at least think about a decent strategy before challenging the existing players. Take the example of Youmint now. Here are the 3 things they are promising. Let’s see how “unique” and clever their strategy is.
1) Get paid when you or your network receive Ads.
This is the crux of the business model (you’ll see why) and it’s a direct copy of mGinger concept. As per Youmint
- What you get each time you get a promo SMS – Rs 0.20
- What you get when a friend you referred get a promo – Rs 0.10
- What you get when a friend of the friend you referred gets a promo – Rs 0.05
They don’t even bother to offer a different amount.
And in the house rules section, they mention
“And you need to have a minimum of Rs 300 in your account for us to cut you a cheque”
The “Rs. 300” part is again taken from mGinger.
Ask these guys, why they chose these numbers, I’m sure they won’t have a convincing answer.
2) Get paid when your referrals join Youmint.
Ah! Something new here. But as you’ll realize quickly, the money you get from this is not even going to buy you a decent meal. If you invite 20 friends and each of them, in turn, invite 20 other (a highly optimistic scenario) you’ll get only one time payment of Rs 110. Take a more realistic estimate. You invite 10 friends and each of them in turn invite 10 others, you’ll end up getting Rs 30 only.
So, on the face of it, even though Youmint looks to be doing something different, the users will soon realize that this is merely a window dressing.
3) Send “Free SMS” to your network.
mGinger has cleverly avoided stepping into any areas that would be seen as a threat to the telecom providers. Unfortunately, Youmint seem to have ignored the angle. If you allow, your users to send free SMS, you are cutting the revenue of the mobile service providers.
I don’t think they are going to take this lightly.
Most of these services buy bulk SMS packs from MSPs. So one SMS might cost them almost half of what it costs the regular users. What Youmint is trying to do is to get the advertisers sponsor these SMSs. Advertisers would be willing to do this, because the cost of the SMS is already much lower; whereas they perhaps would be unwilling to sponsor a regular SMS. I think we can guess the reaction of the MSPs.
In the end, one more point to these guys. Here is what they have mentioned in the FAQ section
“So basically, you make enough to at least cover your mobile bill (and perhaps a coffee for us for coming up with this great idea!)”
Guys, isn’t it bad enough that you are just blatantly copying someone’s idea, do you now have to go around claiming that you came up with it in the first place? Lets hope you guys survive long enough to have that coffee though.
The Office Jerk
There are three kinds of people who work in offices. First, there is a tiny minority who are the honest and sincere workers trying to do their job as well as they can. The second group, which actually is the vast majority, consists of people who just go through the day to day life without putting too much of an effort into their jobs. And then somewhere in between (in terms of numbers) lies the third group whom I like to call the office jerks.
You know the type; these guys act as if they are carrying the entire business on their shoulders. Whenever they meet you in the office, which is generally when they sneak into your cube with a cup of coffee in their hands, they never fail to tell you how challenging and difficult their job is (even if the only work they do is to make sure that the code is properly formatted). Then they give you that look of complete disdain and loathing, when you tell them about your work (even if you are managing a product that contributes several millions of dollars to company’s top line).
If you are saying that you have never met such a person in office, then it means either you are working from home since you have been employed or you work as a night watchman in a cemetery.
Here is an example of how a typical conversation between the office jerk (hereafter called OJ) and an honest worker (whom we'll call...ummmmm.... say.. M) would look like. (This, of course, is a completely hypothetical example)
OJ: Hey M, saw your blog. Nice work man.
M: Thanks OJ
OJ: So, have they not given you a project yet?
M: I beg your pardon?
OJ: I mean, you must be having a lot of free time to write blogs like this.
M: (takes several deep breaths and counts up to 5 before speaking) I write the blog in my off hours; that is generally late evenings or weekends.
OJ: Oh! No wonder you get free time in the evening. I think you leave office very early.. around 7 pm. Whereas I stay here till 9pm. Almost two hours more than you. I don’t get much free time in the evenings.
M: (thinks for a while whether to maintain a calm dignity or point out the obvious flaw in the argument. After couple of milliseconds of deep thinking decides “to hell with dignity”) But OJ, don’t you come to office around lunch hours and even then you don’t go to your desk till 1:30 pm. Whereas I come to office around 8:30am. So if you do the math, actually I work 3 hours more than you everyday.
OJ: Come on M. It’s not the number of hours you work that matters; what matters is how much work you put into those hours (a rip off from the employee guide.. OJs are not capable of coming up with statements like that on their own)
M: I think you started the comparison of work hours.
OJ: You shouldn’t take my words literally. By the way I never see you in the office in weekends. Seems like your project is a pretty easy one.
M: No, I think what it means is I manage my work well and make sure that my team doesn’t have to work on weekends.
OJ: Ah! But see I look at it differently. I always come to office in weekends, just to make myself available.
M: To whom? Nobody else is there.
OJ: You know just in case of some emergency.
M: But isn’t there a different team that handles the emergency situation in production servers. Your role doesn’t even come in that escalation path.
OJ: But no harm being there for the team.
M: (decides not to bring up the free lunch angle) So when you are just “being there”, what exactly do you do?
OJ: You know surf net, download movies, chat with friends.
M: And you think that’s more creative than writing blog? Anyway, what are you trying to tell me is you spend so many hours in the office doing nothing and you think you deserve credit for that?
OJ: See, I don’t think you get my point. It doesn’t matter whether you work or not, what matters is how many hours you are in the office… .err what happened? Why are you looking at me like that?
M: Never mind…
You know the type; these guys act as if they are carrying the entire business on their shoulders. Whenever they meet you in the office, which is generally when they sneak into your cube with a cup of coffee in their hands, they never fail to tell you how challenging and difficult their job is (even if the only work they do is to make sure that the code is properly formatted). Then they give you that look of complete disdain and loathing, when you tell them about your work (even if you are managing a product that contributes several millions of dollars to company’s top line).
If you are saying that you have never met such a person in office, then it means either you are working from home since you have been employed or you work as a night watchman in a cemetery.
Here is an example of how a typical conversation between the office jerk (hereafter called OJ) and an honest worker (whom we'll call...ummmmm.... say.. M) would look like. (This, of course, is a completely hypothetical example)
OJ: Hey M, saw your blog. Nice work man.
M: Thanks OJ
OJ: So, have they not given you a project yet?
M: I beg your pardon?
OJ: I mean, you must be having a lot of free time to write blogs like this.
M: (takes several deep breaths and counts up to 5 before speaking) I write the blog in my off hours; that is generally late evenings or weekends.
OJ: Oh! No wonder you get free time in the evening. I think you leave office very early.. around 7 pm. Whereas I stay here till 9pm. Almost two hours more than you. I don’t get much free time in the evenings.
M: (thinks for a while whether to maintain a calm dignity or point out the obvious flaw in the argument. After couple of milliseconds of deep thinking decides “to hell with dignity”) But OJ, don’t you come to office around lunch hours and even then you don’t go to your desk till 1:30 pm. Whereas I come to office around 8:30am. So if you do the math, actually I work 3 hours more than you everyday.
OJ: Come on M. It’s not the number of hours you work that matters; what matters is how much work you put into those hours (a rip off from the employee guide.. OJs are not capable of coming up with statements like that on their own)
M: I think you started the comparison of work hours.
OJ: You shouldn’t take my words literally. By the way I never see you in the office in weekends. Seems like your project is a pretty easy one.
M: No, I think what it means is I manage my work well and make sure that my team doesn’t have to work on weekends.
OJ: Ah! But see I look at it differently. I always come to office in weekends, just to make myself available.
M: To whom? Nobody else is there.
OJ: You know just in case of some emergency.
M: But isn’t there a different team that handles the emergency situation in production servers. Your role doesn’t even come in that escalation path.
OJ: But no harm being there for the team.
M: (decides not to bring up the free lunch angle) So when you are just “being there”, what exactly do you do?
OJ: You know surf net, download movies, chat with friends.
M: And you think that’s more creative than writing blog? Anyway, what are you trying to tell me is you spend so many hours in the office doing nothing and you think you deserve credit for that?
OJ: See, I don’t think you get my point. It doesn’t matter whether you work or not, what matters is how many hours you are in the office… .err what happened? Why are you looking at me like that?
M: Never mind…
Sunday, September 30, 2007
The Humble Aussies
It was interesting to read Andrew Symonds’ reaction to the team India's celebration after the twenty-twenty world cup. Apparently he had a problem with it. He went on to add “We have had a very successful side and I think watching how we celebrate and how they celebrate, I think we have been pretty humble in the way we have gone about it.”
Yes Andrew, I couldn’t have agreed with you more. We Indians are an arrogant bunch, whereas you Aussies are as humble as they come. Why, I remember the last time you were here; after winning the champions trophy you guys gave the BCCI president a nice shove off the stage and just before that your captain made a humble gesture to him to handover the trophy, while you entire team watched and giggled at the background. You might want to check out this video to refresh your memory.
So I guess the message is loud and clear. One shouldn’t get carried away after victory and celebrate it by dancing for the fans. Just push the guy who is handing over the trophy and then you are on your way for the next match. Thanks Andrew, for this lesson.
I’m sure we have a lot to learn from the Aussies when it comes to both on-field and off-field behavior. Your three most successful cricketers of present era; Shane Warne, Ricky Ponting, Glen McGrath have set so many decent examples for the youngsters; whereas in comparison India’s three legends Anil Kumble, Sachin Tendulkar, Rahul Dravid look so rude, arrogant and spoilt.
Yes Andrew, I couldn’t have agreed with you more. We Indians are an arrogant bunch, whereas you Aussies are as humble as they come. Why, I remember the last time you were here; after winning the champions trophy you guys gave the BCCI president a nice shove off the stage and just before that your captain made a humble gesture to him to handover the trophy, while you entire team watched and giggled at the background. You might want to check out this video to refresh your memory.
So I guess the message is loud and clear. One shouldn’t get carried away after victory and celebrate it by dancing for the fans. Just push the guy who is handing over the trophy and then you are on your way for the next match. Thanks Andrew, for this lesson.
I’m sure we have a lot to learn from the Aussies when it comes to both on-field and off-field behavior. Your three most successful cricketers of present era; Shane Warne, Ricky Ponting, Glen McGrath have set so many decent examples for the youngsters; whereas in comparison India’s three legends Anil Kumble, Sachin Tendulkar, Rahul Dravid look so rude, arrogant and spoilt.
Saturday, September 29, 2007
I don't get it
In that HCL Ad, why was that guy traveling overseas in a helicopter and why did he have to travel to such a remote location by car to catch the chopper? Doesn't the HCL management know that flying the staff by an airline would have been a much more effective (in terms of time, money and comfort) option?
I guess the Ad was just trying to prepare the potential clients for the kind of people they would be dealing with, if they plan to do business with HCL.
P.S.:
I'm planning to make "I don't get it" a regular section in this blog...posting just one baffling incident at a time.
I guess the Ad was just trying to prepare the potential clients for the kind of people they would be dealing with, if they plan to do business with HCL.
P.S.:
I'm planning to make "I don't get it" a regular section in this blog...posting just one baffling incident at a time.
Monday, September 10, 2007
One more Bridge to burn… err.. cross.
Last week I got an email invitation to join a professional network site called www.6bridges.com (they have also booked, very thoughtfully, the domain www.sixbridges.com, apparently for people who are less numerically inclined).
But the problem was this: the invitation was not from a friend (as is the norm), but directly from the site. I guess it was sent to the alumni id of my B-school. It kind of pisses me off when people think they can spam the alumni group email id. I thought I would take a look and see what this site is all about. (I could have simply deleted that mail; but that wouldn’t have made a very interesting read on the blog, would it? I mean “I got a spam mail and deleted it” hardly makes the blog readers to sit up and take notice.)
Now, why the name “6 bridges”? The invitation mail mentioned this
The name ‘6bridges' is derived from the fascinating concept of six degrees of separation between people, which the site aims to bridge.
Fair enough. Then I took a look at the site logo, which mentions this
6bridges.com . Building bridges to your future
Now I’m a bit confused. So is it the bridge between people or bridge between one individual and his future? I decided to check out the “About us” page (this is always the first thing I do while reviewing any site). The page mentions the idea of “6 bridges” in following different lines
If the theory about 6 degrees separating people is an interesting one, just what would you call the reality that brings 6 professionals together, whose interests and callings are more degrees apart than 6 !
We decided to call it 6bridges. Bridges that connected the 6 degrees of separation between people, their ideas, interests, paths and helped them to their desired destination.
6 degrees gave us 6 bridges, which in turn gave us these 6 topics.
After reading these lines, I just had 6 words for the founders, viz. “What a truck load of crap”. I wonder if they know what the concept of 6 degrees of separation is all about or just tried to use the number “6” and the word “bridge” in as many different ways as possible.
Interestingly, this site is only limited for alumni of certain pre-determined “elite” colleges (I’ll come back to this point later). My point is, after bragging about bridging the 6 degrees of separation, they have limited their user base to people who are perhaps separated, at the maximum, by two degrees. Anyway, enough bashing for the name, lets move on.
Next page that I checked, since I already knew about their spamming tendency, is the “privacy policy” page. For some reason they have decided to club it together with “terms and conditions” page. Compare this page with that of other professional networking sites; such as Linkedin or even the Indian players like Brijj or Techtribe; and you’ll understand how important “privacy” for 6bridges is.
Now coming back to the idea of limiting the site to only the “elite” colleges. Just out of curiosity, I pulled out my linkedin contact list and selected the top 30 most valuable contacts. Out of those 30, only 7 were from these elite colleges, i.e. more than 75% of my valuable contacts never went to these colleges. 6bridges is clearly designed for the headhunters, not for users like me whose idea of networking is to connect with valuable professionals.
I decided to register with them (with no intention whatsoever of using it in future) and got the confirmation mail after around 14 hours. I guess it’s the time they take to verify whether you actually belong to one of those colleges; a feature which I’m sure would please the headhunters.
When I logged in, I was completely lost. The page was completely cluttered and confusing, just like the home page. Also it seems the site was never tested for firefox users. Some of the dropdown menus, images and page layouts are messed up (I think the page layout problem is there for IE as well). There was no instruction for the new users about how they should start networking with others.
The invitation mail that I received had links to bunch of career related articles, which kind of looked tempting. But once I had registered and viewed those articles, I realized how useless the content was (I should have expected this). The content was mostly copied from several online sources (they were honest enough to provide the link to the original source) and was not organized properly. Some of the articles; such as “Salary Negotiation – Tips and Strategies”, make you wonder who the target audiences are; since any “professional” would find this information useless.
6bridges looks more like a job site, rather than a networking site. But I think they are missing the point. The idea of combining professional networking with head hunting is to identify the passive job seekers and to help get candidates through referrals. I’m not sure how a site designed with keeping only the headhunters in mind and ignoring the networking aspect is ever going to achieve that. As far as I’m concerned, this is one bridge I’m unlikely to cross.
But the problem was this: the invitation was not from a friend (as is the norm), but directly from the site. I guess it was sent to the alumni id of my B-school. It kind of pisses me off when people think they can spam the alumni group email id. I thought I would take a look and see what this site is all about. (I could have simply deleted that mail; but that wouldn’t have made a very interesting read on the blog, would it? I mean “I got a spam mail and deleted it” hardly makes the blog readers to sit up and take notice.)
Now, why the name “6 bridges”? The invitation mail mentioned this
The name ‘6bridges' is derived from the fascinating concept of six degrees of separation between people, which the site aims to bridge.
Fair enough. Then I took a look at the site logo, which mentions this
6bridges.com . Building bridges to your future
Now I’m a bit confused. So is it the bridge between people or bridge between one individual and his future? I decided to check out the “About us” page (this is always the first thing I do while reviewing any site). The page mentions the idea of “6 bridges” in following different lines
If the theory about 6 degrees separating people is an interesting one, just what would you call the reality that brings 6 professionals together, whose interests and callings are more degrees apart than 6 !
We decided to call it 6bridges. Bridges that connected the 6 degrees of separation between people, their ideas, interests, paths and helped them to their desired destination.
6 degrees gave us 6 bridges, which in turn gave us these 6 topics.
After reading these lines, I just had 6 words for the founders, viz. “What a truck load of crap”. I wonder if they know what the concept of 6 degrees of separation is all about or just tried to use the number “6” and the word “bridge” in as many different ways as possible.
Interestingly, this site is only limited for alumni of certain pre-determined “elite” colleges (I’ll come back to this point later). My point is, after bragging about bridging the 6 degrees of separation, they have limited their user base to people who are perhaps separated, at the maximum, by two degrees. Anyway, enough bashing for the name, lets move on.
Next page that I checked, since I already knew about their spamming tendency, is the “privacy policy” page. For some reason they have decided to club it together with “terms and conditions” page. Compare this page with that of other professional networking sites; such as Linkedin or even the Indian players like Brijj or Techtribe; and you’ll understand how important “privacy” for 6bridges is.
Now coming back to the idea of limiting the site to only the “elite” colleges. Just out of curiosity, I pulled out my linkedin contact list and selected the top 30 most valuable contacts. Out of those 30, only 7 were from these elite colleges, i.e. more than 75% of my valuable contacts never went to these colleges. 6bridges is clearly designed for the headhunters, not for users like me whose idea of networking is to connect with valuable professionals.
I decided to register with them (with no intention whatsoever of using it in future) and got the confirmation mail after around 14 hours. I guess it’s the time they take to verify whether you actually belong to one of those colleges; a feature which I’m sure would please the headhunters.
When I logged in, I was completely lost. The page was completely cluttered and confusing, just like the home page. Also it seems the site was never tested for firefox users. Some of the dropdown menus, images and page layouts are messed up (I think the page layout problem is there for IE as well). There was no instruction for the new users about how they should start networking with others.
The invitation mail that I received had links to bunch of career related articles, which kind of looked tempting. But once I had registered and viewed those articles, I realized how useless the content was (I should have expected this). The content was mostly copied from several online sources (they were honest enough to provide the link to the original source) and was not organized properly. Some of the articles; such as “Salary Negotiation – Tips and Strategies”, make you wonder who the target audiences are; since any “professional” would find this information useless.
6bridges looks more like a job site, rather than a networking site. But I think they are missing the point. The idea of combining professional networking with head hunting is to identify the passive job seekers and to help get candidates through referrals. I’m not sure how a site designed with keeping only the headhunters in mind and ignoring the networking aspect is ever going to achieve that. As far as I’m concerned, this is one bridge I’m unlikely to cross.
Wednesday, August 29, 2007
Yet another controversy for Orkut.
Yesterday our news channels somehow managed to squeeze a bit of time out from more pressing matters; such as the visit of Samlan Khan’s family to the jail on Rakhi or the public display of affection by the constabulary towards Sanjay Dutt, to show us the recent controversy about Orkut. Apparently, someone in Orkut has created a community called “I hate Mayawati” and the UP chief Minister has taken umbrage (if that’s what people take when they are offended) to some of the postings. Our overenthusiastic and extremely responsible media even flashed the name and hometown of the person who has created the community. One of the senior government official commented that “the matter has been forwarded to the cyber crime department”. Surely our governments have got there priorities right. This is exactly what the cyber crime department should have been doing all along. Now all they need to do is to call the army to hunt down that poor soul who took the “freedom of speech” phrase a bit too seriously.
However, I’m glad with the reaction of Google. They have not removed the community yet. They should treat this just like any other abuse report. It took us a lot of effort to remove the “I hate India” community from Orkut. It’ll be interesting to see if Google changes its review procedure to soothe the government officials.
This brings me to a more generic question, i.e. should Google (or any other website) be responsible for the user generated content. If the answer is “yes”, then is removing the content after someone has reported for abuse good enough? Would you trust the sites to act immediately, if it’s clear that they stand to gain by not removing the content?
However, I’m glad with the reaction of Google. They have not removed the community yet. They should treat this just like any other abuse report. It took us a lot of effort to remove the “I hate India” community from Orkut. It’ll be interesting to see if Google changes its review procedure to soothe the government officials.
This brings me to a more generic question, i.e. should Google (or any other website) be responsible for the user generated content. If the answer is “yes”, then is removing the content after someone has reported for abuse good enough? Would you trust the sites to act immediately, if it’s clear that they stand to gain by not removing the content?
Brijjes and Tribes
In the past, I’ve written about how it’s difficult for the new players in the social networking market place to “steal” users from the incumbents. So out of curiosity I decided to check out how the one month old Brijj is doing in the market.
In the absence of any other reliable source, I turned, a bit reluctantly, to Alexa. Some of us, who have been keeping track of Alexa rankings for different sites, usually view these stats with the same degree of skepticism typically reserved for things like Saurabh Ganguly’s call for a quick single or Munaf Patel’s declaration that he is completely match fit; i.e. things that have let you down in the past.
The Alexa traffic graphs for Brijj showed that there was an initial peak and after that it followed a downward slope (This is obviously along the expected lines). But, of course these graphs in isolation didn’t make any sense. I thought it would be more interesting to compare the graphs of Brijj with those of the other players in the market.
A direct competitor for Brijj is techtribe; both are professional network sites targeted specifically to the Indian audience. Techtribe is in market for over a year now; so I expected it to have a greater reach and higher page views than Brijj. But I was in for a surprise. The Alexa graphs showed that Brijj has almost 4-6 times more reach and 3-8 times more page views. Techtribe is ranked 2045 in India; as opposed to Brijj which has a very impressive rank of 371.
Now, I’m not in a position to do a feature by feature comparison of the two sites. I’ve never used techtribe and the time I’ve spent in Brijj would make a typical Sehwag innings look longer. But on the face of it, techtribe looks more content reach (and understandably so). Techtribe has communities, knowledge sections, job postings and so on, which are as of now not present in Brijj. So the question obviously is how Brijj managed to generate so many page views. Is it due to the marketing efforts put in by Infoedge? Is it due to the naukri brand name? Is it due to the fact that Infoedge had a much larger employee base to start the word-of-mouth campaign (seems like a trivial point, but some of my “sources” have told me that Orkut was launched that way)?
I think it’s just a matter of when and not if Brijj would introduce features like job referrals, communities, answers etc. It would be interesting then to see if Brijj can challenge the bigger players like linkedin.
[For some reason the Alexa webservices are not returning any result. I thought of using their widgets to put the graphs directly in the blog, but in stead of the graph I only got a blank space. If you know what's the issue, please let me know]
In the absence of any other reliable source, I turned, a bit reluctantly, to Alexa. Some of us, who have been keeping track of Alexa rankings for different sites, usually view these stats with the same degree of skepticism typically reserved for things like Saurabh Ganguly’s call for a quick single or Munaf Patel’s declaration that he is completely match fit; i.e. things that have let you down in the past.
The Alexa traffic graphs for Brijj showed that there was an initial peak and after that it followed a downward slope (This is obviously along the expected lines). But, of course these graphs in isolation didn’t make any sense. I thought it would be more interesting to compare the graphs of Brijj with those of the other players in the market.
A direct competitor for Brijj is techtribe; both are professional network sites targeted specifically to the Indian audience. Techtribe is in market for over a year now; so I expected it to have a greater reach and higher page views than Brijj. But I was in for a surprise. The Alexa graphs showed that Brijj has almost 4-6 times more reach and 3-8 times more page views. Techtribe is ranked 2045 in India; as opposed to Brijj which has a very impressive rank of 371.
Now, I’m not in a position to do a feature by feature comparison of the two sites. I’ve never used techtribe and the time I’ve spent in Brijj would make a typical Sehwag innings look longer. But on the face of it, techtribe looks more content reach (and understandably so). Techtribe has communities, knowledge sections, job postings and so on, which are as of now not present in Brijj. So the question obviously is how Brijj managed to generate so many page views. Is it due to the marketing efforts put in by Infoedge? Is it due to the naukri brand name? Is it due to the fact that Infoedge had a much larger employee base to start the word-of-mouth campaign (seems like a trivial point, but some of my “sources” have told me that Orkut was launched that way)?
I think it’s just a matter of when and not if Brijj would introduce features like job referrals, communities, answers etc. It would be interesting then to see if Brijj can challenge the bigger players like linkedin.
[For some reason the Alexa webservices are not returning any result. I thought of using their widgets to put the graphs directly in the blog, but in stead of the graph I only got a blank space. If you know what's the issue, please let me know]
Thursday, August 16, 2007
Cross the Brijj only when you come to it
[This post is partly a review of the new professional networking site Brijj; and partly (or rather, I should say, mostly) a response to another review “A brijj too far” by Shyam.
I must clarify upfront that my views may not be considered completely unbiased. I’ve worked at Infoedge in the past, so might have developed a soft corner for the team. I’ll try to keep these personal biases out of the post]
Let’s start with Shyam’s review “A brijj too far”. Once we have ignored the first three paragraphs, which tell you how Indian firms are only good at copying stuff from the west and how only the developers’ lovers use their product, we reach the point where the author starts the review of Brijj. The most admirable part of the review is the discovery of the redundant Meta tags and the invisible div tag. Hats off to Shyam for discovering these things, which have supposedly escaped the notice of the QA team. But my question is how do these things affect the user? May be I’m an exception, but when I’m surfing the net I hardly ever go through the source code of each page to check the meta tags. So what Shyam is trying to tell us is that the code is not polished. Big Deal! Isn’t that what you would expect from a beta version? When the time to market is so important I would much rather have my technical team and QA team focus on product features than spending their time in refining the code.
Next, Shyam complains about the absence of privacy settings for the users. Interestingly, even LinkedIn doesn’t have such a setting (some of the granular settings were added much later; for features such as your public profile or Q&A section; features which are so far not present in Brijj). So the only “privacy” setting that is present in linkedin and missing in Brijj is whether you allow others to see your contact list or not. I’m sure the team must be having this on their priority list. But as far as privacy is concerned I think Brijj does a much better job than the personal networking sites like orkut, myspace etc. Just like LinkedIn, it tries to handle most of the privacy and spam issues by itself rather than asking users to specify these settings.
Then Shyam talks about Infoedge’s “critical mistakes like not having a common registration database among its properties”. Mind you this line comes from a guy who was just complaining about privacy. The point Shyam is missing is having a common user database is actually more beneficial to the company than the users. Most of the times it’s the user who doesn’t want to have his data aggregated. In any case, I don’t think it makes sense for the products Infoedge has; 99acres hardly requires a registration, most of the users would use jeevan saathi for a very short time (at least I hope they would), and in naukri although there is a repeat usage, the frequency won’t be very high.
My favorite line in the entire post is: “I am assuming that at some point Info Edge will roll into Brijj, the muscle of Naukri’s database, but they have again erred gravely by not having it on from day one”. Networking is a social activity and job searching is mostly a private activity (by this I mean most of us don’t want to broadcast the fact that we are looking for a job switch, we might contact some selected people for this). And what naukri database is Shyam talking about? If he is referring to database of resumes and candidates; I’m not sure how that can be merged with Brijj. Invite all the naukri candidates to Brijj? They might as well send a mail to my HR manager and my boss saying that I’m looking for a job change. And if Shyam is talking about the database of job postings, that I’m sure would come much later in Brijj, but in a different form. Brijj would help companies identify candidates mostly through referrals (that’s the benefit of networking, isn’t it?).
So what’s my verdict on Brijj. I think it’s way too early to write a review for the product. The true value of a networking site can only be gauged when it has gained a substantial user base (“positive network externality” guys, remember I talked about this here?).
Brijj definitely has some cool features to start with. The UI looks pretty decent (I generally don’t care much for UIs, but it matters to most). They provide a type-ahead functionality for company names and educational institute names. The importance of this type-ahead functionality would be clear when you look at the “People you may know” section in home page. Allow me to explain. Even linkedin has a “people you may know” section, which tries to match the company name/ institute name to find your ex-colleagues and alumni. But linkedin misses a lot of potential contacts because the company name is entered in a free text field. If user A enters his company as “Infoedge” and user B enters it as “Infoedge India Pvt. Ltd”; chances are linkedin won’t recognize them as colleagues. This problem would be addressed in Brijj to a great extent, since most users would select the name from the type-ahead list.
I’m sure what we are seeing is a skeleton version of what’s planned for the site. Not because the team accidentally missed implementing those features; but because most of these features only make sense when you have build a large enough user base. So let’s give Brijj sometime before we give our verdict.
I must clarify upfront that my views may not be considered completely unbiased. I’ve worked at Infoedge in the past, so might have developed a soft corner for the team. I’ll try to keep these personal biases out of the post]
Let’s start with Shyam’s review “A brijj too far”. Once we have ignored the first three paragraphs, which tell you how Indian firms are only good at copying stuff from the west and how only the developers’ lovers use their product, we reach the point where the author starts the review of Brijj. The most admirable part of the review is the discovery of the redundant Meta tags and the invisible div tag. Hats off to Shyam for discovering these things, which have supposedly escaped the notice of the QA team. But my question is how do these things affect the user? May be I’m an exception, but when I’m surfing the net I hardly ever go through the source code of each page to check the meta tags. So what Shyam is trying to tell us is that the code is not polished. Big Deal! Isn’t that what you would expect from a beta version? When the time to market is so important I would much rather have my technical team and QA team focus on product features than spending their time in refining the code.
Next, Shyam complains about the absence of privacy settings for the users. Interestingly, even LinkedIn doesn’t have such a setting (some of the granular settings were added much later; for features such as your public profile or Q&A section; features which are so far not present in Brijj). So the only “privacy” setting that is present in linkedin and missing in Brijj is whether you allow others to see your contact list or not. I’m sure the team must be having this on their priority list. But as far as privacy is concerned I think Brijj does a much better job than the personal networking sites like orkut, myspace etc. Just like LinkedIn, it tries to handle most of the privacy and spam issues by itself rather than asking users to specify these settings.
Then Shyam talks about Infoedge’s “critical mistakes like not having a common registration database among its properties”. Mind you this line comes from a guy who was just complaining about privacy. The point Shyam is missing is having a common user database is actually more beneficial to the company than the users. Most of the times it’s the user who doesn’t want to have his data aggregated. In any case, I don’t think it makes sense for the products Infoedge has; 99acres hardly requires a registration, most of the users would use jeevan saathi for a very short time (at least I hope they would), and in naukri although there is a repeat usage, the frequency won’t be very high.
My favorite line in the entire post is: “I am assuming that at some point Info Edge will roll into Brijj, the muscle of Naukri’s database, but they have again erred gravely by not having it on from day one”. Networking is a social activity and job searching is mostly a private activity (by this I mean most of us don’t want to broadcast the fact that we are looking for a job switch, we might contact some selected people for this). And what naukri database is Shyam talking about? If he is referring to database of resumes and candidates; I’m not sure how that can be merged with Brijj. Invite all the naukri candidates to Brijj? They might as well send a mail to my HR manager and my boss saying that I’m looking for a job change. And if Shyam is talking about the database of job postings, that I’m sure would come much later in Brijj, but in a different form. Brijj would help companies identify candidates mostly through referrals (that’s the benefit of networking, isn’t it?).
So what’s my verdict on Brijj. I think it’s way too early to write a review for the product. The true value of a networking site can only be gauged when it has gained a substantial user base (“positive network externality” guys, remember I talked about this here?).
Brijj definitely has some cool features to start with. The UI looks pretty decent (I generally don’t care much for UIs, but it matters to most). They provide a type-ahead functionality for company names and educational institute names. The importance of this type-ahead functionality would be clear when you look at the “People you may know” section in home page. Allow me to explain. Even linkedin has a “people you may know” section, which tries to match the company name/ institute name to find your ex-colleagues and alumni. But linkedin misses a lot of potential contacts because the company name is entered in a free text field. If user A enters his company as “Infoedge” and user B enters it as “Infoedge India Pvt. Ltd”; chances are linkedin won’t recognize them as colleagues. This problem would be addressed in Brijj to a great extent, since most users would select the name from the type-ahead list.
I’m sure what we are seeing is a skeleton version of what’s planned for the site. Not because the team accidentally missed implementing those features; but because most of these features only make sense when you have build a large enough user base. So let’s give Brijj sometime before we give our verdict.
Saturday, July 28, 2007
How good is Google Analytics?
“In God we trust, everyone else must bring data.”
I read this interesting quote some time back and have tried to follow that in my professional life i.e. make decisions based on hard data. But the question I’m going to explore in this post (and the next one) is can we trust the data that Google Analytics shows us.
Before you turn back thinking that this is just one more of those Google bashing blogs, I must quickly point out that most of the issues discussed here are applicable to any analytics tool that uses similar technology. And yeah, there will be a point when I turn my attention to a possible “Google is evil” theory; but I’ll give you some advanced warning before we reach that point.
It has been a while that I’m noticing a lot of discrepancies between the GA’s data and the internal tracking data (server logs) that we maintain for our site. I turned to my linkedin network to understand if anyone else has noticed such issues and got a few responses that confirmed the problem with GA.
Google Analytics gives us the following important (albeit inaccurate) pieces of information
• Site Usage (number of hits, page views, bounce rate etc)
• Visitor overview (new vs. returning, visitor location etc)
• Traffic sources (search engines, referring sites)
• Content Performance (top content, top landing/exit pages)
• Adwords integration
Let’s look at these points one by one.
Site Usage: It has been observed by many people that GA under reports the traffic of your site; although it’s not clear to what extent, but I’ve read about cases where GA reports only 40% of the actual traffic.
One of the responses I got in linkedin was from David Kutcher, President of Confluent Forms, who very nicely explained the issue with using JavaScript (as GA does)
“Google Analytics is good, but it will never replace server log analytics, for the main reason that it relies on Javascript (the Urchin code).
Javascript's main drawbacks for this are:
1. it can be cached by a proxy server
2. it can be disabled on the client
These two points alone can wildly skew your results….”
Combine David’s explanation with the fact that our server logs typically over-report the traffic because most of the times they fail to ignore the spiders or bots (which GA very appropriately excludes from its report), and you can understand why the huge discrepancies are there.
Perhaps we could have lived with this serious issue if we knew (approximately) that GA under-reports the traffic by a certain percentage; but as Michael Martinez points out in this article (again thanks to David for the link) he has noticed GA diverging from the server data “in a consistently downward spiral” over few months. So what that means is GA is not only inaccurate in its traffic reports it’s, to make matters worse, inconsistent.
We’ll look at the other GA reports in next posting.
I read this interesting quote some time back and have tried to follow that in my professional life i.e. make decisions based on hard data. But the question I’m going to explore in this post (and the next one) is can we trust the data that Google Analytics shows us.
Before you turn back thinking that this is just one more of those Google bashing blogs, I must quickly point out that most of the issues discussed here are applicable to any analytics tool that uses similar technology. And yeah, there will be a point when I turn my attention to a possible “Google is evil” theory; but I’ll give you some advanced warning before we reach that point.
It has been a while that I’m noticing a lot of discrepancies between the GA’s data and the internal tracking data (server logs) that we maintain for our site. I turned to my linkedin network to understand if anyone else has noticed such issues and got a few responses that confirmed the problem with GA.
Google Analytics gives us the following important (albeit inaccurate) pieces of information
• Site Usage (number of hits, page views, bounce rate etc)
• Visitor overview (new vs. returning, visitor location etc)
• Traffic sources (search engines, referring sites)
• Content Performance (top content, top landing/exit pages)
• Adwords integration
Let’s look at these points one by one.
Site Usage: It has been observed by many people that GA under reports the traffic of your site; although it’s not clear to what extent, but I’ve read about cases where GA reports only 40% of the actual traffic.
One of the responses I got in linkedin was from David Kutcher, President of Confluent Forms, who very nicely explained the issue with using JavaScript (as GA does)
“Google Analytics is good, but it will never replace server log analytics, for the main reason that it relies on Javascript (the Urchin code).
Javascript's main drawbacks for this are:
1. it can be cached by a proxy server
2. it can be disabled on the client
These two points alone can wildly skew your results….”
Combine David’s explanation with the fact that our server logs typically over-report the traffic because most of the times they fail to ignore the spiders or bots (which GA very appropriately excludes from its report), and you can understand why the huge discrepancies are there.
Perhaps we could have lived with this serious issue if we knew (approximately) that GA under-reports the traffic by a certain percentage; but as Michael Martinez points out in this article (again thanks to David for the link) he has noticed GA diverging from the server data “in a consistently downward spiral” over few months. So what that means is GA is not only inaccurate in its traffic reports it’s, to make matters worse, inconsistent.
We’ll look at the other GA reports in next posting.
Tuesday, July 24, 2007
The secret blog and the unforgivable curse
(This post is a deviation from the common theme of this blog. If you have not read my other blog or the Harry Potter series, then I'll recommend you to skip this post)
I knew this day would come… I always suspected he knew… but I was not looking forward to the day when we’ll come face to face.. I walked down the dark corridor .. there was a certain chill in the air.. I don’t know how long I walked.. may be five minutes .. may be five hours… I had lost the sense of time…
and then suddenly I could see him.. a dark figure was sitting behind the desk .. the red eyes clearly visible even in the dark….
He saw me.. the lips curled slightly to show that he was finding the situation amusing… “so you are here.. I knew you wouldn’t refuse to come.. not that you had the choice.. sit down”.
I disliked being told what to do.. so I decided to keep standing.. in any case I felt better protected that way. “No thanks.. so why did you want to see me”…
“Ah! Right into the heart of things.. I liked the attitude.. we would have been great together in one team”
I had already calmed myself… the fear of unknown was no longer there.. “I never liked you P*****.. I would have never worked with you.. get to the point quickly”
His eyes got narrower.. “I heard that you are writing a blog on me”
“Yes”
“Why?”
“Some of my friends find it very funny”
“And what do you think has happened to my reputation”
I almost laughed. “ You never had a reputation P*****, in any case the blog is not public.. I never display the URL on my profile.. only my friends know the URL and only they can read it”
“Give me the URL”
“No.. I can’t .. it’s not for you”
He raised his hand… I was too slow to react.. He shouted “Crucio” … several things happened at the same time..
The curse hit me in full blow.. the chillness I was feeling before was gone.. the night was getting hotter.. There was a loud crack as if someone had just apparated .. and the cracking noise was enough to wake up the portrait of Sirus’s mom… she started screaming… not the usual screams like “scum.. mudblood”… but she was screaming as if she was in pain.. that was unusual…
What was more unusual was the state I was in.. I knew the crucio curse has hit me and was expecting severe pain all over my body.. but the pain was there only in my left hand..
I knew the time had come .. I looked up at the figure… he seemed to have been slightly distracted by Sirus’s mom’s screams.. I had just enough time to fire one curse.. I didn’t know which one to use.. nobody had told me
Then it suddenly came to me.. of course.. I was stupid not to think of that before.. I raised my wand and shouted “Yippee Ki Yay M*&%$^%$^”.. nobody in Hogwarts knew this curse. I had learned this from John McClane.. the LAPD cop from Die Hard series…the curse hit him on the chest.. he fell back from the chair.. I charged ahead.. not sure what to expect.. he opened his mouth.. but no words came out of it.. he whistled . a strange loud whistle that echoed everywhere in the still night.. I knew he was calling someone and I had to run.. but I was losing my sense.. the pain in the left hand was killing me.. I fainted…
I forced myself to open my eyes … I was not sure where I was.. I could still hear the screams coming from the portrait of the Sirus’s mother. .. where was I……..
And then to my great disappointment I realized what has happened.. I was still sleeping in my apartment.. the Harry Potter book lied next to my bed.. the pain was coming from my left hand because I was sleeping on it, not enough to kill me though…
the night has become hotter not because of the curse , but because of the power cut.. the fan and ac in my room were off….the source of the cracking sound, that I thought was the sound of someone apparating, was the stabilizer of my ac which switched off automatically as the power went..
but the screams? Ah, that was coming from my inverter which got overloaded and the buzzer went off.. and then I heard the whistle again.. the security guard outside my house was patrolling the campus..
So I was a muggle again ..*sigh*.. it all seemed so real.. the “jiju blog” that I write secretly… the Die Hard movie dialog to kill him..
I was feeling very low again… my throat was dry.. but I was too lazy to get up and fetch the bottle from fridge.. I shouted “Acio Bottle”.. ahh !! nothing happened.
I knew this day would come… I always suspected he knew… but I was not looking forward to the day when we’ll come face to face.. I walked down the dark corridor .. there was a certain chill in the air.. I don’t know how long I walked.. may be five minutes .. may be five hours… I had lost the sense of time…
and then suddenly I could see him.. a dark figure was sitting behind the desk .. the red eyes clearly visible even in the dark….
He saw me.. the lips curled slightly to show that he was finding the situation amusing… “so you are here.. I knew you wouldn’t refuse to come.. not that you had the choice.. sit down”.
I disliked being told what to do.. so I decided to keep standing.. in any case I felt better protected that way. “No thanks.. so why did you want to see me”…
“Ah! Right into the heart of things.. I liked the attitude.. we would have been great together in one team”
I had already calmed myself… the fear of unknown was no longer there.. “I never liked you P*****.. I would have never worked with you.. get to the point quickly”
His eyes got narrower.. “I heard that you are writing a blog on me”
“Yes”
“Why?”
“Some of my friends find it very funny”
“And what do you think has happened to my reputation”
I almost laughed. “ You never had a reputation P*****, in any case the blog is not public.. I never display the URL on my profile.. only my friends know the URL and only they can read it”
“Give me the URL”
“No.. I can’t .. it’s not for you”
He raised his hand… I was too slow to react.. He shouted “Crucio” … several things happened at the same time..
The curse hit me in full blow.. the chillness I was feeling before was gone.. the night was getting hotter.. There was a loud crack as if someone had just apparated .. and the cracking noise was enough to wake up the portrait of Sirus’s mom… she started screaming… not the usual screams like “scum.. mudblood”… but she was screaming as if she was in pain.. that was unusual…
What was more unusual was the state I was in.. I knew the crucio curse has hit me and was expecting severe pain all over my body.. but the pain was there only in my left hand..
I knew the time had come .. I looked up at the figure… he seemed to have been slightly distracted by Sirus’s mom’s screams.. I had just enough time to fire one curse.. I didn’t know which one to use.. nobody had told me
Then it suddenly came to me.. of course.. I was stupid not to think of that before.. I raised my wand and shouted “Yippee Ki Yay M*&%$^%$^”.. nobody in Hogwarts knew this curse. I had learned this from John McClane.. the LAPD cop from Die Hard series…the curse hit him on the chest.. he fell back from the chair.. I charged ahead.. not sure what to expect.. he opened his mouth.. but no words came out of it.. he whistled . a strange loud whistle that echoed everywhere in the still night.. I knew he was calling someone and I had to run.. but I was losing my sense.. the pain in the left hand was killing me.. I fainted…
I forced myself to open my eyes … I was not sure where I was.. I could still hear the screams coming from the portrait of the Sirus’s mother. .. where was I……..
And then to my great disappointment I realized what has happened.. I was still sleeping in my apartment.. the Harry Potter book lied next to my bed.. the pain was coming from my left hand because I was sleeping on it, not enough to kill me though…
the night has become hotter not because of the curse , but because of the power cut.. the fan and ac in my room were off….the source of the cracking sound, that I thought was the sound of someone apparating, was the stabilizer of my ac which switched off automatically as the power went..
but the screams? Ah, that was coming from my inverter which got overloaded and the buzzer went off.. and then I heard the whistle again.. the security guard outside my house was patrolling the campus..
So I was a muggle again ..*sigh*.. it all seemed so real.. the “jiju blog” that I write secretly… the Die Hard movie dialog to kill him..
I was feeling very low again… my throat was dry.. but I was too lazy to get up and fetch the bottle from fridge.. I shouted “Acio Bottle”.. ahh !! nothing happened.
Friday, July 20, 2007
To CTC or not to CTC ....... and Google security issues
Apparently, Google has decided to discontinue the Click-to-call (CTC) feature from their Google Maps site. I wonder why they did that, as it seemed like a very useful feature to have. Looking at the response of users to this news in Google groups, it seems most of them share my disappointment and surprise.
On a different note, many iGoogle and Google reader users have reported that they are able to login to other accounts or notice the accounts switch automatically mid-way through the session. You can read the reports here, here and here. Well, maybe now that Lord Voldemort is back in power, we might expect such eerie events occurring.
Updated:
Since I didn't have a clue regarding why Google discontinued the click-to-call feature, I designed a very well thought out systematic step-by-step procedure to find out the cause. I opened the browser, typed in google.com in the address box, and used the Google search engine to look for the cause.
The plan failed. There is not much information available about Google's thought process (and it may take a little while before bloggers with more expertise than me on this subject try to enlighten us with their views).
But the search revealed something very interesting. I stumbled upon this one year old article , which is by the way a post on Google's official blog, where Google explains that someone hacked into their blog and posted a "fake" article saying Google has decided to remove click-to-call. The Google official added "As for the click-to-call test, it is progressing on schedule, and we're pleased with the results thus far".
Well, it seems the hacker had more insight about this feature than the Google officials. And strangely that one year old article combines the two issues I've mentioned above (click-to-call and Google security issues). I wonder whether the hacker is related to Professor Trelawney.
On a different note, many iGoogle and Google reader users have reported that they are able to login to other accounts or notice the accounts switch automatically mid-way through the session. You can read the reports here, here and here. Well, maybe now that Lord Voldemort is back in power, we might expect such eerie events occurring.
Updated:
Since I didn't have a clue regarding why Google discontinued the click-to-call feature, I designed a very well thought out systematic step-by-step procedure to find out the cause. I opened the browser, typed in google.com in the address box, and used the Google search engine to look for the cause.
The plan failed. There is not much information available about Google's thought process (and it may take a little while before bloggers with more expertise than me on this subject try to enlighten us with their views).
But the search revealed something very interesting. I stumbled upon this one year old article , which is by the way a post on Google's official blog, where Google explains that someone hacked into their blog and posted a "fake" article saying Google has decided to remove click-to-call. The Google official added "As for the click-to-call test, it is progressing on schedule, and we're pleased with the results thus far".
Well, it seems the hacker had more insight about this feature than the Google officials. And strangely that one year old article combines the two issues I've mentioned above (click-to-call and Google security issues). I wonder whether the hacker is related to Professor Trelawney.
Friday, June 15, 2007
Party Crahsers
Google tried to crash Ebay's user conference by throwing a party on the same day and openly inviting all those who were supposed to attend the conference...
Ebay retaliated by pulling out of Google's advertising network..
You can read the news here
This, mind you, came days after Google's antitrust complaints against Microsoft.
Who said the technology industry is boring ?
Ebay retaliated by pulling out of Google's advertising network..
You can read the news here
This, mind you, came days after Google's antitrust complaints against Microsoft.
Who said the technology industry is boring ?
Thursday, June 14, 2007
An Ad Exchnage?
It's interesting to observe the evolution of online advertising industry.
Bill Gross was one of the first men to come up with the concept of paid advertising.. he started the ball rolling with goto.com... the company became public in 1999 and two years later was renamed Overture Services. In 2004 it was acquired by Yahoo!
Next big step came from Google's Adwords and its bidding system... The system is based on a very sound algorithm which calculates your cost for click based on several factors such as the CTR history, your "quality score" and your bid amount.. In a typical Google fashion, it makes the auction more "user friendly" by making it a second-price bidding system...(Well, my auction theory Prof might disagree that it's a second-price bidding system, as you pay slightly higher than the next best bidder. But we can live with this small glitches for the time being)
In my opinion, the third most important step of the industry is the introduction of the "Ad exchange". Rightmedia is one of the companies to introduce this concept and recentlty there is again some movement in this field, with the introduction of ADSDAQ
It's again an advertising exchange and works very similar to your stock exchanges. (follow the link for more details)
Only time will tell if it is actually going to be a paradigm shift for the entire industry or it is just one of those fads (like paying users for the clicks) that dies quickly. I believe (and hope) it's the former.
Bill Gross was one of the first men to come up with the concept of paid advertising.. he started the ball rolling with goto.com... the company became public in 1999 and two years later was renamed Overture Services. In 2004 it was acquired by Yahoo!
Next big step came from Google's Adwords and its bidding system... The system is based on a very sound algorithm which calculates your cost for click based on several factors such as the CTR history, your "quality score" and your bid amount.. In a typical Google fashion, it makes the auction more "user friendly" by making it a second-price bidding system...(Well, my auction theory Prof might disagree that it's a second-price bidding system, as you pay slightly higher than the next best bidder. But we can live with this small glitches for the time being)
In my opinion, the third most important step of the industry is the introduction of the "Ad exchange". Rightmedia is one of the companies to introduce this concept and recentlty there is again some movement in this field, with the introduction of ADSDAQ
It's again an advertising exchange and works very similar to your stock exchanges. (follow the link for more details)
Only time will tell if it is actually going to be a paradigm shift for the entire industry or it is just one of those fads (like paying users for the clicks) that dies quickly. I believe (and hope) it's the former.
Tuesday, June 12, 2007
Google and Privacy...
Is Google and Privacy beginning to sound like "Microsoft Works" i.e. an oxymoron :-)
Search engine expert Danny Sullivan doesn't think so..In his article, he criticizes the Privacy International's rankings and concludes that it's unfair to rank Google at the bottom...
Well, the argument will definitely continue for a while. But, what can't be denied is that Google is treading a very thin line when it comes to privacy. I'm not very comfortable with the idea of Google Street View.. For example, if you are staring at a girl on the street (who doesn't), would you like those pictures to be visible on Google Map's street view? Does it seem far fetched ? .. Well check this out then..
News.com ran a story of a guy who almost got fired because of this Google Map feature..
One lazy afternoon, Maer Israel and a colleague ducked out of work to have a double espresso at a nearby cafe in San Francisco.
Several weeks later, the information technology manager at the French American International School was alerted that a picture of him sitting at the cafe could be found on Google's online map as part of the search giant's new street-level photo view.
"The HR manager ran into me in the hallway and she pulled me aside and...said, 'Do you know that there are cameras everywhere?'" Israel recounted. "Of course, I was a little freaked out because it's the HR person telling me that we got busted having a coffee next door...My mother is surprised I haven't been fired."
I would let the readers draw their own conclusion....
Search engine expert Danny Sullivan doesn't think so..In his article, he criticizes the Privacy International's rankings and concludes that it's unfair to rank Google at the bottom...
Well, the argument will definitely continue for a while. But, what can't be denied is that Google is treading a very thin line when it comes to privacy. I'm not very comfortable with the idea of Google Street View.. For example, if you are staring at a girl on the street (who doesn't), would you like those pictures to be visible on Google Map's street view? Does it seem far fetched ? .. Well check this out then..
News.com ran a story of a guy who almost got fired because of this Google Map feature..
One lazy afternoon, Maer Israel and a colleague ducked out of work to have a double espresso at a nearby cafe in San Francisco.
Several weeks later, the information technology manager at the French American International School was alerted that a picture of him sitting at the cafe could be found on Google's online map as part of the search giant's new street-level photo view.
"The HR manager ran into me in the hallway and she pulled me aside and...said, 'Do you know that there are cameras everywhere?'" Israel recounted. "Of course, I was a little freaked out because it's the HR person telling me that we got busted having a coffee next door...My mother is surprised I haven't been fired."
I would let the readers draw their own conclusion....
Monday, June 11, 2007
Not a great week for Google
First there were the Shiv-Sainiks... forcing the cyber-cafe owners to block orkut.. Well, perhaps we can dismiss this as a cheap political stunt, which in all likelihood would last only for a few more days...
But then came the big blow on 9th June... An organization called Privacy International released the "Privacy Ranking of Internet Service Companies".. Google was ranked at the bottom ... below Microsoft, eBay, Amazon and many others.. Here is the link to the rankings..The organization has also gone into great detail to explain why they put Google at the bottom. To quote them..
In summary, Google's specific privacy failures include, but are by no means limited to:
* Google account holders that regularly use even a few of Google's services must accept that the company retains a large quantity of information about that user, often for an unstated or indefinite length of time, without clear limitation on subsequent use or disclosure, and without an opportunity to delete or withdraw personal data even if the user wishes to terminate the service.
* Google maintains records of all search strings and the associated IP-addresses and time stamps for at least 18 to 24 months and does not provide users with an expungement option. While it is true that many US based companies have not yet established a time frame for retention, there is a prevailing view amongst privacy experts that 18 to 24 months is unacceptable, and possibly unlawful in many parts of the world.
* Google has access to additional personal information, including hobbies, employment, address, and phone number, contained within user profiles in Orkut. Google often maintains these records even after a user has deleted his profile or removed information from Orkut.
* Google collects all search results entered through Google Toolbar and identifies all Google Toolbar users with a unique cookie that allows Google to track the user's web movement.17 Google does not indicate how long the information collected through Google Toolbar is retained, nor does it offer users a data expungement option in connection with the service.
* Google fails to follow generally accepted privacy practices such as the OECD Privacy Guidelines and elements of EU data protection law. As detailed in the EPIC complaint, Google also fails to adopted additional privacy provisions with respect to specific Google services.
* Google logs search queries in a manner that makes them personally identifiable but fails to provide users with the ability to edit or otherwise expunge records of their previous searches.
* Google fails to give users access to log information generated through their interaction with Google Maps, Google Video, Google Talk, Google Reader, Blogger and other services.
.. and we all believed in Google's "Don't be Evil" philosophy..huh..
Jokes apart, I'm not entirely convinced that Google deserves to be at the bottom. I've to find out more about this paper to draw any conclusions. Till then if you want to read more about this organization and this study, then .. well just Google it..
But then came the big blow on 9th June... An organization called Privacy International released the "Privacy Ranking of Internet Service Companies".. Google was ranked at the bottom ... below Microsoft, eBay, Amazon and many others.. Here is the link to the rankings..The organization has also gone into great detail to explain why they put Google at the bottom. To quote them..
In summary, Google's specific privacy failures include, but are by no means limited to:
* Google account holders that regularly use even a few of Google's services must accept that the company retains a large quantity of information about that user, often for an unstated or indefinite length of time, without clear limitation on subsequent use or disclosure, and without an opportunity to delete or withdraw personal data even if the user wishes to terminate the service.
* Google maintains records of all search strings and the associated IP-addresses and time stamps for at least 18 to 24 months and does not provide users with an expungement option. While it is true that many US based companies have not yet established a time frame for retention, there is a prevailing view amongst privacy experts that 18 to 24 months is unacceptable, and possibly unlawful in many parts of the world.
* Google has access to additional personal information, including hobbies, employment, address, and phone number, contained within user profiles in Orkut. Google often maintains these records even after a user has deleted his profile or removed information from Orkut.
* Google collects all search results entered through Google Toolbar and identifies all Google Toolbar users with a unique cookie that allows Google to track the user's web movement.17 Google does not indicate how long the information collected through Google Toolbar is retained, nor does it offer users a data expungement option in connection with the service.
* Google fails to follow generally accepted privacy practices such as the OECD Privacy Guidelines and elements of EU data protection law. As detailed in the EPIC complaint, Google also fails to adopted additional privacy provisions with respect to specific Google services.
* Google logs search queries in a manner that makes them personally identifiable but fails to provide users with the ability to edit or otherwise expunge records of their previous searches.
* Google fails to give users access to log information generated through their interaction with Google Maps, Google Video, Google Talk, Google Reader, Blogger and other services.
.. and we all believed in Google's "Don't be Evil" philosophy..huh..
Jokes apart, I'm not entirely convinced that Google deserves to be at the bottom. I've to find out more about this paper to draw any conclusions. Till then if you want to read more about this organization and this study, then .. well just Google it..
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