Business model for Twitter

Twitter plans to generate revenue through search. Is there a better model?

Twitter believes so because of its ability to take the measure of what is being said at a given time about brands is a potential gold mine for marketers. A Philadelphia-based digital agency, NetPlus Marketing, is offering a similar service to their clients today.

I think it is better for Twitter to partner with Google than doing it themselves since Google has a ready to use search sales infrastructure. Or is this a good PR story to get Google to acquire Twitter for a billion dollars?

What do you think?

Consumer mobile applications business myth

Who should own up revenue responsibility in consumer mobile applications business? Marketing or Product Management?

Unlike any other industries, product sampling (free trial period) is de facto in consumer mobile application business. Consumers can try the product / service first and then pay for it if they like it. Marketing dept. drive consumers to download the product (trial version) through various communication modes. The free download to sales conversion happens only if the product is good / delivers value.

If so, who should own up the responsibility of sales? Marketing or Product Management?

I believe that it should be latter as the product itself does the sales function. What do you think?

Solving the feel issue of a Touch Screen enabled Phone

There has been usability issue around touch screen phones primarily due to the lack of proper feedback while touching the screen. Experts say that this could be the reason for a low adoption of similar device even while the cost of owning one is also low.

Here is an attempt to make a touch screen phone usable through a different approach. What do you think?

Solving the feel issue of a Touch Screen enabled Phone

View more presentations from Vasudevan T. (tags: feel &)

Thank you my unknown friend!

I've been noticing a a person who is checking my blog everyday since last 4-5 days. He/She is from Los Angeles, CA. My google analytics says so. :) Interesting part is that he/she is the only visitor on my blog. I would like to call him/her my unknown friend!













Hey my unknown friend. Thank you for your patience. I don't know why you keep coming back to my blog. What do you see in it? What do you expect from it? If you permit, I wish to know. Can you leave a comment?

Since I've declared now that I've only one visitor on my blog, you may also want stay away. I don't know what will happen now. My unknown friend might leave a comment, or may go off quietly!

But I will continue to blog if no one reads it!

Story Board

I stumbled upon a video on Story boards which used to be the backbone of all Disney animations.

What is a story board?

Storyboarding is a great way to begin to visualize the story of your content. (In animation) storyboards are used to develop the story. A great storyboard artist is a great communicator (not necessarily a great illustrator/animator). Walt Disney developed the use of storyboards in the 1920s. Storyboards allow film makers to see a blueprint of the movie before going into production. You tack them (your sketches/ideas in visual form) up on the wall so you can see the entire sequence, flow, continuity, etc. Storyboards are an effective, inexpensive way to develop the story. You can "board it up" on the wall and see if it works. Because ideas can be changed easily and quickly, storyboarding works. The key is to put down in your storyboards the minimum amount of information that gives a dynamic and quick read of the content (and the emotions) of the sequence.

Source: Presentation Zen

Check out a video on the art of story telling through story boards.

Tracking global job cuts

It's quite funny to see the layoff tracker at TechCrunch. But it is useful too!

Total Layoffs Since August 27, 2008: 392
Total Employees: 228,119

Outlook Business article on "Why software entrepreneurs fail in India?"

The entire business world is talking about the Satyam fraud story these days. I've read numerous articles about it in the last few weeks and the one stands out - A story on Outlook Business

It talks about why there is an entrepreneurial failure happens in Indian IT sector. Nice article comparing the business practices at various IT companies in India. The article talks about how Cognizant crossed their US$ 1B mark and MindTree - started by 10 professional in early 90's - heading towards it through exceptional quality of corporate governance. The single point of learning from these companies is that "get a highly qualified and experienced executive team to do the job for you and let the founders stay away and watch the company growing"

The article also talks about what is common with Satyam, DSQ Software, Pentamedia Group, and Silverline technologies. All of them did fraudulant activities headed by their repective founding members and get cought by the investor community / government.

Recommended article to read. Go on...