Monday, March 2, 2009

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?

Saturday, February 28, 2009

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?

Sunday, February 22, 2009

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?

Saturday, January 31, 2009

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!

Thursday, January 29, 2009

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

Wednesday, January 28, 2009

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...

mundu.com for your mobile




You would have seen my effort to redesign mundu.com in my previous post. I've attempted to build one mobile version of the same.

Friday, January 23, 2009

A fun project - redesigning mundu.com home page

I've been free at my work place for the last couple of days and I did something which I can't do it otherwise! Don't guess, you won't get that easily.

I believe that I could help people to make good websites. I've pretty good skills on making websites for retail / enterprise, one product / many, product / service, etc. I kind of attempted to make a new home page for mundu.com. Why? Don't ask me, I won't tell!

Look at www.mundu.com first, and then see the below home page, new one what I've designed.

Thursday, January 22, 2009

Fruitful day!

Today has been an outstanding day for me! I re-started blogging and in the evening, I joined a Gym too! Why I joined a Gym?

As usual, what I don't have is what she wants now!


Beginning with a confession












I've been a blogger ever since year 2005, but later I stopped blogging. No specific reason for it, but it happened so. Partly due to lack of interest, and the rest may be due to time constraints. But now I'm restarting it. Why?

I've realized recently that I do have very distinctive opinion on many things in the life around me. But I don't know whether it is fortunate or unfortunate, not many takers for my ideas and beliefs. I may not be making any sense to many, or just that they don't want to listen. I'm confused whether I'm right or wrong. My inner self says "I'm making lot of sense", but it contradicts the next moment by reminding me that you are not qualified make statements since I'm young and not much experienced in life, and also not a graduate in any subject. I'm sure truth lies somewhere. But it is hard to be recognized. I thought let me vent out my thoughts arbitrarily and let the believers (if any) come to me, rather than me going after them. Blog is an ideal platform for this confession and hence this - Vasu's diary.

What you can expect from this Blog?
  • Not so tight in subject, anything!