What does Entrepreneurship really mean? It´s a frequently talked about concept nowadays with a bandwagon of b-schools and independent organizations coming out to find the “Entrepreneur” with Business Plan contests. Is it just about starting a venture or making a company and fighting the odds to make it successful.

A concept rarely discussed of few yeas back is now talk of the town. The network of entrepreneurs is slowly growing and making a large impact socially and economically. They are creating that dream in the minds of aspiring youth to become one of them. I have always wanted to become one, however I do not exactly know why. Entrepreneur actually means “the one who is willing to take up an endeavor”. The purpose of it can be either economic gain, better satisfaction in life, passion and so on. In a website, I stumbled upon recently found this interesting image called “Anatomy of Entrepreneur”

The jist of which is “Knowledge” in Brain, “Passion” in the heart and “Fire” in the belly!

Image courtesy: http://rebuildingmedia.corante.com/archives/2007_12.php

It actually means giving all you have to get “that” thing done. Its not always about getting successful in life and leading a more cushy life, but its more about living life passionately and being willing to give whatever it takes to make that dream come true. I could go on and on about this, about which thousands of people and most of them successful have already blogged about, instead I will just say my opinion on what according to me, is the most important thing to make a successful entrepreneur – Its NOT the product, NOT the idea, NOT the business plan and definitely NOT the revenue model. These are all very important aspects but are all things which we can work upon iteratively and improve over the period. But something which has to be perfect from the kick off time is the Team and synergy between the team members.

Get the best team first and give it everything you have for the team to excel and having people who share your dream with the same passion and intensity is the key.

Find the Team and Live the Dream.!!

“Promoted Tweets”

According to “About Us” at twitter:
Twitter is a real-time information network powered by people all around the world that lets you share and discover what’s happening now.

Now, what best can a real-time information network actually provide you with? What started of as a simple idea of telling “What are you doing?” in less than 140 characters, has went onto to become a revolution merely because of the simplicity, growth and its capability of leverage the network power underneath. The best thing about Twitter was the openness in its platform with APIs thus allowing thousands of developers to build twitter clients which accounts to more than 75% of network traffic to its network.

At some level, we always knew it would be “advertising” that would be central to their revenue model. But they have gone one step ahead by planning not only display of adds on their website, but also enhanced features like ‘Purchase of keywords’, ‘Tiered Pricing Plans’, ‘Concept of Resonance of Tweets’.

‘Purchase of keywords’: Interested companies or parties can bid for ‘keywords’ and if successful with their bid, they can place their “advertisement tweets” whenever anyone searches with the particular keyword.

‘Tiered Pricing Plans’: Twitter has decided to charge their customers with a pricing plan of 1000 unique visits to their advertisement.

‘Resonance of Tweets’: A terminology thought of by an Indian employee at Twitter, according to which based on the “eventfulness” of Promoted Tweet it will be endorsed further. Say for e.g. you search for Burger, and say Burger King’s promoted tweet shows up as the first search result, but if for a significant amount of time if there is no click or activity on the tweet, the resonance of the tweet decreases and it merely fades off from the search ranking. And best part is the resonance function is tied to their pricing plans, so if the resonance value is low, one has to pay less. Now that is definitely interesting and motivating for new players to give it a shot.

Now, how will all this work is something we all need to wait and see. Lets hope Twitter is another ‘Google’ in the making, well hope not exactly like Google either

Some interesting statistics revealed at ‘Chirp’ include:

And, all of this in just 4 years !!

Last but not least, if you are a developer do check out Twitter’s new Development Platform, they have gone one more step ahead of mere APIs which help you create applications and integrate with twitter seamlessly.

Related Post: Twitter Twitter Everywhere, Not a Tweet to Read

After reaching office, I logged in twitter and tweeted:

“After 70 long days.. my hands are free.. No more wearing gloves.. I feel so relieved.. “

Soon I got a mail from our office receptionist saying “Its Waffle Day.. Please feel free to head to canteen and make your own Waffle.. the cream, ice cream, chocolate and all stuff is available in plenty.. Enjoy!! “. I din’t bother to worry about it. When we went out for lunch, we saw many people sitting near the canal which is usually fully frozen. They were just sitting there casually and enjoying the sunlight and hanging out. I even told Shailesh, “Guess this is beginning of Spring.. and now its going to be fun days ahead”.

Later during the day, our friends came and called for having waffles.. so we went made it and really enjoyed the taste of it.

Waffle preparation in progress

Sofia & Tobias making Waffles

Now I wanted to know more about waffles and waffle day in Sweden, hence started googling for it. And astonishingly this is what I read in a blog:

“International Waffle Day (March 25) originated in Sweden where it is called Våffeldagen. It occurs nine months to the day before Christmas – the day the Archangel Gabriel told the Virgin Mary that she was pregnant. As the holiday progressed, it also began to commemorate the first day of spring. Waffles come into play because on March 25th the women of Sweden would set aside their winter tasks like chopping wood and knitting, and began their spring tasks… the most notable of which was preparing waffles.”

Source: http://www.mrbreakfast.com/article.asp?articleid=19

Now, that was really amazing to know, I had no clue whatsoever about this. But we still felt today like Spring was finally here, its really mind blowing to see how such historical anecdotes fall perfectly in place with nature. I mean, why exactly Mar 25.. the 1st day of season.. Why not Mar 26th or the 24th.. And interestingly its exactly 9 months before Christmas.

Yet another situation where “Nature” is in perfect synchronization..:) What started of as a very ordinary day, ended up in some amazing waffles and even amazing Spring season.

Well, these are all not to just meant to say India is bad, but if we can bit more efficient, friendly and take care of people, then they would love to visit us again and again. It feels really good if generally people treat you well in a foreign country and not just look at them and start thinking on how all we can annoy and cheat them. We claim so much about our tradition and culture(Oh Yeah!!), then why can’t we showcase it in a good way to people visiting us. Imagine such horrible incidents in airports where educated and people in service industry are doing this, also harassment of all kinds taking place in Goa, and there are so many incidents of cheating just because they are ignorant. Personally I have seen shopkeepers charging twice or thrice the price just because the customer is from a foreign country, auto fellows rob them of their money. “Ignorance is definitely NOT bliss”. Yes tourism is a great source of revenue for the country, but this is not the way to do it.

This was a situation I always was aware of back home, we all know about it and live with it. But having spent few days in a foreign country now I know how horrible, in-human, and horrendous our behavior to foreigners have been. It pains a lot now.

Having landed in Copenhagen by 1900 hrs, we had to figure out how to get to Malmo by train. We saw an Information center and headed to enquire, the lady there was so kind enough to explain the way to ticket counter, how much we had to pay, how to get to the platform and which train to take and how much time it would take to get to Malmo Central. It was all followed by “Do you have any other questions?”. Hmmmm!! What more do I even need to know Clear, comprehensive information. In no time, we found ourselves in Malmo Central. This was just one incident which was followed by so many like taxi ride from Malmo to our hostel, hostel guy, first bus ride to University, lady at Willys store, guy we found roadside for helping us with direction, shopkeeper at the Internet store, wonderful people at the university, even more amazing people at the office. This list will just go on, every other person we have talked to has been so helpful. Then we met Hans Bergstrand, the exchange student who visited India last year. Ofcourse I know as we did work together in Silverfish, but he has been so helpful starting from helping us get bikes and internet and what not. He even suggested us to take his unused TV to our apartment. And our college treated them with a leaky roof, which even crashed onto their heads.! I remember these guys going around for mineral water to store everyday and here the “Coordinator of International Program” and “Professor-in-charge” are making us sit and they are doing our stipend related work and busy getting us library cards.

Its not just about perfect systems in place here, but the human touch people here give with the greeting nature and ready to help attitude makes us wonder HOW????? Our librarian back home, I haven’t even seen them ever talking, maybe its because “Silence is golden and blah blah..” or maybe because “Students are not talking material..”. I can’t imagine that people back home especially at our college think of it as some place out of the world, they should all come here and then probably they will realize how wrong their assumption is. Every person we met at the university is like this, starting from Programme Coordinator to the lady in coffee shop. With such an engaging, positive environment around, that’s when innovation takes birth and not limits of download of 10/15 MB even for which one needs to get the rooms opened with a signed treaty (MoU) with security guys (who anyways spend the night sleeping). Is this how innovation and new ideas are gonna take birth, is this how research is done. The open minded nature of people here helps people of different countries, different branches of studies, different course work students to all come together and tackle one’s issues. No barriers of project, competition for placements, better grades keep them away.!!

The blog that started off as a general feedback about “Welcoming Guests” has become a university bashing.!! Well, that shows I can narrow down my thoughts to what concerns me most. As my research paper on MDA had said “This is not meant to bash the claims of MDA, but just to do a reality check”. Yes, its time for a reality check back home, its time that we look into ourselves and see where are we lacking, its time we retrospect what our core values are.!! I immensely do value my college back home, it truly stands out with other institutions spread across the country. My alma mater(almost) has been my launch pad for sure. I would never be what I am, if not for my home(IIITB), but if we can identify the small flaws, rectify them, add a human touch and combine it with utmost passion – we will become the best!! Students back home have the potential for sure, and no questions even about the faculty(among the world’s best). Hope my college shows the way ahead and lead the country by example!!

Twitter, a micro blogging platform intended to keep us connected by simply answering the question of “What are you doing?”. The modes of communication mainly on the internet platform dint let us communicate very simple things which were of course interesting to a set of users connected to us. And one such very important question was “What are you doing?. Such things couldn’t be communicated using emails or phone calls. For e.g. we wouldn’t send an email to a friend to tell that “You are enjoying Bangalore climate and having a cup of hot coffee and reading some book”. But its an important message to some person who wishes to be connected to your life. Blogs, phone calls, social networking sites all were possible alternatives, but nothing would actually serve this purpose. Our real world and things we do daily mainly happen between emails, and blog posts. We dint have a platform to share. And hence the concept of micro blogging came, twitter was born and 140 char was the best feature to it. Twitter is sweet cos its short. How many of us like to read tweets which span across 2-3 tweets, we just ignore them. The 140 char limit not only provided “just enough information” but also helps in making a decision if we need to know more about it or not and there by solving a huge problem of the internet of “Information Overload”. Why do we have abstracts in technical publications, nobody is going to read the whole paper to know what it is about, but a handler like an abstract helps us in drawing lines between what we want to know and what we don’t.

The “@” concept was mainly to enrich the power of micro blogging to next level by bringing in collaboration. They dint want to limit it to a one way communication of broadcast of information. Again here the feed wasn’t simply populated in the network, people had the choice to follow or not to follow. It acted on the receiving end, emails and phone calls on the other hand works the other way, where the source decides where these information packets are to be send to, which according to me, was a huge success factor of twitter. It was a well thought after concept which had spread like wild fire in the internet jungle. People instantly liked it cos it was simple, addictive and above all acted as “an handler to information”. But time and again, historical analogies have proved it that technologies are shaped keeping something in mind, but its the way the society interprets it and uses the technology that it shapes its life. Its not the designer nor the coder who decides how it evolves, but its the user of the technology.

I have been using twitter for almost an year now, I would say I am thoroughly addicted to it and enjoy using it. The concept really impressed me, but ironically the very success factor of it is sowing its seeds of destruction. The purpose is lost, we see a lot many more @ responses which are purely one-to-one basis which again puts the user in an information overload and irrelevant nature increases. I need not know what two people want to communicate on a personal basis, emails and even direct messages on twitter serve that purpose, but again nobody controls on how to use the technology.

These are merely my personal views based on the evolution I witnessed within 1 year of my tweeting experience, though the concept has gone in a unanticipated direction, with the amazing rate of growth twitter is definitely going places and new usage pattern esp in business applications and marketing gimmicks are gonna happen out there. Only time and way the people use it will determine where it goes. Lets wait and see this transformation from micro blogging to public chat client to marketing platform to broadcast of information to God knows what.

P.S – It will be great if you could throw some light on what you feel is wrong in my interpretation or even enrich my point of argument. Then again as Srinath sir says – Attack the idea and not the person [:P]

Last semester’s course of Web IR did actually put some light into some issues and motivated us to look into some of them, but the main problem lies with the fact that “we don’t know what we don’t know”

Google is synonyms with search for any internet user now, people don’t search anymore they just “Google It”. Now what would it take for a company to establish such a branding? So how does it all work after all ? This is itself an open question. Anyways I don’t intend this post to be a guide to how search engine works? Probably somebody trying to figure that out will not even land up on this very page. So how does one land on a web page? Is it mere hyper links – which form the structure and edges of the network of WWW. Or is it something way beyond that. The presence of a link to Page B on Page A is not just random, it is being put up on purpose. Now if look deeper, we realize whether it be positive or negative endorsement the occurrence of a link of Page A to Page B, irrespective of nature in a way increases the probability of the user landing on Page B. Now if “hits” is the way to identify popularity of a web page, Page B ends up right on top.

This is true and a well established fact. I am sure all people aware of the field of IR would more or less agree with me on this. Incidentally today morning I met my faculty who had taught me the course on Web IR, and a very interesting discussion came up. The endorsement model on a social network like Twitter. Hmmm, so what’s the big deal, its again the same underlying concept, that’s what I suggested. However he suggested otherwise, he proposed in a model like Twitter the fact whether an endorsement is positive or negative has more relevance. Thinking more, I actually was surprised.

Consider a situation where I receive a tweet from my friend @abc – “What the heck? I can’t adjust with anybody in the world”. Now if I am re tweeting this, am I actually endorsing him? Probably not, the message has tight coupling with the user and his social image. Now giving away such an endorsement is not going to guarantee any value addition for user @abc. In fact, it would adversely affect the user with a recommendation. Isn’t that opposite to our conventional knowledge and assumption. Now that’s yet another open question

The very thought process that let me motivate to write this blog is the discussion I had today with Mandar. Thanks to him , he has always been kind enough to share such wonderful insights with me. Now I “knowingly” insert a hyper link to his page. This was not at all random Was it?

Mandar’s Blog
Mandar on Twitter

Go Fulfill ur DESIREs…!!!!! Cheers!!!!!

It doesnt matter in most of d cases, cos u jst finish d story by sending another sms sayin.. “Sorry, that wasn’t mean for ya”.. but wat if, it was sumthin abt tht person itself.. while composing d msg, u keep thinkin abt tht person abt whom u r riting, n finally whn u select d no.. “What if u select dat person’s no itself n click Send”.. !! Well that isnt gonna b a very good situation rt.. ?

So check well b4 u click “Send” as u don hav a Recall option thr..!!
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