The New New Thing

After about 11 months of putting time and energy behind the New New Thing, I have decided to shut it down. I was thinking about it till last week and now I am clear on what I want from my online presence.

Before what I would be, let me talk about what I would not be.

1. I would not be a blog/website that pimps brands, businesses or people.
2. I would not publish “exclusive” or “you read it here first”.
3. I would not indulge in link baiting (except when I am specifically working on a project).

I rather want to

1. create and contribute to original knowledge.
2. meet, talk to, work with bright minds. There is one and only one way to get them. Be one.
3. come up with ideas. More importantly execute them and see them to fruition.

What has changed?
Over the last one year, I read about the Internet, tried to understand the basics, talked to tons of people, made few very good friends, obviously blogged about all this and everything else, under the guise of New New Thing. I has been an awesome journey and a very rich learning experience.

Also, I have realized that I am not one of those superhumans who can juggle work, blog, life all at the same time and excel at it. Focus on one thing for me, means loss of focus on others. I have limited time and a peanut sized brain and thus there is only so much I can do. I will have to let go of few things and move on. Blogging on New New Thing is one such dispensable thing.

I now shall focus on doing. Rather than brainstorming about it. I would continue to share thoughts and lessons as and when I create things.May be I will do a new blog. Or a wiki. Or a mailing list. Lets see. One things for sure. The focus would shift from being a blogger to a doer. Please stay tuned for updates and announcements. Although I havent said anything about the nature of things I will indulge in, you still might want to contact me (here).

And like Steve Jobs once said,

After about a year since I started this blog, I am having second thoughts about it. I think I need to re-consider my blogging endeavors. I have reasons, both grounded in facts and found in emotions.

Blogging is fun. It makes me think. It allows me to meet new and interesting people. It opens my eyes to a new world all together. It has been exciting to say the least. Its just that I have so much time to spend and so much to achieve. I need to do a serious cost vs benefit analysis on the same. And will do this over the weekend.

And that’s about it for this friday. Will update on Monday.

Hope you are not suffering from paraskavedekatriaphobia when you are reading this blog post. Wikipedia tells me that paraskavedekatriaphobia is “fear of Friday the 13th”. The article tells me more about the supposedly superstitious date. The most interesting of the explanations is that number 13 represents irregularity. And it also tells me that in 2009, Friday the 13th would “occur” thrice. Feb, March and Nov.

And here is a list of interesting things I read, saw and did over the week.

Reading List

• Outliers – Malcolm Gladwell. I did a small blog post here.
• The Science behind Pepsi’s new logo on FastCompany. I dont know if this is for real but this sure is interesting and if Pepsi is actually planning to use this, they have earned my respect. Download this design brief for complete details. Do read. I would strongly recommend this.
• Why do People Buy Virtual Goods on WSJ. You might also want to subscribe to this team blog by Lightspeed Venture Partners.

Watching List

• Zappos.com CEO Tony Hsieh talks to Loic about Zappos and how to create a company that clocks a billion dollars in sales annually. All of it online.
• Vande Mataram, from the movie Jagriti.

Did

• MuMeLo.com: I co-founded mumelo.com with 7 other friends from MDI Gurgaon. Unlike the name, the idea and plans are very serious. I shall share more details in due course. Here and there.

Another Friday, another update. Without much ado,

Things I did

• Focus. My constant effort to stay on track and do only those things that might help me. As a part of the same, I removed Industrial Design feeds, Computer Security feeds from my long reading list. Thing with these things is that they are different, they are purple cows, they are interesting, they are conversation starters and that’s about it. They are more noise than signal. By a long margin. I think I will let them pass. Even if I lose an opportunity to know more about a building that twists as it rises (The Turning Torso Tower), I think I will not be affected. It will be a lost opportunity at max. And that is ok.

Reading List. Off all the things that I read over the week, I liked the following and would recommend

• How was Twitter Born. here.
• A youtube vid featuring Seth Godin @ TED 2009 and talking about his “tribes” and why he doesnt use twitter.
• Finished reading Snowball (yet another Warren Buffet biography) and apart from all things loved Warren Buffet’s thoughts on Ovarian Lottery. I am onto Investment Biker (Jim Rogers). And have ordered The Outliers (Malcolm Gladwell). Received the copy of Outliers and have finished half of it. Very readable book. Will do a book review soon. Reading plate is full for next few days.

Noteworthy. Off all the things that have happened around the world, the most noteworthy ones include

• Google Bus. ET reports that Google is piloting a project in AP where they are sending out a bus (READ “a Internet cafe”) to heartlands of AP and expose the audience to information, communication, entertainment and education. Apart from getting insights into the way people interact with technology and Internet, this could very well be a sustainable revenue stream for companies. A far better idea than actually setting up rural Internet kiosks (SREI is planning to setup these cafes). More details on the bus here.

And as Bugs Bunny would have said, That’s all folks.

P.S.: Focus still “leaves a lot to be desired for” ;P.

I missed it again. Third time (1 and 2). And as always, I can blame my web host.

30th January is Martyrs’ Day. This day in 1948, Nathuram Godse murdered Mahatama Gandhi. Gandhi was probably one of the biggest reasons why British gave up control of India. The lose of Gandhi is probably the biggest loss for India (and world). We, the modern India, have strayed away very far from his lessons. The lessons of communal harmony, peace, non-violence and equality for all.

Coming on to the highlights,

• Hosting: I overshot my monthly bandwidth limit yet again. This has now become a regular event. I will have to look for a solution. Akshay from SocialSync has kindly donated me part of his server (tons of bandwidth and oodles of space) and I am currently testing it with n00b.in. Hopefully I will get the hang of it. If I do, this blog can move there.
• You’ve got OFFFLINE Gmail. If you use Firefox and other Google Gears compatible browsers, you can now use Gmail in the offline mode. This means that you can view your mailbox when you are offline, see attachments, compose emails. All this while you are not connected to the Internet. More details on this venturebeat story.
• Twitter: I now have 1000 followers on twitter. Not a big deal when I compare myself with the “a-listers”, “influences”, “evangelists” etc. I think I will start asking for money to promoting content ;P

That’s about it I guess. I happened to meet Sampad over the weekend and racked brains. We have few ideas and lets see how many of them take shape. Keep watching this space for more.

Quite an interesting week. Barack Hussein Obama II is now the US President. Links to his speech – YouTube Vid and Full Transcript. Met Zishaan (of Chaupaati.in) and had an awesome conversation about the classifieds business and mobile phone usage by “aam aadmi” in India. Spoke to Datta (of DesiStartupBuzz) and had yet another insightful discussion about the start-up ecosystem in India and problems plaguing the same. Announced the second meet of my value investing club. Reading Snowball all over again. Work at work is getting more exciting with each passing day. Couldn’t do new focus I promised last week. Probably the long weekend might help complete all the pending tasks.

Entrepreneurship

• Power of Ideas. ET with IAN announced their Power of Ideas contest. Like any other business plan competition, participants are expected to send in business summary and over a course of next few months, selected ones would be exposed to mentors and “senior mentors” and eventually the winners would get money to start their businesses. They missed one point though. An idea with tons of money and mentor-ship is miles away from being a sustainable business. But again, let me know pass a judgement on it before it starts. Lets see how this one goes.

Twitter

• Twitter Addiction. Guess am over with my twitter addiction. Now I can go on for days without missing twitter. Hope it stays like that.
• Sampad’s Signs of Twitter becoming mainstream in India is an interesting little experiment. What all would you see if twitter goes mainstream? Please use #twitindistream if you want to add onto it. My current favourite is “When you hear girls talking abt Twitter in #CCD and how they keep a check on their BF’s with it“. Do add yours.

And that’s about it.

Its a long weekend ahead (26th Jan – India’s Republic Day and probably a time to revisit our pledges to the country and the constitution). I shall use the long weekend to travel and to introspect on a lot of things. From life to country to career to ideas to other hazaar things occupying my mind. I plan to leave home on Friday night and return on Monday night. Any suggestions on where to go?

And did I mention that Creativeland is looking to hire people interested in Social Media and New Media? You could be a blogger, writer, photographer, comic artist, traveler, marketer, coder, designer, all of the above, none of the above. Please send in your nominations (;P) here. Do not, I repeat, DO NOT send in a boring CV.

The week of the Dream Job. Tourism Queensland’s The Dream Job is creating so many ripples on the Internet that its not even funny. An awesome way to promote awareness about the Island and eventually promote tourism. I can already see this becoming an online marketing case study. Read my blogpost about the job here. And BTW the contest website has already crashed once ;P

Coming onto past week’s highlights,

Cricket

• Sachin Tendulkar got his first duck in domestic cricket yesterday in the finals of Ranji Super League finals against UP. In a 20 year old career, its amazing how can someone not get out on a duck even once.

Internet

• BlogcampMumbai is on 17th Jan 2009. Amazing lineup of attendees coupled with passionate organizers should make blogcamp fun. I am going to talk. As always, am too lazy to work on a topic but I am looking forward to the event.
• Rural Internet in India. According to this IAMAI report, there are 3.3 million active Internet users in India. Compare this with 81 million active Internet users in India. Along with the survey, IMRB and IAMAI are trying to make a case for regional language content. I would disagree. For me, regional language content dont make a business sense. We cant compare ourselves to China, Japan and Korea in terms of local language content because in those markets, systems were developed in their local languages. In India, systems were developed in English. Anyways Pluggd.in has a detailed coverage. I dont really agree to a lot of it though.
• Startup Evenings. After Startup Sundays, Mobile Mondays, Open Coffee Clubs, Firecamps and zillion other uncofrence formats around entrepreneurship and starting up “ecosytems” and “platforms”, we have yet another one in India. Startup Evenings. Sameer and Nandini from Morpheus Venture are starting this one. Here are more details. The first one happens in Mumbai on 20th Jan 09. What I like about this one is their focus on serious business and the fact that event is by invitation only. They also plan to limit attendance to 15 people per event only. Too bad its not open for people who are waiting on the sidelines (like me), who are equally keen in contributing and participating.

Twitter

• On the following tab on twitter, the list of users is populated in the order these users joined Twitter. And that explains the mystery why most of the people have ev, gigaom etc. in that list. Thanks to Matt Dickman. Original post here.

I think thats about it for the week. By the coming week, I am planning to do yet another Focus. In this one, I want to include my interest in value investing (my investing blog, FB group), cut even more flab from the blog and add more to marketing, advertising and online marketing.

Nishu interviewd me today for http://beingablogger.com. You can read the full interview here.

Here is my favorite question. And its answer.

Q: Do you benefit from blogs financially?
A: No, I dont. I have had offers but so far I have been declining them. Maybe someone here wants to make me an offer that I can’t refuse?

Any offers anyone?

Mr. Raju (ref: Satyam) takes the limelight this week. He stepped down from Satyam and accepted to fraud in this letter board of Satyam. Since then, the stock has tanked by more than 90%. Lawsuits have been filed against Satyam and promoters. Everyone, especially the clients and employees are scared and the future of the fourth largest IT company from India looks doomed. I did a blog post on the Satyam saga here.

Apart from Satyam, other things that kept me interested this past week,

Advertising

• Whopper Sacrifice. After Whopper Freakout and Whopper Virgins, its time for Whopper Sacrifice. Idea is again simple. Drop ten “friends” from Facebook and get a Whopper. Another intresting one from CP&B. You love your friends but you love Whopper even more. When I last logged in, more than 51, 000 friends had been sacrificed.

CAT

• The CAT 2008 results are finally out. You can check your scores here. If it matters, I got a 98.8 %ile (managed some 97 %ile when I took it last).

Facebook

• Matt released his quarterly Face of Facebook Report for Q4. Interesting things to note for Indian Social Media Marketers are 1. India has over 1 million people on Facebook now and 2. The number is rising fast. Obvious, but now we have data to substantiate the claims.

Twitter

• Claim the usename you always wanted. Got this tip from @roshnimo on twitter. Few simple steps. Email username@twitter.com with your desired username and twitter will review if the requested name can be released and allocated to you. Only catch is that the username you are trying to claim should be inactive for more than 9 months. I submitted my request to get @saurabh. More details here.
• UPDATE. I got my username changed. I am now @Saurabh. Please update links and bookmarks.

In the end, BlogcampMumbai is finally happening (Website, Twitter). Thanks to Sampad, Hardik and Moksh. Its Next Sunday (17th Jan 09). If things go well, I will talk about digital marketing landscape in India and will take inputs from participants on digial marketing. Do attend. And if you cant, please spread word.

This is the first friday update of the year. And I will make sure that this gets posted on the first friday. I have missed the last two updates on some pretext or the other. This year, since blogging and personal branding is one of the focus areas, I will make sure that these regular posts get their share of attention.

Indian Politics

• Omar Abdullah is the new J&K CM (via ET). National Confrence is back in power in J&K. About 60% excercised their right to vote in an election that was being watched by everyone, especially after the recent Mumbai attacks. Scary thing however is erosion of Congress share in both votes and seats. By the look of things, we are heading for a hung assembly in 2009 when we go for general elections.

Personal

• The New Google Reader. I use Google Reader to read my share of news releases, blogs, media etc. As on last count, I track more than 350 sources. Obvisouly it was getting very difficult to manage the feeds. This week, I reorganized and retagged my reading lists. More than just increasing categories, I put things in perspective and re-aligned them according to my interest areas. If someone is keen on the OPML file, do let me know.
• Sunday meetings. Nalin and me have been thinking about this for quite some time now. We propose that we will meet up with people regularly and just talk about anything under the sun. From politics to governance to sports to policy to movies to world affairs, we would just talk and try to get more opinions. We dont know how would the group proceed and what shape would it take, we just want to meet people and experiment. Someone wants to help us get more clarity on this .. ?

This year looks promisnig. I plan to do a lot of exciting things this year (here is a small list of things that I want to do in 2009). Lets see how it turns out. Did you make any resolutions this year .. ?