Get More Juice on Google's SMS Channels

Google India has just introduced a new product called Google SMS Channels that lets you subscribe to news alerts, blog updates and other kinds of information like horoscopes, jokes, stocks or even cricket scores via SMS text messages. (Courtesy: Blogoscoped)

So, if you're based in India, and don't have the time to visit my blog on the net, or to read the posts on the email newsletter, then you can now subscribe to it via SMS, using Google's SMS channels in India and get some Interactive Marketing Blog's juice in your mobile handset.

CLICK HERE to subscribe.

More Info: Google SMS Channels, which seems to have lot in common with SMS Gupshup, is free both for content publishers as well as mobile phone users who subscribe to text updates via SMS.

Families or friends can create private SMS groups on Google SMS channels and stay in touch via SMS without paying any fees to their mobile carrier. (Courtesy: Digital Inspiration)

Singularity, Human Intelligence & Google

The concept of singularity dates back as long as the evolution of computers go if not more than that. But what excited me about the whole Singularity concept is Kevin Kelly. He is a genius and pioneer of Web (and I'm just being modest). In his recent post on his blog, he wrote this:

......a smarter than human artificial intelligence will bring about yet smarter intelligence, which in turn will rapidly solve related scientific problems (including how to make yet smarter intelligence), expanding intelligence until all technical problems are quickly solved, so that society's overall progress makes it impossible for us to imagine what lies beyond the Singularity's birth. Oh, and it is due to happen no later than 2045. I agree with parts of that. There appears to be nothing in the composition of the universe, or our minds, that would prevent us from making a machine as smart as us, and probably (but not as surely) smarter than us. My current bet is that this smarter-than-us intelligence will not be created by Apple, or IBM, or two unknown guys in a garage, but by Google;

Continuing with the same, I want to share few couple of points on Kevin's take on Artificial Intelligence (AI), Human Intelligence and Google of course.

1. The question posed on Kevin's "Thinkism" by Yihong Ding is something which we tend to overlook at times i.e. the evolution of human brain potential with advancement of technology. If we keep both AI and human brain in X-Y axis, then we just can't keep one as constant and other as variable since chances of advancement in evolution will definitely show duality. So haven't we turn out to be more smarter than we were before?

Hypothesis: “Singularity” is that machine intelligence which may be improved rapidly while human intelligence keeps at the same level. However, the reality might not simply be this way. When we improve machines by artificial intelligence, why can’t machines improve us on human intelligence as well? Because of the machines we invented, we can think better and think further beyond the limit of our single brains. We may have collective human brains to think just like machines collaborate their computational power.

2. My second point is ImindI:This new startup company more or less shows what lies in the future. I call it close & personal web. The Web will know everything about us like what we like, what we don't like etc. We can call it as "Our mind on the Web". Read this post, it will provide more insights what I'm talking about.

3. The third point is of course Google- the one point stop for most Web visionaries. It has defined web 1.0, defining web 2.0 and more necessary will define web 3.0, but thats not all. The last & final frontier for Google to embed itself into our lives is "How much is the limit". People will feel strangled for privacy but the question that will be asked in the future is the trade-off between privacy or convenience. I guess we already know the answer, so I don't want to make it obvious here. So Google, even according to Kevin will emerge sooner or later as the World Wide Computer on the internet. And it is very possible that this other intelligence beyond ours would emerge on or long before 2045.

Related articles

• Kelly to Kurzweil: You're a total Thinkist
• A Few Predictions for the Near Future
• What we talk about when we talk about singularity
• What ever happened to artificial intelligence?
• Google: Artificial Intelligence Activity

Google's Intelligent Cloud & Kevin Kelly's "Next 5,000 days of the Web"

From Google Blog Post:

"...The internet has had an enourmous impact on people's lives around the world in the ten years since Google's founding. It has changed politics, entertainment, culture, business, health care, the environment and just about every other topic you can think of. Which got us thinking, what's going to happen in the next ten years? How will this phenomenal technology evolve, how will we adapt, and (more importantly) how will it adapt us?....."

Some more juice on this: "....Thus, computer systems will have greater opportunity to learn from the collective behavior of billions of humans. They will get smarter, gleaning relationships between objects, nuances, intentions, meanings, and other deep conceptual information. Today's Google search uses an early form of this approach, but in the future many more systems will be able to benefit from it."

Now this is real damn interesting stuff - Future of Google or should I say Future of Internet. Saurabh has got some interesting stuff to share here on "Future of Search" too.

What really got me excited was not the word Future which is all around this blog post but the prediction of different set of minds towards one direction i.e. Future of Search linked with Google & Internet par se.

Check out the video from Kevin Kelly from TED Talks.



One suggestion would be to check the comments down below the video.

Though this is the end of the post but the question will still remain: Where are we going? So just to put it in simple words, the best way to predict the future is to invent it, so we will be doing our best to make good on our experts' words every day - Karen Wickre & Alan Eagle, Series Editors of Intelligent Cloud from GoogleBlog.

Yahoo Launches SpotM in India

From TechCrunch: "......Yahoo India announced that it has launched yet another social network for the 16-24 age bracket in an attempt to capture the growing market in India. And although scant details are available, it sounds interesting.

Target Market:

Dubbed SpotM, the new social network will bring college-aged and those close to going to college together in one space.

Marketing/Targetting Dilemma:

There’s no word on how Yahoo will be able to ensure everyone using the service is really as old as they claim, but Yahoo believes it can manage that problem.

Points of Differentiation:

SpotM attempts to differentiate itself by offering two features:-

1. The idea of a secret friend.

2. SMS integration with anonymous chat.

According to Yahoo, SpotM will allow users to make friends with other users and if they choose, make those friends private so other users don’t know about the relationship. SMS integration with anonymous chat will let users correspond via SMS without revealing their phone number.

Scepticism:

It’s nice to see Yahoo try something new, but whether or not its privacy initiatives will really work in its favor remains in doubt. As social networks become more popular, it’s transparency that parenting groups are looking for, not privacy. And once those issues arise, every social network buckles under the pressure. Will Yahoo be any different?

SpotM is currently in private beta.

My Comments:

I’m not too sure about this new initiative by Yahoo since already within a span of 2-3 years there have been plethora of Social Networking Sites (SNS) developed by Indians and Intl giants like Google etc. So for SpotM, it better be good, different, fast, high on usability and wide reaching otherwise another failed investment I suppose to nudge Indian expectations from Yahoo.

How Google Won Search War: A marketer's outlook

This Screencast says it all I believe. If it's still being not evidential then let me clear up few things then.

This is the screencast of Google way back in May, 1999 & the Screencast of Yahoo in May, 1999 which I took from Way Back Machine which archives everything in internet from past to present.

Now a quick check of the links above will show 110+ links for Yahoo way back in 1999 whereas Google had none. So food for thought is why did Google win over Yahoo in the search wars? Everyone must have their own reasons but surely I can figure out one. Google anticipated our actions in terms of needs, wants & desires in the most simplistic way. Isn't that how businesses should be run? We overkill it by adding complexity in our marketing messages by re-running those boring, slapstick ads over & over again till customers get bored and start ignoring.

So Friday's thought from my side as a Marketer is: What is the oppurtunity gain/loss between choosing complexity from simplicity for customers? Any thoughts from your side is most welcome.

IAMAI Digital Marketing Conference (Bangalore,2008): Key Insights on the Intersection of Man, Technology & Culture

This post talks about 3rd IAMAI Digital Marketing Conference held at Bangalore. I'll post about the broad implications later in the subsequent post of course but for now enjoy the ride through a list of tweets (Courtesy WatBlog). In between, you will find certain discussions marked green. These are the pointers which I feel makes this blog post's title apt: Key Insights on the Intersection of Man, Technology & Culture. And as usual if you feel like you've anything to say, please comment in the section below to have a discussion.



(I)“ANALOG VS DIGITAL: WHERE TO SPEND MARKETING BUDGETS NOW AND WHY”

Discussions in this section revolved around: Sellers of traditional media tout that media such as broadcast TV allows advertisers unrivaled impact and reach, attributes that become even more valuable as media fragments. Sellers of digital media counter that pinpoint targeting and ever-improving analytics make spending more in digital the right choice. Below is the crux of the discussions:

1. LIVE from #IAMAI: Goggle Ads click-through-rate (CTR) is 16% in India – Mahesh Murty, Managing Director, Pinstorm Technologies (Tweet)

2. LIVE from #IAMAI: Consumer is the new muse for our brand, that should be the approach - Chetan Marwah , Partner & Chief Executive Officer, ISHIR Digital (Tweet)

3. LIVE from #IAMAI: Move from cost per click (CPC) to cost per impact (CPI) to get better deals (Tweet)

4. LIVE from #IAMAI: Jet airways spend 50% of their digital budget in international markets whereas only 10% in India (Tweet)

5. LIVE from #IAMAI: Prediction -TV is going to be primarily digital & we are goin to see the marketer going to ask why was his ad not seen there - Mahesh Murty, Managing Director, Pinstorm Technologies (Tweet)

(II) NEW MEDIA TOOLS

Discussions in this section revolved around: The Internet was just the beginning; these days media planners are faced with a plethora of new digitally-derived media forms from podcasts to blogs, social networking to SMS, all of which need to be evaluated to see if they might meet clients needs. But how to go about it? Our panelists will help you figure that out. Below is the crux of the discussions:

6. LIVE from #IAMAI: In India, YouTube is the 6th most trafficked as per Alexa - Naren Nachiappan, MD, Jivox (Tweet)

7. LIVE from #IAMAI : Video impressions going to surpass search in Q1, 2009 in North America – ComScore (Tweet)

8. LIVE from #IAMAI : Bandwidth barrier in india is surpassed by users by downloading in office and background buffering – Naren Nachiappan, MD, Jivox (Tweet)

9. LIVE from #IAMAI: In 2005 blogs as a search category overtook magazines - Parminder Singh, Business Head - Technology & Media, Google (Tweet)

10. LIVE from #IAMAI : Customer doesn’t click on online ads as they dont want to move away from page. Try using gadgets to initiate conversation – Parminder Singh, Business Head - Technology & Media, Google (Tweet)

11. LIVE #IAMAI : Social Networks should be used to create brand evangelists and not primarily ads placement – Parminder Singh, Business Head - Technology & Media, Google. (Tweet)

12. LIVE from #IAMAI : In India, Leads from Mobile Search Ads is 3 times better & purer than desktop search leads – Parminder Singh, Business Head - Technology & Media, Google, (Tweet)

13. LIVE from #IAMAI: 71% of those who consume mobile internet ads say there perception of brand and recall has increased – Parminder Singh, Business Head - Technology & Media, Google, (Tweet)

14. LIVE from #IAMAI : For Google, mobile search queries in India is 10% of desktop queries (Tweet)

15. LIVE from #IAMAI : In US iPhone alone generates 2x the search queries of all other smart phones put together (Tweet)

16. LIVE from #IAMAI : Mobile UI is key to growth of it evolving as a medium – Parminder Singh, Business Head - Technology & Media, Google, (Tweet)

17. LIVE from #IAMAI : Rohini (Citation reqd.) - Intel Online India - Traditionally online treated as bleeding edge and therefore Marketers are wary (Tweet)

18. LIVE from #IAMAI : Rohini (Citation reqd.) - Intel Online India - Our Facebook game statistics: 16000 played, 500 per day talking about it online (Tweet)

(III)“HOW TO FIGHT WEB-WARINESS AND EMERGE AS A WINNER”

Discussions in this section revolved around: Convincing a company to spend more money in digital media is one challenge; to get it to use new media forms to break creative ground is an even bigger one. But there are those who have done it, and on this panel, we’ll hear from them-three gutsy clients who innovated not just in the media they’ve used, but in the work they’ve produced for them. Below is the crux of the discussions:

19. LIVE from #IAMAI : Big TV (Reliance DTH service) generates 50,000 leads online in two days - Tushar Vyas, Chief Marketing Officer, Sure Waves (Tweet)

20. LIVE from #IAMAI : Namrata Sehgal, Senior Manager, Trilogy - Most ads with high decibel on web have less than 1% click through rate (CTR)! We say "No wonder twitter has no ads" (Tweet)

21. LIVE from #IAMAI : Gaurav Gupta, Regional Manager Asia Pacific- Retail Operations, General Motors asks how many brick & mortar are here? Just couples of hands show up in audience! Web Wary are we? (Tweet)
22. LIVE from #IAMAI : General Motors’ 2.5% of all sales in India is through digital channel without any other channel involved for GM. Gaurav Gupta, Regional Manager Asia Pacific- Retail Operations, General Motors - (Tweet)

(IV) THE BLENDED SEARCH REVOLUTION

Discussions in this section revolved around: The first generation of search engines ranked pages based on the content of those pages alone -- the words on the page. The second generation increased relevancy by analyzing links. The third generation, Search 3.0, is upon us now in full force. Today’s search engines automatically blending in results from specialized or "vertical" search engines such as video search or local search. This session looks at the revolutionary change happening with blended search and how search marketers can ride the wave to success. Below is the crux of the discussions:

23. LIVE from #IAMAI : 31% images, 17% videos, 36% news - Clicking percentage on search results in a blended search - Milind Mody, CEO eBrandz (Tweet)

24. LIVE from #IAMAI : Search engines are valued high because they are content finders in context across mediums - Vivek Bhargava, Managing Director, Communicate2 (Tweet)

25. LIVE from #IAMAI : Search has not yet evolved - Narasimha Jayakumar, Business Head – Travel & Local, Google India (Tweet)

(V) TRAFFIC TO WEBSITE AND CONVERSIONS

Discussions in this section revolved around: In the beginning driving traffic was necessary and sufficient, now the dynamics of business has changed driving traffic is important but not sufficient, in the competitive environment with increasing cost per acquisition as marketers there is need for better understanding of website visitors and advertisers look for conversions. This session would look at the importance of digital marketing and maximum potential realization of digital marketing with relevant examples.

26. LIVE from #IAMAI - 'Use of good tracking & analytics software should be a core of ROI. Don’t just use freeware' - Anurag Gupta, Managing Director, DGM India Internet Marketing.

Tweet Courtesy: http://twitter.com/watblog

Google Chrome, Android, Cloud Computing & My trends

I kick started the year with lot of optimism and hope, especially for the netizens. That’s why I wrote this post on 01-01-2008. Excerpts of that post are down below:

"…On 31st December, 2007 GoogleBlog posted "This year of Google blogging"
which gives a lot of hints about where actually we are heading, not only in tech
space but also about general human psyche. The article contains a small piece on
the posts which captured maximum attention as well as linkbacks from other
bloggers in general. So here what's written in the article...The posts that
elicited the most reaction in terms of views and linkbacks include (courtesy
GoogleBlog):

1) The much-discussed "Gphone" news
2) Our thinking about the upcoming FCC spectrum auction.
3) What the OpenSocial APIs could mean
4) How a black screen might not save energy
5) Announcing the Knol test project
6) Building your own Google homepage

It's very simple to come up with trends for the future. Actually the past always have some clues for the future. So it becomes kind of easy to build upon it. So, looking at the maximum viewed posts, it kind of gave me the key towards the future. The ubiquitous question for every marketer ::What do customers/users want?:: My conclusions from these snippets are based on the point that giving much attention to such posts mean they want to know more about it. So when users want to know more, it becomes apparent for marketers to align their thinking in that direction. So my conclusion would be that "Users need more power, more control & all in all something which is more about THEM i.e. users" which can be in the form of Knol, OpenSocial API's etc.So lets hope 2008 brings optimum coherence between customers/users & marketers.
So, "User Federated Space (UFS)" era is now!!....”

So, come September 2008, it seems we are quite on the track. What interested me in writing this post was the way those developments are taking place. From the above 6 points of my January post, many things get clearer. Though for some, Google is evil & for some Google is God but what Google is can be explained by this small sentence: “they are a freak of a company; the best advertising business ever built is funding the largest collection of mad scientists ever assembled”. Now that's what one of the posts of AVC talks about. Interestingly it also talks about Google’s future trends and how it will shape our lives. Down below is the post:

“…...Google is building a collection of web apps, like gmail, gcal, and google docs, that businesses are increasingly relying on. My personal goal this year is to get our firm completely off of the office suite and into the google suite. As builders of web apps, Google understands that the infrastructure for the deployment and operation of web apps just isn't there yet.

And so they are doing something about it in three important places.

1) They are building a modern browser, Chrome (Point 3 of my trend post above i.e. OpenSocial API's) that resembles an operating system as much as a browser. If you haven't read the Chrome Comic Book, you should do that. It's not that Google wants to build a better version of Internet Explorer or Firefox. They want to build a better environment for running web apps.

2) They are building a mobile operating system, Android (Point 1 of my trend post above i.e. GPhone), which is also designed for running web apps in a mobile environment. I think in time, Google's Android will be to the iPhone what Windows was to the Mac. The iPhone laid out many of the killer mobile device innovations, but it’s a closed device, a closed carrier relationship, and even a closed application store. Android will take all of those good ideas and put them on every device, with every carrier, and in partnership with every app developer. You'd have thought that Apple would have learned the lesson that you can't control the entire ecosystem with the Mac, but they did not.

3) Google is all about the cloud. They have developed all of their apps in what goes for the cloud these days. They've build a great cloud computing platform in App Engine. And they will certainly support other cloud computing environments that emerge. Google's DNA (like Intel's DNA) is about supporting an entire ecosystem. The more web apps that are built, the better Google will do. So they will do anything and everything they can to support the development of a robust cloud computing environment for web apps. It is on this three legged stool (browser, mobile, cloud) that Google's future will be built. And sitting here today, it seems like they are well organized and have a great strategy for doing just that.

Now after 2 random posts (one from my earlier blog & other from AVC), two things becomes quite clear.

1. I was right about the Google’s future trends I covered in January.
2. Secondly, something is more important than me pin pointing the trends. I’m talking about Browser, Mobile & Cloud which is the table stakes for companies to win over potential customers. Now surely Google has identified it but let’s wait and watch who else joins the race so that GooG doesn’t feel too alone.

So what do you think? Where are we heading?

Why Marketing "Cuil" as "Google Killer" a bad idea?

Is the hype on the latest search kid on the block i.e. CUIL over? Though I may assume it should be but still it isn't (Me going by the trending topics of Summize- oops now Twitter Search on 29th July,08 also). So here are my own perspectives. You may not agree with me here but that's what I want as then we can have elaborated conversation in this blog or start-off by shooting a mail at sampad[at]gmail[dot]com.

Firstup, some facts: Ex-Googlers launched a new search engine called "Cuil" on 27th July, 2008 with an index of 120 billion web pages which makes them arguably the most comprehensive search engine on the web (Thinking about Google's index worth- They proclaim it to be more though- Read more on the launch on Techcrunch). Since TechCrunch has already covered the who's who and where about the launch I wont dare fiddle with it. What I want to point out is this: IS Marketing CUIL as GOOGLE KILLER a good idea? Ask me, then my answer will be NO WAY, NEVER. Here are some of the conversations happening around the Web:

- Will Cuil Kill Google? - Motley Fool.
- Is Cuil the next Google? - Management Today.
- Ex-Google workers launch Internet search rival Cuil - AFP.

Reasons for me going against the tide are listed below:

• Don't go against your dad when he's still giving your pocket money- Conversion: When search audience knows search more by Google (want to say Yahoo also, but...), no point showcasing yourself as the next Google Killer as you're raising expectations manifold. And you won't be surprised what happend next...They Crashed though not Burned!
• A great search engine provides two core competencies: relevancy and trust. I did not see any higher levels of relevance in these search engine results that I am not already getting from Google, Yahoo or Microsoft and based on the categories referred back, it will be difficult to earn my trust with these types of results. (Courtesy: Six Pixels of Separation).
• Surprise the Buck to Kill the Buck: You can't expect to do everything the same way as others have been doing and win the game. You have to do things differently. Try out innovative or a newer approach towards it. (Remember there's nothing called Free-Lunch in this world- If you're thinking for a free tip here :-)

Finally, I won't sound too pessimistic here since its early days for CUIL. But their initial PR programs of being the next Google Killer was totally inappropriate. So I don't expect CUIL to take over Google in the recent times for sure.

P.S. This blog is not being indexed properly by CUIL (pronounced "COOL") if I try searching it by my name in the first page w.r.t. Google with PageRank 4. So no brownie points on that note.

How can a brand stay young forever?

I have been observing Google for quite sometime now and so have you I guess. One of the interesting facts about Google has been it's changing logos. Today is World Earth Day and as usual Google changed it's logo or signage so as to say. It's a great PR activity I must say to promote the awareness amongst us. But is there any other strategy behind this? I feel there is!

One of the most important facets about a brand is to keep it young, if not forever. And I feel one of the easiest ways is to keep it fresh is by attaching the brand with something relevant to it's user base or it's customers. It's kinda difficult for most brands since the value may be lost down the line if it keeps on attaching itself with everything. But not so for Google. Google itself stands for fresh since search (which is it's core competency) is all about latest and best information that it can provide. So changing the signage overtime keeps it quite young and fresh among us. Anyway kudos to Google's Marketing team for this efforts which keeps it young forever (if I may say so!).

Related Posts:

• The Love for color "Red" in brand logos
• Happy B'Day Google: Is it 9 or 10 years old?
  

Social Media may save our lives

Our world is changing. Now that's very cliched, you may say. But if you look around a bit, then our way of information gathering to idea spreading has changed over time. Much due to the advent of internet. Internet is shaping our culture in way which we wanted to. Web 1.0 era is over as we have seen much discussion about it and the new world order of Web 2.0 is here. And with the introduction of Web 2.0, came the concept of Social Media. And this very revolution has changed a lot of things: For us and the business models of the world. You can frame it largely as we are in "SPECS Economy" i.e. Sharing, Peering, Engaging, Collaborating and Socializing culture.

In the world where we are using tools like Twitter, Facebook etc to connect people across the boundaries, so why can't we use these mass collaboration tools to help each other prevent some of the worst feared catastrophes which have more often than not paralyzed the entire human race. On this regard, Google has taken a new initiative to save the world via the internet. They (Google.Org) are funding a non-profit group called "InSTEDD". The idea is to alert citizens of the world against disease outbreaks & natural disasters and coordinate relief efforts in the event of disasters, such as Hurricane Katrina and Tsunami etc.

According to InSTEDD:

"We want everyone to benefit from tools & technologies to save our lives. We want those technologies to work anywhere, anytime, and under the harshest conditions. We can collaborate with technology developers, researchers and experts to develop better methods to improve early disease protection & disaster response."

But there is higher concern than just the idea of mass collaboration to warn people of such catastrophe. The concern is about how few bad apples can mess-up the whole bunch of good apples. So till the technologies can come up with solutions to such problems, the system will be looked upon with some amount of skepticism. So till then, Trust is the only thing among us which will move this system for the betterment of human race.

How to increase traffic for your blog

Once in a while, people ask me this question i.e. How to build traffic to my blog? The other day a friend of mine popped this question to me. I was far from surprised since I'm not a SEO guru or a internet traffic wizard. But yeah, I have been pulling some decent (trying to be humble) amount of traffic to my blog. So here are my 50 small tidbits for those who are interested or in a mood to have some fun:

1. Write which people will be interested in.
2. Don't write about your ex-girlfriend or how your mom keeps pestering you.
3. Make love to Search Engines. Remember that Google is your new best friend.
4. Learn to be an expert in your field; At least try to be..
5. Be the first to break or announce news.
6. Long post sucks; believe in KISS (Keep it short & simple) philosophy.
7. Write timeless posts which can be read after one year even.
8. Bait inbound links by writing definite posts.
9. Being controversial helps.
10. Write about your sexy hot girlfriend. Give pictures if needed :-)
11. Include bright and shiny widgets to grab attention.
12. Encourage comments by conversational posts i.e keep it open ended.
13. Give a free brownie to your commenter's.
14. Tag your posts in Del.icio.us, Digg, StumbleUpon, Reddit, Furl etc.
15. Have some influential bloggers talk about you. Period
16. Use images in your posts. Helps in assuming the idea of your article.
17. Work on the visual appeal. Yours is fine but more on the blog.
18. Include Categories, Most popular posts & Recent Posts.
19. Write about topics which are easy linkbaits for other bloggers like about gadgets, Google, Web 2.0 etc.
20. Have some influential friends who can help you spread your blog. Being Social is most important.
21. Use Twitter to perfection. Try to have followers/following ratio greater than 1.
22. Post on weekdays since there are more readers.
23. Post on weekends since there are less blog posts.
24. Use RSS and "Subscribe to Email" tab in your blog.
25. Keep a check on Technorati on top searches. Set Ping automatically or take help from someone smarter.
26. Don't write about something which you will hate to read.
27. Learn SEO or buy "SEO for Dummies" for long term advantage.
28. Write in English or better write in Japanese.
29. Use third party way of driving traffic by posting in SlideShare.
30. Email friends about your new posts. Remember friends not foes.
31. Comments on other bloggers site, even though their posts suck sometimes.
32. Think I'm your pal..you know what to do!
33. Get back to your comments and give feedback.
34. Remember your blog's url is your new name. So use it wherever possible. Try using it in your resume.
35. Sometimes not listening to other bloggers giving suggestion helps.
36. Create your own USP about your blog like Marketing, Social Media, Web 2.0, Technology blah blah.
37. Use Facebook to promote if you like Zuckerberg or use any SNS to let people know about your blog.
38. Increase your social circle..If not refer back to No 20.
39. Take ideas or get inspired by other people's writing.
40. Stop being boring.
41. Surprise your readers. Write about Osama Bin Laden.
42. Create a niche for your blog through posts. Remember there is always someone interested.
43. Add some videos of Paris Hilton or some podcasts with J. Lo.
44. Create a buzz by publishing something newsworthy like Einstein's Theory of Relativity was wrong or something like that. But it should be true and not a rumor.
45. Don't over promote yourself at the expense of your reader's attention.
46. Love blogging and have passion for it.
47. Look for new topics to write on from other people's twitter conversations.
48. Don't be vague in your posts.
49. Make a lot of online friends in different SNS & Bookmarking sites. Again refer to No 20.
50. Last but not least, be patient.

So here are my 50 advices to get traffic to your blog. So feel free to give your ideas (satirical, humor or relevant).

Google Trends, Revisited..Goof Up

Wallah!

This is the first result you get in Google for "Google Future Trends". Now this is amazing. Infact GigaOM, SearchEngineGuide and even Google itself features after my post.

I am far more sure that someone else must have done a better job than me in predicting Google Trends. The point here is that the GoogleBot (Google's page indexing mechanism) has to go a long way than this.

Blekko: David versus Goliath in SearchLand

Got this piece of information from TechCrunch. Rick Skrenta (a very media savvy guy) who is known more for first computer virus and stuff like that is coming with a bang by starting up something which intends to take on Google...Yeah, on Search.

This is what he said in this blog post:

...But I get asked - why do search?

Simple - the idea that the current state-of-the-art in search is what we'll all be using, essentially unchanged, in 5 or 10 years, is absurd to me.

The web is big. Really, really big. It's literally billions and billions of pages. It's Carl Sagan big. And it's doubling in size every year or two.

So the idea that what you can see in positions 1-3 above the fold on Google are the sum of what the web has to say about every possible query is crazy...

The guys are still working like a usual start ups i.e. no big shot flashy offices or something like that. Even their site is fancying the above picture as of now. But soon the site will be active to compete against big shots like Google, Yahoo or MSFT's Live.

Skrenta was the same guy who had written earlier about "PageRank (Google's bread & butter) wrecked the Web, and Google is going down with it".

So till 2009 when the very site will start functioning, we will be watching the space definitely along with other start-ups like Mahalo, Powerset etc. But going by his repute, it will be interesting to watch the "Search Space". So the million (oops Billion) dollar question is that "Will Google be challenged/outbeaten/unsettled by these new developing start-ups or not"?

Google hinting future trends

On 31st December,2007 GoogleBlog posted "This year of Google blogging" which gives a lot of hints about where actually we are heading, not only in tech space but also about general human psyche. The article contains a small piece on the posts which captured maximum attention as well as linkbacks from other bloggers in general. So here what's written in the article...

The posts that elicited the most reaction in terms of views and linkbacks include (courtesy GoogleBlog):

• The much-discussed "Gphone" news
• Our thinking about the upcoming FCC spectrum auction
• What the OpenSocial APIs could mean
• How a black screen might not save energy
• Announcing the Knol test project
• Building your own Google homepage

It's very simple to come up with trends for the future. Actually the past always have some clues for the future. So it becomes kind of easy to build upon it. So, looking at the maximum viewed posts, it kind of gave me the key towards the future. The ubiquitous question for every marketer ::What do customers/users want?::

My conclusions from these snippets are based on the point that giving much attention to such posts mean they want to know more about it. So when users want to know more, it becomes apparent for marketers to align their thinking in that direction. So my conclusion would be that "Users need more power, more control & all in all something which is more about THEM i.e. users" which can be in the form of Knol, OpenSocial API's etc.

So lets hope 2008 brings optimum coherence between customers/users & marketers. So, "User Federated Space (UFS)" era is now!!

Google's "Don't be Evil" mantra - Holy shit

Last night Google announced that they are starting a new project named Knol. Hmm interesting I must say. Actually, it pertains to creating wiki like pages. Now people will be able to submit comments, questions, edits, additional content, and so on and so forth. One of two things comes to my mind when I read about this new development. Firstly, will Wikipedia and Wikia become yesterday and secondly if it becomes due to certain reasons which I will elaborate later, then are we going to get crappy results (spoke about it in earlier post) which we most often get when we try finding something in Google.

Considering that, Wikipedia is turning out to be one of Google's biggest rivals in terms of search results. So there is all the more possibilities that Google is trying hard to kill both Wikipedia and Wikia (Jimmy Wales social search engine).

So the interesting detail among all these is the timing of this announcement which comes just days before Wikia's beta launch. So what's the future of Wikipedia and Wikia? It all rests in our hands. Though Google is in a win-win situation because of the following reasons:

• Still we use Google as primary search engine and with its allied services, we will be driven towards making those knols which can anyway outrun Wikipedia in terms of the fresh content which we found in Wiki.
• Remember Google's indexing mechanism which can now index Knols to a larger extent (since it's Google's own system)and keep the major traffic away from Wiki.
• The moolah factor which is on the side of Google will definitely help it to close the deal better than wikipedia which is trying to raise some money.
• The corporations just love Google because of its far-flung reach through its ads program and other different tie-ups. So when the corporations love Google and in a way hate Wikipedia on its openness program, so biting the larger chunk of the cake won't be that difficult for Google, I suppose.
• Last but not least, the power of the masses is in favor of Google as of now due to its reach.
  

So my take on this will be conservative, as in, it will take some time for people to get used to Knols and creating, editing & publishing fresh content. But my gut feeling says that the war is far from getting over between Google & Wikipedia. And at the end of it all, we the users will be most benefited as I suppose some changes are due in Wiki's front and I personally want to see what Google comes up with next.