Should Social Networking Sites consolidate?

So many social networking sites (SNS) have come up in last 5 years and yet many of them are highly successful. In fact, it was the fastest growing category of websites in 2008. Entry barriers are pretty low but gaining critical mass through network effects and monetising them is extremely hard.

Users have been complaining about the large number of social networking sites. Every new SNS was remarked by reviewers/critics as yet another or me-too. Friends who have joined those networks keep sending new invites to join. It is annoying as there are too many sites to manage in terms of accounts, privacy, friends, messages, profile, contents, status message etc. This leads to lot of duplication of effort and more importantly inconsistency of information.

Can’t they all merge together/consolidate on a common networking platform and build special applications for each type of network niche?
1. Monopoly – Internet, World Wide Web is so successful because of its free nature, no body owns it and yet everybody uses it. Merging will create a sort of monopoly and one who controls the core platform will exercise power over others. Monopoly creates imbalance, kills innovation and is good for the business but bad for users and society.

2. Growth – Being in the early growth stage of Product Life Cycle, consolidation is unnecessary. It is done usually in the maturity and declining stages.

3. Theme – Most SNS allows user to create a profile, send messages, upload pictures and videos, write status message and so on. But the same information is filled according to a context. In facebook one tries to be cool and casual while in linkedin one needs to be professional.

4. Features – The main reason why communities or sub-networks in main networks fail is because the communities don’t have the necessary tools for sharing and collaboration. Specialised sites can create them. E.g. flickr has tools for photographers; dhingana has tools for music lovers.

5. Network – In our social life we have different network i.e. family, friends, professional and special interest. They are vastly different and we don’t get all of them together not even during marriage. We like our family, relatives and close friends to attend our marriage but we keep a separate reception for our friends and colleagues. I wouldn’t have my boss in my facebook network to let him observe what I am doing in my personal life. Or I wouldn’t want my family/relatives to know with whom I am dating ;-) So I will use geni for family/relatives only, facebook for classmates/friends, linkedin for colleagues, picasa among my photography network.

6. Just a click away – Beauty of web is any webpage is just a link away. It is normal for everybody to have a blog, orkut, facebook, twitter, linkedin and flickr accounts. Integrating them is as simple as just hosting their links.

7. Advertisements – SNS has rich information about the user’s profile which can be used by advertisers for targeting. Also there is lot of activity that takes place and time that user spends on it giving enough opportunities for advertisements. It will be better if there are specific niches where advertisements can be even more effective. I will advertise on flickr if I launch a new camera, dhingana on releasing a movie/album, apple forum if I write a new application for apple’s app store, linkedin if I want to hire somebody than on general ones like orkut/facebook.

8. Simplicity – facebook being a giant offers every thing that twitter offers. Still people use twitter because of its simplicity. Twitter does just one thing but does it well.

So, clearly consolidation is not a very good idea but opening up the network through APIs is. Instead of somebody coming up with a new sns to just add a new feature he can use the existing network itself. More than facebook, I like the way linkedin has gone about this by partnering with the best in business like amazon, slideshare, simplyhired, wordpress and many others.

Google – A human side of it

Google has been a God send to earth in this new millennium. It is a brand that has created tremendous value to all its stake holders. At least, I as a user have benefited enormously from it without having to pay a single Rupee for its services. I will not discuss about the obvious value that it has created to the mankind but a more human side of it. That is the mistakes that it did with some of its products. I am writing about Google and its mistakes because they make very few of them and its impacts are huge.

Search - This site may harm your computer
It had flagged all the websites that it has indexed as malicious and wouldn’t let anyone open them. They had to come out in public to apologize. Who better to do it than its VP Marissa Mayer. Anybody will pardon if someone that beautiful comes out and says sorry, wouldn’t they? ;-)

Adsense – Exchange rate problem that assumed 1 dollar as 1 Re
Google had sent its content network partners cheques that just assumed a 1:1 exchange rate with dollar. If somebody has earned $500 in a month through adsense for his blog/website, he will get a cheque of 500 Rs instead of 25,000 Rs!

Apps email – Your account is locked for 24 hours
Rehan Yar Khan, CEO of flora2000.com (where I interned) had this frustrating experience. He had been locked for 24 hours for supposedly performing an illegal activity.

Orkut – The 3 photos that isn’t there
When I open my orkut account, I get a screen like this.

People who visit my profile would see that I have 3 photos but would be disappointed when they open to see that there aren’t any. Would they really? ;-) It is not really a serious bug but it is serious enough to a perfectionist.

Chrome – Is it the fastest web browser? Is it out of beta now?
It is the fastest browser in the market by a long margin, but not to me. For last 2 days, I had to open my gmail in html mode to negotiate slow internet connection. To make matters worse hostelites around me were browsing normally. At one point yesterday my friend and I exchanged laptops because he wanted to watch a movie while I wanted to browse internet. He casually opened firefox to check out how bad the internet speed was. To my delight/horror it was working fine. Verified with Chrome for the speed, it was bad. I couldn’t find the reason but it is true with the version (1.0.154.46) that has come out of its beta. As we do with any software problem, I uninstalled and reinstalled but the situation has not improved.

Reader – The reader that unread my posts
I have subscribed to around 60 blogs on my RSS reader. I subscribe to only those blogs that post less than 5 posts in a day, for the rest it is better to read them from browser directly. I get around 20 new posts everyday and finish reading them the same day. Reading all the posts take an hour generally. I get intimidated when I see too many unread posts. A few days back when I opened the reader I found 11 unread posts for Amit Aggarwal’s sub-blog India Inc. But 10 of them were the ones I had already read. This has happened with Zoho blog and Rajesh Jain’s blog also.

These mistakes are not complete or are the most serious. But what is important is the way they handle them. By accepting them, taking responsibility, apologizing, correcting and making sure that such mistakes doesn’t happen in future.

Free Open Source Software - Materials

The reason I am studying MBA is not to get out of the world of software into something mundane like selling soaps, but to understand the software from business perspective or a more holistic one. Not to say that I want to become a programmer again. But to be a businessman who has a much bigger say in what software needs to be developed and how it has to be monetised. Technology I now realise is there not to show off the scientific greatness but to meet business and human needs.

By thinking from a Businessman's shoes, I wondered whether it makes any economic sense to give “software for free” and more importantly the source code and hence freedom. I couldn't think of the answer myself. So, I searched the web for "economics of open source software" and explored further by reading fully the following materials. This really was an eye-opener, I feel I have gained a lot more knowledge now than before.

Books

“Wikinomics : How Mass Collaboration Changes Everything” - http://www.wikinomics.com/book/

“Free Software, Free Society: Selected Essays of Richard M. Stallman” - http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/fsfs/rms-essays.pdf

“After the Software Wars” by Keith Curtis (Former employee of Microsoft) - http://www.lulu.com/content/4964815

Papers

“The Cathedral and the Bazaar" by Eric Steven Raymond - http://catb.org/~esr/writings/cathedral-bazaar/

“Some simple economics of open source” by Josh Lerner and Jean Tirole - http://www.nber.org/papers/w7600.pdf

“The economic motivation of Open Source Software: Stakeholder perspectives” - http://www.riehle.org/computer-science/research/2007/computer-2007-article.html

"An Analysis of Open Source Business Models" by Sandeep Krishnamurthy - http://www.linpro.no/no/content/download/646/4790/version/1/file/Analysis%20of%20Open%20Source%20Business%20Models.pdf

Basically, free software is about giving the users the freedom to use, read/understand, modify and distribute the software. It doesn't specify that the software should be given for free (at 0 price). "Free as in free speech, not as in free beer" - Richard M Stallman. Money is made through sale of things auxilary to the product/software like service, hardware, training, customization, donations etc. It is a sustainable model and benefits the developers, businesses, users and most importantly society as a whole.

Wikipedia, Firefox, GNU/Linux, Apache etc are few of the most successful open source products. We generally think that only those companies that sell software (for a price) make money e.g. Microsoft and Apple but there are a whole lot of equally big companies making money by distributing software for free e.g. IBM, HP, DELL and SUN.

The model can be replicated to all industries not just software. But it works best in software because there is no cost in copying software once produced and writing software is a work of art and programmers enjoy doing it. Internet is the key enabler of collaboration.

After reading all these literatures, I am so convinced of the open source model that I now wonder whether there is any sense in proprietary model. Whether Microsoft will survive for long if it doesn't open up? My answer is that Microsoft wouldn't survive, we have seen a dip in the market shares in its own bastion i.e. Operating Systems, Web Browser and Office productivity space. I will now head out to explore its version of the whole story.

Chennai Test - India vs England 2008

At the end of third day's play with England leading by 247 runs having lost only 3 wickets in 2nd innings, I was looking forward to the 2nd test at Mohali for India to win the match and save the series. But Indian Coach Gary Kirsten believed India can chase any target. And now India did actually pull off an incredible win chasing a record 387 runs to win in the 4th innings.

Test cricket is still relevant even in India

In the first day England were scoring at 2.5 runs per over and lost only one wicket till tea. It was so sleep inducing and everybody questioned the relevance of Test cricket in India. But at the end of 4th day many people would have spent a sleepless night. Rajesh Jain has written in his blog wrote "A T20 or a one-day international doesn’t lend itself to analysis on the possibilities the way a Test Match does". A Test cricket lover beautifully summed up in a mail to cricinfo saying, "Test Cricket has survived 2 World wars, One day cricket and now T20 cricket over last 133 years and will continue to do so".

History didn't repeat but was created

When India started its run chase, the statisticians would have said India doesn't have any chance of winning the match. As the highest successful 4th innings chase in India was 276-5 by West Indies and in Chennai it was 155-8. (Chase of 347 is not considered successful as it was in a Tied Test) Thankfully Sehwag and Co. doesn't believe in history or even know it. He creates history for others to know.

It is all in the mind

To chase runs of that proportion batting last on a wearing pitch, one needs to believe that it is possible and then work on it. Win it in the mind first, then on the field. Captains of earlier generation like Kumble or Dravid would have said "Let’s try and keep wickets in hand, ensure safety and then look for victory if possible". The first test between the same 2 teams in the previous series at Nagpur in 2006 followed the same pattern. The same negativity was evident in Oval and Bangalore too and we drew the match that should have been won. This generation of captains like Dhoni and Sehwag (Vice-Captian) realise that in the process of safety first approach, the batsmen can get bogged down allowing bowlers to attack and create more chances of getting out. That was the reason for some of the 4th innings collapses in Mumbai, Bangalore, Sydney, Durban and so on.

What this victory means to India and run chase means to Cricket

Laxman's sublime 281 at Calcutta in 2001 to help India win after following on has made the concept of enforcing follow-on outdated. Very few captains in world cricket have enforced follow-on even after having a lead of 300 since that time. It also helped India believe that they can come back from any situation. India was all but dead and buried, trailing 0-1 in a 3 match series and trailing by 274 in the first innings then and went on to win the match and series 2-1. With this 4th highest run chase in history that too losing only 4 wickets, captains will always be jittery to set a target of less than 400 runs. And this victory reinforces the Indian belief of winning from any situation.

Sehwag - Man of the Match

I think it was a very sensible decision to give man of the match to Sehwag, though there were 4 centuries from others in the match. He didn't do anything with the ball or in the 1st innings. Statistics measure only the centuries and the number of runs scored, but never the impact it has had on the game. England the team that dominated the Test scored 2 boundaries between lunch and tea on 4th day, Sehwag scored 5 of them in his 15 balls. He used the hardness of new ball well and changed the course of the game in a very short span of time i.e. 68 balls in a test match of 2416 balls.

Sachin, does he have anything left to achieve?

It was a perfect match for Sachin. He scored his 100, hit the winning runs and avenged the loss to Pakistan at the same ground 9 years ago. This incidentally is the 50th time he is part of winning side. The biggest criticism that he doesn't play well when India needs the most in the 4th innings is answered. There aren't any records left to break, he is walking on the path never travelled by anybody, 41 centuries and 12000+ runs. I would like to see him sign-off by winning the world cup for India in 2011 and Test Series in Australia in 2012.

Yuvraj as a Test cricketer

He hit his purple patch in one-day series and was an automatic choice to take Ganguly's place in test side. His 2nd innings knock will indeed seal his spot for the next few tests. But I am still to be convinced of his test credentials. He can be easily intimidated by opposition players’ chit chatting and bouncers. Worst of all he reacts to them with words and stares instead of responding with the bat. This is something he can learn from his legendary senior colleagues. None of the opposition players do the same with Sachin, Dravid, Laxman or Kumble as it would have no effect on them and also out of sheer respect for them. Sachin's presence at the other end did help him, he looked like sincerely following Sachin's advices but wasn't paying that much heed to Dhoni's tips in the 1st innings.

I savoured the winning moment at my friend Tarun's house for last 75 runs. It has been a lucky place for me to watch cricket. I watched India win tests this year at Perth, Kanpur, Galle, Mohali, Nagpur and now Chennai. I also saw India winning the ODI at Sydney and U-19 world cup at Malaysia on the same day.

MS Dhoni with 4 wins out of 4 matches makes me think, Is this best Indian team ever? The question will be answered when they go abroad. ICC Test Rank No 2 and later No 1 are also up for grabs.

Notebook to Netbook

My present HP notebook bought 14 months back costed me 45,000 Rs, weighs 3 kgs, runs Windows Vista(TM), boots in 4 minutes, shutsdown in 90 seconds, uses 65% of 1GB RAM without me running a singe application.

For my usage that is mainly entertainment, I surely don't have to incur so much of cost. The cost is not just the price I pay but also the weight I carry, the speed (or lack of it) that I put up with. I think I can reduce the costs in the following ways.

1. Replace Windows Vista with Ubuntu Linux - Vista Home Premium costs around 7000 Rs, uses atleast 12 GB Hard disk space, uses atleast 500 MB of RAM, wants to confirm every time if I am sure I want to run an application program. Opening a folder with 40 files takes a noticeable amount of time not to mention the boot and shutdown time. Solution is to customize the free and open source Linux to include only those modules that I need. I tried doing that but couldn't get the Display driver and Wireless Network driver.
2. Use Online Productivity suite instead of Desktop Office Softwares - Whole MS Office Professional bundle costs 25,000 Rs, though minimal student ones are available for 8000 Rs. It takes around 1 GB disk space, each program like word or excel uses 50-100 MB RAM space depending on file size. Significant amount of time too is required to open a file. Free alternatives like OpenOffice and StarOffice don't give much respite either. Online office suites like Google Docs, Zoho move the computing from the PC to their servers freeing up the resources at the PC end. Inherently online office is the best way to share and collaborate. The documents can be accessed from anywhere and edited on any OS and Browser. Any updates in Desktop softwares have to be done by applying a patch or reinstalling, while in online it can be done continuously and without intervention of the user.
   
3. Install Basic Softwares - Have basic softwares to only read pdf, xls, doc, ppt files. Simple mp3 player, video player and photo viewer. This is to do something when I am not connected to internet.
4. Remove Anti Virus - It is one of the most annoying softwares. It will add 30 seconds to the boot time, runs in the background, pops every now and then and ask you to register, update, scan and restart. Thanks to the security provided by Internet Explorer and Windows, Anti Virus has become a necessity. I will not need it anymore.
5. Change from Hard Disk to Flash - NAND Flash is almost as fast a RAM in read, so I can imagine opening a file from it. It has no moving or rotating parts like Hard Disk that's why it is called Solid State Disk. Power Consumption is one tenth of Hard Disk. Weight and space is vastly reduced. With bloated OS and softwares gone, the space requirement is also reduced and a 32 GB Flash Drive should be good to keep even photos, music and videos. If one likes to keep lot of data like movies then an external Hard Drive should be good.
   
6. Have an external CD/DVD - This again has moving parts and removing it reduces lot of space and sheds weight. I don't use CDs and DVDs that often and if I do require I can use an external one.
   
7. Reduce the screen size from 15.4" to 12" - This will make it more portable without compromising on the display effectiveness. Power will also be saved.
   
8. Remove some of the connection slots - Slots for Memory Card Readers, PCMCIA, Serial Ports, Parallel Ports, 1394-firewire, PS2 ports etc are not required. If required, one can always buy those converters for 150 odd rupees. This does away with having the necessary controllers, drivers and hence cost. I only need 4 USB slots, 1 network slot, audio output, voice input and Wireless Network capability.

Having simplified so much, the RAM of 512 MB and 1 GHz processor should suffice. And yet I can get desired performance of 30 seconds boot time, 15 seconds shutdown, fast enough run time performance and increased battery life. The price can be brought down to 10,000 Rs and weight down to 1 kg. The basic requirement is a decent broadband connection.

What I have actually done is to reduce a notebook to something more simpler but optimized for internet usage which is called Netbook. ASUS Eee PC is the pioneer and leader in this market. Nova netPC is the brainchild of Rajesh Jain for Indian market.

Personal computer market growth started with Desktops. Now the baton is passed to Laptops or notebooks. Following the trend of more compact, simpler and affordable PCs, I believe the next growth will come from Netbooks.

India regains Border Gavaskar Trophy

India regains Border Gavaskar Trophy at Nagpur where they lost it exactly 4 years back. With this we have shown that we are not only equals to Australia but even better than them.

Statistical Highlights

• India has held the trophy 5 times while Australia held it 3 times.
  
• Out of 26 matches, 15 in India and 11 in Australia, India has won 10, lost 10 and drew 6 times. Only Rahul Dravid has played in all 26 of those matches from either side.
  
• Sachin has now played in 49 of the matches which India has won. He has a chance to win his 50th match at his home ground in Mumbai when India plays England in 2nd test.
  
• Australia is losing a series for the first time since Ashes 2005. India is winning more than 1 test in a series for the first time since home series against Sri Lanka in 2005.
• After nadir at Sydney and things looking only worse, India has not lost any of the last 6 encounters against them. Till Sydney, Ricky Ponting as captain had a 31-3 win-loss record including 16 successive wins. Since then they won 2 against West Indies and lost 3 to India.

My predictions

My prediction of a 2-1 defeat has gone horribly wrong. I had predicted a 2-0 loss to England too last year. I am glad that they were wrong. I generally make a pessimistic guess, so that I will have something to cheer about even when India loses. I realise that this approach will not take me long and I need to be lot more realistic and accountable with my predictions.

This proves my strength in accounting about the past through statistics and weakness about predicting the future. Statistics requires just good memory power and regular following. Prediction involves a lot more skill and understanding of the game. Even in Business, Managers are paid to plan and control the future while accountants are paid a pittance to document the past.

My emotions during the series

Indians were dominant throughout the series and I am witnessing this for the first time since 1998 series in India. The matches were quite high scoring and didn't make it as interesting as earlier series. 2003-04 series in Australia was also high scoring but still it was lot more interesting owing to the see-saw contests. Overall, there weren't so many thrilling rides over the series. One moment which did provide some thrills was the 4th day afternoon of the 4th test.

Anil Kumble and Saurav Ganguly have retired. Both of them have done their jobs and have taken Indian cricket to a higher level. It was time for them to go. It is time for even Rahul Dravid to go. His last great contribution came 2.5 years ago with twin fifties in the Jamica Test. India are now at a stage where those legends will not be missed so badly.

Future

After the series Australia has come down from 138 points to 129 points and India has gone up from 109 to 116 to reach second spot in the Test Rankings. There is a lot of cricket coming up over the next one year for Australia, India and South Africa. With the difference of only 13 points there is a good 3 ways battle for the ultimate number one spot. Australian domination will be questioned for the first time since they won in West Indies in 1995. Over the last few years we have only seen fight for No 2 spot between India, England and South Africa and all of them held the position for a brief period of time.

In the present situation, India is favourites to become No. 1.

Border Gavaskar Trophy 2008 in India

This is easily the most competitive series in Cricket ever since it started in 1996. That is all the more fascinating considering that one is undisputedly the best team and other is unpredictable and plays its best agaisnt the best. In the table below I compare a few of the most important series in cricket.

(Only matches since 1996 are considered)

Clearly, Border Gavaskar Trophy is right up there interms of results percentage and competitiveness i.e. Win/Loss Ratio. Ashes but for 2005 has been extremely one-sided. Last 2 India-Pakistan Series was very boring.

Fabulous Five

The hype for the Series starting today is not just about the recent rivalry between the Teams. It is also about the Individual players. From India it is the aging Fabulous Five of Sachin, Kumble, Dravid, Ganguly and Laxman. Their cricket playing career very much conincided with my viewing career. And it will be very hard for me to see an Indian Team taking field in a Test Match without any of them. They are the best not just because of their envious career records but also because of their contribution in India's fight against the World Champions.

The table shows a very surprising statistic. One would normally expect a Team to win most of its matches against weaker teams and lose against stronger teams. But with Indian Team it is different. All the members of the Fab 5 have defeated Australia the most, next being the weakest teams like SriLanka and Zimbabwe. Kumble is an exception because he missed the 2001 series.

Advantage India

Coming into this series Indian team looks to have advantage on paper.

1. Home advantage. But if we look at the things media is focussing on at the moment, it actually is a disadvantage
2. Best players with loads of experience and talent are playing. They are all fit, haven't retired yet, haven't gone fishing either!
3. Balanced Batting and Bowling. Sehwag opening and Big 4 in the middle order. Dhoni Keeping. Good variety in bowling with a leg spinner, off spinner, left arm medium and tall right arm fast bowler.
4. Only 4 Australians have played a Test in India earlier and none of the bowlers have bowled a ball in India. Ponting's glittering career has a huge dark spot in India especially against Harbhajan

To win series

There are more important factors that decide the winners than the ones mentioned above.

1. Having a detailed plan for each of the players and situations. Assigning and assuming the roles according to the plan and executing them.
2. Being desperate and focussed only on winning the series. Showing fight and intensity in the field for all the 5 days of the Test.
3. Patience, Playing positively, taking the chances (catches) offered, taking singles and not letting slip a winning situation.
4. Again focussing on the big picture i.e. the series without getting distracted with Individual miles stones. Ganguly is playing is last series, Sachin is closing on Lara's world record and 12,000 runs, Laxman closing in on 100 Tests, Kumble and possibly Dravid playing his last test at their Home ground Bengaluru.

All matches will have results unless more than 2 days are lost due to rain. A couple of matches will also be very close. I would say Australia will retain the Border Gavaskar Trophy by winning the series 2-1.

Sony Cybershot DSC-H50 - How I went about buying it?

What is my need for a new camera?

The Nikon Coolpix S1 camera at home is not working. So, I will give my big LCD Sanyo Xacti E6 to them. While I will go for an upgrade. The ideal upgrade would be an SLR. But considering the cost (40K+), amount of manual operation and maintenance required, I thought I should go for something lower than that. So, I thought I should go for one in the prosumer category.

My requirements are

1. Good Optical Zoom 10x+. When I shot the moon at night using 3x zoom, it appeared just like a white dot.. It also helps to take some good people's photo from a distance without their notice ;-)

2. Large LCD screen. I am used to 3 inch screen in my earlier camera. It indeed was a useful luxury. And it will be difficult to go below it.

3. 4 Mega Pixel is more than enough for me. And even the most basic models and Mobile Phones have more than 4MP.

4. Video is necessary but an average quality 640x480 would do.

5. Brand should be within the top 3 brands in India. Japanese makers seem to be leaders in this market with marquee names like Sony, Canon, Nikon, Panasonic, Olympus, Kodak and Fuji.

Recruitment and Selection

Checked at a few sites and Multi Brand Outlets (MBO) to get a hang of a few cameras in prosumer category. Only Sony and Canon seemed to be well distributed. So had to decide between the 4 models.

1. Canon Powershot S5IS

2. Canon Powershot SX100IS

3. Sony Cybershot H50

4. Sony Cybershot H10

The Sony versions were superior to Canon's w.r.t LCD (3 vs 2.5 inch) and Lens (Sony has Carl Zeiss lens). Sony was priced slightly lower and their models were released later (April 2008) than Canon's(2007). But Canon did well w.r.t the screen, it could be rotated.

Between H50 and H10, H50 looked much better (15x vs 10x zoom) at not much difference in price (20K vs 16K). So, I finally decided on Sony Cybershot DSC-H50 model.

Where to buy?

Two options here too.

1. SonyWorld and Sony India authorized outlets.

2. Online shopping portals like ebay, indiaplaza and rediff.

 - Online had only 1 year warranty while Sony India has for 3 years.

 - Online companies source it from other countries like China, Taiwan, Malaysia at a cheaper price and sell it here.

 - When I contacted Sony (call centre), they said - Only ones from Sony India and sold by Sony Authorised dealers are approved. Sony India does not have or approve online channels.

 - 1GB Memory Stick free when bought offline. Non-Sony memory sticks are available in eBay at half or third the price of that of Sony Memory Sticks. But Sony India doesn't recommend using them. Obviously ;-)

 - Online portals were selling at about 15% discount i.e. 3000 Rs lesser price.

Still, I am not too sure about buying such high value items online in India. They may say, I can send it back if I am not satisfied but who has time to go through the procedures of sending back and getting a new one. so, I decided to buy from Sony India recommended channel!

Buying Experience

I visited one of the nearby Sony Authorised Dealer and this is what he had to say about Sony

 - Sony has been there in India for last 25 years and it is still the same customer centric company as it was.

 - I asked if there will be any promotion offers for Diwali. He showed me a case of 75,000 Rs LCD TV that gave just Casino Royale film CD free as a Diwali Offer. Such a small offer. Now that talks about Sony's Brand Equity. The Brand that is adored by its consumers need not come up with discounts to appeal to them. They appeal through their product, service and brand image throughout the year for so many years, so why anything special for Diwali alone?

 - No shop is allowed to give away any discounts below the MRP. Meaning all customers are same and the product is really worth the price. Even Apple doesn't give discounts on its products.

 - After I buy, within 2 days a company person will come to my residence and give me a demonstration of usage. How many companies care for their customers after the sale is made? Similarly in case of any problems later, just call them and within 24 hours they will be at my doorstep. Dell does this though.

Well, I haven't said anything about the Camera itself. I don't yet have the camera yet. I will get it tomorrow. There are enough professional reviews available in tech2, mouthshut, steve-digicamsetc. Looking forward to get the camera tomorrow, get the demonstration day after tomorrow and click some great photographs with it later.

Google Chrome - A New Web Browser

This morning I got the news of launch of a new web browser "Chrome" from Google in its official blog. Since then I have been frantically trying to download the software. I could finally do it at 12 at midnight. I am a huge fan of Google. It is one company that seems to do everything right in this Internet era. Being a leader in Web applications, it was only time before it moved into the platform where they are run i.e. the web browser.

User experience

What I like about all Google products is their simplicity. They have done away with Menu Bar, Tab Bar, Search Bar and a bar at bottom that exists in Firefox. This gives them additional vertical space equivalent to 3 bars to display webpage. Chrome has also done well in being a very fast software. It responds to events faster than other browsers I have used. Perform actions like page scroll, opening and closing tabs, typing text and so on, one will realise how fast it is. Javascripts are made to run the fastest. Sridhar Vembu of Zoho.com lauds this fact in his blog. All this doesnot come free, it uses more resources to do it. Opening each tab spawns a new process. Creating separate process has a advantage. Suppose opening a webpage fails and hangs the software, only the tab that opened the webpage is affected. Not others as in Firefox because it opens all tabs under same process. It is not common to find a webpage hanging the browser, open any unproffesionally written Indian website.

Browser's Growing Importance

After booting the OS, the browser is the first software that I run on my computer. Cloud Computing has enabled all computations and storage online i.e. at server end. Be it Office Application, Email, Music, Video, Photos, Games, etc. No hassles of maintaining files on local computer, updating and maitaining large resource intensive softwares. Anything can be accessed from anywhere. All they need is a web browser and internet connection. A thin client or dumb terminal can replace our sophisticated PC. With this web browser has become the most important software. That's why we are seeing a major browser war today.

Competetive Landscape

Source - Net Applications

Internet Explorer - Microsoft just launched IE 8. IE will continue to exist and be a leader for another 5 years atleast. The users of IE are Windows users who are not aware of Firefox and use it because it came by default with their PC. They don't realise that there are faster alternatives, don't understand that a poor browser can be a security loop hole, are not interested in trying something different.

Mozilla Firefox - Mozilla is adding almost 1% to its market share every month. The firefox 3 launch was spectacular with 8 million downloads spending hardly any advertising money. It earns money from Google itself by placing google as default search engine in its search bar. But remember Mozilla is a Free Software Foundation and is not dependent on Google's money for its survival. Mozilla has its strength in its developer network, the vast reach it already has, 3000+ free addons.

Google Chrome - Google has made it open source, in the same lines of Firefox, used the modules from firefox itself. Google's contract with Mozilla extends for another 3 years. I hope they work together to create 2 complementary browsers to give a good choice to the users. Any internet user in this world uses google.com or yahoo.com. Given its reach and brand image it is easy for Google to promote Chrome to its users. Simple value proposition could be "Use Chrome to work with our applications better".

With the launch of Chrome, I think Chrome will grow at the cost of Firefox. Because to use Firefox or Chrome, the user needs to take extra effort to download and use them. Both of them are similar. Here the user now has a choice between Firefox and Chrome while earlier it was only Firefox. But together they will fight IE.

Top Search Engines

I will be researching on the top 5 web service brands.on categories like Search Engines, Web Browsers, Web servers, email, social networking, blogging tools, rss reader, e-commerce and so on. It will only be a secondary research and the purposes are

1. Being an avid internet user, who spends more than 8 hours everyday on internet, I better know what I am using and what to use.
2. Learn the internet analysis tools like alexa.com, comscore.com, hitwise.com and itfacts.biz.
3. When I become an online marketer, I need to know where my target audience are and how to target them.
4. Internet is an industry that has low entry barrier and a behemoth can be toppled overnight. So, it will be interesting to look back upon this research report 5 years later and laugh at it when things have changed completely. Remember netscape and altavista?
   

Starting off with Search Engines. Guessing the leader and follower is a no-brainer. It is Google and Yahoo respectively. I like Yahoo! over Google because of one particular point. That is, my blog comes 5th in Yahoo but only 33rd in Google in the search list for word "keshavaram". For academic purpose, the table below shows the Search Engines and its usage

Ref - Most popular search engines worldwide, Dec. 2007, comScore

The above results have tremendous implications to both internet marketers users. The users know where to get relevant search results from. The marketers know where to concentrate their SEO and SEM efforts. The focus of top search engines have always been on satisfying the user. If the user likes a website the site will come up first irrespective of how much another site pays. The search engine there by pleases the user at the cost of increased short term revenues.

A comprehensive analysis and comparison of Search Engines in in this link.