Twitter's Revenue Model

Few days back, the number tweets exceeded the world population.
Also Twitter got to know about a recent small earthquake faster than the local media could get to know about it.
They have 70million users and they’ve grown 1300 odd% in a year.
But yet they don’t have a revenue model and don’t make any money.
So here are a few things I think they can do to become profitable.

• Divide the screen space and display ads.
  This is a tough one as people like Twitter for its simplistic view. But still there is a lot of screen space they can utilize. They can probably divide the page and on one side are the ads related tweets. These tweets can have graphical content which will stand out in comparison to the text based tweets. To tweet here ( lets call it b-tweets) you need to pay something to Twitter. They could charge you per tweet or per month with a usage limit or for the data content. Put in a lot of options which will give a lot of choice for businesses.
  


• Customized feeds.
  Twitter should ask people if they would like to subscribe for customized feeds of they're interests. Something like Yahoo does when you sign up, they ask you to check your interests. There would some people who would check for something which would make a portion of the users not complain about ads since they asked for it. Of course others like us should have the option of not getting any ads on our personal area.
  


• Communities/ Fan clubs
  Twitter should also have this thing like fans/communities where people with similar interests could have conversations. I think since Twitter is so open, there is no directions to the tweets; which is nice in a way but people should be able to direct it if they want to. Twitter could charge businesses for starting these communities to give people info about their product/services.
  


• Strike a deal with GOOGLE
  Also Twitter can strike a deal with Google and allow Google to access their site for real-time searches. This works for Google as well as they need to combat Facebook on the real time search front.(btw It takes a Facebook with 360mil users and Microsoft to take on Google and Google still rocks!!!)

I still haven’t given this much thought; I need to come up with more points.

Paa

I watched Paa last night.
I loved the movie. Amitabh Bachchan has acted really really well and my respect for him as an actor went up a few notches yesterday.
They story revolves around Auro- a 13 year old kid suffering from Progeria, a condition of advanced aging. Auro is the illegimate child of Vidya(Vidya Balan) and Amol Arte(Abhishek Bachchan).

Amitabh's expressions and body language as a 13year old kid is simply amazing. Vidya Balan has acted really well too. Movies with a "different" story suit Vidya more than those which involve wearing skirts and dancing. She has this raw beauty about her and she'd still be as beautiful when she just wakes up as she is all decked up. Ofcourse, since I'm head over heals in love with her, I could be slightly biased.The movie was directed excellently, the songs by Illayaraja were superb- especially the 'gumm summ gumm' song which I am totally crazy about. There was this background score which sounded like a tape recorder barely able to play- yet playing all the time which added to the effect.
All in all a lovely touching movie and a must watch for all ages.

SWAMIYE SHARANAM AIYAPPA

Yesterday there was a pooja for Aiyappa swamy at my aunt's apartment complex. I wanted to go out of belief to Swami Aiyappa. It was a huge gathering of about 300 people. The arrangements were done nicely with huge mantaps for Ganesha, Subramanya, Venkateshwara and of course Aiyappa.
I went there thinking I would just have a darshan, mangalarthi, take my prasad and go. There was loud music playing due to which i was not able to hear anything on a call i received. Feeling a little irritated I thought to myself "what a waste-all the flowers and lighting. that money could have been used elsewhere to provide food for the homeless.etc".There was some sort of orchestra by devotees who were all going in a group to Sabarimale. I actually started enjoying the songs and watching people sing with devotion. It was very nice. Everything from the songs, the singer, the little metal plates banged to add to the music, the casio- I enjoyed it thoroughly.
Of late since about a year or so, my religious activity involved going to the temple or saying a few prayers here and there. I felt I had lost the connection I had spiritually and it had become more of a routine. Recently I had been having a lot of negative thoughts which led me to move into a negative spiral. Attending to pooja, listening to the songs sung there has some how helped me get out of that negative spiraland I am really thankful for that. And I am seeing some form of that spiritual connection resuming again.
When I'm back in Bangalore I want to attend some bhajans more frequently. There is this Hanuman temple near Sophia's where every saturday there are bhajans sung. Looking forward to going for that every saturday.

TRIVANDRUM

I hated Trivandrum at first. Why would I? It was nothing like Bangalore. Also I went there at the wrong time. What added to that was I went there alone, usually batches from a college are called together. The fact that there is a very schoolish atmosphere at TCS there with rules everywhere did not help. I also went during peak summer and was given really lousy accomodation there. So I guess the first month and half at Trivandrum I became a loner. Preferred staying alone.

This was the absolute rejection phase where I could not like anything about the place. But the surprising thing was when I came down to Bangalore- and I did try coming as much as I could- I missed the peace I had there. Nobody to bother you, away from the problems, so close to nature everything.

Gradually I started accepting the place as it is, without any comparison. Started making new friends. I actually started like it. Soon it was like I was finding excuses to not go back during long weekends.

The best part about Trivandrum is that though it is the capital, it is such a laid back city. The place I was staying at is just a km and a half from the sea. There is this fisherman’s beach called which is completely empty. Much better than the commercial Kovalam beach which was just 2 kms away from where I stayed. The view from CLC( Corporate Learning Centre, TCS) is just amazing. Just coconut trees which looks like grass from the distance and the Arabian sea. The view from top is beautiful, the sea on one side and the start of the western ghats on the other.

My favourite place is varkala, where I’ve had so many fond memories. Sleeping on the beach, all night, drunk; going swimming pretty far into sea, standing on the cliff viewing the sea on one side and hills and greenery on one side while drinking beer. This has to be one of my favourite places in the whole world - not that I have travelled much- but still.

The place I stayed at is called TCS Executive Hostel. There is this little stream flowing just behind it- you could go sit there for hours and not hear anything other birds chirping and frogs croaking. There was this bar called B6 just close by where almost everybody from TCS would be there on Friday nights – they had to be there- there were no other bars nearby.

I came there during a really really tough period in my life, and I changed, and matured and learnt a lot. I made a lot of good friends – Rohith, Mamatha, Umar, Liza, Mansa, Rajath, Pawan, Ashok, Malli, Pooja, Bhanu, Chivu, Manohar, Harsha, Lovepreet ( yes that’s a name), Mindri, Praveen, Sameer, of course our HR Shafiq and Finance guy Ashutosh and Cheta from the Nayar shop and anybody else I might have missed out on. You made my stay awesome. Especially Rohith, Mansa and Umar

Thank you Trivandrum- my favourite place in the world( along with Bangalore that is)

My Farmville prediction

I think farmville is going to slowly lose its popularity and people will start getting bored of it. i personally don't play farmville much though my farm is now well maintained by my sister. Prefer Tennis Mania. But I know lots of people who do, but are not that rampant now as they were before. Farmville was differnt( though the idea was ripped off from elsewhere and implemented on a farm). The fact that you could interact with your friends and pass on gifts and fertilize their farms made it a very good social networking game. People who did not keep in touch were suddenly sending gifts to each other everyday. Also building something from scratch is nice and people started having farms. The fact that you needed to come back and harvest your crop regularly made it addictive and made sure people did not leave theirs farms. Soon there were competitions among friends to see who has a better farm.
But then what happened, or is happening or I think will happen is - people cant afford to spend so much time on their farms. When the excitement/ interest for a certain thing is more than the value you place on the time taken, you go ahead with it. Slowly the excitement of people is coming down. After you have a nice farm with a cow shed and 3-4 tractors- What next? There doesn't seem to be a definite end to building your farm which makes people lose the sense of achievement after adding something to your farm.Its like when you buy a new house you are all excited about decorating it and you keep buying stuff and doing your interiors. After sometime when you are settled , you don't really have to interest to keep doing more. The fact that your crop dies if you don't harvest it soon enough will further bore people and make them want to leave the farm altogether. That coupled with the fact that you don't have a "harvest all" option and that little fella takes so much time to move all over the farm makes it very time consuming.
So however popular it is, Farmville is on the decline. Give me a car racing game or a tennis mania game -where I can just play a game and forget about it - anyday

My Dad's India and mine

I Was discussing with my dad the other day about a friend wanting to quit TCS and join a start up with a friend. He found the idea absurd and gave his usual "you youngsters are not wise" dialogue. Now the wisdom of my friend not taken into account, the idea atleast must atleast be appreciated. But coming from a reasonably conservative middle class family, my dad's reaction is not all that wrong.
Back in those days, there weren't too many good jobs around. Now we have so many options.The existing jobs were mainly in the public sector. Job security was paraount. If you were in a decent paying job for a long long time, your future was secure. My dad's India did just tat and secured their future and ours. They saved up money-no frivolous spending- not like there were any good places to hang out and spend your money anyways. They not only secured their future but ours as well.
Now if you look at Maslow's hierarchy of needs, if you don't have food water and shelter, you really cant think of job satisfaction or about making the world a better place. So our parents did just that. Secured the food- shelter part. There is another physiological need which is considered a bad bad thing- but lets not get into that. So now that level was set up, the next generation that is us could try for the higher levels. Which is why there are a lot more start ups, lot more people thinking about global warming etc.I think that India is growing the way it is because of the fundation set up by the previous generation. So we shouldn't be thinking that they are conservative. We can be the modern and fast moving because they were steady and conservative.
So when my dad thinks that sticking to a job which provides security is the way to go, he is just trying to come to terms with the change he helped to bring about.

CAT online

* this was a draft written loong back. It is the same for CAT' 10 as well

I have been busy over to past 10 days or so, so no new posts. Wrote Cat 09.. this is what i felt about it

• There were only 60 questions. So from being a '180 questions' paper a few years agon, it is now has only 60. this definitely removes speed from the equation. Gone are those times when you didnt even have time to read all the questions.
• Last year and the year before that, the questions were waay tougher. This time might not have been sitters but they definitely weren't all that tough to crack.

So basically Cat 09 was a very "feel good' Cat. Everybody came out feeling good about themselves. There in lies the problem.
Now Cat is not easy for sure to crack and the competition is intense. Very. So now what happens is since the questions were relatively easy and less in number, at the top, say 95 percentile and above, it will be very very close. The gap between the 98 and the 95 will be very very little. In such cases a little luck in one question could even swap a 98er and a 92er which sucks.This time, I just woke up from a hang over and went to write the cat with out solving a single sum. Since I had nothin to lose, I attempted almost everything which I thought would help me. But since the new Cat was craaaaazy, everybody's attempted just the same which really makes the luck factor play a big part of the equation.