Speaking At The Facebook Developer Garage

One was part of the Speaker Panel at the Facebook Developer Garage held in Bangalore on the 28th of August at The Taj West End.

Having worked on building applications on the Open Social and the Facebook platforms, growing them to be among the top applications, building an active user base and monetizing the apps by running some interesting brand campaigns, I shared my experiences on treating applications as products and took the audience through the various stages of development and growth of these apps and the important elements involved in each of the stages.

It was a great experience sharing my thoughts and experiences with a very enthusiastic developer audience and sharing the panel with peers from the internet industry from companies like Facebook, Games2Win, Chakpak, Position2 and WeRead.

Below are some photos from the event -





































































































Here is my presentation from the event -
(Suggested full screen viewing)

Nikhil Kulkarni - Facebook Developer Garage Bangalore

View more presentations from Abhishek Goyal.

Mr. Cock-a-lock

Hail buffalax and Benny Lava, aka Prabhudeva in India! Here's more on the geniuses.

The original Benny Lava video by buffalax!




Oh, and I did not know Urvasi could also become this!



Polly's bum for fantasty, ah!

Too Much Is Too Bad

Sometimes it rings so true, what our grandmothers used to tell us and we never used to listen. Too much is too bad, isn't this what they used to tell us?

Once upon a time, there was social network utility named Facebook which was known for its simpicity, ease of use and uncluttered look. And then the big young man announced the FaceBook Developer Programme, which let developers create different applications for Facebook's users. They said Facebook would be a social OS, some said it could even be the next Microsoft. Wait, some even called it what? A data black hole. Then came applications which let users let their friends know of their moods to applications which let throw sheep at their friends. Great, they said. Initially, driven by the hype and interest, they lapped it up. And then, they started removing these application one by one.



What happened after this? We'll know soon.

PS. How many of you are on Facebook? More importantly, do you visit it regularly? If yes, what is it that makes you visit it regularly?

PPS. Too much isn't too bad when it comes to blogging. Here's announcing the launch of CircusMouse, a blog which I'm not able to come up with a description for. Promises to be lot of chaos, fun and entertainment. Check it out and let us know!

PPPS. Have you checked eye5 lately? Regular posting has resumed there as well. Planning to revive 10+3i. Hopefully, some good news on that front soon.

What's This Stupid Internet Thing? Shut It Down

Sir Elton John wants the internet to be shut down. And pray, why is he singing this tune? In his own words -

"The internet has stopped people from going out and being with each other, creating stuff.

Instead they sit at home and make their own records, which is sometimes OK but it doesn’t bode well for long-term artistic vision."

The next gem is truly humbling. Because I was under the under the impression that my blogging was to change the world and according to Sir John, it isn't quite so. Thank You Sir for enlightening us.

“We’re talking about things that are going to change the world and change the way people listen to music and that’s not going to happen with people blogging on the internet."

"Let’s get out in the streets and march and protest instead of sitting at home and blogging."

I say dump your key-boards and get on the street, we're going to protest against the internet now. Imagine everyone using the internet out on the street shouting Internet Hai Hai. Or, Mera broadband connection waapis le lo. . Blogging, Wogging nahin chalegi, nahin chalegi.

More gems from Sir John in this Sun article. That's not music to our ears, Sir. The Sun reporter is better at puns. Joining the chorus with Sir John to give us more gems, she ends the article with - I guess that’s what Sir Elt would call a net loss . .

Net loss, indeed it is. A Rolling Stone article on the decline of the record industry has some real eye-openers. Some interesting points from the article -

• Overall CD sales have plummeted sixteen percent for the year so far -- and that's after seven years of near-constant erosion.
• In 2000, the ten top-selling albums in the U.S. sold a combined 60 million copies; in 2006, the top ten sold just 25 million.
• More than 5,000 record-company employees have been laid off since 2000.
• About 2,700 record stores have closed across the country since 2003

And wonder when will the industry executives start looking at technology as an ally and use it effectively, like EMI offering its entire music collection DRM-free on iTunes. While physical album sales have declined, digital sales are growing as the numbers from the article indicate.

• Digital sales are growing -- fans bought 582 million digital singles last year, up sixty-five percent from 2005, and purchased $600 million worth of ringtones -- but the new revenue sources aren't making up for the shortfall.

More such DRM-free offerings, more labels entering into license agreements with YouTube, innovative models like Amiestreet is the way ahead. And people talk about shutting down the internet.

The record labels just seem to be in a hurry to squeeze as much as possible from all possible revenue sources. No wonder then that all internet radio stations in the US went silent on June 26 to observe the National Day of Silence protesting against new royalty rates.

While music on the internet in India is still in its early stages, the situation isn't very different with the odds highly stacked against those who use branded content and wanting to do it legally. Hefty license fees, very hazy regulatory body structure, use of every possible opportunity to extract that little more money, rampant piracy and the inability of the powers that be to effectively control it. is threatening to kill internet radio in its infancy in India. Remember that story in which the greedy owner kills the goose laying golden eggs? Looks like another case of the same. Hoping to come up with a more detailed piece on the scene here in India. In the meanwhile, Naa Bajega Baans, Naa Bajegi Baansuri! Isn't this what they say?

The Long Tail in radio

I'm no rocket scientist(I've never wanted to be one), or an economist(which I've sometimes wanted to be) or a social scientist(which I want to be), but one doesn't need to be any of the above to figure this out.

For Jaane Do Na from Cheeni Kum, Illayaraja uses one of his earlier compositions, Jothe Jotheyali from the Kannada film, Geetha. An earlier version of the same is Vizhiyile Undan vizhiyile from Tamil film, Nooravadu Naal. Been listening to lot of FM radio and happened to make this observation. The observation being - while Jaane Do Na was played across different radio stations, the Kannada original was played more frequently. Much like this from Chris Anderson's The Long Tail. Here's an excerpt which talks about a similar phenomenon -

In 1988, a British mountain climber named Joe Simpson wrote a book called Touching the Void, a harrowing account of near death in the Peruvian Andes. It got good reviews but, only a modest success, it was soon forgotten. Then, a decade later, a strange thing happened. Jon Krakauer wrote Into Thin Air, another book about a mountain-climbing tragedy, which became a publishing sensation. Suddenly Touching the Void started to sell again.

Random House rushed out a new edition to keep up with demand. Booksellers began to promote it next to their Into Thin Air displays, and sales rose further. A revised paperback edition, which came out in January, spent 14 weeks on the New York Times bestseller list. That same month, IFC Films released a docudrama of the story to critical acclaim. Now Touching the Void outsells Into Thin Air more than two to one.

What happened? In short, Amazon.com recommendations. The online bookseller's software noted patterns in buying behavior and suggested that readers who liked Into Thin Air would also like Touching the Void. People took the suggestion, agreed wholeheartedly, wrote rhapsodic reviews. More sales, more algorithm-fueled recommendations, and the positive feedback loop kicked in.

Particularly notable is that when Krakauer's book hit shelves, Simpson's was nearly out of print. A few years ago, readers of Krakauer would never even have learned about Simpson's book - and if they had, they wouldn't have been able to find it. Amazon changed that. It created the Touching the Void phenomenon by combining infinite shelf space with real-time information about buying trends and public opinion. The result: rising demand for an obscure book.

While Jothe Jotheyali is by no means an obscure song, Jaane Do Na definitely helped to bring it in the popular public realm. And how did The Long Tail work here? The radio stations can store all the content they want and with smart methods of organizing such content and information, it helps them serve their audience better. All this and more without having to spend extra resources and still being able to find that one song which a caller might ask for during a request show.

Here's the Kannada song from perhaps the best example of The Long Tail -

Thinking beyond Google and the search for the next big thing in search.

Search begins and ends with Google, or so you thought. Ofcourse, there are the other search engines which you never really bothered to visit - Yahoo!, MSN, AOL and Ask. But there are a slew of other search engines which are sure to make search more interesting. Whether they'll be able to give Google a run for its money? Only time will tell. But for now, Google
rules the roost with a market share of 49.2%, followed by Yahoo at 23.8% with MSN, AOL and Ask ranking up in this order with market shares in single digits.



Google recently launched its Personalised Search. This keeps a history of all of one's previous searches, be it in Google images, Froogle, Google video et al. A very useful,feature indeed and interestingly, one can get an idea of his/her preferences/search habits after using this over a period of time.

Most of our searches are sporadic and random and it's good to know about our search preferences. Most of our work on the internet begins with a search and the Google's personalised search would give an idea of how do we spend most of our time on the internet. One may also bookmark the pages. So you need not worry if you've searched for something previously and have forgotten to bookmark it. Google's personalised search makes your life easier. One perhaps needs to use it over a period of time to get this kind of data.

A small enhancement, but very substantial nonetheless. With Google putting on hold rollout of new products and instead deciding on concentrating its energy on making the existing products work better, it remains to be seen what enhancements it brings to search. Innovation or improvement? Improvement it is, now that Google has reached a stage where it had to stop and think about its future plans, all the hype and hoopla over the GooTube deal not withstanding.


The founders of YouTube talk here about the deal.



Can't miss the naughty smile on their faces initially and how they break into an almost boyish laughter towadrs the end of the video. Imagine watching a tourist video of Pondicherry and having ads for budget hotels in Pondicherry on the side. That could be GooTube for you!



Another interesting product from Google's stable is
SearchMash. Since Google cannot radically alter search on the main site, SearchMash seems to an ideal playground for experimenting with new ideas. This has a host of new and exciting features, which indeed may lead to making one's own search engine.




To begin with, there is no Search button, which is redundant anyway. You hit enter and the SERPs appear with the top three image search results by their side. You may then drag and drop the search results according how important or relevant you think they are. The subesequent search results open in the same page on hitting the spacebar. Very neat - the features, the layout and the idea. Go ahead. Try it!






Here's a search engine whose model seems interesting - ChaCha. It offers 'real time search results'. And as ChaCha claims on its website, ChaCha is

* A smart search engine powered by human intelligence.
* A place to find exactly what you're looking for without sifting through
millions of results.
* Intelligent search results from people who are knowledgeable about the
very thing you are looking for.

One may either search the web as you do normally or do a 'live' search. During a live search, you talk to a 'guide' who searches for the information and provides it you. The guides are paid by ChaCha and the remuneration is proportionate to their 'expertise'. You need to be invited to the network- ChaCha Underground and have you work your way up through the guide hierarchy. More details on SearchEngineWatch.

I tried searching for 'Hotels in Pondicherry' with a guide and after I confirmed that that Pondicherry was indeed in South India, I didn't hear anything more from the guide.

But still, here's why ChaCha might work.

1. Instead of spending a lot of time searching within hundres of search results, people would be willing to spend that extra time to get exact results for their queries.

2. The human touch, which makes it more interactive and easy to use.

Cluster search anyone?






Try Clusty. Cluster search arranges the SERPs into cluster thus making it easier for you.


A search for 'Hotels in Pondicherry' on Clusty arranges the SERPs into -

- Pondicherry
- Discount
- Hotels and Resorts
- Deluxe Hotels
- Pondicherry Travel
- Booking of hotels in Pondicherry
- Hotel Mass *
- Accomodation in Pondicherry
- Tour packages

[ * Hotel Mass is a well-known hotel in Pondicherry]

Each have these 'clusters' have links within them and thus the search results are arranged according to the category they belong to. Definitely makes searching easier. Clusty come from Vivismo.

Also using cluster search results are Mooter and Clush. Clusty, with features like Clusty Clouds, definitely scores here.




Now either Powerset let me use its much talked about Natural Language Search or take responsibility for my death. Seriously, with so much being discussed about Powerset in the blogosphere, it remains to be seen if Powerset lives up to the hype. No doubt its team comes with impeccable credentials, especially its founder and CEO Barney Pell. The COO Steve Newcomb and Product Architect Lorenzo Thione have been in the search industry for a long time to understand its dynamics. So one has enough reasons to believe that the buzz is totally unjustified. What makes Powerset immensely likeable is its founders frankness and honesty, not to mention the clear elucidation of their philosophy behind Powerset. Here's what Barney Pell has to say in response to the blogstorm generated around Powerset -

" Anyway, we truly were not expecting all this attention yet, as we are not releasing a product in the immediate future. It is a little daunting to have so much attention but not be able show our product yet. Nobody can tell if we are hype or substance (unless they know us). However, from my perspective, one great thing about this blogstorm coming early is that it has kicked off a vibrant discussion about the present and future of search, and what it would mean to be able to express intention to a search engine in a new way. That discussion goes beyond any one company and itself can lead to the kind of transformation every startup hopes to achieve."

Personally I believe search is yet to be solved and there's definitely more to search than what Google can offer.



So, can Snap provide us with a new search experience. Infact it calls itself - ' the other way to search'. We are all so used to the 'text in text out' way of search that Snap comes as a refreshing change. Refreshing because, though not as 'simple' as Google or the other well-known search engines, it definitely provides a very pleasant search experience.


Picture here


It provides search results on the left and one can navigate through these by using the up/down arrow keys. The previews of the search results appear on the right. Pretty neat for those who aren't conditioned to use keywordese. You may mark the each result as Perfect or Junk thus enabling better results for future searches. The interface is also very user-friendly. According to Snap, here's why they feel they are better.

Snap was also mentioned as one of the 50 coolest websites on TIME.


My two cents worth on the new movement in search.

Nothing can replace Google, because of its deep pockets and its immense popularity. Ther's no denying the huge impact it is having on our lives. But there can definitely be new way out for some kind of searches for which Google definitely doesn't help much. So are websites like Guruji, Raftaar, Onyomo, burrp! the answer?!

More on these websites in the posts to follow.

Here's the wikipedia list of search engines.

Tags:Search,Google,Powerset,ChaCha,Snap,SearchMash,Raftaar,Guruji

BlogCamp 2006

How do I feel now? Great!. If you were at the BlogCamp, you'd know what I'm talking about.


BlogCamp un-happened. The success of this meet was no mean feat considering the novel nature of this event. The fact that it was an unconference and attracted around 200 participants from all over India speaks volumes about the passion bloggers share towards blogging. Before I forget to mention and later commit sucide, only to be sent back to earth by Yamraj that I didn't blog enough in my lifetime, hats off to Kiruba. This man made just about everything possible and with such ease. You are the man. Peter, Dina, Neha, Jace, Syed handled just about everything with wiki-ease. Now, I do not know what wiki-ease is. Do not ask me. And I am not stoned, Nehaji!




[Nehaji talking to students from ASJ and I listening to it, while passing off as recording the conversation]




To me,quality conversations and discussions were the biggest gains out of the unconference. Opportunities to learn, contribute and experience were plenty be it the technical sessions by the Bothack junta or the open sessions on Blogs and freedom of expresson,Are comments important?. The best conversations of course happened over coffee or over lunch. Meeting and sharing ideas, experiences with people- geeks, journalists, consultants, journalists, analysts was a great experience.

Personally, I was there to understand and explore the reasons behind people's passion for blogging. And it was definitely heart-warming to meet in person people who take their blogging seriously. Amit Agarwal, for example. Commanding a readership running into millions and retaining it is not an easy job. But then blogging is his job. Amit writes about the interesting people he met at the BlogCamp here. Thanks for the mention and it was a fantastic experience spending time with you, Amit. BeachCamp by the night was great fun!


Talking of the BeachCamp, which was wonderful, for the fact that we had the entire beach for us, the bloggers. So many things happened with bloggers in high spirits that I'm now thinking of making a movie on bloggers to be titled 'Bloggers' Beach' on the lines of Joggers' park. Sad, Perizaad Zorabian doesn't blog. But Bipasha Basu does blog here.And did I mention the free food and the booze at the BeachCamp?!;)


On a more serious note, the high-spirited discussion with
Rahul about media, technology, business, retail and just about everything will definitely hold me in good stead for a long time to come. Thanks Rahul for all the encouragement. There was a nice little discussion brewing between Rahul, Amit and Om[ from Page Traffic] of which I enjoyed every bit. Awesome time with Karan, Vikram and Nidhi from
WebChutney. More on Nidhi(to be referred to a Chutney henceforth) in the following posts. She accompanied me to Pondicherry and spent two days here. Vikram, the chaos in your head right now is definitely leading to something big! Work on it.

Wonderful was the time spent at the BeachCamp with what I'd like to call the Tam geek gang. No offence meant, but somehow I find the name funny and interesting. These guys were the backbone of the BlogCamp and they deserve every bit of the credit and appreciation. Ganesh, Ganesh[ Rupya], Aswin, Arpit, Bhargav, Satish and the rest of the junta's energy and zeal was infectious. The long drawn discussion with Arpit, lasting till 3:00 a.m. gave some shape to a few ideas brewing in my mind. These hopefully should see the light of the day soon. We saw the light of day really early at 6:30 in the morning. Sleep, I did though yesterday. Straight for 17 hours. Thanks to the energy I invested at the BlogCamp and in the next two days following that, taking Chutney around Pondicherry.




[Sunil Gavaskar at the BlogCamp.]


On day 2, it was a wonderful experience meeting with Shailaja Neelakanthan of GigaOm, with GigaOm being one of my favourite sources for news on technology and start-ups. At the stalls set up at the venue, it was interesting exchanging ideas with people from merinews and Zoho. Great to see activities happening in India in the media scene. But there's still a long way to go in community formation and delivering to their needs, and in return getting the community to work for you. Rajesh from Zoho, writes about my organization PlanetRead on his blog here. It was good meeting interesting people doing some really cool work like you, Rajesh.

Osama Manzar of the Digital Empowerment Foundation and the Manthan Award was at the unconference with his son Abner. Our venture
BookBox won a special mention at last year's Manthan awards and Osama was happy to see me and know about BookBox's progress.

Also met Garima from Watblog, Preetam Rai from Global Voices Online and Jammy over coffee, lunch and IRC, not respectively. Prayas and Ashwan from pinstorm were there too.

But as Subhash Rai of India Online Journalism mentions in his post here, the best conversation happened in the smokers' corner with Dr. Subho Ray of IAMAI, Mr. Sukumar of eZeeBags.com, Samrat Choudhary from Hindustan Times and Rajesh from The Week. Though I listened for most of the time , it was truly an enlightening and enriching experience. The wote of thanks
by Babloojee was interesting.

Chutney and I teamed up for the quiz and missed qualifying for the finals by a couple of answers. A decent quiz that was, with a couple of T-shirts flying our way for the audience questions. Felt great coming back to quizzing after a long time.I then headed to my relatives' place and Chutney to her relatives'. Finding that place wasn't all that difficult for me, but identifying me was definitely difficult for them. Yes it was. They were seeing me after 12 years!

The next day, Chutney and I headed to Pondicherry carrying wonderful memories of the BlogCamp, with some questions answered and a lot more popping out in our heads. Coming posts to talk about the time we had in Pondicherry!

Photos conveniently flick(r)ed from Jace, Neha and dream.chaser. Thanks. Some more BlogCamp photos on Flickr here

Tag :BlogCamp

The battle heats up-Microsoft CEO: 'I'm going to f---ing kill Google'

my shift key has a problem, so no 'capitalised'(exactly..that's what one of our teachers said..all keywords in java should begin with 'capitalised')letters and my mind's not working. i donno the reason. is it because of the excess of movies that i'm watching or is it because i'm attending more classes this time!



continuing on the google-ms war, here's a piece i stumbled across on slashdot. it is a great site for people who are intersted in tech-trivia. they call it a site for nerds and i don't quite consider myself to be one. reminds me of one funny incident though. microsoft came calling to our campus for recruitment and i thought my knowledge of msn spaces, the mappoint technolgy would be of some help. and as it turned out i failed to clear the 'written' test which was quite 'technical'. that's ok as i don't quite fancy my chances with things 'technical'. but what amazed me was that even in the interviews that followed, there was not even a single 'hr' question. it was pointers, arrays, data structures, algorithms, compilers all the way. and this idiot thought his hours of meandering around the world wide web would be of some help! how naive of me! sometimes i feel i should have drowned in object oriented programming than spend time deriding bush's objective of occupying iraq. but surprisingly, when pause for a moment,i don't repent what i did! thinking that that one hour test would have made a difference of around 3.5 lacs to my annual salary!!was just wondering what makes the differnce? that duration of one hour of the test or the 'wasted years' (that's also the song playing rt now!, how ironic!!!..f*&k..the song is by iron maiden!!now my mind's working!!). to me it was that one hour that made the difference. my thoughts on placements din't go down well with many people here(like most of my thoughts!). and i hate to talk/write about placements, but couldn't miss this one as it was about ms.congrats siddharth!

google is also planning to come out with an operating system to challenge windows.
(writing 'remember i told you this first' sounds like crap to me now!!)let's see.

will post a list of movies/books that i've drowned in of late. talking of movies, am planning to start a blog on the 'other bollywood' ,the sensible indian cinema, indian movies in english, not the american desi, chai types...my gyaan of such movies is decent enough...and want to 'specialise' in that.just like my photoblog on hoardings, posters and notices!

if anybody can get their hands on cds of the following please write them for me. all freight charges will be borne by me.

war and peace- anand ptwardhan
matrubhoomi- manish jha
is raat ki subah nahin- sudhir mishra
black friday-anurag kashyap

What happens when you dream and grow 'big'

THIS

Will come back with another post soon...i see less people coming to my blog these days..what's (not) happening????!!!!!