Archive for the ‘opinion’ Category
Twitter was down for few days. The micro-blogging soothsayers had nowhere else to go but wait for the service to come back online. However, twitter is simply a service (and prone to failures).. for now, inspite of the numerous times it keeps throwing the cute error messages, people are willing to forgive the outages.
my observation to this episode is if the whole “micro-blogging” ecosystem could go down based on a service, aren’t we putting all our eggs in one basket? if micro-blogging has to go main stream, can one only rely on a single service to deliver the same? Where are the alternatives? oh yeah, u might start thinking of 3jam, Dodgeball, Jaiku, Jooopz, Jyngle, Loopnote, tumblr, plazes, Pinger, pownce and Swarm-it but none really have achieved the status or ubiquity that twitter has..
the other reason why this is more important for social media is that all of these services are online. and online services are prone to disruption more than any other thing (self inflicted or malaise oriented)..
another example of eggs in a basket is the “Google Adsense”.. google made a whole lot of us greedy and a few dollars with the adsense program. of course, you have to give them credit for spawning a new “professional blogger” SMI category. yeah there are other money earning programs but none as ubiquitous as adsense.. what happens when adsense goes down?
currently, i am feeling the pain as adsense has stopped working for my blog and i have no clue why? what if google decides that i am not fit for their ad network? fortunately, my daily bread doesn’t depend on this but what if it did? what if not earning for a few days was NOT an option?
in the recent BlogCamp, a participant mentioned google turning off his gmail account when he wrote a mail to their CEO complaining of the ill treatment he had received from one of the google recruiters. what could he do except watch in pain?
in some cases identities of people have been wiped out when google decided to erase their site from the index.
the age old maxim of diversification is becoming more relevant for a Web 2.0 world. sure the reliability of the services have improved tremendously but what if it failed ever? would we be willing to take that risk?
What do you think one should do to tackle this?
they say that in the darkest hour you can see the light.. and it is that time now..
in a recent meeting, the VP of Microsoft India gave a very sound advice that i would like to share with you. it holds true for everyone and especially people who are befuddled with the things around them (esp me).. i do wonder though whether any inspiration/ good thought ever did any good to anyone in the corporate world.. but this may benefit me and you ..
so here it goes:
Some things I wish I had known when I was 30
•Don’t let someone else define what success means for you
this finds its origin in not letting others (including managers)tell you what you are and what you are not good at! you are successful when you you believe you are!
•Know your strengths & focus on these
–No one ever became great focusing on their dev needs
this is divergent in the thought that it encourages you to hone and further work upon your strengths rather than working on your weaknesses. mostly all the reviews and feedbacks will tell you what you are NOT good at.. this says that it may not be that important to focus on that but on things you are good at!
•Embrace life, take on LARGE challenges & BIG risks
this one is about taking leap of faith and taking huge risks..
and a quote to go with it –
“Do not go where the path may lead, go instead where there is no path and leave a trail…” (Emerson)
Read this “Why else would Google buy YouTube?” – an article from Economic Times. My understanding from the article – Google would YouTube to cater to its social networking needs and blogging!
Being from the community space myself, i say – “What bull”? this is not why companies are bought. The journalist has spent some obscene time on talking about fads of today and worse still flowing with it.
Well, this is why i think Google bought YouTube:
- with YouTube, google acquires the customer base there.
- this provides them with “thought leader” position in the rich media space.
- Google is an internet advertising company. YouTube is a strategic fit for providing targetted ads to rich media like videos. you can already see Google ads in all of their properties that advertisers are happy to pay for!
this is in short, IMHO the reason why it was bought (things like blogs and other social media are implicit!)
Category: technology
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This posting is provided “AS IS” with no warranties, and confers no rights.
when technology is a part of the whole! 