While the buzz around social media platforms like Facebook and Twitter is huge to say the least, they still haven’t found a solid way to generate the kind of revenues that Google did with their Adwords network. While Facebook has been somewhat successful in capitalizing the advertisement model, there seems to be a raging debate whether it should or shouldn’t charge individual users and companies with groups/ fan pages for using Facebook. Just a couple of days back a cousin of mine cribbed that she is going to stop using Facebook cause they’re now going to charge users and I said that I hadn’t heard anything to that effect.

Co-incidentally, Ning, the white label social networking company has announced three new pricing options. According to CNNMoney starting July 1, administrators of Ning’s 300,000 social networks will have 30 days to start paying up or find another place to congregate on the web.

Not surprisingly many have started complaining and as theCNNMoney article says, “they complain, the site lured them with the promise of a free experience and then broke trust by introducing the charges”.

As an entrepreneur and a CEO, I certainly understand Jason Rosenthal’s dilemma to turn the company profitable. At the end of the day it is the bottom line that matters. However, as someone familiar with the social networks, I personally feel that for Ning, which isn’t as popular as Facebook or Twitter, switching to a paid model out of a blue is certainly going to lead to some adverse publicity if not a outright boycott from its existing users.

At the end of the day though, it seems like the free days for users of social networks are coming to an end, as investors, looking to make a profit from their investments, increasingly start asking tough questions to managements before doling out more cash and funding more freebies for users who seem to spend a lot of time but are not willing to spend too much money on these networks.

I think it makes sense to drive traffic from the Facebook ad. campaign to a Facebook page where you can get them to sign up rather than to a website that will hard sell a product. My logic for this – A Facebook user is casually surfing and networking and is not actively scouting around for a product or service like a search engine user that we can target through SEO or PPC campaigns. So he or she is still in the nascent stages of the buying cycle. Keeping this in perspective, “Get them interested and keep them informed should be the mantra”!!!

We’ve heard about Bushisms, but has anyone ever thought of Googlisms?

I was interviewing someone for a job, and she mentioned that Google says the CEO of Yahoo is Terry Semel. Well, whatever happened to Carol Bartz. I asked her if she was sure that she had used Google to search and not Yahoo (!), and she replied in the affirmative.

I decided to search on Google and guess what… searching for “Yahoo CEO” does infact pull up a result, which says Yahoo! – Ceo: Terry Semel.

Google search result for

Try one more. Search for “which is the biggest search engine”. What do you expect? “Google” Well, the first result it shows is Cuil

Google results for

Let us know if you find some more Googlisms

The barbaric acts carried out on the 26th of November shocked and stunned not just Mumbai or India but the world. Terror struck at the icons of Indian heritage… some of the most famous location in Mumbai… the CST, The Taj and The Oberoi. A nation was held to ransom by 10 insane extremists who belong to no nation, no religion and no race. Just 10 highly motivated and brain washed terrorists whose only job was to kill.

There will be several questions raised in the aftermath of this horrible attack and hopefully the officials will react to ensure that this does not happen ever again. I don’t want to go down that path and be a part of blaming anyone. I just hope our government has learnt it’s lesson and will react the way it should, before we lose any more innocent lives to this menace.

All I want to say is, as a Mumbaikar, I urge each and every person to go on with their life and not get cowered down by a handful of terrorists. Be vigilant… You owe that to your loved ones… but don’t change the way you live… You owe that to this wounded city.

I think I speak for everyone in this city when I assure the world that Mumbai will bounce back!

This one is a long overdue post. I have been meaning to write it since months (may be even years ) but never actually got down to it.
People who know me will tell you the amount of time I spend every day in office. It isn’t just me. Everyone around here has long days.

But ask anyone here about life at Convonix and they’ll say that it is all fun. We’re very serious about our work and our deadlines… but we never forget to party… be it weekly dinners, birthdays, our special biryani parties (a big thanks to the chef at Delhi Darbar for the awesome biryani that he makes) and off course our frequent out of town brain storming weekends.

To the people who want to join us (you can apply here!!!) – Every Convonite will tell you that the Convonix culture, formed through an amalgamation of people from different backgrounds, is special. Team spirit, responsibilities and hard work are a way of life here. But, once you blend in, you will find that the line between work and fun has disappeared.

Below are pictures of some of the fun things that we do every day (Finally…).

Everyone has heard about “The World Is Flat”. I was recently watching the author of the book, Thomas Friedman, give a keynote address which was being broadcast on CNBC. The program was aptly titled, “The World Is STILL Flat”.
It was an interesting lecture, but there were 2 points that clearly stuck on -

1 – He said that the date August 9, 1995 should be etched in History. Why? Because this is the day a small technology company called Netscape went public and triggered the dot com boom. Their simple little point, click and surf browser coupled with the tons of optical fiber laid by companies instantly brought Bangalore, Beijing and America closer. It made us all neighbors!!!

2 – In a flat world anything will be done, either it will be done by u or to you.

We all know about the first point. However, it’s the second point that I feel is so true. Today, the barrier for entry to most business is much lower than it ever was… and if one can dream it… he can do it. And if he doesn’t, someone else surely will!!!

The internet has made it simple for people to copy content… but search engines like Google and sites like copyscape have made it even simpler to find these guys. The question once you find them is whether you want to go through the trouble of getting them off the search engines or the internet.

Personally, like every other person who spends time thinking and coming up with original content, I hate people copying stuff from our site. However, a sentence or 2 here or there is something I tend to ignore. However, there are a quite a few folks out there who have copied entire paragraphs of content. There are a few who have copied our entire pages, including references to our inhouse web analytics tool, Hitstatz. I wonder how they can call themselves genuine business practicing ethical SEO.

While I don’t want to mention all the sites that have copied our stuff here, I have to mention this one guy – http://www.magicinfomedia.com/search-engine-optimization-india.html.

This guy has copied our entire front page, including screenshots of Hitstatz reports and has the audacity to refer to this image as a screenshot of their inhouse analytics application. I would love to meet this guy and ask him to prove that he has developed an inhouse analytics application that produces reports that look like that picture.

I sincerely pray and hope that people, who want to do business, understand that setting up an online business is hard work and you cannot just copy original content written by other people if you want to genuinely grow and survive in the longer term.

This category is the result of me feeling really guilty for not updating my personal blog for months now… There is just no time, or I guess I am just too lazy to blog after a 14 hour workday. So I thought… why not have a small section right here on the Convonix Blog?

Khopcha is a local Mumbai slang for corner and off course its also the name of my first site (years before Convonix was formed) on a paid server, khopcha.com – A teens portal that was established by a group of schoolmates and run with virtually no money in our pockets ;).

So everything mentioned in this section is just my personal view and may not necessarily reflect the view of Convonix Inc or its employees .

Vishal.