It tries to give answers to some of the interesting questions like:

1. To what social media sites do business people turn when seeking the information they need to do their jobs on a day-to-day basis? And what are they looking for?
2. What do people consider to be the most useful social media resources for business information (and, therefore, the most valuable social media sites on which B2B companies should participate in order to reach their target audience)?
3. What are the most popular types of social media initiatives among B2B companies, and is the impact of these initiatives visible in business results?
4. How do B2B companies judge social media success?

Its free to download, but registration required.

This article made some rounds/buzz in the circle as people around suddenly thought they now know a proven way of not investing in/for these geographical location, or even throttling out users.

I wonder why would you not want your users to use your service?? After all users are using your services in legitimate legal way! They did not hacked away your bandwidth, but using the content you wanted your users to watch.

Issue here is with the business model you have chosen and NOT with user base of a specific geographic location. There can be nothing better if you have a shop and you have customers lined outside., but my friends You can’t sell same thing to everyone in same way. You should know how to monetize your content.

As Ram Charan points out in one of his videos, you would need to think like a shopkeeper around the corner.

Another example I want to quote is of Twitter. Very famous, useful ( atleast for some) millions of users, revnues??? They may have some money making plans..but? On other hand look at another service SMS Gup Shup which is famous, useful ( atleast for some), around 20 million users, and revenue=$150,000 USD and expecting break even in couple of months. Importantly, GupShup is on the way to make profits by ‘selling’ to people in the same geographies.

World seems to have changed a lot, thanks to internet.

I found this interesting site today http://academicearth.org/ thanks to TechCrunch, which hosts loads of free to watch video lectures from subject matter experts. Astronomy, Engineering, Computer Science, Political Science..you name it.

Its such a great resource for faculties. Its a great resource tool for them to explain concepts. Just grab that not so much used auditorium and play these videos.

Sounds fun and productive.

• Very famous blog post by Steven Sinofsky on ‘PM at Microsoft’
• A recent Blog post from Joel Spolsky on  ‘How to be a program manager’

Do you think you can be a Program Manager? What other companies have roles like this?

The Future Of Music And Media from Plugg Conference on Vimeo.

I believe every  few centuries, there might be changes like this, which is more related to cultural shift rather than just technological advancements. Whatever it be, this paradigm shift is bringing in huge challenges to the established conventional players but is definitely bringing up huge opportunities. Some of them are:

1. Optimizing data delivery network.
2. Digitization of content.
3. More contents need more tools to filter it out.
4. More contents means way to get Contextual content.
5. Opening up existing contents.
6. Implementing new business model and execution.

What do you think about this change?

I watched Academy award LIVE on TV and I am really happy to see Indian faces other side of the stage.

Congratulations to Rehman, Gulzar & Resul Pookutty won a Sound Mixing Oscar. You have got what you deserved.

Unfortunately, they are getting the award for the work which I personally think is not even close to what they have delivered in the past. Roja, DilSe, Bombay and many more in regional language.

Slumdog was a high-tide which made these little boats ( read as work) touch the sky ( read as limelight).

Nonetheless I am sure this is a stone set and would provide a gateway for artists, technicians and all others who are associated with movie industry in India.

Update: My friend Kavya, pointed me that I missed to congrats Resul. Sorry Resul. I am adding you now.

I will be following up on email to explain the issue I have faced. I have already figured out answers to my previous query but this might help when I or someone else gets into similar situation again.

Never thought that corporation of this big size do not understand how to provide support or probably they do not care.

Example 2: Call in AT&T Customer support. As always your wait time would be around 30-45 minutes. Call them towards the end of day and wait for your turn to get connected to agent. You will hear message meant something like ‘you are esteemed customer, please be in queue, someone be with you shortly’ wait for patiently as it might take 70-80 minutes. Suddenly they would prompt you that we should call back again as we have called the customer support after normal office hours<sigh>.

Why did they made me wait for 80 minutes on call then?

You must watch this video interview for two reasons:

1. They way video has been hyperlinked within itself to browse through the talk.
2. Actual talk from Eric, who speaks in general about innovation, management, future challenges and more.

Like Job Security or Large Job Cuts. Jet Airlines recently announced to lay off 800 employees. I am sure there are more in same queue given that it might take 2-3 years economies to recover from global meltdown. Some of the top IT companies in India has already decided  NOT to do annual increment for their employees.

What would employees do in this situation? Look for job, increase their network. Networking sites like LinkedIn has posted increase in their usage:

You must be thinking what it has to do with Startup, as LinkedIn is not the one. When you start a startup in bad economies:

1. You get human resource cheaper than what you would get in the booming economy days.
2. Your business proposal will get vetted much more minutely. While a good review does not guarantees (which attribute does??) it but it would make founders think harder and plan more wiser.
3. Less competition. Not all dare to start startup in economic stability ( ignoring the fact that tumbling stock markets is not the single most factors in the success/failure of the startups)

Starting a business may still seems like a good idea when economy is good, but that does not guarantees anything. So, when nothing seems to be guaranteed in this world, why not just take plunge without fearing about share market.