Before you start reaching out to premier tech sites about coverage for your startup, clarify your immediate goals for the PR exercise:

• Are you at the stage where your internal team is finished with its dogfooding and now are looking for more users to alpha-test your service?
• Are you done with alpha-testing and looking to expand your userbase for a wider beta-test to test capacity planning and gather more real-world feedback?
• Do you have a 100k+ userbase and are looking for VC funding?

Different requirements need different PR strategies.

Social Media

A website, a blog, a Facebook Page and a Twitter account can be your first PR step to expand from internal dogfooding to limited alpha-testing. Some startups expand even more to a wider beta test using just social media.

Spread word of mouth through social media, and you will find there are many tech enthusiasts, early adopters, and influencers out there willing to try out anything new. Early adopters and influencers often give you early feedback that is critical to aligning your product to actual user needs, and this is best done before you think of PR.

At the same time, your social media presence should adequately and appropriately respond to all user feedback. Whether it is the Twitter mentions, Facebook comments or comments on your blog posts, each and every one is a potential influencer and you should be there to listen and respond.

Technology Blogs Focused On India

For reaching a wider userbase for expanded beta-testing, you can reach out to quite a few tech blogs that cover Indian startups. It is better to do this on your own, without any need for a PR agency. Here are some blogs that are interested in covering Indian startups:

• NextBigWhat – focused on Indian startups, ecosystem, etc.
• YourStory.in – dedicated to Indian startups
• MediaNama – features many Indian tech startups
• Tech In Asia – covers Asian startups, with a dedicated section to India
• The Next Web – also has a dedicated India section
• StartupCentral – focused on Indian startups
• TechPP.com
• TechSplurge.com

Once you get such coverage, you will probably need a dedicated person to handle your social media presence, which remains a priority.

Premier Tech Blogs

When you are ready to expand full-steam and are looking for the best online coverage out there, you need to be featured on TechCrunch, Mashable, etc. For some tips on this, read this Quora thread.

General Tips

• Develop relationships with bloggers & journalists who cover your space. Read Chris Dixon’s tips for interacting with press. You should be following journalists, bloggers, investors, VCs, editors on Twitter and participate in the conversation.
• Plan PR for major events in your lifecycle – Beta Testing, Series A, and so on.
• Do you need / should you hire an external PR firm? Here are some good benchmarks from Mahesh Murthy to consider when making that vital decision.

Other Resources

• Mark Suster’s PR Tips for Startups is a great resource.
• How To Get Media Coverage For Your Startup: A Complete Guide is an excellent guide.
• NASSCOM for Startups is a well-rounded support system for all startups; has its own guide to PR & Marketing
• You should be reading Techmeme every day.
• You should be reading Hacker News. Duh.
• Startup Saturday can be a good forum for exchanging PR strategies/ideas/feedback
• Apply for TechSparks – a large startup-discovery platform across India
• Demo your startup at UnPlugged
• MoneyControl SME Mentor – decent overall resource for entrepreneurs

I hope this post helps Indian entrepreneurs in their marketing efforts. There is no short-cut to PR, it is a time-intensive effort that takes a lot of planning and effort.

If you are in a profession where you facilitate PR for startups and would like to be mentioned/listed here, please leave a comment and I will do the needful after review.

Oh and by the way, Techmeme is not a content-producer, but an aggregator. Techmeme doesn’t cover all the startups that are covered by the premier tech blogs, either.

Nokia Lumia 920 Handset

With many excellent in-depth reviews online, there is no need for me to delve deeply here.

• Excellent display, great camera, is fast and responsive. Everything you would expect from a flagship smartphone.
• Not very happy with battery life. I had expected slightly longer life, when using with WiFi & 3G. But the Battery Saver feature is great and alleviates any serious concerns.
• I will not recommend the 920 for anyone with small hands. It can get tough using with one hand and reaching all parts of the screen.

Sample Photos with Lumia 920

Windows Phone 8

I am in love with WP8. The approach to WP8 is fresh and innovative, a completely different experience than both iOS and Android which both feel more alike than different once you switch to WP8. The tile based home screen is thoroughly customizable. The iOS6 interface on my iPad now feels stale. There is no equivalent in iOS/Android of the sizing capability of live tiles. The home screen is prime real estate in any smartphone and the ability to size tiles according to your needs feels like WP8 really values your preferences.

I do not miss a centralized notification center some have discussed. Because I am an atypical smartphone user, I have not missed any apps in WP8. My basic social networking, navigation, kids gaming and other such needs are more than adequately fulfilled.

Outlook.com vs Gmail

I am very happy with Outlook.com. My Gmail has become virtually unusable because 70% of it is intended for other people, that gets delivered to me thanks to Gmail’s policies. I cannot even filter such emails because many of them are from service providers, banks, utilities, etc. that I myself also use. A unique, great feature of Outlook.com is the ability to create aliases. Now, I use a different alias when signing up for new social sites, a different alias for my finance related matters, a different one for online e-commerce and so on. This enhances my overall email management as my “true” email address is almost never shared with any site. If any of these aliases starts receiving spam, it will help me identify the rogue and also help take corrective action easily.

SkyDrive Integration

This is the star jewel of the Microsoft ecosystem. It just works smoothly, in the background. I have access to my photos, videos, documents on my phone, desktops & laptop, iPad, etc. anywhere, all the time. Just as an example, the ability to view and update an Excel sheet of some financial estimates while on the road has been a life-saver.

Thanks to being an early adopter, I have 25GB of free SkyDrive space, and have never needed to use DropBox.

Search

I miss Google search on the phone. I am not impressed with Bing search so far. I am not sure if this is because Google knows me for a long time and delivers personalized results that it knows are more relevant to me, something that Bing may eventually do after some time.

Maps

I was blown away by Nokia’s maps and turn-by-turn voice navigation in my 2nd-tier city of Pune, India. They’ve worked exceedingly well, every single time, and I think they are actually better than Google Maps.

PC Integration

Moving photos, videos, documents between PCs and my phone has never been easier. SkyDrive fulfills most needs, and even without it, the process of importing or transferring media and documents between PCs and the phone has never been easier.

Summary

Apart from Google Search, I am happy with my switch to Windows Phone. So much, that my better half now has a Lumia 620 of her own! But, as I always say, looking for the ‘perfect’ smartphone is like searching for the ‘perfect’ better half. Everyone’s needs are different so what satisfies me may not necessarily be right for you. I hope this post gives an idea of some of strengths and weaknesses of Windows Phone.

As social networks like Facebook try to increase the density of their social graph, they risk crossing the boundaries of irrelevance. Social graphs have an innate limit offline; attempts to expand it online beyond certain human interest levels will irretrievably deteriorate the online experience. I believe that is what is happening in the case of Facebook.

Facebook promotes itself as the platform to connect with everything and anybody you know, anything you liked in the past, anyone you just met, something you liked in your teenage years, folks you knew in your school years, passions you developed as part of growing up, all of your ex-colleagues from all of the different jobs in your career, music, movies, and books which not only you like, but everyone you are connected to you as “Friends” like, not only what all of your relatives like but their friends too, which of your friends are where at this moment in time, what someone is listening to, what someone is reading and so on and so forth.

In short, Facebook promotes itself as a platform to get “connected” to everything that has ever been or is at present, not only a part of your life but also what is a part of all of your “Friends” (while the concept of  ”Friends” is extended to not only past long ago friends, colleagues who were never friends, friends of friends, etc.).

The end result is a cacophony of infinite proportions, more harsh than the dissonance in Stravinsky’s  The Rite of the Spring. In its quest to become an inseparable part of your existence, Facebook risks becoming like the air we breathe – everything to everyone, yet not a single memorable thing to anyone. In my case, what it led to is a complete disillusionment.

What are the best means for such social networks to regain a high engagement level? That is the holy grail of online networking – a harmonious marriage of social (personal + professional) and interest graphs. We do not even know whether this holy grail exists, or can ever exist, as one and only one network – it may very well exist as a multiplicity of networks.

LinkedIn knows it has captured the core of the professional network and we observe it remains within its focus area, unlike Facebook that seems to spread like a weed. Facebook’s ambitions, without focus, loom toward irrelevance and are a danger to itself.

Everyone has different ways of using Facebook and neither one of them is right or wrong. I just had to decide how I am going to use Facebook, in the way it makes it useful for me. Thus, I ended up with this process:

• If not recently added,
• If not a blood-relative,
• If ex-colleague connected on LinkedIn but not a personal friend,
• If never met in real life or never want to meet in real life in the future,
• If “See Friendship” shows no other interactions besides “Happy Birthday” for over 3 years,
• If profile and timeline photos do not include a single personal photo,
• Unfriend.

This is a human process, so the algorithmic AND/OR are unnecessary. It seems to work so far, I am already down to <400.

To begin with, why not the iPhone 5? I already use iOS 6 on my iPad where I can enjoy the flowers in the garden. If I can have the best of multiple worlds, why not? For purposes of this post, I am contrasting the LG Nexus 4 with the Nokia Lumia 920 as they are the newest flagship phones on the two platforms. Lastly, this is the first time I am writing about gadgets on this blog or anywhere, so mea culpa for any errors!

Philosophy & Requirements

I prefer to own my core data – documents, contacts, music, photos, etc. – so that I can choose to use it in any different service as and when I like. This is not always possible, but I try and hence I’ve primarily stuck to Google or local storage. I use Gmail (separate personal & professional GApps), Google Search, Chrome, Google Reader. I also have my music library in Google Music, which is locally in an iTunes-format library.

I use a Windows 8 desktop PC, use MS Office on it for all my documents, have 25GB of unused SkyDrive, will likely get an XBox after some months. My iPad has my eBook collection, and usage is mostly restricted to reading, gaming, and other fun/education/reference apps. I am also in the process of setting up a 7.1 home theatre, for which I am choosing a Marantz that would be both AirPlay as well as DLNA compatible, besides a DLNA-compatible AC Ryan PlayOn HD media box.

I spend all my weekdays online, working from home, on my PC. I spend time away from home only on weekends, when I like to be and largely am, offline. Holiday travel is few times a year. Thus my atypical smartphone requirements, in order of priority, are:

• Voice calls and text (70% of which are spam)
• Basic email & social networking
• Unified cloud-based contact management
• Good, easy-to-use camera, selectively share photos to Facebook, Twitter, Google+
• Navigation when I’m on the road
• Easy, cloud-based note-taking
• Kid-friendly
• Stream photos/music to home theater / act as remote control
• Cloud access to key documents
• Expect good usage for at least 3-4 years with latest updates

Pros & Cons of Android / Windows Phone 8

After remaining stuck with Android 2.2 on my HTC Hero, the latest Jelly Bean on the Nexus 4 is very enticing indeed. A quick summary of Android advantages

• My comfort factor with Android, especially the tight integration with all of Google
• Extreme Customization (I love being able to tinker with different ROMs), keyboards, backgrounds, etc.
• Number of apps (Besides all the popular apps, I need apps to block/identify spam calls/texts)
• Google Now, new Camera app, Photo Sphere

Given these, why am I considering Windows Phone 8? I am an early-adopter who likes to try new things.

• Live Tiles, People Hub, etc. are a whole new perspective different from the app-centric model of iOS/Android and I’m enticed
• Better integration with my Windows 8 PC, and future XBox
• Better integration my Office Documents, better usage of SkyDrive across PC & phone, and OneNote
• Kid-friendly. My 6 yr old plays a lot with my iPad but never with my Android without supervision.
• 60% of my Gmail is spam, and it is getting increasingly difficult to control spam in Gmail
• I can use Outlook email with both my phone & my Win 8 PC
• Use new cloud-based contact management system integrated with Email, Facebook, Phone Numbers, Twitter, and Gmail (at least so far)

Nexus 4 vs. Lumia 920 and Regional Factors

• LTE support is largely irrelevant in India
• Google/LG support in India is largely unproven, while though Nokia has huge base in India, Microsoft hasn’t rolled out WP8 updates as quickly
• Nexus 4 not yet launched in India, worldwide availability issues, Lumia 920 launched officially in India
• Storage on Nexus 4 is 16 GB vs. 32 GB on Lumia 920 (neither support external storage)
• Nexus 4 has DLNA, Lumia 920 to get a DLNA app in future
• Nexus 4 is light, Lumia 920 is a monster
• Nexus 4 expected to be cheaper than Lumia 920
• Both have Cameras that have few pros and few cons in overall performance & usability so it’s a non-factor
• Navigation with Google Maps & Nokia Drive excellent on both so it’s a non-factor

Have I missed anything important?

Windows Phone 8 Adoption Hurdles

Mainstream Indian reviews advise against it, especially the software. There is a price to pay for being an early adopter, but almost every long-term user of Windows Phone 8 I have interacted with is passionate about it. In shifting from a Google-centric Android universe to Windows Phone 8, here are the challenges I will face:

• Updating my new personal Outlook address on all 3rd party sites and services that are important (this is one-time, but a very big deal)
• Painstakingly organizing my new contact hub in the Windows world
• Miss the excellent universal Notification Center in Android
• Hunt for replacement apps where possible, live without one if there isn’t any
• Relinquish my history and personalized maps with Google, make a fresh start with Nokia
• Import/Integrate my local music library with that of Windows 8 and Windows Phone 8
• Pay a high price for a heavy-weight monster of a phone
• No support for multiple Twitter accounts in People Hub
• Lose patience waiting for latest updates (also somewhat true of Android in India)

Any items I have missed?

Summary

I have not committed myself either way at present. This post was a starting point to organize my thoughts on the subject. Also, regional factors are sometimes critically important while choosing a gadget, something you don’t find in the US-based top gadget site reviews, which entails one to evaluate relevant factors oneself. There may be other Indian early-adopters considering a similar switch, for whom I hope that this post would be useful.

Seem familiar? Such observations have become commonplace and pervasive across networks. I find their inherent disparity quite fascinating.

A social network is not the same for everyone by definition, because your experience of it is dependent on who you are connecting with on that network. Is our experience of a social network it’s defining characteristic? No.

Why then do we characterize social networks in such broad brush strokes when what we are really characterizing is the people who we, by our own choice, are connecting with on that network?

All social networks use some kind of relevance algorithms to try to engage us in what may interest us the most. These algorithms are just that – algorithms, not humans. The lesser we use any network, the lesser we choose whom to connect with or not on that network, the lesser we configure it to our preference, the lesser it’s algorithm knows what we are really interested in, and the more it becomes irrelevant and useless to us. And then we are disillusioned with it.

I have repeatedly succumbed to this mode of thinking. What ensues is that I continue to stick with the networks I find most interesting and comfortable, reducing my participation in other networks. What is the end result? There are passionate and thriving communities on several networks, but I engage in only a handful of them. I do not gain anything by deriding those other networks, I only lose.

I realized that I can rediscover the beauty and diversity of the social web if I let go of this handicap.

Rethink/Tips

Here are some tips that I found helped me:

• Continuously update who I’m following on all networks. Laziness in curating my social graph leads to irrelevance. This also includes actively finding new people to follow.
• Don’t be negative. Unless I’m an opinionated tech blogger focused on page views and committed to supporting one company while deriding other companies, I’ve got nothing to lose by engaging on social platforms created by various companies. Whether I prefer iOS devices or Android ones has got nothing to do with what I think of Google Plus. If I think Google is evil and out to destroy my privacy, I should not be on Facebook either and probably not on any other social network.
• Blogging is dead. Nobody comments on my blog posts, so I’m quitting blogging because blogging is dead. Rethink. Disqus had 500 million unique visitors last year, 35 million of whom are actively engaging in comments on blogs. Disqus is a social network in itself.
• When I am disenchanted about what my chosen friends share, it is not a problem of the social network, this is just how people are, and maybe I need to introspect about my expectations of people. Do I really wish people to “slot” what they share on public social networks in defined categories? If so, I’m not being realistic.
• The next time you’re about to say “XYZ <the social network of your choice> has lately become <adjective of your choice>, instead say, XYZ has become <same adjective> to me, because <results from your introspection here>.
• Own your data. This is extremely vital and unfortunately, not possible in some cases. Companies and their online platforms rise and fall, and your precious data goes down the drain along with them. Keep copies of your blog posts, photos, reviews, tweets, videos, comments, and everything else. Blogger/Facebook Timeline/GoodReads/Flickr/Twitter/Instagram/Pinterest/etc. are here today, but none may exist 30 years from now. Liberate your data from the chains of these services so that your precious data remains portable. Act now to avoid disillusionment later.

Conclusion

From Paul Sawyers at The Next Web:

Social networks only work when people use the same ones. In other words, they naturally lend themselves to being monopolized…The Internet isn’t a monopoly though. It’s an oligopoly consisting of multiple monopolies.

It is for us to choose whether we allow ourselves to get victimized by a monopoly or choose to enjoy the oligopoly.

It is a conflict that needs deeper study.

Even in our real lives, we struggle to understand our real self. This illustrates the situation pretty well:

(I am not sure where this abstraction comes from – Carl Rogers comes close)

In essence, we are neither who we think we are, nor are we what others think we are. Our real “self” is embedded in some shadow. Discovering this – our “real self” – is the magic that has spawned generations of godmen and mystics. This quest for the search of our true “identity” has continued for centuries.

What happens when you introduce the online world? This:

The quest for identity has gotten much, much more difficult thanks to the Internet. We are no longer just real human beings living in real lives, visible to sound, sight, and touch – we are now a Twitter persona, a Facebook persona, a Google Plus persona, and so on.

These online accounts are identities in themselves. Whether one chooses to associate these online identities with one’s real identity is an individual’s choice. (There are over 7 billion people on this planet.) But many do, and when they do, there is possibility of conflict. Online and Offline collide in ways one had never thought of before. Yes, they often do, just like this.

How does it look when your online persona is very different from what you really are?

The more different you are online than in your real life, the more stress you feel.

Some people are true to themselves to such an extent that their real life identities match closely with their online identities.

These are folks who experience harmony, with their digital and real self entwined together.

Another way to think about this:

No wonder millions of people are trying to solve the puzzle.

I am not offering any solution to the possible conflicts, merely trying to gain some insight. Please do share your thoughts in comments!

‘Social’ Networks

Spend time on any general purpose social network today, and you’re bound to discover not a simple apathy, but a healthy disdain & contempt for other ‘social’ networks. There are communities & groups on each, who share & rejoice in the ridiculing of other networks. It would not be a problem if the ridicule & the disdain were targeted only at the individual companies behind these networks, the issue is that it is being targeted towards users.

People are now forming opinions about each other depending on whether they’re primarily using Facebook or Google Plus or Twitter for their social networking and whether they’re on a network or not. Are you checking-in on Foursquare? Are you sharing pictures of our meeting on Instagram? The scenario of a date or prospective couples meeting only to discover one of them isn’t on Twitter and hence having a negative influence isn’t an imaginary future, it’s a reality today.

Is this what it means to be social? When we judge people, and this is becoming more & more common & widespread, we are being the exact opposite.

‘Smart’ Phones

Instead of the phone simply being used to communicate, phone ecosystems have become organized religion. There are evangelists (fanatics) who not only vigorously defend their platform of choice, but wage war on those who choose another. When the vitriol reaches the level of death threats, one wonders who is being ‘smart’ in this whole affair. Using a smartphone doesn’t make one smart, it makes the company’s marketing smart.

Look at how stats are being published on whether iPhone or Android users are more likely to have sex on the first date. If you think these are just blogs eyeing page views, think again. There are companies behind these stats, out there because there exists a market for them. It is real.

When one meets a person in real life today, one of the Frequently Asked First Questions is about which smartphone you use. Several judgements & conclusions follow, though they may not be expressed explicitly. If you reside on different continents of the ecosystem, a real distance is created.

The continents of these different ecosystems belong to different companies and are drifting further and further apart. These tectonic shifts are getting worse. Remember what a phone was invented for? Now, these ‘smart’ phones are creating islands of communities hostile to each other. Instead of communicating, they’re distancing many people.

You

Facebook is a 800 million strong social network. Yet, as a public company, it has opted for the “controlled company exemption”‘, retaining 57% voting control to a single individual. Google has compromised on its flagship successful product, to promote its own rival social network. Twitter has decided to accede to governments, opting for a country-specific censorship policy, with Google following in its toes, with Blogger. The ‘Universal’ in URL is lost forever.

The question is, are you being really social? Are you really smart? If you were you would agree that both the Internet and humanism in general are suffering, thanks to a few companies.

As a heavy user of Google Reader, I have mixed responses to this announcement.

Positives

• Google Reader will finally get a much-needed UI revamp. I suspect removing the native social follower-model within Google Reader will make it much faster.
• Sharing from Google Reader to Google Plus will be much easier. I can quickly share an item from my Google Reader to my “Tech Enthusiasts” circle on Google Plus.
• No way to get an RSS feed of your Google Reader shares. Many people use this RSS feed for auto-posting shares on their WordPress/Blogger/Tumblr blogs, in addition to Twitter. Of these, Twitter is where the most noise is generated by this auto-posting. I have written about this in great detail before.

Negatives

• No way to follow a highly-curated tech-focused feed of other Google Reader enthusiasts. As a passionate Reader enthusiast who stays on top of tech news all day, my feelings about missing this feed is well expressed by Sarah on TechCrunch.

Understanding the Root Problem

My Google Reader shared feed is a tech-focused feed and nothing else. My Google Plus feed, however, is a mix of personal photos, personal blog posts, shares as a father about my daughter, etc. Where will my Google Reader followers get my tech-focused feed now? No, Google Circles doesn’t solve the problem.

The reason I have this tech-focused blog, and keep a separate personal blog (where I’m currently writing about Western Classical Music appreciation) is that readers of this blog expect to read tech-focused posts, while friends who know me personally enjoy reading my personal blog too. I do not pollute my own Google Reader shared items with my own personal blog posts.

The reason I have two separate Twitter accounts is for the same reason. @ScepticGeek is well-known as a tech expert, while people who either know me in real life or are interested in my other non-tech interests follow @Palsule. Different people even call me in real-life either as “Mahendra” or “ScepticGeek”.

Identity and Personas

Both Google and Facebook are now forcing me to be myself with all my varied interests in all my sharing and engagement on those networks. Twitter allows me to be two different persona. This is a crucial difference, recently described best by Chris Poole, nicely summarized by Tim Carmody here. The money quote:

Both Google+ (with Circles) and Facebook (with Smart Lists) misunderstand the core problem of online identity: It’s not only about who you’re sharing with, but how you represent yourself. “It’s not who you share with, but who you share as.”

On Google Reader I am @ScepticGeek, on Facebook I am @Palsule, on Twitter I can be both, and now I wonder what I am supposed to be on Google Plus.

The Future: Focus on Interest Graph

Does this mean Google Plus necessarily becomes a place of incongruous, irrelevant shares? No. What we need is better filters for relevance. I have written before about how Quora complements the Social Graph with an Interest Graph for greater relevance as well as serendipity. As a general-purpose social network, Google Plus needs to do more.

We need to be quickly able to filter the Google Plus feed by source – Google Reader, Photos, YouTube, etc. Google needs to invent a way to auto-tag/auto-classify Google Plus posts such that I can view a feed of tech news, personal photos, humor, photography, etc. using a simple UI filter.

This problem is understood by Bill Gross, who started Chime.in as a way to “Follow a Part of a Person”, the idea being that you can follow both @ScepticGeek and @Palsule on the same network, and depending on your interests, you will auto-magically see only the shares you are interested in. But with the likes of Google and Facebook in the race for dominance of the social web, it is unclear whether new startups focusing exclusively on this problem stand a chance.

Do you know who is already capitalizing on this problem and is hugely successful? Tumblr. Most people use Tumblr by sticking to a specific area of interest, and the social network makes it easy to follow others sharing your interests. With 850 million Facebook users, 50 million Google Plus users, why are there almost 30 million Tumble blogs out there with over 10 billion posts? I suspect it is because neither Facebook, nor Google Plus are an interest-based social network like Tumblr. The future war of the social web hinges on who better creates the most relevant experience for users.