Corridor Conversations

The ‘DNA’ of a Young Entrepreneur

jamshedwadia@hotmail.com (Jamshed Wadia) — Tue, 13 Oct 2009 15:22:00 +0000

I recently had the privilege to interview a young budding entrepreneur on behalf of City News, an exciting local news portal where I volunteer whenever I am given the opportunity to. The young entrepreneur was none other than Mr. Suhas Gopinath who has earned the unique distinction of being the world's youngest CEO; he started his software company at age 14 and has since then become one of the most remarkable success stories of teenage entrepreneurship. He was invited here to Singapore as a guest at the recently concluded ‘Global Social innovators Forum ’09’.

Suhas Gopinath is now 23 and runs a world-class business with over 600+ employees. His company Globals Inc had a modest beginning when he founded it from an Internet café in that he frequented in his neighborhood in the IT city of Bangalore, India. As Indian laws did not permit him to start a company, he was forced to register the company at San Jose, California in 2000. At age of 16 when most other teenagers are busy with things like studies, movies, music, friends and games, Suhas was already recognized as the world's youngest CEO by the world media including BBC, Washington Times and the Limca Book of Records. Today, Globals Inc operations are global with representation in at least 11 countries and offering services to more than 200 clients world-wide. With the average employee age being 25 years this young software company seems positioned to pull off the next big corporate success story.

You can read the interview on the City News portal here.

I was very keen to meet Suhas because it would a unique opportunity to understand the thought process of a young entrepreneur who has the potential to be the next Bill Gates. It was indeed an inspirational 30 minutes.

Below are some of the thoughts that I walked out of the interview with.

The DNA of a successful entrepreneur

They just Know: Most entrepreneurs deep within their being just know that they born to set up their own Business. It’s a calling that’s planted within and it’s just a matter of time and opportunity when they act on it. In Suhas’s case he acted on it at the age of 14 when we saw a huge business opportunity in the Internet in his frequent visits to the Internet Café.

They are convicted to get there: They have the single minded pursuit to achieve their goals. No matter how hard they need to work and or sacrifices they need to be make they know & they know that the fruits of their labor is worth it. When most teenagers at the age of 14 when most other teenagers are pre-occupied with things like movies, music, friends and games, Suhas was more interested in investing his time learning about setting up an enterprise for the future. His parents had concerns and put pressure on him to revisit his decision but he pursued and eventually they relented after seeing his initial commitment and success.

They see visions of the future: This is one gift that all entrepreneurs are bestowed with. They can visualize the future and think about businesses that are ahead of their time. Suhas knew that the Internet was his vehicle to launch his business and that most future organizations will have biz models that are based on technologies related to the Internet. From having nothing to dreaming up of a business that would one day employ many can only be possible if you can visualize and dream of it.

They stay grounded and humble: This where many falter and fall, so many times we hear of stories of success going to a persons head and sooner or later the plunge happens. Entrepreneur who are in it for the long haul know that being humble and grounded is a virtue to have. Interestingly even after Suhas’s company made its first US $500,000 he continued taking pocket money from his father. He didn’t make any significant changes in his lifestyle but stayed grounded in his vision to build a sustainable business.

They most certainly have role models: Having mentors and role models is the key to successful entrepreneurship. It keeps them focused and they are a constant source of inspiration to keep going. For Suhas it was the story of Bill Gates founding Microsoft that inspired him. Having met Bill Gates in Bangalore was definitely a great milestone for him and he was bowled over by Bill’s simplicity and approachable attitude.

They know how to monetize an idea: All of us once in awhile get business ideas but most of us fizzle out when it comes to translating that idea into an opportunity. Good entrepreneurs know how to take their ideas to the next logical stage that is making it into a viable business model. When i was talking to Suhas i was asking myself how many times have i shot down good ideas that have crossed my head. :(

Being socially aware is a plus: Many entrepreneurs are beginning to see the benefit to pursue businesses that not only have a profit motive but can also address some underlining social issue. For Suhas one of his other motivations to start was to create a platform for the young dropouts and unemployed youth to develop their talents and give them employment opportunities in the technology sector. For him there is nothing more satisfying than having the ability to provide employment opportunities to young deserving people.

To end I would like to pick a sentence from his concluding remarks – “Be adventurous in life and be willing to take risks, take every opportunity to meet new people and learn to operate in new circumstances by getting out of your comfort zone”.

Blogs and Tweets - The million dollar pipe dream

jamshedwadia@hotmail.com (Jamshed Wadia) — Sun, 27 Sep 2009 14:50:00 +0000

Close your eyes and picture this - you on the beautiful island and you are living out your dream life. You live in a house by the beach and your daily routine involves getting massages, getting a nice tan, alcohol at lunch, afternoon siesta’s, expensive dinners and partying with friends. And all this is possible because you have an endless source of income that comes from having a fantastic blog with many readers and a couple of popular twitter & facebook fan page accounts. You content is hot with readers and gets distributed in all big forums. Your followers wait with bated breath for your every update, so that they can hit the tweet and re-tweet button on your posted links. Companies are chasing you to write reviews for their products and tweet their new viral campaigns for a fee. Advertisers on your blog are hitting their payout cap everyday with all the high CTR’s you are generating. The cash is reigning into your bank and you are a social media ‘Rock Star’. Ok now slap yourself a couple of times till you come back to reality.

I know that there are lots of social media and affiliate experts telling people that they have this magic formula to success via social media but most of them are missing a big chunk of the truth. There are no free lunches in life and there are no shortcuts to amassing fortune and fame. First of all any revenue making engine requires a robust business model and then loads of hard work, and achieving this with a personal blog is really tough if not impossible. Pretty pictures and juicy content will only propel you along for awhile but it can’t sustain you for a lifetime. So what’s realistic and what’s not and how much of a career you can make out of blogging and social media.

Let’s start by asking ourselves some basic fundamental questions.

What’s the objective of your blog and social media updates?

Expression: It’s a creative outlet for you to express yourself to the world.
Displaying your talent: You are an artist, musician, actor, fashion model etc and you would like to show case your talent to the world.
Sharing: You like to share your life and experience with your friends and family especially those who are long distance?
Networking & Self Branding: You like to connect with other like minded professionals, entrepreneurs and biz people to share your views and knowledge. You also view it as self-branding opportunities where you get to show-case your experience and knowledge.
Domain Expert: You consider yourself as a domain expert on a particular industry, a job function, or a particular subject. Examples could be domain expert in parenting, life coach, marketing, law, finance etc.
E-commerce: You want to sell your products and services online from your blog.

Your answer to this question and how you establish yourself in the objective category you fit in, will determine how and to what extent you should monetize your blog. Many people start blogging and engage in social media with the objective to make money; it’s like putting the carriage before the horse. You decide on a content objective, establish yourself there and then work on monetization. Also unless you are solely pursuing an e-commerce activity, relying on blogging as your primary source of income is foolish. It has to be a supplementary or secondary income to whatever profession you’re into. There are some star bloggers but they are more of the exceptions than the rule and how long can they sustain their popularity and income from the blog is questionable.

Why would people read my content and updates?

Obliviously you can only make income when you have people visiting your blog, to achieve that your content needs to be compelling and sticky enough to the reader.

Your content needs to be unique and specific, something they don’t get anywhere else.
It has to be more than reporting news and events; it has to give the reader more insights and different angels to the story, just like good journalism.
You need to have offline credentials to back up your insights and knowledge. It could be the number of years of experience, projects handled etc.
You need to be considered by others as a content expert or thought leader in the area that you write about.
Your posts and articles should be referred widely on other blogs and forums as a reference for discussion on those topics.
People need to trust you and your recommendations. You cannot be viewed as too commercial or a total sell out. You can’t sustain a blog solely running on sponsored content.

Your ability to make frequent and consistent quality updates.

Your blog can be a one post wonder or it can be a blog that people consistently keep coming back to. Not only is frequency of content refresh important but also the quality of it as well. Your ability to churn out consistently good content will determine your chances of attracting organizations, advertisers and affiliates to invest in your blog. Good content is a factor of many things such as below.

You use your ongoing professional learning’s and experiences as a source of good and frequent content.
You follow and read other bloggers who write on similar topics and content. You participate and interact with them on their blogs and forums to stimulate discussions and new ideas.
You follow industry/ topic trends online and offline and never shy to share your views and insights on them.
You even co-author your blog with other guest bloggers to bring fresh insight and keep the excitement going.

Its simple as that, ‘content is king’.

Other aesthetic and miscellaneous considerations

Your blog needs to look professional and should be easily readable. Templates should suit the theme of your blog.
Try and link it to your own private domain even if you’re on a free blogging platform like blogger, wordpress, typepad etc.
You should auto feed your blog to portals that carry content about your industry or topics that you blog about.
Index your blog on all major search engines and use your social media profiles to proliferate your new content. You can also create separate social media profiles just to promote your blog. Facebook fan page is an example of one good way of doing this.

In summary don’t get carried away but the million dollar claims of Blogs and Tweets. Be grounded and stick to the basics of quality, consistent and compelling content and connect it with a sound biz model and you will do well.

Channel Events: An affinity exercise or an opportunity to train?

jamshedwadia@hotmail.com (Jamshed Wadia) — Tue, 15 Sep 2009 17:41:00 +0000

Most large to mid size companies that market and sell their products through channel/ dealers would maintain a dealer/ channel meet calendar. It could vary in frequency depending on size of their business contribution and number of channel partners attending as well. Having channel events can have strategic objectives that impact business.

Some of the objectives could be as follows

- It helps the company to get to know their dealers more personally and foster closer relationships.

- It gives them a chance to pamper their partners and make them feel special.

- It’s a platform to give them strategic direction and vision for your business as well as their business.

- It’s a great opportunity to get feedback from key channel representatives on what’s working and what’s not from a product and marketing stand point of view.

- Last but not the least an opportunity to train them on your products or services that they intend to carry.

Though these objectives may seem pretty clear, if you have been long enough in channel sales or channel marketing then you will be aware that achieving a good balance of all these objectives at the channel event is sometimes difficult to pull off. The important question to ask is what proportion of it should be a fun & bonding exercise and how much of it should be preparing them to sell and strategize for the future collectively. The sales managers will always say that all work and no play makes Jack a dull boy but the top management and finance department may think otherwise, either case there are no straight answers to this. Let’s see some of the variables that are important to look at while making that decision.

What is the Industry?

This is an important question as various industries have varying levels of complexity to their products and services. Needless to say the more technical and complicated the more focus on training sessions. Training sessions should be benefit based and not feature based and should have role play and interaction as well. Sometimes getting external trainers can help getting a more unbiased perspective and bring genuine learning to the partners. Training could also include business management topics like cash flow management, retaining talent, marketing innovation etc.

Timing within Product life cycle

Channel meets can be a perfect time to introduce new products and rev up the partners behind a new initiative or strategic goal. It can be a great opportunity to get them ready with all the ammunition they need to go and ramp sales or reach new markets or make new customers.

Company regulations

Some multi-national companies may have financial regulations that prohibit more than a certain proportion of spends to be made on fun/ recreational activities within the event. The other considerations could also be that in an economically depressed environment, extravagance may be construed by customers and outsiders as being insensitive and making a bad use of money.

Who is attending?

Another consideration point would be who from your dealer organization you are inviting for the event. Is it the business owner or top management or the managerial/ sales staff? If you are inviting business owners then having more strategic discussions and fun activities may make sense. You may have various categories of your partners as well that would determine what benefits they are entitled to at the event.

In Summary here are some quick indicators to look at for level of proportion of affinity and training.

More Proportion of Affinity: Biz owners/ senior management, products less complex/ technical, high contribution to biz, highest tier partners, better economic environment.

More Proportion of Training: Mid manager/ Sales, Products and service more complex, mid tier partners, larger number of attendees with more representation from one partner.

Is Porn making a come back via Social Media?

jamshedwadia@hotmail.com (Jamshed Wadia) — Sat, 22 Aug 2009 06:45:00 +0000

Everyone who is associated with Internet marketing probably is aware of the buzz created last year when Porn sites seemed to have lost it's # 1 status to Social networking sites on the Internet. A while back, Bill Tancer, general manager of global research at Hitwise, announced in his book, "Click: What Millions of People are Doing Online and Why It Matters", that porn was no longer the #1 activity on the Internet. According to Bill, porn has been replaced by social networking, but a year later, could the data read a bit different, because i am getting the feeling (i have no data to back it) that Porn is actually making a comeback ironically via Social Networking. And now it's back in an even more dangerous form where it can go undetected and barriers of entry for woman and men who are in economically desperate situations are even lower. If you spend a fair bit of time on the popular social networking sites you will see the mass proliferation of Porn profiles that probably never existed before. And what's even more concerning is that many of the profiles are not large scale aggregators but private individual profiles and sites which could be a one person operation. The last one year of economic meltdown has i think propelled many first timers to experiment with this form of income. For example Twitter, If anyone has an open networking policy on Twitter and use third party tools like auto follow will know that Porn profiles on Twitter seem to have benefited by this, where someone auto follows them without checking them out first. If an open networking strategy is right or wrong is a discussion for another post but it most definitely makes you aware that the Porn industry has learned to improvise their biz model and jump on the social media bandwagon. The Twitter example is just one of them and i am sure there are many more that needs further study and analysis. I believe with this new trend parents will have to be even more vigilant about their kids social networking profiles and check on the friends that their kids are following and interacting with. It would be interesting to see the statistics on how much of Porn related traffic is actually now coming from social media and what size of the social networking profiles are porn related. Any thoughts?

Great example of targeted marketing

jamshedwadia@hotmail.com (Jamshed Wadia) — Sun, 16 Aug 2009 15:57:00 +0000

I happened to have the weekend all by myself so i decided to go over to the video store and get a movie that i could watch at home. I had heard from friends that the movie 'He is not that into you' was really good so i decided to buy it. For those who aren't familiar with the movie; this is a romantic comedy that follows the love lives of a dozen or so characters with its lead character, a young women who attempts to understand the mixed signals she gets from the men she's dating and she gets advice from a bar owner who prides himself on understanding the ins and outs of the dating scene.

So when i open the CD pack to watch the movie to my surprise i find the business card of this local Singapore based organisation called 'Lunch Actually' which is essentially in the business of setting up dates over lunch for its clients. And i think to myself what a brilliant way of reaching out to their target audience. The demographics of the kind of people that would find this movie interesting would be just the right fit for the services they offer. Great thinking at their end.

People Don't Leave Organizations... They Leave Managers

jamshedwadia@hotmail.com (Jamshed Wadia) — Mon, 10 Aug 2009 09:05:00 +0000

It’s common knowledge and backed by research that people don’t leave organizations but people leave managers. Extensive research of exit interviews across organizations cite different reasons for a person leaving, but when you dig deeper, most often than not it has been related to a bad experience with a manager. Of course it would be completely wrong to put the blame on the plate of the managers, but it does help to take some pointers on what issues can potentially raise conflict with your staff. The list below is just some of my personal learning’s after talking to various people in the industry over the years on expectations from their boss. Most often than not most of the cribs I have heard from people center around the points below.

Do you lead from the front and walk the talk?

Remember that almost all the staff watch their bosses on this particular characteristic. They want to know if their boss can lead and show the way and do you they get your hands dirty as well? Many times bosses expect a certain level for quality of work, passion and commitment but don’t project and do the same in their own work. They have different standards for themselves and different for their staff. Don’t treat your staff like donkeys, because they have a brain and they will question this behavior at some point in time. You’re in it as a team and it is still a collective responsibility.

Do you give credit to your team or do you steal credit from your team?

This is a big sore point with staff and can get the frustration levels high up there. Many mangers have the natural inclination to package and pass off their staff work as their own and claim credit. Nothing kills the motivation of a person more than someone stealing his or her credit. We all need appreciation and kudos for the work we do and it’s probably one of the basic expectations that anyone has from their manager. Don’t be insecure and steal the limelight of your staff. The fact that your direct report managed to pull something good off was because you managed them well. It just reflects well on you if your people perform and shine in the organization.

Do you value add or just act like a traffic controller? Are you a yes man/ woman or can you push back and defend the team?

Do you just pass on instructions from your boss to your staff or do you do your bit of analysis and planning before you delegate. Delegation is not bad but delegation without any direction or personal input makes you just an email forwarder. Break down the task in logical steps and delegate it in a balanced way with your team members. The other crib we hear often is that the boss is spineless and doesn’t stick up for the team when they need defending and protection. As a manager you are the guardian of your team and if they are right you need to defend and fight for them and correct perceptions about them.

Do you give your staff visibility to top management without being insecure?

This again relates to your insecurity and lack of self confidence. You need to give adequate chances to your staff to establish their credibility in the organization. If your staff shines in the organization it reflects well on your management style. Getting people to work full steam and their fullest potential is what successful management is about.

Do you encourage career development and rotation or just hold back people for your own selfish reasons?

Many managers keep their staff locked up in routine assignments for too long. Depending on the industry I believe there is a self life for every job and that after a certain period of time learning for the employee stops. In fact keeping a successful employee in the same job for too long can be counter productive. The common excuse we hear from managers is he or she is my best team player and I can’t give them up. Well guess what if you don’t give them up and help them progress to a new level they will leave anyway. If your staff show interest in other departments of the organizations then encourage them and guide them to meet their goals.

Do you give regular feedback or is it always a surprise? And are you honest in your feedback?

The appraisal process in all organizations has their fair share of disgruntle employees who don’t agree with their yearly assessment. The common response you get from staff is that ‘it came as a surprise’ or they heard of this feedback for the first time. The feedback could be genuine but it may be too late in the day for the person to make amends. The manager owes it to their staff to give regular feedback on their progress and behavior. This is not an area to be shy about, remember it’s the employee’s career that is at stake and complete honesty is needed. Give enough heads up to them and document the feedback so that they can to make the necessary changes and avoid surprises.

Do you exercise work life balance and do you encourage staff to do the same? Do you hold any prejudices because of the person’s lifestyle or belief system?

The last tip deals more with your personal beliefs. We all have our views on morality, religion and lifestyle but we have to remember to be fair and professional. You are not in a position to judge a person on personal aspects like lifestyle and anything that’s related to their personal time. How they live their life outside has no correlation with their performance. Only in circumstances when their actions outside are harming the companies reputation or is un-lawful is when intervention is needed. Avoid counseling in personal matters and leave that to company appointed counselors if available or external counselors who have knowledge of that subject. In-spite of all the good intentions it’s best to keep away from their personal matters and focus only on professional mentor-ship and direction.

Lastly just like communication is important in all of our personal relations, I believe it’s the same for boss-reportee relationships. If there is no regular communication these problems can fester and result in the person either leaving the organization or becoming a non-productive worker. So people communicate and talk to your staff and don’t shy away from sticky issues.

The Great Debate: Should Media Owners establish direct relationship with advertisers?

jamshedwadia@hotmail.com (Jamshed Wadia) — Mon, 20 Jul 2009 13:20:00 +0000

An interesting article in the current print edition of ‘Marketing’ piqued my interest this evening. The article was covering a marketing round table discussion between ad agencies, clients and a media owner. The topic of discussion was ‘Are advertisers more inclined to establish direct working relationships with media owners and should media owners by pass agencies in the process? Controversial but interesting topic isn’t it? Of course one can immediately sense a slight conflict of interest in this way of working which in the recent past has gained momentum and with the onset of the online media growth, the partnership between the media owners and clients has even grown stronger. In my personal opinion having been there on the client side i understand why media owners would try and establish relationships with clients. Many media owners are afraid that agencies may not properly understand and represent their value proposition well to the clients. This occur due to various reasons and it could span from a genuine lack of knowledge of the media to special deals they may have with other rival media owners. So the media owners feel the need to properly represent themselves and their products to the client. But no one should have the illusion that media owners can take the place of agencies and completely bypass them. As long as the agency guarantees results for the campaign most of the clients will not question media choice beyond a certain point. Also another point to note is that most campaigns have multiple media vehicles and putting the media plan all together is best done by agencies especially when clients lacks those expertise. More dialogue and transparency between media owners and agencies will make things smoother, where in they both complement each other rather than competing with each other. A good practice would be if media owners could give an heads up to he agencies when they meeting and pitching to their clients that would go a long way in creating an atmosphere of trust and collaboration.

How to get thousands of followers on Twitter?

jamshedwadia@hotmail.com (Jamshed Wadia) — Sun, 19 Jul 2009 13:10:00 +0000

If you don't have a Twitter account and you want to get one with many followers or if your existing twitter account is languishing and not going anywhere then i suggest you read this.

Do you want to know the formula of getting thousands of followers on your twitter account without making a single Tweet, with no personal URL entered, with no content needed and no need to bother about conversations? Yes? Then the trick is: put up a sexy picture as your user pic, pick an exotic name and follow men aggressively. No jokes. I just came across a Twitter user who hasn't made a single Tweet. This twitter user has over 7K+ followers already and with no personal URL and location. Sometimes i want to laugh at all the content out there that gives tips on increasing follower base: come up with good content, fast on breaking news, be interested in conversations blah, blah.

Ahh Men!!

Social Networking rated PG

jamshedwadia@hotmail.com (Jamshed Wadia) — Thu, 14 May 2009 02:37:00 +0000

If you have teenagers or young adults in your family or friend circle then it’s time you sat up and paid attention to their Internet surfing habits. Teenagers and young adults are considered as heavy users of the Internet who spend hours every week surfing the Internet, doing their home assignments, playing online games and socializing with their friends.

Statistics shows that the most popular websites used by teenagers are social networking sites, instant Messaging sites, chat rooms, and file sharing networks, thus making it easier for them to share personal information with a larger group of people. But this behavior also outs them at a greater risk of their personal information being shared or made available in a way that may have harmful consequences for them.

All social networking sites need setting up of profiles that store personal information that may include information like name, address, school or college name, birth date, personal phone number, government identity number, photos and videos, credit card and banking details. Certain websites may also track shopping habits or preferences, and any information about the users life, likes and dislikes.

Another point to note is that most social networks are open to access and participation to some degree by a number of different people: it could be site owners, marketers, friends, other network participants, college officials, prospective employers, and government agencies and hence what information you share is very important. Sex offenders, cyber bullies and other on-line predators may also be on the site. There are enough instances where young adults have been a prey to these predators that don’t reveal their true age or identity and befriend innocent teenagers with intention to harm or cheat them.

Phishing scams are another imminent danger for vulnerable teenagers; this is where criminals send out spam or pop-up messages in an attempt to lure victims into sharing their personal and financial information on fake websites.

Knowing the nuances of the internet and social networking sites, elders and parents have a responsibility of protecting and educating their teenagers and young adults on Social networking sites. We all have a right to privacy, for ourselves and for our family especially children and that would mean the right to decide who has access to this personal information and how that information is being used.

What can parents and concerned elders do?

o To start with Parents must understand that a social network in reality is not appropriate for young children. Parents can consider making social networking sites off bounds to children and teenagers below age of 14. Many social networking sites prohibit anyone younger than 14 from using them but it's common for youngsters to lie about their ages to gain access so it’s important to determine if your children have illegal profiles and counsel them.

o In order to find out if your kids have an account on any social networking sites parents must show their concern in a loving manner. And if they do have an account then they need to have a heart to heart talk with them on things like which sites do they use, who are they connected with, how much time do they spend on these sites and how they need to protect themselves.

o Parents need to teach their kids to keep their information private by making use of the Privacy settings on the social networking sites. If needed Parents should set up an account for themselves and learn more about how Privacy settings can be incorporated in their profiles. Every social networking site has its own privacy policies and it’s worth investing time in studying and understanding how seriously the website takes privacy of user information.

o Parents should also request a tour of their youth’s profile and check on their connected friends. If their children are not comfortable in sharing their profile then some time frame must be established between which they can clean up their profile and give you a tour.

o Parents should also load antiphishing software which recognizes or blocks fake or phishing web sites. Also educate your children that they should not give out any sensitive details like username and password information to any website as it could be a phishing scam.

Tips for that parents and elders can give teenagers and young adults

o Only add and invite the friends you have in the real world to be your friends on-line. Sometimes you may feel some social pressure to accept when you get a friend request. But if you don’t know the person it is often the safer choice to decline even if it feels awkward to decline someone’s request to be your friend.

o Do not post images, videos or notes of yourself that you wouldn’t want to share with your parents, grandparents, teachers or elders that you know.

o It’s always better to check with your friends and seek their permission before posting images of them. Make sure you tag them and let them know what has been posted about them and let them decide the extent of their exposure on your profile.

o If you are one of those that post many photos to your profile page and if asking each individual maybe be unrealistic then make sure that you honor any friend’s request to remove a specific photo of him or her from your page.

o If a friend is taking pictures or videos at a party or an event, and you don’t want pictures of you to appear online be affirmative in asking the person not to upload the pictures on their profile.

o Sex is a topic that you should avoid discussing at all cost on the Internet, particularly with people you do not know. If someone begins a conversation that has sexual overtones or is perverse in some way, immediately stop the conversation and sign out, you may choose to block the person as well. Don’t ever try to play along as it is not a good idea, even if it is meant to be a joke. You maybe sending wrong signals to the offender that you are ok with this kind of behavior.

o Never agree to meet someone in person that you have met only on the Internet. If you do arrange such a meeting then meet them at a public place in broad daylight. Making sure you inform some of your whereabouts and when you will be back is a good idea.

o Be open to talk with your parents, older siblings and elders about your Internet use and ask questions if you have any.

o Though as younger generation you may know more about technology than your parents, your parents understand better in terms of human interactions and they are in a position to advice better on what is right and safe for you.

o Don’t share the personal information of other people that connected on your network unless you have their permission.

o Make sure you look for privacy policy whenever you are giving out your personal information. The Privacy policy will tell you what they intend to do with your personal information and will talk about your privacy rights and data security considerations.

o Websites which don’t display a privacy policy when collecting your personal information should be avoided and are positively a red flag for usage.

There is no doubt in my mind that social networking is here to stay. For example some months back Facebook had reached a milestone of 150 million active users worldwide, half of which signs in daily. If Facebook were a country, it would be the eighth most populated in the world, just ahead of Japan, Russia and

Nigeria

. Closer to home in Singapore it’s estimated that a higher double digit percentage of population has a social media profile and a huge percentage of these users are teenagers. The fundamental truth behind the success of social media is that people want to connect and be heard by their friends, colleagues etc.

But we must be reminded that every good tool can be misused and that we must use the same judgment and wisdom that we practice in our off-line life to our on-line world. The same parenting that is needed in the real world works is needed in the online world as well. It’s very easy to be under the illusion that whatever you do online is private and that one can get away with it. But case after case it shows that the opposite is true. The Internet is not as private as we think it is. Anything we do on the internet is like a permanent mark on our record for future scrutiny by prospective colleges and employers. So let’s be judicious before we press the submit button on any content that we upload on our social profiles. The last but not the least is that these new internet tools are not here to replace the conventional ways of interaction but only to compliment it. So protect yourself and your loved ones on the Internet and harness the true power of technology to transform your life.

Social networking sites can be a great way for teenagers and young adults to connect with their friends and build their social skills but it has to be used judiciously and with advice and counseling from Parents. Parents will always have the best intentions for their off springs and you need to help them in protecting you online.

Another interesting Viral from Lenovo

jamshedwadia@hotmail.com (Jamshed Wadia) — Fri, 30 Jan 2009 08:12:00 +0000

After the great success of their Grandma Proof viral campaign, I think Lenovo has hit the nail on the head again with their new viral campaign about their W700ds product range. What an excellent way to differentiate and highlight key features and benefits. This is gets a thumbs up for it being creative, interesting and sticking to the viral rule book.

Social media is a 'Hygiene Factor' for an Organisation

jamshedwadia@hotmail.com (Jamshed Wadia) — Sun, 14 Dec 2008 13:42:00 +0000

This entire debate that has unleashed on the internet over the last few days that Corporate blogs are not worth investing in, is just an example of being naive and ignorant. So this storm was kicked up by a report that was released by Forrester that suggested that only 16% of the respondents to survey elected corporate blogs as a trustworthy source of information. My first question is why is it even surprising that the statistic turned up this way. It's no brainier that people will view third party websites and data as more unbiased than something that's coming from the horses mouth, i am not sure why one needs to be a rocket scientist to understand this math. Does that mean organizations have to stop having corporate blogs? and that they should now focus their efforts on 'Ghost bloggers'? On both counts the answer is a big fat 'NO'. If we were to survey other traditional forms of marketing and compare it with third party unbiased word of mouth publicity the result would pretty much be the same. Word of mouth influence would win hands down but does that mean organizations stop doing their own marketing? I am curious what would the results be if we asked the same respondents what would their impression of an organization who didn't have a blog or web presence be? I am very sure those organizations would score less as compared those who have a social media strategy. Let's accept it, social media for any organisation is like a 'Hygiene Factor'. If present may or may not do much but if absent it would a gaping hole in any organizations marketing and corporate strategy. How these social implementations are executed is another topic of discussion and as any new media evolves, it will need time to prove itself. On the topic of Ghost bloggers i am a staunch supporter of transparency and i feel even venturing into that is setting yourself for failure. So all you dooms day advocates for social media give your keyboards a rest as you are on the wrong side of the debate.

WiseLine: A great new addition to the world of timeline concepts

jamshedwadia@hotmail.com (Jamshed Wadia) — Mon, 08 Dec 2008 04:15:00 +0000

Some weeks back I had blogged about a Timeline concept and how I felt it was almost like the motion picture version of your social media life. Well I came across another interesting and promising tool called WiseLine which is based on the same timeline concept. We all know that a visual representation is far better than a wordy description and hence using something like WiseLine is great way of representing and sharing your life. WiseLine is a new timeline graph of your life and although they are still in beta it adds an interesting twist to the existing timeline concepts where WiseLine users can add a value from +5 till -5 to a moment in time, the value representing ups and downs and its impact on your life. All the moments in time are connected with a line and form a comprehensive graph. So by rating milestones of your life, you turn the chronology of events in your life into a graph which would be your WiseLine. You can easily add important moments to your WiseLine like: your first kiss, a special friendship but also your education and work experience. Another interesting feature within WiseLine is that users can collaborate and influence the actual graph together. Imagine what the WiseLine of your favorite band, your family or sports team will look like, when all members collaboratively describe history together this way. By a principle of co-valuation, the ups and downs of the graph are generated in a democratic manner. Below is a great video clip that gives you a quick overview of the concept.

WiseLine from Hans Hoornstra on Vimeo.

WiseLine is available on wiseline.com and will be available as a widget in all major social networks around the world that have embraced the OpenSocial initiative. WiseLine has a fully working embed codes as well, which enables bloggers to generate their own collaborative WiseLine and publish it on their own blogs. This way one WiseLine can be simultaneously published on multiple platforms (blogs, multiple social networks (e.g. Facebook, MySpace and Hyves) and Wiseline.com). WiseLine has been localized in 7 languages and this month Chinese, Korean and Portuguese have been added. With local campaigns and local teams they will focus on: China, South-Korea, Brazil, United States and the Netherlands, It shows the early international focus of this ambitious Dutch start-up.

LinkedIn Poll: 'Would you recommend your current company as a great place to work?'

jamshedwadia@hotmail.com (Jamshed Wadia) — Fri, 05 Dec 2008 04:42:00 +0000

I just took a LinkedIn poll 'Would you recommend your current company as a great place to work?' and results were quite interesting and bit surprising to me. I wonder if these results would be different if we weren't in a recession. Maybe employees are appreciating their employers more under tough times. I am also curious if we were to plot job security in comparison, we probably would have inverse results here. Interesting times when job security is low and employee satisfaction is high. If i was in the head hunting business this probably wouldn't be great news for me. More details on the results are available here. The charts give data by seniority, age, gender, job function and company size. No surprises that more senior staff and smaller business employees have rated their employers higher than the rest. It maybe a good idea for organizations to get data from linkedIn and see how their own employees have voted with respect to rest of the industry.

Are you using different designation titles for the same customer facing job functions?

jamshedwadia@hotmail.com (Jamshed Wadia) — Mon, 01 Dec 2008 11:13:00 +0000

In 11 years of sales and marketing I have found one inconsistency that has been consistently made by marketers and organizations and that is disparity in 'Designation Titles'. I have never ever figured out why the same job function had different designation titles in different parts of the country or different regions, especially when these job functions are customer facing. And more often then not they are all mentioned on the same marketing collateral or website. I got a electronic direct mailer this morning from a reputable organization (cropped the image and scratched away the names and contact details) that was selling advertising space and as you can see the customer contact point in one city has a completely different designation than the other 2 cities. It may not seem like a big thing to the marketer but to the customer it tells a lot. At first it could portray that at some places you have dedicated headcount to look after the customer and some places it’s a shared responsibility or a higher designation person looks after one batch of customer and a lower designation person looks after another. So what you're essentially saying is that your service levels differ from region to region. Secondly it portrays general inconsistency in the way your organization approaches human resource policy. I do understand that some situations may demand this difference, but does the world need to see this disparity? Can’t we just use simple terminology like ‘customer contact point or person’ or something like that?

Typealyzer - Analysing the personality and writing style of your blog

jamshedwadia@hotmail.com (Jamshed Wadia) — Sun, 30 Nov 2008 13:10:00 +0000

I came across this unique tool called Typealyzer [Thanks to Dennis McDonald, via LinkedInBloggers - Yahoo! Groups] that analyzes the authors personality type. All you need to do is put in your blog URL and then hit submit. It brings up a personality description and also brings up a chart that will outline the areas of the authors brain that are most active while they are writing. I am not sure what's the back-end algorithm that brings up these results but here is some background information on it (Read here). I did a small experiment by submitting my personal blog and professional blog and it gave near similar results. The personal blog did have some more indicators of feeling, spirituality etc. which was expected. This is quite an interesting tool and worth a try.

Personal Blog Chart

Professional Blog Chart

Customer service levels soar upwards in tough times

jamshedwadia@hotmail.com (Jamshed Wadia) — Tue, 25 Nov 2008 10:31:00 +0000

The only good thing that may have come out of this entire economic meltdown is that organizations and businesses have started valuing their customers. ‘Big or small I will be super nice to you to get your business’ that’s the motto most organizations are adopting now. I have seen a completely new attitude emerge in the service industry in this market environment. Cab drivers, hair dressers, waiters, money changers, service providers, bankers, brokers, retailers, doctors all now realize that if they need to survive they need to build relationships with their customers and keep them happy. Now is a good time to analyze your customer service practices and eliminate anything that is turning off your customers and forcing them to search for options and running to your competition.

Some things we all can do ……

Get in touch your old clients who have stopped giving you business. Find out why? And see how you can turn them around.
Get in touch with all your existing customers and see if they are happy with things.
Build relations with your customers, be personal wherever you can.
Give them great deals but try and lock them in for longer tenures. It’s more important right now to cover cost than focus on making a lot of money.
Retrain your customer service staff and enforce high standards. ‘If you guys do a bad job we may all loose our jobs’ that should clearly send a strong signal to employees.
Don’t make it difficult for customers to reach you. Don’t make them wait for response and action.
Empower your staff to make quick decisions and reduce red tape.
Finally use technology to achieve your customer service goals. Build forums, corporate blogs, social media accounts that build relationships with customers.

It’s clearly a buyers market and may stay like this for sometime. Let’s get our act together or we may be all forced to close shop.

The future of blogs

jamshedwadia@hotmail.com (Jamshed Wadia) — Sat, 22 Nov 2008 13:06:00 +0000

Some of the common questions I encounter when I talk to friends and colleagues about blogging are …

- Do you think there will be a consolidation of the blogosphere?
- Aren’t there too many blogs out there on similar topics?

- With more social media sites and micro blogging tools, doesn’t it make blogging redundant and pointless?

- As young Bloggers grow older will they abandon their blogs as they grow out of that phase?

Some of the reasons why I feel blogs will keep going strong

1. Personal expression: I have no doubt in my mind that people will keep generating content as long as the internet lives. People have always wanted to express themselves and present their thoughts and opinions and this is not going to change. E.g. Personal blogs that could cover conversations regarding parenting, growing up, travel, medical conditions, overcoming adversity etc.

2. Stories not covered or ignored by mainstream media: There will always be topics and stories that will never be covered by mainstream media for variety of social and political reasons. The mainstream media still scratches the surface when it comes to covering events and real life situations. E.g. of this being citizen journalism covering contentious topics on race, sexuality, religion, politics, white collar crimes, social stigmas and issues etc.

3. Show case personal talent: Blogging serves as a great avenue for people to show case and give a preview of their skills and talent. E.g. Writers blog, Musicians blog etc.

4. Building Personal brands: Maintaining a blog helps entrepreneurs, consultants and professional to have a certain competitive edge in their respective fields. It helps establish credibility and brings more visibility to them, making them more sell able in the competitive environment. E.g. Professional blogs that give a preview of the Bloggers professional expertise like marketing, medicine, cars, small business etc
5. Social Causes and non profit Fund Raising: It’s a ‘no brain'er’ that blogging and non profit industry go hand in hand. Blogging helps generate awareness and brings attention to the cause of the lesser known and the under privileged in our societies.

6. Evangelistic blogs: Use of blogging to spread the word of God is another under utilized part of the blogosphere. As more individuals get on to the internet and with lesser time for their spiritual growth, blogging will play a pivotal role in this sphere. E.g. blogs maintained by clergy, pastoral staff or even people who have experienced God’s abundance in their lives.
7. Keeping in touch with customers: Lastly use of blogs as a communication vehicle to reach customers with corporate vision, product info, customer support and marketing messages. E.g. Corporate blogs, affiliate blogs etc.

Some key Points to note
1. Blogs will be just one pillar and piece of the puzzle in the maze called the internet. Organizations and individuals will use blogging in conjunction with other social media tools like micro blogging, social networking, websites, podcasts etc to keep their message alive on the internet. Blogging as I call it will be the base station and all the rest being complimenting technologies

2. Does that mean everyone should have a blog? No. Why start something that you probably will end eventually. Though blogging has its stated advantages if done wrongly it can be counter productive. People keep forgetting that whenever they hit the submit button on the internet they are essentially publishing something. An abandoned blog doesn’t speak highly of the author irrespective of the category of the blog.

3. Does frequency of a post matter? Yes and No. If the blog is maintained as a journal or a portfolio of skills then frequency of posts can be lesser. You rather have great quality of infrequent post than have sub standard filler content on your blog. But if you are making a living of blogging and your next assignment depends on fresh content being put on your blog then frequency matters. But it still doesn’t give you the right to put up sub standard content.

4. Credibility is more important than popularity unless you’re in it for a fast buck. If it’s not your view or experience and it’s a cut paste then don’t bother. You can by all means be controversial, but remember it has consequences. If you’re building a blog as a pillar to support your business or career then be less controversial and be balanced.

5. The success and failure rate of a blog is the same if not better or worse than any other enterprise one may take in their life. If you think that it’s an easy way to make money then you probably don’t have the right objective in mind.

6. If you’re a young blogger and intend to keep a personal blog for a long period of time then I suggest you maintain time stamps and archives on the blog. Any change of opinions or thought process must be documented in newer posts you make. It’s ok to change opinions and show you have grown up but it’s important to document it so that people don’t judge your present character or capabilities by your opinions in the distant past. What you are today is not what you were necessarily before and everybody can accept that.

Social Media - Improving Parent child relationship's?

jamshedwadia@hotmail.com (Jamshed Wadia) — Tue, 18 Nov 2008 11:58:00 +0000

A month back I had the privilege to put in some voluntary community hours training some technical education students. This was a part of my organizations community building program on the occasion of our 40th anniversary of inception and the topic of course was my personal favorite – ‘Social Media and its impact on Marketing’. There is something really magical about teaching young adults and I personally thoroughly enjoyed the experience. It’s just amazing how kids today instantly get the idea behind social media while some adults I know are still are debating if they should take the plunge. Kids today definitely are better at collaboration skills than our generation and sharing of information comes naturally to them. But what was a revelation to me from the entire discussion was an example of how a student improved her relationship with her mother through social media. The girl was having issues relating with her mom and things had turned quite bad. As most parents the mom was having problems trusting her daughters decisions on friends, expenses, choice of career etc. One day while surfing the internet her mom happened to accidentally stumble upon her daughter’s blog. From that day on, it became a ritual for the mom to secretly read her daughters blog. Over the months the mom had a better understanding about her daughter’s opinions and what was on her mind. Slowly their relationship took a turn for the better and the mom finally revealed to her daughter about having read her blog. Now her mom not only is an active participant to conversations on her daughters blog but is also on her daughters Facebook friend list, making her a great example of super cool social media mom. I found this true life example extremely interesting and felt there is a ton to discover on how social media can enhance parent child relationships.

Dipity: Your social media life in a Timeline view

jamshedwadia@hotmail.com (Jamshed Wadia) — Tue, 11 Nov 2008 13:29:00 +0000

I just signed up for Dipity a new social media tool that displays all social media actions done by you and your friends on a scale that represents time. The tool essentially aggregates feed from all your social media accounts like blogs, twitter, Friendfeed, YouTube, Flickr, etc. You can go to Dipity site to view complete list of supported platforms. It offers a new visual way of looking at all the feeds you would see on a standard RSS reader. You can even grab it as a widget and drop it on your website or blog. It also enables you to provide keywords that you like it to monitor and display activity on. If you would like to view the original post then you can click on the respective flags of activity. It’s probably a great way to view your social media archive. Imagine after ten years if I wanted to go back in date and time to particular activity you can just scroll by to it. It’s almost like the motion picture version of your social media life.

Finally the 'Perfect Ten'

jamshedwadia@hotmail.com (Jamshed Wadia) — Tue, 11 Nov 2008 12:13:00 +0000

I know i am going to be called a 'vain pot' for this but today i made a 'perfect 10'on Google search for the very first time and i thought i should capture the moment as i am not sure how long it will last. :))

Visual CV's - Time to build one

jamshedwadia@hotmail.com (Jamshed Wadia) — Mon, 10 Nov 2008 14:56:00 +0000

I finally got down to making myself a visual CV at VisualCV.com. I have been reading about the buzz on visual CV’s and I think it’s about to gain momentum. The reason why I was putting it off was that I was quite happy with my LinkedIn profile and was focusing on building my professional network on that. But after taking a careful look at the concept I realized that it probably has a different purpose than LinkedIn and doesn’t really compete with your existing LinkedIn profile. In fact I think it probably complements it well. But I suspect more education is needed around visual CV’s and the differentiating factor over other professional social networking sites. For starters there is a lot of information on visualCV.com on what it’s all about and how one should go about creating a visual CV. It’s definitely a better way to represent and brand yourself with all the visual and multimedia capabilities it gives you. It probably makes total sense for consultants, entrepreneurs and top executives of marketing agencies who may have loads of video and audio to share from their previous speaking and consulting engagements. I guess if you have it, why not flaunt it and get some visibility for yourself. I like the fact that visualCV.com gives new users a free service of getting them started by doing the initial leg work for you. I think they are addressing the right barrier that one could have to build a visual CV. All you need to do is send in a copy of your existing CV and they will enter the preliminary details for you within 1 to 2 business days. You can then get started on editing and adding more information. In my instance it took me an hour to add in the other essential details like my profile image, blog images, my book, social networking tags and some membership badges. Of course all images being linked to appropriate URL’s. For individuals who use free blogging platforms and don’t have a home page I feel this is ideal staring point that can link you to all your internet assets. My vote is that if you don’t have a visual CV you need to evaluate this opportunity seriously. Other Social networking sites may pick up some of this functionality but at this point this is unique and fits in well with other social media components one must have in the web 2.0 era.

LinkedIn adds productivity applications

jamshedwadia@hotmail.com (Jamshed Wadia) — Wed, 29 Oct 2008 12:37:00 +0000

LinkedIn has announced the launch of new productivity applications that can be seamlessly added to your existing linkedin profiles. It’s quite similar to the ones on facebook, but the difference being that these apps revolve around professional usages. They have collaborated with some of the Internet’s premier organizations to bring the first set of beta apps that enable you to collaborate with your connections and viewers alike.

The applications that are currently available are

• Reading List by Amazon

• Box File.Net Files by Box.net

• Google Presentations by Google

• WordPress by wordpress

• Slideshare Presentations by slideshare Inc

• Blog Link by Six Apart

• Huddle Workspaces by Huddle.net

• Company Buzz by LinkedIn

• Polls by LinkedIn

I already hooked up this blog to my profile with the help of the blog link app, will explore other apps as I go along. If you haven’t yet got yourself a linkedIn profile, I suggest you get before you get categorized as a professional dinosaur.

Read about the new launched at the LinkedIn blog and LinkedIn learning centre.

Twitter widgets for blogs

jamshedwadia@hotmail.com (Jamshed Wadia) — Sat, 25 Oct 2008 04:02:00 +0000

I have been on an ongoing basis been looking at Twitter widgets that would work well into my blogs and facebook profile. Here are four of the many options available to choose from.(not in any order of priority)

Option 1: Twitter widget from Widgetbox - Read More

This is fairly straight forward. You just need to add user name, customize the colors and size and then get the widget. It supports most of the blogging platforms and even facebook. It automatically logs into your account and adds the widget without you having to copy the code and paste. You can choose to play around with widget placement later.

Option 2: Twitter widgets from Blogger Buster - Read more

Offers a couple of options on the page. One is style option for standard blogger add code for Twitter widget. The second useful one is using the widget installer to add a widget with the "Twitterific" icon as below.

Option 3: Twitter widget from Kadazuro.blog - Read More

Another option with easy option of adding user name and changing background color to suit your blog. It pulls the image id you have uploaded on your twitter account.

Option 4: Korelab Twitter Balloon - Read More

Here it allows you to update any image in the background and you can play around with placement of the twitter balloon to suit the visual. If your background visual is interesting it can make an attractive and noticeable difference to your blog page.

Why i love twitter from a writer's perspective

jamshedwadia@hotmail.com (Jamshed Wadia) — Fri, 24 Oct 2008 19:44:00 +0000

I have been using twitter since June of this year and i just love it. I don't use twitter too much to update my status in terms of what i am doing or where i am headed. I use it more as a tool to quickly capture a fleeting thought that previously would go uncaptured. I have always been hit by these thoughts in the most inconvenient of times, like when i am on the bus or at lunch etc. But now all i need to do is get out my PDA and tweet away from m.twitter.com. I also like the feature where anytime i make a blog post it sends a tweet on my behalf with a tinyurl of my post. In recent month's this has boosted the traffic on my site. I can see that there is even competition of incoming traffic from twitter and linkedin where i am active also. I recently also hooked my facebook status bar with a facebook twitter application that updates my status bar whenever i tweet. This is great as i no longer need to separately update status bar in facebook. I won't be surprised if Twitter becomes the default status update tool that feeds other status bars in other social media tools like facebook, linkedin, msn etc. Whoever said twitter is dead got it so wrong. But i did notice that my frequency of blogging has reduce ever since i micro blog at twitter. Check out the best of my tweets. Read here