Facebook has us all, and grossly under-performs

How much can our eyes see in a given moment? How many moments do we have in any given day? How many moments do we spend on reading and going through the FB updates? On how many such moments we feel 'amazing'?

From how many friends (I've got some 850 odd friends) do you see updates on any given day that you check FB? And so, how many friends you would surely like to check updates from? Who are these friends? Given the number of friends, how adept you've become socially as a result of social media?  Apart from friends, how many groups are you a part of on FB?

I spend a considerable time on FB almost everyday. And yet, on reflection I feel no great on most such days. I itch to get updates from some people and I don't quite know if they've posted anything. Why? Simple, everyone's posting a lot of stuff and that lot of stuff is algorithmically curated and the algorithm is no good. If I have 850 in my friends list, and everyone's posting 4 updates on average, there you go. On any given day I have a total of 3400 updates to go through! It's become a super-market of updates!

Is there a way out? A way that can make browsing the FB timeline marginally better and yet significantly effective?

There must be a cap of, let's say, 5 updates for every user. Don't let the algorithm curate. Let all the updates appear in a sequence on the timeline. Let the user figure which updates are worth posting.

Someone will argue, another platform will emerge that will offer 50 updates for every user. Sure, can emerge. Will that be any good? Will that help you read and go through the updates in any better way?

Capping the quantities is what makes something worthwhile. Otherwise the space is wide open. And you aren't even an atomic organism when placed against that space.

Ahmedabad is a one-mall city

I just happened to visit the Gulmohar Mall. Saw quite a few branded shops closed. Enquired about the phenomenon with a service executive at one of the shops I entered.

He informed me that after the opening of Alpha One (another significantly bigger mall) footfalls have really really gone down. Saturdays and Sundays are when some crowds gather.

Some time back, I was talking to a Mississippi patron who has a retail shop at Iscon Mall. She said the same thing. Gets corroborated by the fact that a lot of shops have closed down there as well.

I have always found the air-conditioned malls unsuited in the Indian context. For Ahmedabad in particular, I have always wondered if there's a number of people that can help survive even 3 malls. It turns out, only 1 can survive. To me, even that's suspect. Let's see.

Indeed, if we debate the definition of 'mall', Ahmedabad has many which have tuition classes and offices and dental clinics and orthopedic hospitals. In that sense then malls can survive.

Add to this, the quintessential habit of finding a 'deal' makes online shopping quite attractive for people from Ahmedabad. So something like Flipkart et al offers a far bigger mall for Ahmedabadis to get hold of stuff (after checking them physically in the brick and mortar shops).

Long live the malls. 

Where should a big hospital be run from?

Hospital is a contingency business. I mean, the consumer of a hospital is always in trouble. And 'what's the need' is a forgone question, though of course needs careful consideration.

How do we behave when in immediate trouble, emergency or dire need?

Unfortunately, a lot of hospitals took a leaf from the general assembly line management system and got it all wrong. (When I say that, I am aware of certain hospital which used assembly line management to great effect.) Yes, the ones who got it wrong are the ones who made secluded chambers for managers responsible to take care of the operations. They made nodes which would be far from where the consumer(patient) would typically rush in. They made the team wait at these nodes where the consumer(patient) would typically find it difficult to reach.

Unlike a grand monumental atrium-like central empty space available at different places to make the visitor feel good, a hospital has to have the pilot and his entire team right where the consumer first walks in. Yes, right at the first touch-point. Empty spaces help the movement but slowly kill the guy in pain.

Egos would not let the above happen. Perhaps then, the most responsible person who's supposedly called the COO and his entire team meant to deliver care, has to be right where this patient walks in. Mind you, not just that one person. His entire care-team.

And then see if a hospital is any less enjoyable and any more difficult to manage than other places.

Vibrams, the marketing thinking and the invisible style

Just came back from a 5km run in the backwoods in my Vibrams FiveFingers.

A little girl going to school watched the shoes and followed my moving feet with a sleepy curiosity. A taxi-driver followed my feet for a few seconds. A watchman (whom I encountered for the first time) at a neighborhood building followed my feet for a few seconds too. Sometimes even dogs look at my feet with curiosity.

When at Hiranandani Garden in Mumbai, quite a few fellow runners/walkers on the track look on with inquisitive eyes.

Over more than 2 years now, I've rarely encountered another person in my vicinity wearing Vibrams.

None of the people who've talked to me about Vibrams have ever admitted that they love the style. Strangely, it doesn't bother me. My feet feel so right, so very natural, so free.

That's the point. I am sure Vibrams must have been written to or informed by a mighty number of shoe-lovers about the 'ugliness' of the visual design. On the other hand, a mighty number of Vibrams wearers must have shared how amazing they feel on wearing the shoes.

Surely, exclusivity - even that of the weird or the incomprehensible which borders ugliness - is a style statement. But unless there's something substantial, such style statements are difficult to sustain.

In the case of Vibrams, the movement the shoes facilitate and the feeling arising out of that movement in the wearer, far surpass the awkwardness of visual style. In fact, if you video-record the movements/the action of someone wearing Vibrams, you might not find anything extraordinary either. And this someone won't stop wearing Vibrams.

Toyota's Express Maintenance is great strategy

I am not a great believer of the carzy ecosystem. But having bought and owned and maintained a car, this initiative makes perfect sense. In fact, more than perfect sense.

It's the kind of strategic move that was open to all the car brands of the country. But again it takes guts and simple observation of the customers' travails at the service stations to come up with such a move. Coming from a brand that promises Quality Revolution, it looks the right thing. Am sure this must have taken quite a bit of preparation to be able to promise such a thing.

Among those bullet points, look at the last one. Watch your car being serviced. And 60 Minutes Comprehensive Service.

I don't quite like the Toyota's styling department but if I were to buy another car today, this initiative would be enough to switch my mind to a Toyota.

The ad-driven revenue model for content sites

I have no problems with them from this moment. And here are some points.

I understand that advertisements offer a way for content-driven sites to survive and earn. So far it's innocuous.

I used to get disturbed whenever I clicked an ad flashing right beside the article I would be reading, or a promo-link embedded within a piece of text. Imagine rushing out of a meeting that felt like worthy of your time and never returning to the room again. What's the purpose of that publisher who published the text that resides beside the tempting ad?

The problem gets yet more compounded when the writer talks about the nuisance of using cars on the congested Indian roads and there's an ad promoting a long sedan right beside that post. What does a reader believe? What does a reader believe about what the publisher believes in? Is the aim of such publishing to make the reader understand the virtues of believing paradoxes? And does the reader visit such sites to learn the skill of paradox assimilation?

Motorcycle ads on motorcycle blogs seem a great match. Yesterday I visited this blog that I often visit. The post I was reading was cautiously critical of the move of launching Mahindra Centuro. Right beside I noticed an ad promoting that very motorcycle. No problem so far but if I had left the post midway by clicking the ad, guess it would be an incomplete sort of experience. I read the post and then checked out the motorcycle by clicking the ad. Felt appropriate.

And it isn't a stretch of imagination to apply these occurrences to other media like TV or Radio or newspaper/magazines et al. And I have no doubts that the damage to people's understanding of the world is unprecedented even though seemingly unmeasurable.

One thing I can say for such content-driven sites, where conflicts between advertising and their messages are rampant and blatant, is the publishers aren't doing enough to enhance a reader's understanding in spite of the revenues they earn because of the readers visiting their sites. I think that's such a waste of the opportunity that the readers have given them.

New Duck

I have imagined something. New Duck. Now that I mention it, can you imagine the New Duck? How does it look?

Now that we are both aware of the New Duck and we both imagine the New Duck, what are the chances that the New Duck that resides in both our heads is the same?

Sure, both imagine with the same name New Duck but what are the chances that we are imagining the same New Duck?

Between two individuals who want to interact with each other, words are what are used to convey and understand imaginations, emotions, expectations, manners, behavior et al. And now you see how difficult it is to be specific?

Being specific is a skill. And it is difficult. Just plain difficult. Being able to make imagination understandable through words is a mighty skill. If anyone has mastered it, hire that person without a moment's delay.

This is a part of the reason why business plans/advices/consultation seem ridiculous. It might not be a matter of bad intention on the part of the evaluator. And it might not either be a matter of bad business plan either.

If New Duck is a product, do enough to produce a prototype like object. New Duck will be far better understandable.

Platform, website, presence

As more people on the web have come to know of Mississippi Earrings, we face these questions more frequently now:

• Are your products available on the net?
• Do you have an online shop?
• Are you selling online?
• Why don't you sell online?
• Why don't you set up an online platform?
• Do you have a website?
• What's the name of your website?

All questions look apparently the same. But if one were to get very specific about the meanings of each of the words in these questions, one would have to make very very deliberate and different choices than the answers that some questions lead one into.

Like for example, for the first question, I would have to answer, "Yes, designs are available on the net."

For the second, third and fourth questions, "No, we don't have an online shop. But we try to sell through the online medium and we do makes sales through the online medium."

Fifth question. Online platform to sell? More important is online presence so that friends and others remember us when they are buying jewelry. Platform is infrastructure, not an aid to memory unfortunately.

Sixth, yes we have a blog. Website still doesn't fit into our scheme of things. Can you see the website out there standing tall, a landmark, among the nondescript buildings? :)

Seventh, what's the name of our earrings?

The information revolution is rather stunted

It doesn't mean that it hasn't benefitted us all.

Here's a little point. Can you possibly go through all the FB posts of your friends on any given day? Most likely, no! And yet there's this incessant urge to share some or the other thing on FB, of course in the hope that friends will read or see the post/update.

For this incessant and in all likely self-unregulated urge, there's practically no data for the user of FB to make any smart judgments about all his/her activity. Though, of course, FB has all the data at its disposal. Can it make the same available to its users? Very much. But it doesn't. Users therefore don't necessarily have any great means to understand and make their updates any better.

Users (including me perhaps) keep generating cluttering content. Users have limited time. Users don't go through all that's posted. Immensely wasteful effort and time for one and all. No measure to understand what's waste and what's wonderful. And FB puts a cap on free-flow of both the wasteful and the wonderful to generate money out of its users. 

FB learns and earns, user doesn't. Forget earning, largely, the user doesn't even learn. Even if he/she is learning, the learning curve is rather long and very very slow at best.

Facebook's business model

First play God. Create veins and arteries attached to the heart.

Then play Devil. Inject them with bad cholesterol.

And then, become an avatar of God, a bypass surgeon, to charge them to remove the bad cholesterol or to bypass the bad cholesterol.

The way to create an info-based business-model like FB, is that?

Icon courtesy: www.iconfinder.com

Should you build a bazaar?

I just saw this ad on the front page of today's TOI. Buildabazaar.com is a platform to open your online shop. It's a venture of the now quite famous e-commerce portal infibeam.com.

Opening an online shop sounds easy. Sounds glamorous too (doesn't it?). And why not? E-com ventures are a talk of the town. Lotsa ads appearing on television. And for a long time, ever since I did my stint at flora2000.com (now goldboxx.in), I felt the same.

We've been trying to set up Mississippi online. And it has been one mighty task. This, I say, in spite of the innumerable e-commerce sites which have come up in the recent years.

My context is setting up a small e-commerce enterprise. If one tries to set up an independent e-commerce site, unless one knows coding for the web, one needs to collaborate with some amazing coders. 'Amazing' needs qualification. Coders who really try to understand your ambitions, your products and the audience for your products. Difficult to meet such guys. More difficult considering the money one has in the pocket when starting a small enterprise.

Suppose you don't set up an independent site. Then? You oughta have amazing writing skills, great visual merchandising skills (especially photography and graphical skills). But you would say one can outsource all that. Then the guy who takes such an outsourced work should have a good understanding of the same things I discussed in the last paragraph. I am not sure writing beautifully (don't confuse it with using flowering words) about products is an easy task. Nor am I sure about visual merchandising.

Is that all? Even if using an already existing platform, getting used to using it efficiently takes a good time. Software is machine. It takes time to become adept at using the machine.

Lastly, you need an amazing ability of sitting-in-front-of-the-screen. For once, I don't possess that. And while I spend a good time on the laptop, I just find it extremely difficult to stay focussed on just one application/website/piece of software.

So build a bazaar? Actually, build a bazaar in literal terms is 'build a shop'. Bazaar means you have an audience. I'm afraid here that isn't the case. Even if infibeam.com has its audience and displays your products to that audience, for your shop to work, you need to be able to garner good attention.

And while you need all the skills mentioned above, you need exceptional skills to garner attention and convert it into 'trust' for your shop. That takes some doing.

My recommendation, garner attention and build trust, first. If need be, build skills to garner attention and to build trust. And then build a shop.

What do you need for a new business model?

A new routine. A set of new habits. A new way to relate to the world. A new kind of persistence. A new form of compassion. A new level of tolerance. A new way of reading. A new way of buying. A new way of spending. A new way of analogizing. A new way of working. A new way of dressing. A new way of smiling. A new way of expressing gratitude. A new way of respecting.

So what's the scope?

Parents and their kids, who are just about to choose a stream/pursue a professional qualification, ask this. Some young pros considering starting some form of business or entrepreneurial venture ask this. As if this question is going to make their careers or help earn a great deal of money.

And while I've answered that question, I have not been internally satisfied with my answers. I wonder those who asked for my opinion were satisfied either :).

MBAs would know better that 'scope' can be answered through Porter's 5-forces model. However, with supply trumping demand in most categories which pertain to life in general, Porter's 5-forces model might not be sufficient.

'Scope' is a category question. And it can't be answered categorically. Besides, it requires that once you put a name to the category, you do a lot of slicing and dicing. More on this in other posts.

For now, let me try and close this by saying that in today's economy, scope will be largely determined by how you intend to connect with people, how long are you willing to check and evaluate whether you are connecting with people in the greatest possible manner.

If you want to earn a salary, 'scope' might often be a redundant question.

Reading the difference between Google & Facebook

Of course they are different. Here's a bit about the nature of the difference.

Google's enables search. A machine-driven algorithm-determined search.

Facebook has those elements I suppose. More importantly, Facebook is a default for a tribe-driven conversation on anything and everything. Your tribe helps you search, right? And a tribe-recommendation will likely turn out to be more relevant and credible.

My experiences on the both the planets have been mixed. Searching on both have yielded some good results and some not-so-good results. My sense is Facebook will yield better (by 'better' I mean, for important and urgent matters, the success in accomplishing the desired objectives of the search quickly and credibly) results before too long.

Human beings still do a better job connecting one another, or one thing with another, than algorithms.

Getting into 'brick and mortar' retail business

In writing this, I assume that budding/aspiring entrepreneurs have good retail business models but are unable to get off the ground for some reasons.

I find that the aspirations of the entrepreneurs themselves act as big stumbling blocks; other reasons have only peripheral importance at best.

What are the typical aspirations of the to-be-entrepreneurs? A nice house. A good car. A good place, a nice set-up to work in, a desire to visit places, etc.

The thing is that real estate prices are very high. All investments can be clubbed on one side and investment in a real estate property can be placed on the other side. In such a situation, either you invest in buying a house for living, or buying space 'for executing your retail business model'. The trade-off is precisely that I sense.

Yes, of course, venture capital is available to maintain your 'lifestyle'. However, a proof of concept is the best bet to attract even venture capital. So, for at least a while 'lifestyle' and 'typical aspirations' will have to take a backseat anyway. Besides, 'executing a business model' is the greatest style and the best aspiration anyway, given we are not sportsmen/artists by profession.

Pricing your Consulting Services

This model is meant to help those consultants who are struggling to get it right with the clients, who feel they are exploited by the clients and do not have a way to stem the rot, who feel that clients cannot appreciate their expertise or their efforts, who in general find it difficult to put the right price tag to their services. For more assistance on this model, call me (+919099189174) begin_of_the_skype_highlighting            (+919099189174)      end_of_the_skype_highlighting. Or send an SMS if this helps even a little bit.

Depth Trust Model for pricing Consulting Services

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Selling cool air...

is tough. But the title is the answer to the question: What are the malls really selling?

I mean it applies to most malls of the country except some which have been thought through by the developer/architect/businessmen nexus.

From what I observe, people visit these malls for the following reasons:

• Warming eyes or call it window shopping
• Whiling away time or sitting comfortably or socializing at low cost and in a clean sweat-free environment (both attributable to a great extent to free Air Conditioning)
• Buying stuff
• Watching movies

Find other reasons if I've missed one.

And if the first two reasons are good enough reasons to visit a mall, ask the visitors, "What is the price of air?" Don't be surprised if someone slaps the questioner!

Who pays for air conditioning? Of course, the mall owner. And he, in turn, gets it from the showroom/shop owners/renters. But most of the air-conditioning happens to keep the air in the common area/atrium cool. So shop owners/renters are basically paying a price for something that people in most circumstances won't agree to pay for or even think of paying for. Why incur such a cost and make your own and so many other businesses fail?

Or is there an assumption that people who walk in to the mall for a cool clean environment (because of the Air Conditioning) will buy once they spend some time and are exposed to the shops?!

Or is it like survive at any cost for a few years, make people habitually visit the mall even if they don't buy and eventually they'll come around to buying from the shops they see? Then we assume that the world is gonna stay static and the mall is gonna stay as squeaky and polished as when it started.

God, save the mall owners and the tenants/shop owners therein. Sorry, the real estate boom might save them if it sustains. For me, Linking Road, zindabad!