Connect2Develope

This is a little astray from the topics i have been recently posting about, just a discovery i want to share with all of you. I recently came across an online networking site for the techies, so not just another Orkut or MySpace, but exclusively for the techies to discuss their ideas and develope over them in collaboration using the site as the platform. Its called "techtribe" and I m as they say a "triber" in it and have found it quiet exciting. It is aimed at providing an identity for the Indian technology professionals.
Also the company has a campaign called connect2develop, which rewards innovative ideas in technology -- to the tune of Rs. 1 million every month. They just launched it at a press conference in Delhi with the President of NASSCOM.
If you want to check it out, go to www.techtribe.com
This is the first such network focus only on India.
Recently Zensar collaborated with this site to provide a platform to his employees. To read about it more check out http://www.ciol.com/content/search/showarticle1.asp?artid=89124

Branding Google

I was searching for a Brand management presentation topic and landed on brandchannel.com, and as here again i found my beloved Google. Just posting the links for everyone to see...
http://www.brandchannel.com/features_profile.asp?pr_id=30
http://www.brandchannel.com/features_profile.asp?pr_id=216
http://www.brandchannel.com/features_profile.asp?pr_id=279
Happy Reading!!!!!

---------------------------------------------------------

One small point, the article in the first link is of 2001, so do the necessary filtering and adjustments while reading.

Blog Search

At present there is a lot of talk about blogs. About blogs being used in marketing, customized advertising, customer feedback, customer reviews, “word of mouth” marketing, etc. We are all seeing an increase in the number of blogs being created everyday, hundreds of them just cluttering the web space, like remains of past satellites or spacecrafts cluttering space. They don’t have anything significant to say, no contribution, a great majority of them have been “under construction” since years. When I m searching about some topic, blogs come very low in the list, what comes first are established sites like wikipedia, news sites, etc. When I look at blogs many of them are just about a person’s personal life, his/her daily life, now how useful is that? Yes, it’s a medium of expression for the person, but apart from that what else. In this whole clutter of personal, under construction or just blank blogs how do I find something that I m looking for. It’s only by chance that I’ll land up at the right blog at the right time. So how much can the companies advertising on a particular blog actually make? Yes, I know they are paying only per click. But doesn’t that mean all that talk about blogs being a good medium for internet marketing. Blogs are no doubt a good source of information provided we spot the right one when we actually need it. So what’s the future of blogging? I think they are not going to last for long, till someone somewhere comes out with a way to make available all the information at one place. Our own blogger.com does give us a way to search the blog space for a particular topic, but how many of us actually go to blogger.com to search for anything. What if Google adds blogsearch to it main page, just like image search, video search etc. This will give a lot of blogs a new lease of life, and thus blogging a new lease of life. So happy blogging!!!

Opppppsssss.......................there is always a google blog search http://blogsearch.google.com/

its just not on the home page...i guess we ll see it there soon enuf

---------------------------------------------------------

I dont believe in punctuations, please help urself

Search Engine Marketing

Search Engine Marketing or SEM, is another business out of the Google economy. Google Economy has been discussed in the earlier posts. A few days back I had doubts about the effectiveness of Google Adwords campaign. I read somewhere and had also observed this in people, that when we search for something in Google, we know that the right hand side will have sponsored links and thus don’t give it much attention. My doubt was cleared when during a recent class discussion we were told that Google makes around 90 percent of its revenues from Adwords program. This fact was validated by a recent Economic Times article, where it is mentioned that Adwords generated over 5 Billion USD in revenue, which is around 99 percent of the total revenue. One more thing that clears my doubt is the emergence of a number of search marketing firms, not just in the developed nations, where we know Internet economy is quiet developed, but also in India. In a class discussion we were introduced to Pinstrom, a highly successful SEM firm from India. More about the company can be found at its site. In the same Economic Times article I found the names of three more Indian SEM firms, Communicate2, Webchutney and Quasar media, I bet if I go a search right now I will find lots more. So what happens in SEM. I will write here what all I have understood about SEM till now, the learning is still on. An SEM firm acts as a mediator between a company who wants to advertise on Google, through Adwords obviously, and Google itself. So suppose a company X wants to place ads on Google for its products or services. It will approach an SEM firm say Y. Y will decide on the key words for which ads for X should be placed, It would make the complete Adwords campaign, which involves, text, region to which the ads have to be targeted, etc. and then signs up for it. So the ads of company X appear on Google search from a particular region (might be a country, state, city, or a smaller region), for a particular set of key words. This is SEM in a nut shell, will post as and when I discover new things about SEM.

--------------------------------------------------------

I dont believe in punctuations, please help urself

The Google Story

An insight into Google by David A. Vise and Mark Malseed. A little about the authors from the info I found at the book’s website. David has worked with Washington Post for 22 years as a reporter and at present he is the senior commentator of Breakingviews.com. David has written on various topics and The Google Story is his fourth book. His first book, Eagle on the street, written with Steve Coll won him the Pulitzer Prize, 1990. Malseed has been a researcher for well known journalist, Bob Woodward. He has been a guest commentator on the BBC, ABC News, etc. He has got extensive knowledge about travel and has written a travel column in Boston Herald and for several travel guides.Now, 'The Google Story'. This book is literally a story about Google. It describes in detail about the inception of Google, the obstacles Larry and Sergey had to face and how they overcame those obstacles. For example when they wanted to sell licenses of their search technology, the rejections they had to face, and how they dealt with it. And this was a blessing in disguise I should say. The book describes how the founders had tough times raising money. In fact its mentioned in the book that Google was formed when the founders received a check from their angel investor and it was in the name of Google Inc. I do not remember the name of the angel investor at present. The book describes how Eric Schmidt, the current CEO came into Google. The founders were actually forced to employ someone with a business perspective by their venture capitalists. They had delayed this for long and rejected a large number of candidates. They finally recruited Eric Schmidt, but even this guy had to find ways to develop a synergy with the founders, who were quiet resistant to him. Then the book discusses in detail the growth of Google to its present position. It is a must read for anyone interested in Google.

The Google Economy

Google has brought about a big change in the way marketing people think, before Google came internet marketing was very well present, but not widespread and limited to only to the companies with big advt budgets, search marketing wasn’t heard of. Now small companies can use Google Adwords program for search marketing.

Companies have come up which do the search marketing for another company, right from deciding upon the keywords to the text of the sponsored links. These companies are thriving on Google.

Companies have come up for Search Engine Optimisation (SEO), that is making changes in a webpage so that it comes in the first page of Google search for a few words. This is a debatable issue as the search sites are continuously making their algorithms SEO proof.

Blogging has also got a new life because of google. Expression of views will always remain the main reason for blog creation, but people have also started looking at the commercial aspect of starting a blog. Google Adsense is the reason behind this. Some of the successful blogs are earning lots due to Google sponsored ads in their blogs.

So its not just Google that is growing but a whole lot of other fields as mentioned above. Google has brought about a drastic change in the way internet is seen.

-----------------------------------------------------------------

I dont believe in punctuations, please help urself

Google pages

One more thing Google comes out with...Google pages....Google already has blogger then why does it need Google pages???? I havent been able to figure out how different it is from blogger, i do see a few problems with it...first its not as easy to use as blogger...u dont get a dashboard link when u open it...u need to login to google pages first....in blogger i can any day open my blog and sign in from there and make the changes.....its so easy....see the blog and make changes then and there.....at this stage I fail to understand the whole purpose of coming out with google pages....