"e"xperience sharing

Off late I have been writing on Web 2.0 and metaphors of several such things which have made IT a common mans terminology. I myself have started getting my hands dirty these days in an attempt to understanding the emergence of technology and architecture that's making the business mammoths run away from IT products and embrace service providers proving service over the web. I read a recent article on Netsuite targeting SAP R3 customers  where we can see that SAP can also have a run for their money(may be I am overreacting) if they do not realize that today's customers' needs have become stronger and the fulfillment more difficult. Today's enterprises are not looking at solutions that are complicated, difficult to implement, have a huge cost associated with them which they can boast of. Rather they want something that is simple to use, not so difficult to maintain and easiest to let go if the service is not the classy self that these product vendors claim of. Also wit

Think of two subjects and do a search on Wikipedia , you'll realize that these 2 subjects are related to each other somewhere within the range of six links. This might be the average with the maximum link of separation being close to 12 but have we ever thought how true it is for the people in the first world and second world who are really separated by only six degrees of separation . (I will not get into the real existence of first, second and third world country because in times to come, and infact even now this division of worlds will cease to exist).  Some proven experiments done say that this degree of separation might really be just a 5 degree of separation , but will this remain what it is and will the social networking sites and various other modes of getting people together and reuniting lost friends and families decrease this separation further. It has become so easy for one in the networked world to search an information about some individual these days. I agree t

What is it that Google, Yahoo and MSN have in common. They all do search the same way as others except that google has gradually become the unanimous winner when it comes to the no. of areas from where it gathers its data from .  So what is it that is still lacking in the search results? What if I want my results to be more coherent to what I think and want rather than get the similar mundane results that every other user gets? Am sure with the web that the search engines and others are trying to build around people they would certainly know in times to come each and every users every single need. So how about explaining it with an example - We have an user who searches for the term "baseball", considering that this user is based out of Chicago and he has bought online tickets through the google desktop, of the much awaited Cubs v/s Sox match already he might be looking for more details about the two teams under discussion rather than getting the results on places that sell

While I was away following the US Financial crisis rather the forthcoming global financial crisis and see a mammoth like Lehman Brothers fall to what people call bad debts, my favorite topic of discussion has not been discussed much by others either. The SAP's and Oracle's are no longer fighting to get new clients, they are only shielding themselves from not facing the brunt of existing clients and wait for a slow exit. Is this financial crisis only affecting the financial sector or the IT sector or is it affecting all other sectors. Tourism dipped, Auto dipped, Infrastructure was on a rise until recently, the demand for textile and clothing in the USA and the Europe has gone down. The only solace that govt. must have had is that the global crude oil price has come down to the present $ 107 over last 2-months, from the peak level of $146/barrel 4-months back. The new start ups which were growing MoM and YoY and they were doing wonders in getting C2C and B2C links and were

Link"e"d in as the name says really has been instrumental in creation of one of the strongest and inviolable networks (one of its kind as there aren't many professional networks in this sea of social networking sites). And very easily Linked in has scaled up beyond being just a professional network to a combination of network and job portal that's has quality jobs (or does it not..) What's surprising about Linked in is that while there were pioneers like monster, dice, jobsearch , ladders (Another website with a different model of functioning), sixfugurejobs (quite an ambitious name) who have been working on assisting jobseekers and headhunters to get the right fit, but post the advent of Linked in I personally feel that the process of job search will actually alter in the coming few years. I really don't know what could one get by the recommendations in Orkut or Facebook except for some ego massage but in Linked in the recommendations assist the user to a

Recently " Tumblr " founder David Karp was in picture for having come up with one of the easiest platform for users to start blogging and I decided to have myself registered into it. When I looked at the features I realized that there is nothing out there that can differentiate Tumblr with other blogging sites, but that's what it is and we already have .17 mn registered users on that website. So what does this imply - are we saying that tomorrow Facebook , Orkut, Twitter and others will have to get meatier to keep up with the competition, or will they just the way they always have - will keep churning more users and keep making money out of the advertisements?  Atleast, that's the only mode of making money that these social networking sites have and the model seems to be well accepted in the e-business world. But do we see an evolution in these social networking websites. Are these   social networking sites going to remain what they are with the several widge

IBM sold primarily through its "brick and mortar" model before this huge giant named Dell transformed the way computers were sold. It wasn't just a strong focus on Supply Chain with the JIT (Just in time) inventory and decision to just assemble (that aspect has a different e-tale on its own) and not manufacture, but also a focus on having an on-line customer service where any customer would get the first response to their queries in within 2 hours and an appropriate link to the Dell website for any kind of support that's why Dell is called the pioneer in providing on-line support to their customers through the website. Shopping stores were dictating terms before a bunch of guys decided to start a marketplace that could increase the purchasing power of the customer manifold by launching a portal named e-bay. Not that there was a dearth of marketplace, they were in plenty and everybody had focused on either B2B or B2C but e-bay realized the true potential of having a C2

Google - a company that has literally reinvented the wheel by having a business that runs entirely in a virtual world. It's like having a whole new world with its own countries, states, languages, politicians, musicians, movie makers, scientists, doctors and a continuous aggregating population that's all gaga about this virtual world. When I think how Google has evolved in the last 10-12 years from being a search engine dedicated to the Stanford University to now being a company that seems to be making the moves that no other company can match. AdSense & AdWords, Doubleclick , Orkut, Google maps, Google grid, blogger, Google checkout, translator and they all have direct competitors in aQuantive , Real, Facebook , Yahoo maps, Paypal ( who had imagined Google's credibility to be at par with paypal ) ... and to sum it all a solid user profiling by means of : The Google cookie Personalized search G-mail (All the contents of mail are actually scanned by Google) Google docum

Whenever I plan to buy an electronics item after looking at all other opportunities like e-bay(could have left e-bay aside as these guys are primarily resellers and work on a marketplace model), best buy, deals4all, circuit city, buy and several other online vendors my gut insists me to keep going back to Dell or Amazon (Not considering the one time opportunities available with vendors like woot , dealcatcher etc). I wonder if this is something to do with just me or it happens with others as well. I am sure and the numbers can talk that all the former set of online vendors that I mentioned too have loyal customers and they have been pioneers in doing a several strategies that has wooed people to them. But even then why is it that Kotler's and Drucker's of the marketing world just don't have too many words for these other vendors. I can cite some reasons for the same : The brand built for over ( at least ) a decade A strong focus on customer satisfaction and customer re

" e-business " this word is become ubiquitous today and each and every company and the marketing gurus across the globe are advising companies to embrace e-business open heartedly. When I talk to people in the business world and specially if he is a marketing guy all that he would talk about is how e-marketing and e-advertising is changing our outlook towards promoting our company and examples like Google's ad-sense, double click and Microsoft's acquisition of aQuantive are given. If the same question of how business is embracing the "e" to a manufacturing guy he would immediately quote e.g.'s of the SAPs and Oracles of the world(which are still just ERP's and not completely run with the e-ngine) and of the Sterling Commerces and Aribas on how these best of breed packages are making the supplier relation so manageable and how web has helped them build lasting partnerships... And similarly if I talk to a Human Resource professional he would immediatel