Brighton Street Performers

Brighton is very synonynous with joy and i happened to be there for couple of days during the last longweekend. Being used to be travelers than a tourists , sounds a bit zennish, we just packed up some food and stacked up some loose change. As usual with the weekends (both long and short versions of it) , trains didnt disappoint us and we have to take a circum route towards london victoria. After having bought the tickets by staring too long at the dumb terminals , we missed a fast train by a minute and took a slower one which was very adamant to stop at all the stations in the route.

The thing that attracted me most was the street musicians throughout Brighton (May is the Brighton festival time). We were watching a show by a small band in the fringe street (near Royal Pavilion) and i started thinking about the numerous street performers and buskers that i stumble upon. Performing in the street is the hardest job for any artist as the people are always on the move and not having paid to listen/see they could walk away in any moment (sometimes only the ticket money makes us stay ) . To captivate a fluid audience, the artist needs to really engage them and should have lot of perseverance and a good sunny day.

Street performing must have had its origins from very olden days as it is a form of an art which allows you to reach the common mass which cannot afford to go to the theatres (same applies for artists as well). If we take evolutionary angles, the performing can be closely linked to an attempt to attract the females and that could have gradually evolved to amuse others who are in power and have huge money. In the due course the performing has got sophisticated and has reached into the shelters of specialised buildings viz theatres and has taken many a forms through radio, tv, dvd, internet etc.

Performing in great theatres and cinemas are not reachable for everybody and those who didnt hit the jackpot, resort to various other platforms where the entry barriers are not very high. Street is full of untalented (who have an illusion of having lot of talent) and unlucky talented ones. I think it is the moral obligation of the society to acknowledge those underappretiated and hard working artists who work with passion and with a hope that somebody important would notice them and lift them to the stardom forward.

Next time when you come across a street artist, please acknowledge them as the air sorrounding you is full of their songs and music which expects to be appretiated , otherwise it could just mix up with the horrific traffic noise unnoticed.

iPhone and twitter ecosystem

The social media phenomenon is further evolving with the advent of twitter and iPhone Apps ecosystems. The twitter and iPhone platform have something in common ie they provide the basic platform and expose functionalities that you could mash up to your imaginations and be wildly creative.

Creating an ecosystem where the innovators would defy mediocrity and stretch the products is not something which comes easily to everybody. While iPhone thrives out of the Apple/Steve Jobs brand clout, twitter came from nowhere and has been rocking the world. I felt there is a similarity in the popularity of both and wanted to put my points (has been quite while since i blogged last)

Opensource was probably the pioneers in getting the value based on ideas of few individuals and developing it with the efforts of an mass intellectual army. While OS offers you the full flexibility of shaping in whatever way you can, twitter and iPhone doesnt offer you the same flexibility but offer an access to the stabler platform (debatable in twitters case) which you could extend to offer varied functionalities.

Twitter has become the defacto microblogging platform and has taken varied faces in the forms of apps across browser, blackberry (twitterberry) and iPhone (twitterfon). In acceptance to its popularity spammers have started venturing into this ( wait for those ads selling viagras and mail from nigerians offering 50% of 1 billion that they have to collect).

iPhone has offered the flexibilities that we never used to enjoy (my wife searched for indian restaurants nearby using google maps which asked to share our location and ordered chicken tikka in a nearest shop for snacks in the evening) and has created a near gold-rush with every body grabbing a mac and trying to write a killer app that could make them rich.

Nobody can be sure whether iPhone or twitter ecoSystems are here to stay but may be they are just an instance of an emerging phenomenon of product vendors providing a platform that could be extended and left to the creative imagination of end users than a closed environment. This is worth noting especially with the popularity of the social media (Facebook apps).

I am very curious to see how this would affect the development of the enterprise applications, with a core platform alone and prebuilt apps at a lower cost and remaining extendable features........

In the gloomy times where everybody (you and me too ) is preoccupied in whats going to happen next, these ecosystems give us some hope that we could also make some money if we are creative and willing to burn some midnight oil. Lets all get a mac (no sight of PC version of iPhone SDK sadly(

Twitter Monetization

Twitter has come a long way in the last three years it has been in existence which is a relatively short span of time. The leading internet traffic analysis site compete has estimated that twitter’s popularity has grown by 964% compared to the same month last year (Myspace is going down). The number of unique visitors are close to 8 million. This is huge given the basic functionality twitter offers (140 characters on ‘what are you doing now?’).  What is very interesting is the fact how it is going to survive further as the VC’s would be mounting pressure on twitter team before web obsessed crowd turns their attention to something else..

Web is full of social networking sites that serve as an alternate to the decreasing interpersonal relations in a fast paced world. For millions of years ,if you are looking at a coverage for billions of years, read ‘Ancestors Tale’ by Richard Dawkins, we have been operating as groups and this desire to operate as a group has taken the shape of social networking in the web world. If we were to consider orkut,myspace, facebook etc as 3 course meals, twitter is ‘the’ fast food. Grab something real quick , have it and move on. But mind the fact that like triple whopper with loads of cheese, it is really addictive as well ( i have an urge to sign on to twitter early morning after checking mails in my blackberry, as soon as i wake up)

The factors that make twitter click are

> It is quick and easy, the 140 character limit makes is mass SMS media of the web

> It interests high profile techies and celebrities, so high chance of developing valuable networks

> Great platform to market your product and yourself (sparing those I-AM-IN-BATHTUB-NOW type updates)

> The facts are more authentic as the false information gets corrected by the ungoverned watchful eyes (same phenomenon like Wikipedia)

But How will twitter make money?

Twitter as a concept has web, mobile and 3rd party apps as its channels and hence any monetization strategy has to be different according to the nature of the channel. While web is a great medium to put adverts, mobile is not. And since twitter allows api level access, governing 3rd party apps would be too difficult. So it is going to be interesting to see how twitter folks monetize their fame , real quick.

Following are my predictions about the ‘cashing in’ of twitter

> Online contests/prizes that could earn you twitter points (nice business opportunity those chinese entrepreneurs who could employs 1000+ chinese youths to earn and sell these points)

> Opinion polls by product vendors with guaranteed freebies

> A small fee for premium twitters with more options which are not normally available to the common folks ( Linkedin irritates you with this strategy already)

> Sponsored Ads in between the twitter streams (this would annoy really)

My thoughts are based on the fact that twitter would remain textual and wouldn’t want to become another jazzy confused social networking site. In this web 2.0 era where people have multiple options to voice their opinions , companies are getting increasingly conscious of guarding their brand (bad mouthing by a lead twitter could do a considerable damage) and market their brands to the masses who crowd these sites. Anyways as long as i am not restricted in what i could do now and if i had to do a courtesy-click of some weird ads to support twitter engine going, I am perfectly fine. Go Twitter Go……

You can follow me in twitter at http://twitter.com/rsenthilk 

Technorati Tags: chinese entrepreneurs

Technorati Tags: web 2.0,twitter monetization,linkedin

Chinese Aggression

China as a country has always been good Greenfield for strategic thinkers and has produced great thinkers like Confucius, Sun Tzu etc. Chinese society has survived several odds in its long history and has contributed immensely to the world (paper, gunpowder, silk , sil road etc). The leaders of china never react in haste and when they react it carries lot of hidden meanings. There are three incidents which happened in the last few weeks which are worth a close look.

The first being harassment of the USNS impeccable ship near Hainan Island ,which is supposed to be a Survey ship collective marine data(?). The ship was surrounded by Chinese fish-vessels and a PLA navy vessel(People Liberation Army) there were some bold/aggressive manoeuvres like throwing wooden logs in front of the US ship, bringing the Chinese vessels too closely etc. USNS impeccable is not the only ship which suffered this fate but there were other survey ships like USNS victorious which was a victim of Chinese aggression.

The second incident is the warning from Chinese Premier Wen Jiobao expressing concerns over the credit worthiness of US government as Chinese have invested heftily on the US Treasury bonds. Traditionally Governments all over the world have a habit of buying Tbonds as a safety net to preserve their foreign exchange reserves. China has accumulated over a Trillion dollars of US Bonds which accounts for more than 70% of its foreign reserve and more than 50% of US Debt in bonds.

The third incident is the blocking of an 2.5 Billion acquisition of leading juice maker Huiyuan by coca cola. Though this would have recurpussions in Chinese acquisition in US and all over the world , the closely guarded Govt of China (Republic or whatever) seems not to be bothered, in spite of china’s reliance on US for its exports.

If we connect the dots, Chinese are clearly questioning the authority of American Might on the lines of Military , Economy and Fundamentals upon which american society is built.

>When the enemy is too strong to be attacked directly, then attack something he holds dear

>Encourage your enemy to expend his energy in futile quests while you conserve your strength. When he is exhausted and confused, you attack with energy and purpose.

>Loot a burning house

>Make a sound in the east, then strike in the west

>Startle the snake by hitting the grass around it

The above are the selected few from the 36 stratagems, an age old wisdom practised in China and probably Obama should have a look at these instead of his usual rhetoric about how great mankind is , why should we all love each other etc. Anyhow apart from the usual news of failing banks, falling interest rates, vanished property markets etc, china is determined to add some spice to the ongoing drama. Time has to tell how much more spice china would be willing to add and how much obama would be willing to take. May be he should pickup some lessons from Dalai lama…..

Technorati Tags: Chinese aggression,USNS Impeccable,Wen Jiabao,36 stratagems,Obama,EEZ

Hyundai Assurance Plus - Recession time innovation

This is clearly a time for the "Survival of the fittest" (contrary to popular belief , the quote was made by Herbert Spencer and not by darwin). If fittest stands for strongest or most intellect only elephants and foxes would be surviving among the rest(discounting homo sapiens sapiens). The fittest in my opinion means the most adaptable animal or species which could adjust itself to the hardships of changing environments and acquire newer skills. This applies to businesses as well.

It has been very boring to be saying that we are going through historically transformations times and this is the most difficult era of the current generation/living memory etc. HenceI was trying to see how businesses are shaping their strategies to survive in this environment and one that really caught my eyes is the "Hyundai Assurance Plus" program.

The main reason why majority of the population are not willing to spend (i spent quite a lot over this weekend promotional sales due to domestic compulsions :-( ) is because of the fear of job loss. This is a vicious cycle as the lesser spending break even more business and hence more job loss (Prisoners dilemma). Interestingly Hyundai has taken advantage of this tricky situation and guarantees that one need not pay for the first three months after losing the job and if the job loss continues beyond three months , they can simply return the car. This is a very clever more where in Hyundai has just wrapped an additonal job loss insurance cover and has marketed it very effectively. The clever strategy has paid well and while Toyota car sales has slumped by 36% , hyundai's sale has gone up by 4-5% in US.

Hyundai is definetely not the strongest car company of the world, they are not the company with the best R&D team in the world(Is it Merc/BMW?), but they are adaptable evidently. Please check out Hyndai commercials/website alternatively you could wait for 1 more month to read the "Successful Recession Business Strategies" by some of the management gurus for 30$.