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Is AOL relevant again?

March 17, 2010 by Vidya Shivkumar

If you are like me, you probably use Facebook to post updates to friends and family, Twitter for market research and shameless self-promotion, LinkedIn for expanding your professional network and web mail for all other persistent communications. And if you don’t own an iPhone (or something similar), and have a full time job, may something supernatural help you stay current and keep others updated. It is overwhelming.

So, I tried to give AOL Lifestream, AOL’s social aggregator, a whirl. First, I like the name of the service. It is simple and self-explanatory. True to its marketing claim, “All your social network updates in one place”, the service lets you aggregate Twitter, Facebook, Flickr, foursquare etc. and post updates to these sites. It also lets you create content on AOL. But, of course!

The product is in beta. Signing up is simple. If you already have a Facebook account, you can sign up using Facebook Connect. The service is not without kinks. But, I did mention that the product is in beta. I am looking forward to their next iteration with a little less scary verbiage on their sign up screens.

I also tried Google Buzz earlier last week with somewhat disappointing results. Well, their marketing blurb said “Import your stuff from Twitter, Picasa, Flickr, and Google Reader.” and I skipped right past it. No wonder I was disappointed. With Google Buzz, you cannot really publish your streams to other sites. Well, you can but you need to sign up with Twitterfeed and use it to export to Twitter or Facebook. The service is all about creating and keeping the content on Google. But why keep the buzz all to yourself? Here is an interesting article that provides some insight into the Google way of thinking.

Anyways, back to AOL, it recently announced an integration with Facebook’s Chat API that enables AIM and Facebook users to chat across both services.

Does all this mean that AOL is relevant again? AOL is definitely building the right products and signing the right deals and at the right time. Only time will tell if the former Internet giant is able to turn itself into the popular household name that it once was.

Posted in Social Computing | Tagged , , , | Leave a Comment »

Not your mother’s Valpak

March 11, 2010 by Vidya Shivkumar

In late 2009, I signed up for this service called Groupon. Today, it is a hugely popular service in the Facebooking-Tweeting circles. It combines targeted online marketing, social publishing, and collective buying power to deliver upfront revenues to local businesses. Moreover, businesses do not have huge upfront costs to use this type of advertising.

So, how does this really work? The folks at Groupon have put together some very good videos explaining “how to” for businesses and consumers.

Groupon writes the web copy of the ad that is delivered to consumer mailboxes. So, even if no one makes a purchase that day, its free advertising for the business. I have seen services typically discounted at 50% of their regular value. This is great value for a consumer who then has several months to avail of the Groupon. Groupon makes money by taking a percentage of the purchases. At one point, I had read that the service charged a 50% commission on all Groupon purchases.

Groupon launched its service in several US cities and claims that 97% of featured businesses want to be featured again. This model of social advertising has gained so much popularity that LivingSocial, a competitor to Groupon, announced today that it had raised $25 million in a Series B funding round led by U.S. Venture Partners with participation from Grotech Ventures and former AOL CEO, Steve Case’s Revolution.

It is definitely interesting to see how the social web is helping consumers and small businesses connect in new and innovative ways.

Posted in Social Computing | Tagged , , , | Leave a Comment »

What can IaaS do for the Indian Consumer?

March 8, 2010 by Vidya Shivkumar

Since I have just returned from a whirlwind trip in the subcontinent, this blog post might as well be about cloud computing in India. Today, Microsoft announced that it launched Windows Azure commercially in India.

Let us examine what this could mean for the Indian consumer base.

Technology leap frogging is not a new concept in growing economies. India now boasts close to 500 million cell phone owners in a country where even a person earning approximately $100 a month owns one (I witnessed the latter first hand!). Today, the voice market is extremely competitive and there is a downward pressure on prices. Think of billing in increments of 1/45th of a US penny! Talk is indeed cheap. Value added data services, therefore seem to be the next logical growth area for telecom providers.

While the demand for improved speeds is high, broadband connectivity has and continues to be an an issue in India. Speeds as low as 256 kbps are considered to be broadband. This limits the number of applications, much less feature rich ones that can be distributed over the Internet. So, Indian consumers adopted GPRS and 3G enabled phones and innovative data plans introduced by telecom providers to access the Internet for activities such as web browsing and social networking. Fortunately, there is always demand for services such as social gaming, astrology, Bollywood, Cricket, stock trading, and religious services.

India’s leading telecom services companies like Bharti Airtel are backing venture funds to encourage start ups in the technology, media and telecommunications areas. The price of mobile hand sets is poised to go down in the not so long-term future thanks to tax breaks for mobile accessories and India is  set to auction off shares in their 3G spectrum on April 9th with a goal of raising approximately $5.4 billion. Lastly, in the 2010-11 national budget, the Indian government has proposed a somewhat anti-competitive taxation on foreign software downloads.

With monetary incentives in place, the market rife with demand, eliminating the need for upfront capital expenditures, Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS) makes it easier for Indian entrepreneurs to consider launching a product or service. Innovation and a competitive market ultimately benefit the consumer. IaaS could not have come at a better right time. It remains to be seen if availability of utility based pricing on computing resources ultimately encourages entrepreneurship in the country.

Other US technology companies are doing their share to promote cloud computing in India. Yahoo!’s R&D group held its India “hadoop Summit” in February.  Amazon Web Services recently appointed Simone Brunozzi as an evangelist for the Asia-Pacific region.

So, smart move, Microsoft. I think :-)

Posted in Cloud Computing | Tagged , , , | Leave a Comment »

All things fluffy

January 22, 2010 by Vidya Shivkumar

Hello and greetings from The Lenticular. Altocumulus Lenticularis is a lens-shaped cloud. So, what does that have to do with this blog? Well, I will be blogging about topics of general business interest in the realm of cloud computing. You know, focus a wide lens on the cloud. But why cloud computing?

I started my professional life building applications to look for things on the Internet a.k.a. search. It was a few years before we started “googling for things on the web.” Slowly but surely, things began to move online. Booking your plane tickets, stock trading, banking, bill payment, my mother. Though, not necessarily in that order. Security and privacy concerns followed soon thereafter. We asked the questions “Who is looking at your data?” “What are your children looking at?” Then we began filtering the web. The term Malware was defined. The Anti-Phishing Working Group was formed to protect the web user from phishing attacks. SpIM came and went. And now, I feel old (in Internet years). Yes, I have used and loved Netscape and dmoz.org used to be cool. Hey, at least I am not as old as the guy who was used to the Control key being some place else on the keyboard.

We humans have come a long way since Al Gore invented the Internet. Ok, we can neither teleport nor have we bridged the digital divide. However, in the past few years we have forayed into this virtual world by generating humungous amounts of web clutter, called it Web 2.0, found a way to monetize it, and have finally managed to get businesses to put their applications and infrastructure in the cloud.

Once again, we find ourselves debating issues of privacy and security on the Internet. This time, questions on the safety and privacy of business data residing in the cloud are being raised. Legislations will be passed to protect businesses. New businesses enforcing best practices will be born. Computational capacity will be traded. There will be regulation. We will find other and better ways to express ourselves and finally teleporting will become a reality. I digress!

To watch the world wide web evolve into a medium of personal and business collaboration that it is today is fascinating. I honestly don’t know what people did before the Internet became such a big part of every day life. Therefore, to continue celebrating my fascination with the WWW, I shall focus on all things fluffy.

Fluffy? The Internet. The Cloud. Get it? I must confess. I’ve been staring at our cat for way too long today.

Posted in General | 1 Comment »

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