I just love @improvevery !!
Their latest musical is all about social networks and 'always online' people. Must Watch!

Terms & Conditions - When two parties individuals or companies want to do business together T&C mainly comes into play to specify one party to the other and vice versa that this is what we will provide and this is what I need from you in return.

Quite a simple and crucial component. Lately I had couple of interesting experiences...

I signed up for Just Dial services, where the customer care people gave the whole low down on what will be provided and how much it will cost me... Seemed fine so I opted for it. The guy came to my house explained the plan and I signed up. I took a cursory glance at the T&C but nothing more. Its 2-3 pages long and small font! I chose to go by what the customer care told me verbally.

The next day I got a message of Thank you for signing up
1. You cannot cancel this plan for 9 months.
2. After 9 months in order to cancel the plan you need to provide 3 months notice
and more....

I did not plan to stay on for 9 months, in fact the customer care had assured me I can check it for two months minimum then cancel at anytime!!

Now the issue here wasn't so much the fact that they told me different stuff, its the fact that once a customer signs up to your service and you send them such a greeting with how they CANNOT cancel instead of how I would benefit then the first question that comes to my mind is "Are you peeing in your pants??" I mean why the hell are you so hell bound to not let your customers cancel their service? Does your service suck!!??

[I am currently taking their services as one of their customer care managers spoke to me well, apologizing and all that - and offering a discount]

After that I was checking out web hosting services for my company website and while checking them out I signed up for bluehost. I was still wondering whether to go for it when I filled the credit card info to see how much they are actually charging (yes I know dumb way of checking costs :p), instead of going to 3D secure screen where it would show me amount debited the amount straight away got debited!

I was a little freaked I might not even have gone for this company! So I thought let me see what the cancellation procedures are. I was amazed that,
1. They would freely cancel my subscription in first 3 days after signing up
Even later the process was so simple.... that I just felt very good about the whole company. Now I don't know how promptly they would follow up on these claims because I did not cancel my subscription feeling good with their T&C!!

So I think its great and talks volume about the company and people behind them when they make client - friendly T&C

Sometime back the concept of crowd sourced communities came to the fore where people realized how awesome they can be yadi yadi yada... and now a days we can see these communities around and often their popularity tends to be infectious :) One very novel example I came across lately is txtWeb.

A sms platform where 'developers' can make apps for varied purposes. The term developers may give wrong impression as the interface is so simple that any lay man can just go and make a small app for their keyword.

One quick example, SMS @priyankawriting to "9243342000" to get small snippets about my whereabouts/happenings which I can easily update by logging in to their website :D

This initiative by Intuit is also very interesting as it brings a lot of services/features available to smart phone users to the SMS friendly phones - which are all mobile handsets. Thus opening up many windows of possible interactions for the large mobile user population in India.

From simple apps to tweet and update facebook , there are wikipedia apps to find quick meaning of terms, app to chat with online friends (browser to sms) and a lot more. For this World Cup there would be slew of apps that can help cricket aficionados - stay in touch with game developments even with crappy handsets with SMS.

Had this interesting conversation with @annkur and @unitechy about brand communities. I don't remember exactly how it started but basically I was differentiating between pure fan communities and brand managed communities.

It all starts since I became a part of this Wheel of Time community Its really rich with interactions and discussions. People are coming up with theories about the story and making graphic images of what characters might look like, even short movies. In short its like a brands 'wanted' social media presence, except that it is a fan community. TOR books or even the author don't really own it. Some time back when the 13th book got released there was this amazing offline-online game where people had to collect some clues left by the author which would open out chapter names of the upcoming book. Totally cool! So this is where there was an official representation of the brand integrating with the pure fan community. So it made me think about how social media approach would differ when working with these brands who already have established serious fan communities.

This would be applicable to brands which have serious, passionate fans like for eg: DC comics. So when movies are being released Iron Man, Thor and so on the brand can consider serious integrations with pure fan communities which are already present.

You can check out the discussion we guys had on twitter here, I think there was more to it but this is how much has been pulled out by the app,
http://twitter.theinfo.org/20406162138599424

Its a pretty fascinating area of thought. One aspect of social media is to Build communities, but when there is a serious community like this already live then it would be a different sort of ball game to bring about integrations and to align the brands official community such that both communities can go hand in hand.

It had to happen. Once I started a company and got down to recruiting, the first few attempts later I realized that recruitment is a hell of a job. Today 7 months down the lane I had the worst interview ever!

I explained to the potential candidate the work I would require from him and the guy saw no point in the activity. I tried to explain it.. but he really did not see any point. I thought that was fine considering his previous works had been in other domains - content writing and SEO.

I asked for alternative ideas that he might have, since he was clearly not happy with the strategy I had. Some of them were really crappy which could create a serious backlash for the client, others were good ideas but that was a different strategy altogether... and frankly nothing new. However, the interviewee promptly went on to tell me 'why not do something more constructive?' aren't you answerable to your client? Which was a bit too much! Considering that as yet I had not seen any concrete evidence of the person ever having handled a social media project before.

The interview ended by him telling me that he was ust trying to add value to the project. He was concerned about my reputation as a social media professional (yes, he used the exact words) and thats why he wanted my work to be good. After all this he kept insisting he was only trying to provide value to the company and client. He still wanted the job, But he was not a robot who would take instructions from me and not question them.

What I saw is the lack of any humility to take up work from another person. This is something that I have been seeing often even happening when I myself was an employee. Very often there have been colleagues who think they are too great for this mundane works we are doing. "The boss is dumb, I know better and my genius is being stifled" except that often its the case of not being able to be humble enough to first learn the work, and learn it well.

I don't know whether there are always such people or its the times where at a young age people get exposed to lot of information. Where they are thinking about major business workings read on a blog without having an ounce of real life experience. Then when they do get to the point of 'Real Life' work they think they should be on the board of directors rather than intern position.

Since I started my company in digital marketing I keep getting some queries, clients etc.. through my online network. One of the most surprising calls I got was from a tweep, who wanted to help me with the work. In passing he mentioned that he was visually impaired.

"What??" I am sorry, I thought I misheard, did he say visually impaired?

The obvious question in my mind was How can he possibly do any online marketing when he cannot see!!

Since I have chatted, emailed him, and he has some interesting tips for social media marketing too!

I thought all you guys would be interested in knowing about him and how he uses the internet... also Why he does that. Here is a small video and his interview about how he got into internet marketing.



"I started surfing the internet during 2004 that’s when I got my first desktop computer. I am a game geek so I use to play a lot of games with my low vision. It was during 2005 my sister showed me how to use google and then I found that windows xp has got an in built magnifier which opened a new world together. Since then I stopped playing games and started off learning a lot of tech stuff, reading and networking with people using mails. But I got my limitations, in spite of using
the windows xp magnifier I need to give rest to my eyes after 1-2 hrs of continuous work on the computer.

You might be wondering how can I play games when I cannot see any thing on computer with out magnifier, the kind of disease which I got degenerates my vision slowly day by day and during that time I had some good vision which helped me to play games.

Online marketing is a life changing agent and how I entered into this field was due to my interest, hunger to learn and enthusiasm. It was during September 2006 I stepped into online marketing, I went to a friends house and there I saw him making a website with Microsoft front page and when I asked him he told that from these websites we can earn money. It was interesting but my friend told no when I asked him to teach this to me. He said you cannot see properly how can you design websites, don’t strain your eyes…drop the idea. I was stubborn and did not give up the idea of learning web designing. I still remember that every day after coming from college I use to sit before computer for hours together and trying to read lots of tutorials on web design trying and testing new free software’s to crack and make a website. I was not successful but gained a lot of knowledge on web design and learned a lot about the web world as I surfed thousands of pages, read hundreds of newsletters and tested lots of software’s. I don’t like my vision limiting something in life and I always tried to keep up my spirits by cheering my self. When I met the same friend next time I asked him are you earning money, he said I need to get “SEO” done for the website…..when I asked him to teach me SEO the reply was same like before...

I came home and used Google to find out more about SEO and found that it is search engine optimization and I understood what exactly it is. During my campus placements I haven’t got selected. I walk out of the
interview halls because the kind of questions which they asked look silly and use to pull my spirits.

It was then that online marketing took birth as a profession in my life. I thought to my self I can do some
thing with what I had learned through Google. Then I started a blog and got content on it. Did lots of SEO to it and finally sold it for some where around 200$. Then I really thought I can adopt this as profession then I dived into it totally and started doing lots of research.

During this time I met couple of other’s through referrals and started taking clients and offered the
services of internet marketing. We did pretty well and I regularly updated my knowledge in the field of online marketing when my friends use to take care of work under my instructions.

I continued it for a long time of 3yrs until I thought to join some company and learn some corporate stuff. I ran 2 online marketing ventures successfully.

I joined a job at IBM and I can say if online marketing has brought a tremendous change in any ones life I am
a real example. Sometimes it is good your friends might not teach something to you and they may say it is tough and hard, but my message to world is never stop learning by yourself and one day certainly it will
pay you off."

You can contact him on Twitter @raghavasatish He also blogs @ Raghava.in

I have been thinking about Pressure (the pressures of life kind of pressure) and how that helps us work. Generally there is a tendency of people to think that Pain, Pressure, Hurt, Sickness are all 'BAD' things. I think that is a very vain sort of thinking, when a person does not want to challenge himself anything that is a little difficult to understand becomes BAD or avoidable.

All these aspects are very much part of life. Lately I was thinking about pressure and I saw a cycle within me. Pressure is mechanism to get things done, to become active and DO something than just sitting in a very passive state of inactivity.

When there is a sense of achievement the pressure slackens for sometime, but soon after a little worry starts. This worry builds up pressure and it again incites action. Basically pressure keeps us moving forward.

How well a person does is very closely related to how he can manage pressure. Can he keep his head, and stick to what he wants to do and excel at that, or does he get side tracked and end up doing bad work? Whichever way it is, Pressure will always be pushing us....

Its like Gravity, and an amazing example of what I am saying can be found in astronomy. In order to get away from Earth's gravity any space craft has to put in massive effort and its a pain how much fuel needs to be utilized to just push the craft away from Earth and into space.
There is a thing called Gravity assist - many missions have used the gravity pull of planets to save fuel and travel light! (Read more)

Similarly while initially we seem to think that "pressure aargghhhh we need to get away from it" its only until we understand how it works.

So its time to keep aside complaining or viewing Pressure as a negative thing and lets embrace it as it is a force that helps us achieve and aspire. This will also help us manage it better and not get freaked out by all the pressure around us.

Came across this concept on @mrjain's blog about DeBeers the Diamond Giant. It an intriguing read on how they made Diamond Rings the symbol of an engagement ceremony so as to keep up the diamond market!

It made me realise what we call as culture might actually be the direct effect of 'marketing' gimics by huge corporates that gain a lot of money from it. Hmmmmph will older people understand that if I tell them?

DeBeer's and Google by priyanka

Later I read this other articles about Google and Sify, and they are around the similar topic about Big Brands and their markets.

Google gets into consulting small businesses. Google is actually into a lot of things.. some which we don't know of like they have this scholarship for youth into non-profits work.

Sify - Indian AOL? Its cool to understand how they went about tapping into their market.

Sify by priyanka

Brands and their market and how they influence 'their market' which we also call society??

A crucial aspect for any company is Hiring! To scale up or even sustain practices employees are required in companies, and to get these employees hiring is a must. Yet its not easy at all, as I myself have been realizing at DigiWhirl!

An interesting podcast by @sahilparikh and @mrjain on their hiring experiences,
Joys of Hiring in India

While it is difficult, there is a lot of room for innovation in this field, as we can hear from Shridhar Vembu of Zoho.



What are your thoughts on hiring?