What did you lust for when you were tired or turned-on?

Honestly tell me, have you ever wanted to have sex when you are really tired, have a headache and beat-down? or did you just wanted to lay-dead and sleep? How about aspiring for Rancheros Enchilada (or your favorite dish) when you had fever and tummy pain? If you answered this with "Are you freaking, out of your mind?", you are part of a large group of the sane population.

Now, also tell me. Did you care for how remarkably awesome your bed should be for you to lay-dead and sleep over? Or even cared about whether Katrina Kaif promoted the Crocin you popped in? If your answer is a “No” again, you are rest assured that you confirm with a large group out there.

The point is? Even when your product is remarkably sexy, curvaceous and the most lustful creation that you may have created, if your target segment is tired and beat-down (or in pain), then you fail selling sex. It does not matter if you drop your going-rate (price), engage in longer foreplay (dedicated pre-sales and program structure elements), stay back longer (more for less) etc... Instead, focus on selling them a simple sleep aid or a quick massage if they are tired (deal fatigue or some similar syndrome?) or honestly leave them alone for some time if you are not addressing the pain. Again, If you do not have passionate early adopters (and/or you are not addressing a consumer pain), then do not bother on further expenses on cosmetics, bikinis and fad-diets.

What about when your consumer segment is extremely turned on? (The other extreme lets say. Like when they are pumped on testosterone or probably drunk), do they go choosing between a hot blond versus a brunette bomb? Intuition and trends says, “No”, they do not. They will probably settle down with who ever is the most convenient to access (as anything may do in that state). Even here, overtly sexing up your product in the name of competition may not help. Focusing on just “being available” when needed does the job.

The problem arises when the consumer is in neither of the states and they are sober. This is when they have enough time to haggle on the price, services, duration, special-attention, shape, size, texture, whatever (the value conscious state). This is where you better be “remarkable” or you shall be soon off the streets. Being remarkable need not have to play on the deadly sins theme at all (no you do not have to be a hooker). Just choosing the core business values and doing it well is good enough.

Being remarkable requires your ability to make an impression in a way that the consumer will speak about you in their casual conversations. Something like, “That girl is one of the kindest soul I have come across. I find it cute in a way” or “He is so chivalrous and decent, a breathe of fresh air”. These casual conversations dictates that they remember you for your core-values, as against "Oh, she has the hottest assets you know". Having and maintaing hot assets is far more difficult than being kind, and is not sustainable in the long run. If you are note worthy during a casual conversation on your business values, you have made the right consumer impressions for a long-term organic growth.

Do you know what state your market segment is in? Have you figured out your core principles?

What is the best hyperlocal strategy for India?

Came across the question here on Pluggd.in forum.

If I take the question at face value, then it is at a very high level. It is almost like asking "What is the best means of transport on land (in India)?" The devil is actually in the details of what we perceive of this question. What do you mean by "best" (quality, cost, value, speed)? What do you mean by "transport" (for people, live stock, fragile goods, general goods)? What will be the volume, frequency of travel? Will it be in a desert? Metaled Road? By-lanes? Across highways? Rough off-road terrain? (Point being made)

Similarly, In this question we have the following variables: 'best', 'strategy', 'hyperlocal' and 'India' which has wide ranging and extremely swinging perceptions. Best for who? (vendor, manufacturer, service provider, consumer...)? What is a threshold to say something is strategic versus operational (from a near term cash-flow perspective? or a long term organic growth perspective?) What is hyperlocal? Which India? (The 4 broad demographics in a tier-1 city? The multitude of BoP class which can only be classified on economics, but gets hairy when we apply cultural context? Aspirants from tier-2, tier-3?...)

Let's specifically say for hyperlocal, the challenge with any discussion around hyperlocal quickly surmounts to what each of us perceive as hyperlocal (and also based on what categories already has or has-not worked in some distant markets). Some agree that it is around a physical boundary (narrow geography) while others vehemently deny a concept of geography involved at all (the theory of nearness to an idea/concept  which does not encompass geography is also accepted as hyperlocal).

As an example, let me assume that the flavor of discussion I would like to ‘barely attempt’ to provide my opinion, contains the following key constituents: Narrow-geography based on your immediate current location, Relevance, Individual targeting, Retail and Tier-1 city as a domain (even this is at a very high level).

Then IMO, (at a very aggregate level) India and BRIC style developing nations will be the most equitable places where hyperlocal will thrive in the mid to long term forecasts.

Why? because the heterogeneity of the markets and the amount of fragmentation and decentralization in these nations are high (intuitively, that is, compared to homogeneous, big-box EDLP markets). As a hygiene-argument from a market-category perspective, demand analysis in such markets is way costlier if it has to be done by each SMB on their own. Currently even large well funded (offline retail) conglomerates in India suffer majorly from demand metrics which can significantly improve top-lines when applied well. (This assuming hyperlocal enables significant improvements on demand-chain solutions, which it resoundingly does).

A large part of Indian-metro population is cost conscious markets (specifically around dailies, staples, consumer durables and household services) as I understand it (Note that not all FMCG falls in this group, or beauty and restaurant services is avoided intentionally as that has its own segmented behavior). (Again, what is good for Mrs Khanna is not good for Mr. Iyer).

If you look at the market from the (stated) consumer perspective for the specifically stated categories, then IMO, we can ascertain that finding value (cause one is cost conscious) for what we pay in such heterogeneous markets is extremely painful. and hence, where there is pain (latent or otherwise) there ought to be innovative solutions which shall be reasonably profitable for all players involved.

There are many execution specific questions that pops-up when you generalize such arguments. What is the pain threshold? Will the consumer generally live with the pain in a latent mode until a hyperlocal-solution is offered? or have they already moved on with other alternatives with maximum utility (group-deals are already hyperlocal)? What is the segment size and the number of segments that can be herded with a single platform enabling dynamic customization for similar market segments at minimal cost for the solution-provider? Can it go to the level of relevance and individual targeting over a period of time? Can you apply consumer language for all of the questions and simplify the ‘value find’ use-cases efficiently in near-term? The nature of solution in itself is a huge debate. Add to that the number of edge-devices, maturity of the masses to soak up mobility solutions (or other such profile), technology, market-led innovations etc.. and we can keep this debate on for a long time in vaccum. Justifying an opinion to such interesting debates on a single-post on a blog is really hard without getting excited on every aspect of the problem-space. (Maybe further blogs)

Meanwhile, think through the following hyperlocal use-cases and apply your own perspectives:

• Collective collaboration at the community marketplace where vendors offer service-packs (electricians, painters, plumbers...).
• Community economics encouraging sustainable & experiential lifestyle involving gaming, community sharing (used items, car pool).
• Social engagements involving flash mobs, activism, common goal (as against common interest), social donors.
• Enhancing supply-side (sourcing) dynamics with stock and asset moments along with logistics, in-bounding, relevant auto-indents.
• Empowering producers (farmers) at the geo-fenced level with info enablers such as price flux, input source, weather, infra...
• Enabling 'catchment level' sales structures and program support elements empowering feet-on-street, reducing fiction costs.
• Community news, for the community, by the community enabling personalized channels and preferences.
• Transport details involving nearness, cost, mode, quality of experience (crowded) and alternatives.
• Near-store engagements enabling experience that are relevant for the moment-of-maximum exposure limiting the lead times to zero.

In essence #hyperlocal is an ability to focus on a market of 1 (or few) engaging with relevant info based on personalization in real-time, near-to where you are currently located. Its a nascent problem-space. There are no such thing as best strategies except to intrincically know your markets and to iterate. There are no experts who can predict the outcome of any of the myriad hyperlocal use-cases for India or anywhere globally either. We should therfore be cautious not to throw baby out along with the bath-water.

Are we 'Life' Challenged?

Regardless of our supreme abilities as mammals, living life seems to be a challenge for most of us. We complicate and procrastinate things like we shall live forever, in the end only to die like we have never lived. Why is it so difficult to lessen the luggage? adding more and more of inanimate desires which slows us down, chokes us and strips us all of true joy.

Jealousy, greed, awry, hatred, lust; these have never seemed to have rejuvenated anything ever, yet we internalize them. Vicious these parasites are, for once they hang on to us, they do deplete life before we know it.

Unconditional love, it seems, has become a poet’s semantic. Hopeless romantics are despised. To slow down to watch the sunset is abstained. Boundless laughter is thought to be frivolous. New-perspectives are sedated and made to fall back in line of the old. Different is feared. To start-up is considered dreadful. Are we programming ourselfs to gravitate towards getting stuck in a surreal state of gloom?

Wondrous encounters with the elements, sunshine on our face, a dip in the serene lake, wholesome fresh fruits, playful and indeterminate conversations with the kids, being impregnate with curiosity, to get up and run; free and wild. Just the sound of these words are so full of life. In order to “one-fine-day” achieve such ecstasy, we seem to abandon the very same, “today”.

Life’s compromises are just that. Compromising on life.

 

Heavens Will be More Perfect.

I feel naked. Naked to the fact that death as a milestone does apply to Gods as well. I do not know if it is true, that death is a destination, for, in my culture and religion, I have been fostered to believe that death is just the beginning. The beginning of the new, the beginning of the momentum that you may have set in due course of your life.

I do not have the privilege to claim that I know or understand Steve Jobs. But I have the colossal honor to have lived in his times and to be impacted with sheer excellence of his legacy. The legacy for me is not the products that he marshalled, nor the business that he built, nor the empire that he reigned on.

The legacy, for me, is something more astute to the fact that being a fearless heretic of an idea, an idea that strongly resounds with the “why” of existence more than any other ruminations, is the most potent wisdom that empowers paradigm shifting creations.

A man who was given birth only to get adopted, who dropped out of college at 17 post self interrogation of the value for such expensive education paid through the savings of working class parents, to have slept on the floor of friend's dorm and to have been fed by the deposits of coke bottles when there was no money for food, who walked 7 miles once a week for one good meal. For such a man to be in romance with aesthetics of life is something astonishing, but not unimaginable.

What is unimaginable is the passion with which such aesthetics was pursued, unsettling to anything sub-optimal, relentless in the pursuit of the pristine, fearless in his advocacy of what should-be than what was assumed necessary, never bowing down to anything mediocre. Feared, respected, revered, worshipped. For someone who even death, it seems, asked permission 6 years back.

Uncompromising and resolute towards perfection. A perfect life, a perfect death and a symmetrically perfect legacy. iSalute.

What are you waiting for?

So, said the reporter, "Excuse me... What's your opinion on the meat shortage?" to a nearby standing clique which had an American, a Russian, a Chinese and an Israeli. Now, the ability to perceive the reporter's question was preceded with the idioms and metaphors of the culture and economic context of the individuals who were from their respective countries, as usual.

- "What's a Shortage?" queried the American. In the land of excess this was an alien word.

- "What's meat?" quizzed the Russian, for, he had not heard of any for a long time.

- "What's an Opinion?" wondered the Chinese. As much as what had been the rule of the land.

- "What's an Excuse?" inquired the Israeli. That's something they were never used to !

Now, there was an Indian passing by who happened to overhear the Reporters interrogation. *The Indian understood the question perfectly well*. 

The point is? Well we Indians as startups and Innovators happens to be in the context & economy that allows us to be blessed to understand all the connotations of that question. Yet, we must hope that it would be a blessing, the day we stop understanding "excuses". This shall probably be the day we accelerate the process of Innovation.

Whats your execuse to not start-up? or to not push the boundaries? or to not stop whining about lack of eco-system? or...

(Attribution: this context is a adaptaion of Mike Leigh's Jewish play "Two Thousand Years")

Mobile Apps Developer? Ad Monetization? Really?

There are so many mobile app developers nowadays. It is getting hard to keep track of what exactly each of us do. Whenever you veer into the Business and Revenue model discussions with some of them (us), you get to hear awesome things about Angry Birds! The pitch is to follow the Angry Birds revenue model. What is that you might wonder? Oh the Ad Monetization based Revenue models you are pitched.

But have you explored what App you would like to develop? What is the consumer and target groups you are going after? The utilities you enable for the target group? About other revenue opportunities? As soon as these questions flow, it sometimes look like I catapulted a Black-Bird that explodes on contact at them, and the conversations flow like, Oh, we 'thought' about it, we have tried it 'once'! those are pretty 'hard' things to do!

Thought about it? Tried it Once? Hard to do? I am gasping for fresh air at this moment.

You know, there is absolutely nothing wrong in aspiring on a good Ad monetization revenue model (even if you are not benchmarking Angry Birds here). I know several great Ad monetization businesses which are doing decent top-lines (some of them are good friends and well respected). So, before you break it down, its important to know what other Business Models exists.

At the very high level, the following are some broad brush strokes mobile app business models :

• Enable mobile channel play for existing web channels which are non-ads based (Deals, Events, News).
• Enable mobile channel play for Business LOBs creating new media asset (Leads, Branding, Merchandising).
• Own a focused, curated content (created through your app), and charge for the access to assets (POI, Metrics, API).
• Enablement of mobile mediation layers controlling access to existing enterprise services. (Enterprise Mobility).
• Mobile device management and control platforms. (Enterprise Device Management).
• Develop apps for other business as a service. (Software Services).
• Develop compelling utility/game apps which users are willing to pay (Pay per download).
• Develop compelling utility/game which are free (Ad monetization).

The Revenue models can be categorized as follows:

Not charging the consumer but charging a Business: (Free for consumer)

• Charge for Action (Number of leads filled, Deals closed, Events booked, Close loop).
• Charge for Impression, Click Through Rates (Brand content disseminated, Click on assortments).
• Charge for Service to develop (Fixed Cost, Time & Material, Hybrid).
• Charge the Developer or Enterprise for Usage (Charge for API calls, charge for throttled use of mediation layers).
• Earn through Promotions (Ad monetization). (This is diff from 'charging' for Impression where you control the sourcing)

Directly charge a consumer:

• Charge for Commodity (One time download fee)
• Subscription Charge for Access (Subscription for monthly news, Stock tickers, Domain content)
• The above can have a variant of free for limited features, different monthly fee for different capabilities.

Since we started on Angry Birds Ad monetization as benchmark (for a specific Business/Revenue model combinantion), you should know some high-level metrics of Angry Birds (as I write) if you are aspiring to be one. Angry Birds have in excess of 350 Million downloads (across all platforms) and has 200 Million minutes of play time everyday (that's equal to 380 years of game time every day). Also, it is not just one game anymore. It is more a game platform with series of games for every season (Halloween, Christmas),  along with extension packs and Themes for movies (Rio) and Ports (Magic for Nokia). Angry Birds is rumored to have taken in excess of 50+ release attempts before it struck the exact game psychology with its adopters. They also have a paid version, where 12+ Million copies have been purchased on iOS.

Then, Of-course, you were kidding when you mentioned Angry Birds. Yeah, I know that. in that case, lets focus on the people who are making a decent living off Ad-Monetization, shall we. Lets take an analogy here, there are so many bloggers who are making a decent living off their blogs cause they are experts in what they write and have a focused audience. So when you say you would like to start a blog to earn money, be very focused on the audience. Even for mobile apps, audience and utility matters. Who are your audience? demography (age profile..)? psychography (likes, tastes...)? What app are you developing (Game, Lifestyle, Info, Travel, Shopping)? What is the experience you are targeting (Lean-Back, Lean-Forward) etc.. Once you have figured this, you need to worry about:

• Hardware, Software, Device (and experience) fragmentation.
• Compelling UX, Addictive Visuals, Theatrical Experience.
• Content Refresh Rates (or game levels).
• Challenges and Puzzles for the right psyche and device profile.
• Context Awareness (Location Based, Event based...)
• Seasonal, Theme or Memorabilia (Christmas, Disney, Harry Potter)

Next, you have to worry about the metrics of the mediation layer. In other words who shall give me ads? what shall I earn? when do i get paid etc.. Some of the Ad and usage metrics that you have to be aware of are as follows:

• Dwell Time: The average time spent by the user daily.
• Frequency: The number of times the consumer uses the app.
• Time lags: The time between frequent visits (this can taper down).
• Shelf Life (Half-life): The time that a app can keep a consumer excited, once a half-life is reached, the usage tappers down.
• Impressions: Number of times a ad is served.
• CPM: Cost per Mille of the ad impression.
• Clicks: Number of people clicking on a served impression.
• CTR: Click through rates, number of clicks by the number of impressions served.
• Global Fill Rates: This is a percentage metric representing the inventory of ads that is served.
• Funnel Fill Ratio: Number of new users, acquired users, median users, half-lifed users that are in your funnel.
• Viral Coefficient: This is a fancy ratio, but in general this means, how many of your current users referenced new users.
• Relevancy Metric: Is it in native language? Is it specific to a locale? is it specific to a demography? psychography?

Notice that you earn less money by serving impressions and more for covering clicks (clicks are considered as actions and are equivalent to leads) So, how do you increase your impressions and clicks? This is exactly where the rubber meets the road friends. If you do not know your audience profile, or track the usage metrics of your app, then, you are in complete doldrums here. You need to have a good analytical dashboard in the backend or rely on the one that your ad mediator provide (like InMobi or AdMobs).

Assuming you have a compelling App which has a addictive user Interface you 'still' need to ponder on:

• Is this a lean-back app driving dwell times but is not so much focused about frequency?
• Is it a lean-forward app relying much on recency and frequency?
• Do you uderstand the events that produce the time lags?
• How about your Relevance strategy? What are your ad promotion strategy based on such relevancy?
• Do you serve text ads versus graphics?
• What about the Global Fill Rates? Are the house ads (free ads) eating up your ad inventory?
• Who controls the fill rates (you or the mediator)?
• What is the seasonal cost of such inventory (Oh, these rates fluctuates beyond anyone’s understanding).

Just while you start interacting and getting a handle of some of the above, your half-life hits and usage tapers down, now you start worrying about Funnel fills, refresh rates & median CTRs for retention (through new versions, new levels, extension packs). What about virality? marketing budget to go after prime adopters? Yeah, I can go on, but by now you get the point right. If you are throwing more than one app out there to spread the bets on the portfolio, then you have to do all of the above for every app if you need a decent top-line. But then again, you can blindly just throw apps out there not worrying of anything and hope to make some revenues as well (Good luck if you are one of them).

Just in case if you think you are in the Ad monetization business because it is 'Easy'. Think through again. Talk to established players and understand their metrics. Get a good product mentor on board. Most importantly be ready for a wild experience. Oh do not forget to have fun in the process. Cheers :)

Social Graph: The Philosophy of Existence.

The first post of this social-graph series explained the scheme of things and the second post looked at the broad types of activities one can perform over the graph and the experiences that are possible using edge devices.

In this post, I ponder (philosophically) on the nature and the context of the social graph from the perspective of why it matters or why people participate.

Its been found that even bacteria-infecting viruses (called phages) do communicate through chemical markers (viral gene expressions based on genomes and proteins) in the host system to make collective decisions to either remain in a latent state or to attack the host. The point is? Well, the point is that life, it seems, is inherently and implicitly social, both by nature and context (voluntarily and involuntarily).

In-fact, i have a amateur-theory that all organisms are hardwired by nature to engage with other organisms in order to get fitter in the cycle of evolution. The fitness is based on the 'access' and evolution of 'shared' knowledge (of a particular gene state in a host, or the economic output of a country, or any other esoteric inter-galactic protocol).

Given that humans are organisms blessed with superior interaction skills, our incentives are primarily driven by engaging with each other, often emphatically, based on many different 'intents of life'. The intents of life can be shaped up from a functional context as understood from previous posts or also based on 'tastes' and 'interests'. Note that I am generalizing all intentions that forms different context and still call them as social-graphs . In many places, people have coined many other terms such as interest-graph or taste-graphs and have provided interesting connotations for these topologies (I will provide my opinions on this in future posts). For me, simply put, if Individuals are socially networking, then its a social-graph. The rest of it is a signalling discussion around the context. IMO, the intents only bind the domain of discourse of the graph establishing a context.

To illustrate, If I am interested in bird watching, I would love to engage with fellow bird watchers to exchange notes, discuss, and learn about this domain. Now, will I choose to search for others sharing similar interest over my friends network (Facebook, Twitter etc..), or will I form a separate group, or will I move to a separate social-graph for bird watchers is again a discussion of semantics. Lets for a moment assume that there is a bird-watchers fan-page or a group as part of a established social network (say Facebook) and call it a platform.

Every time people engage with each other over a topic of interest over a domain (on a platform), they refine the knowledge-base within that domain and take it to the next level (evolution). Note that in the process of engagement, I may also want to date, hang-out and party with people who are like minded. The pleasure modules in the brain is incentivized in this 'interest seeking' behavior to feel good about engaging with other humans on the topic of interest that are close to our heart(?). In effect, when we say we engage socially, we involve the faculties of both Cognition (understand, learn) and Psyche (perceive, emote) to derive conclusions of such engagements. it is almost a driver of life, that we voluntarily or in-voluntarily participate in social-graphs then.

Given the connectedness of the digital world, it became quickly obvious that establishing context specific platforms over the Internet (the digital nervous system) to enable such interactions is a natural hit. As hypothesized, it becomes natural for us humans to gravitate towards such platforms which enables access to others so as to share our life's intent enriching our experiences.

The nature of such engagements happens over different styles of communication as follows:

• Synchronous or Asynchronous (relevant based on the flow of info and immediacy) 
• Closed or Open ended (status versus questions)
• Private or Public (Inside a closed virtual room or on a wall)
• Unicasted or Broadcasted (one-to-one or group messages)
• Organized or Un-organized (hashed, tagged, categorized)
• Structured or Loose (Text heavy or template based)
• Animated or Bland (Exchange of Narratives, Theatricals and Videos)
• Location specific or Global (My locality, state, country...)
• Discovery versus Recovery (Find something new versus fetch something I know)

Again, it has to be noted that the styles of engagements are chosen primarily based on the combinatorics of dimensions that we have understood in the past posts such as the functional domains, the edge-device profiles, the device experiences (upright, lean-back, lean-forward) and also on the intent of accessing or sharing information and the conclusions that are sought for such engagements. So, again, not all engagement styles are suitable for a given combination of device-profile, device-experience, environments and engagement intents. (much to ponder and innovate here BTW)

Now, then, it starts getting interesting to study and analyze the usage profiles and behavior of humans (to access and share info) through such bounded context of different social-graphs. The intents that are captured, the knowledge disseminated, diffused, built or contained in such graphs becomes extremely important to push the bounds of human evolution a bit further. Of-course such knowledge gets extremely enticing to all practitioners from the functional domain, be it marketers, sellers, buyers, recruiters or also to linguists, sociologists, politicians, economists, logicians, biologists etc...

We can conclude that Social graphs do matter and it is natutral for people to participate. And, what about the evolution? The reach and relevance, unprecedented. The potential and imagination, unbounded.