Bing + Alpha Even better!

Few months ago, I blogged about a niche new search engine Wolfram Alpha is serving and its product positioning within that space. Turns out, Wolfram Alpha and Microsoft management is moving into exactly that direction. Microsoft's Bing is licensing technology from Wolfram Alpha to serve niche results. This is even better! Now Wolfram Alpha is getting mainstream traffic and serving outstanding search results within its special niche, while bing will serve most other results. This is win-win case for brilliant technology of WFA and promising counter attack by Bing...

is facebook defying gravity?

Social networks usually have a very strong network effects. Meaning, I don't give a damn about ANY social network unless I have my friends/ family on the network. So I would not care about facebook otherwise, but since most of my friends are on facebook, I am on facebook and vice-a-versa. (Ok you can imagine other example of network effects, eg. Phone! I have a phone because other people have a phone and I can call them! ok enough of being pedantic..)

IMHO, establishing a new product by breaking these network effects is as good as defying gravity. I'd not put my money on such product/ service. But it's apparent to me that facebook is eventually going to beat Orkut in Indian market. Not long ago Orkut was the norm. Everybody is/ was on Orkut in India. But something happened, and suddenly people are moving to facebook. In my small test sample of my own friends, I have added 100+ friends on facebook in last 2 months who also happen to be my friends on Orkut. I have over 20+ wall posts on facebook, and have just under 5 'scraps' on orkut...

What you think? What could be the reason behind this kind of abnormal phenomenon? What is the secret sauce facebook have that orkut doesn't? After all, orkut is a Google venture!

Update: !so Google - Orkut's response to stop the exodus to Facebook - stor from tech crunch

Kai Fu Lee and doing web business in China

Last week Google China VP Dr. Kai Fu Lee left Google to start his own venture capital firm to back China based high tech innovation. Last year as a student at Carnegie Mellon University, I had a chance to listen to his interesting lecture on Google's China strategy. I highly recommend watching his full lecture to anyone who is interested in understanding China's technology landscape, and how it is different. He shared some very interesting observations like -

In China - people do not have access to Wikipedia!
It is belied that to be successful in China one needs to take long term view, Google fully understands this -

"We will take long term view in China, China has 5000 years of history and Google has 5000 years of patience in China" - Google CEO, Eric Schmidt

Finally, the way Chinese users view a search page is far different than the way americans do - here are the results of an eye tracking study of a Goole search page!

Here is the full lecture -

Entrepreneurs

Last week two of my friends launched their own businesses - this blog is a tribute to their promising ventures -

My Carnegie Mellon friend Ankush Gupta - recently launched his venture Vigyaapan technologies - a targeted advertising product focused on leveraging social networks. Unlike most ventures of ad-targetting on social networks, Vigyaapan is building product based on social connections (network) formed over a "phone" network.. His venture was also featured under "top 10 hottest start ups" in India.


My high school friend Vipul Shah has also launched a very promising business - Trias Advisory - Firm aimed at providing financial advisory solutions. Vipul and his partners hold an MBA from reputed institutes and vital experience in wealth and financial management.

So, if you want to market your product, contact Ankush, or if you are rich and need a new and promising money manager contact Vipul. My best wishes to both these ventures...

Don't be afraid of polarizing people

I am not talking about Political parties here, but rather - designing products. Some products will appeal to most, but there will be certain products which polarize people. And more likely or not these products will serve 'niche' markets and can actually make decent money!

Google is being central in search engine space... But I always believed there are areas around this central space which should serve niche areas. yes Google is the best - but it only fulfills 80% of my needs - I need niche product for remaining 20%...

This week, I found one - WolframAlpha- they call themselves computational knowledge engine... Search Engine product designed to address computational queries. You can find more information here

If these guys manage to churn out successful venture - there will be more people going after more niche products. And that could be beginning of the end of Google's super monopoly. If not - I don't see any threat to Google in foreseeable future. So lets wait and watch the alpha launch...

New World Order

Uncertainty is part of life. Ok, So we have this concept
of risk that comes naturally with uncertainty. Then comes risk assessment and then risk mitigation etc. We also have all financial derivative instruments to cover these risks. As events are unfolding, I am sensing need of new order to manage this uncertainty. Lets take example of 2 events that have unfolded in last 6 months:

1. Dollar has strengthened by over 25% against Euro (and also Rupee)
2. Oil is down from $146 to now below $60

These two statistics carry unprecedented change for businesses around the world. My view is, its impossible to do business and emerge as a winner on your business strength, too much luck involved in those numbers. This is hurting. Classical economics of demand and supply is not working. We have not stopped drinking oil in half, nor we are eating more dollars...

For stable long term growth, we need to cap these swings. Yes, I am for regulation. As a society we can never sustain 10-15% growth y-o-y, and we need to cap this growth. As a society we will be more happy in long term steady growth as opposed to
erratic swings we are observing through this economy. More certainty will bring more consistent business opportunities and more capital will flow into pure business models as opposed to trading models.

My guess is post crash of wall street, our leaders will embrace new world order,
where uncertainty and volatility will be discouraged with regulation and innovation will be encouraged by sound policy making....