Archive: Oct 2006

It is interesting to see how Social Networking (SN) sites evolve.

Friendster took off like a rocketship when it launched. It was out of control – everyone was on it and everyone was talking about it. Then techonology problems (like an excruciatingly slow site) caused it to fall off a cliff. But, if you look at the graph below (from Alexa), they are reemerging…

Orkut, Google’s venture into SN, also took off with a ton of press about Orkut Biakutten. Everyone I knew logged on, added all their friends and then, maybe 6 months later, everyone got tired of it and stopped. Primarily because there was no point.

But Orkut is *huge* in certain places. The well known one is Brazil, but they are actually also huge in India. All the evidence is anecdotal. Go to most any Indian blog and you will see mentions of Orkut. I also get a fair amount of messages from Indians on Orkut. Actually, looking at the Alexa numbers, there’s been an incredible spike as of Q2 of 2006. Why?

And comparing Friendster versus Orkut, you can see that Orkut has clearly taken off.

Here’s an interesting blurb from ZDNet News (from July ’06):

In May, Orkut had 210,000 visitors in the United States, up 85 percent from the year earlier, according to ComScore.

Worldwide, Orkut enjoyed more popularity. It ranked fifth in May by ComScore’s measure, more than doubling its visitors for the year to 33.7 million. In contrast, MSN Spaces doubled its visitors to 101 million, and MySpace grew 250 percent to 74 million, according to ComScore.

Wow — US traffic is smaller than a speck of dust. Incredible how significant international growth is.

The only SN site that seems impervious to cycles is the juggernaut, MySpace.

This is cool. Kiran Desai became the youngest woman to win the Man Booker Prize for her book “The Inheritance Of Loss”. The last Indian woman to win it was Arundathi Roy for “God Of Small Things”, which I loved.

It took Kiran eight years to write the novel (wow!) and she dedicated it to her mother, Anita Desai, who was nominated for the Booker three times, but never won.

Click on the book to listen to Kiran’s reading.

Here’s an excellent interview by one of my favorite bloggers, Jabberwock.

Sorry I haven’t been posting here. I’ve been jammed with the film festival. I have been writing about it on Tatvam.

Back really soon.

This site enables you to create Pollockesque art by moving your mouse around. Click the mouse to change colors. Very relaxing and much less messy than trying it on canvas. I wished that it would let you stop painting and save your masterpiece! I’d definitely put it up here!

Charlie linked to a new site, finetune, that compiles a playlist of any chosen artist and streams the music. It also recommends similar music. My music discovery has gone down significantly since I stopped commuting to work (my only radio time). So, this will help fix that.

Update : Apparently I am horribly behind in my knowledge of music apps. Charlie pointed me to Pandora. Better than finetune. UI is better, and most importantly it allows you to tell it what you like. Hello Music 2.0, I have emerged from under the rock.

Fred Wilson has a good post about what it takes for Union Square Ventures to fund a company. It is always good when VCs are clear on what they are looking for – it makes the entrepreneur’s job so much easier.

While I agree with Fred that the cost of entry is going down, it is all relative. If you are a young entrepreneur with a job, mortgage and maybe a kid, do you quit and just take the risk or do you get a working beta (while at your current job)?

A friend was recently in this situation — he and his partner had a pretty good beta of a product I would use. It was in a crowded space, but the execution was very good and it had those key product touches that could make it the breakout product. My friend was ready to quit to do this full time. He was willing to take the risk and didn’t want to take someone else’s money till he was comfortable there was traction. The partner however wanted the security of some angel funding to quit his job.

With Web 2.0 apps and the whole “cost is going down” argument, even angels want to see traction before they fund a startup. What is the right way for an entrepreneur to proceed?

Today, Tatvam Productions was born online.

Tatvam means reality or inner truth in Sanskrit. Tatvam Productions tells stories that reach for the truth, share the reality and communicate the inner meaning.

Tatvam will be my professional blog where I blog about the entertainment world. This blog will continue to host my random musings.

Getting Tatvam live was a team effort.

• The name Tatvam was conceived by my Grandmother (the tech savvy one) and my Mother.
• The cool logo was created by Kathleen Ko and I got lots of input on which one to choose from my husband, brother and sister.
• The completely, fabulously, mind-blowingly cool site was designed by George Liang.

And all in record time.

May Tatvam be with you!

You can either dive headfirst into the technology revolution or make excuses as to why you can’t. The person who amazes me the most in this regard is my Grandmother.

She is one cool lady. There’s been a history of coolness – from a gold medal in Sanskrit in college to driving herself (and her kids) around in Bangkok, to speaking Thai and French in addition to English, Tamil and Kannada, she’s always exhibited a passion for life that’s contagious.

Not that my Grandfather is not cool in his own right – both my grandparents are iPod converts, pulling out the little device when they feel like listening to their favorite ragams. I have a “technology is compressing our world” moment every time I see my Grandfather, sitting in his veshti, white iPod earplugs sprouting from his ears, lost in his music.

But my Grandmother takes the cake. On my last trip home, I was sitting near my Grandmom, talking on the phone with a friend. The conversation was about Wikis. I was telling my friend how they work and I said “Of course the most famous and comprehensive wiki is…” “And my Grandmother piped in with “Wikipedia”! She then proceeded to explain how it worked. So cool.

I recounted the conversation to Om and he blogged about it. The post subsequently got a couple of trackbacks too.

Not just cool, but famous in the blogosphere!

I stumbled upon this cool meme. I wasn’t “invited” to the meme by anyone since I don’t know any of the bloggers, but it was so cool that I decided to participate (is that kosher?)

Gaurav proposed three words — Mahmood, Chardonnay and Musharraf. He proposed that not only do you come up with a story, but do so in 55 words. Interesting!

Here’s my take:

Fucking Effing Musharraf was on Jon Stuart. Dictatorial comedy. Made me smile nonetheless. Not quite a smooth pinot noir, but maybe a perky chardonnay instead. Reminded me of the best of Mahmood. Wit, charm, convenient memory, lies. The worst of Mahmood. Crawling into bed alone, I wished he were here. Rememories surface at most inopportune times.

The goal of this meme is to give to ProjectWhy. Please do.