Why Tata Nen HottestStartups Contest Is A Complete HogWash

In case you are not familiar with this contest, its a contest for Indian startups where the winners will be selected by popular voting and ratings by expert panel.

Now here is why this event is a complete hogwash. 

1. The best startups might not be able to get popular voting at all. For example a nano technology company with a product focussed on government organization. It makes sense for consumer websites to get more, and probably thats what its intended for. The only issue is that they have not mentioned this anywhere.

2. The votes can easily be rigged. Infact i am sure most of the top 100 startups have in some way manipulated voting. The top company has got 10,000 votes. Seems unrealistic.

3. The voting charges are 3 rs. per sms like those reality shows. 

4. Some of the top 200 startups in the contest are nonsense. They have no business model, no profits, no future.

5. The experts are no good to give any one ratings. Most of the experts have not proved themselves that they can sense a good business opportunity. The expert panel is not impressive. I saw some experts give exceptional comments to a blog. I mean nothing against blogs, i just dont consider a blog a startups.

6. Some of the best companies i could find are in the bottom 100.

7. Their website is so pathetically slow, its virtually impossible to vote online. If this guys were serious they would do something about this. You will not even get confirmation emails when you register. If you do register you will not be able to login.

8. They didnt expect people would rig votes. They mention on their website that they didnt expect people to manipulate votes. These are the people who are supposed to judge business opportunities. By the time they realised votes have been rigged its already too late.

9.  Popular voting is given 50% weightage. Now that will make sure the best startups don't get nominated in the top 30.

How A Search Engines Conflict Of Interest Can Keep You Away From That Perfect Search Engine

We all dream about that perfect search engine. The engine that gives you answer for every question without trying your ability to think of imaginary keywords that might or might not exist. The search engine that will tell you where your kids are and what they are doing, the search engine that tells who you need to marry, the search engine that tells you if are going to become the next president.

But wait, it will never happen. 

There is a conflict of interest that arises in every advertising based business. Every content provider is serving a advertiser. They owe the advertiser a share of your attention. 

If search engines became perfect, you will hardly click the ad. If search engine became perfect, you will not visit a website, the content owner will not have any reason to share his content with the search engine.

Marrissa mayer, gave a seminar in web.20 summit in which she shared how increasing the number of search results on each page from 10 to 30 caused the traffic and revenue to reduce 20%.

When marrisa mayer equates people leaving their search results page early and not clicking ads to bad performance you know there is not much hope.

The chances are a user might might have more search results to view, he focuses less on ads, he finds a good result in 30 results and visits the website.  

Itsclearly understandable, irrespective of what google tells you, they want you on their website. That is where they get their revenues from.

I dont blame them, they are a for profit company. Its the entire business model that has conflict of interest built in.

Someday maybe they will start an ad free search engine and charge a fee for it. There they can give users the best search engine, because you are paying them for it. Simple.

No its not the software stupid: Google shows off Gmail on Android

Google inc showed off its gmail service on android on its blog recently and it seems everyone is happy to see the screenshots. Very happy.

Infact the screenshot looked so much better then gmail on the web i am tempted to use a android phone just to check my emails even when i am right infront of my computer.

But hey who ever complained about android, we just thought G1 design sucks. 

Nokia switches strategy, connects to internet

  

Nokia whos brand slogan is connecting people, has so far not connected to the internet too much. They were happy making cool phones and selling them. 

Nomore. Nokia has seen many companies come and play in its core domain. Every company that does anything at all has a phone to sell to us now. 

But so far Nokia has focussed on its core. It made phone and only phones while others like Sonay and samsung ventured into anything that has a silicon chip inside it. And then along came Google android to give its recently acquired symbian mobile operating system a run for its money.

Everyone just wanted to take what bill gates did to the PC and do it to our mobile phones. Everyone wanted to control the third screen as they call it.

While Steve jobs is too arrogant to learn from his mistakes which is evident from the fact that he steal wanted people to buy a phone that has apples software, apples hardware and design, Google is actually doing what bill did by releasing a operating system and not making a mobile handset.

Now since Google would be shown a middle finger if it just came along with operating system and told everyone to switch over cause it says so, it follwed a better strategy of releasig this softare as open source which is less threatening to most handset manufacturers.

It seems nokia realises, with android becoming the default operating system it will be forced to offer its phones in android os too. More threat coming from other handset manufacturers.

Nokias new strategy is to save its market share by providing more internet based services. Services that are not easily portable creating a tall barrier to entry for other handset providers.

With its recent dozen acquisitions it seems nokia is thinking ahead of a lot of other handset manufacturers.

Obviously not everyone, Steve out thinks everyone, but then he wldnt sell anything to you that isnt apple made. Its so not steve. He makes his own screw when he build his house, he makes his own medicine when he gets a fever.

Acqusitions is for kids. Apple is differenent. If you want the apple, buy the whole tree you cheap skates. 

ValueClick executive joins a startup

Reuters reports one of the early executives of valueclick, an online adnetwork has joined a startup called gigya. 

Gigya apparently lets application developers distribute their applications in their publisher network. It also lets advertisers advertise in these widgets and shares earnings in advertsing with publishers and developers.

Good business model. Distributed content is surely the next big thing on the internet. 

I wonder if these recessive times will allow senior executives of more public cmpanies to take the plnge venture backed startups.