We use LinkedIn, Ryze for business networking but we forget to mention Twitter , a micro-blogging service, that appears in most of the blogs.This is how Wikipedia describes Twitter:

Twitter is a social networking and micro-blogging service that allows users to send “updates” (text-based posts, up to 140 characters long) via SMS, instant messaging, the Twitter website, or an application such as Twitterrific. Twitter was founded in October 2006 by San Francisco start-up company Obvious Corp.

Updates are displayed on the user’s profile page and also instantly delivered to other users who have signed up to receive them. The sender can restrict delivery to those in his or her circle of friends (delivery to everyone is the default). Users can receive updates via the Twitter website, instant messaging, SMS, RSS, or through an application.

Some of the benefits of Twitter is (obviously) networking, getting updates from friends,announcements of your blog deatils(and new articles on your blog) and so on…Noticed a very good presentation on “Twitter and the entire Web 2.0 phenomena revolving around it“and the interesting point is the title of the presentation “Twitter:Useless son of Web 2.0” , is it really useless? rolleyes

Enjoy Twitter(networking)!!!

Solo Entrepreneurship is a much hyped word and finding the right partners is a very important decision.As Guy Kawasaki says “A players need to hire B players,B players need to hire C players” which means “We should team up with/hire someone who is better than us,which leads to a good team formation“.

Economic Times has a very good article which focuses on “Choosing the Right Business Partner” … may be some of the basic fundamentals ,which we can also apply in our day to day work life as well.

Check out the complete article here

Note: Before I start this article,I apologize if I may sound rude at any point during the course of this article.

Bloggers read blogs and link to articles from other’s blogs.However,stealing content is always a crime and if a blogger steals content from another blog,than he/she doesn’t know the basic principles of blogging.But,nowawdays mass media is not behind when you consider “Content Theft” and I had already mentioned in my previous post that Bloggers are getting media attention biggrin, so are we(bloggers) getting so much noticed,that media has to steal content from Blogs,for this read the story..

Media Theft story:
WAT Blog,as every blogger knows is a very popular and widely read blog.They have very niche content,which focusses towards Web 2.0 but,I never knew even Mid-Day was so much short of stories that it had to steal content(that too without modifying it) ,without giving any credit to WATBlog

This post on WATBlog was copied by Mid-day(word by word,oh forgot punctuation marks as well),which came up with an article(which is a complete Copy-Paste of the original one!!!)

Rajiv Dingra,founder of WATBlog is very correct in stating that “WATBlog cannot sue Mid-Day” but we(the blogger community) can definitely give a run for money to the Mid-Day guys!!!

In order to fight plagiarism(which is now at it’s best), my request to bloggers would be to post an article on the same and link it with the original article on WATBlog.

We(bloggers) can collectively fight plagiarism,by making more people aware about the issue!!!Also,WATBlog has come out with a Blogger’s Council which would help bloggers focus on such issues and also minimizing(and collectively fight) “Content Theft”.

What other bloggers say:
Mid-Day plagiarises blog content
Sridhar Rao on The Dark Side of Mid-Day
Startup Dunia on Bursts of Plagiarism in India

Together,we(Bloggers) can fight Plagiarism!!!

Blogging is becoming popular day by day and same is the case with bloggers.Though,Blogging cannot replace mass media,bloggers have gained media attention and respect as well.This made me curious to know the total no of blogs that exist,till date(without taking into account,the no of updates that happen in the blog) and google search for “No of Blogs in the world” indicates that there are over 60 million blogs existing,till date.

India,as you might have guessed,is not far and this is what Blog Herald reports about India:

India/ Pakistan: approx 1 million blogs no firm figures however.I’ve noticed a significant rise out of India recently, and certainly the Indian press is also reporting on the emergence of Indian blogs, which is a sure sign that there must be a reasonable number there.
Sub Total: 24.35 million

This is certainly good news for Indian Bloggers.I actively picked up blogging after BlogCamp,Chennai but some pick up blogging by reading other’s blogs or reading books or some other means.However,once you spend quality time reading blogs and writing them,you want to dig more into it and this is where the new magazine “Blogger and Podcaster” would help for the blogger community.A magazine dedicated to Blogging and Podcasting…Whew,that’s pretty exciting…

Register for the online version of the magazine for free and you get to read interview of Scoble and other geek bloggers neutral

I hope that this magazine would help in improving the podcasting scene in India,which looks very bleak right now neutral.Do not forget to subscribe to the magazine by clicking here

N R Narayana Murthy,mentor of Infosys spoke at the New York University (Stern School of Business) on lessons he learnt from his life and career.The speech revolves around his college days,initial struggle of his career and life after foundation of Infosys.Some of the sudden and special events , which have taught him many learnings in life.

The important excerpts from the speech are given below:

Pre Infosys:
1. Sometimes advice can come from an unexpected source, and chance events can sometimes open new doors.

2. Entrepreneurship, resulting in large-scale job creation, was/is the only viable mechanism for eradicating poverty in societies.

Post Infosys:
If you want to create a great company, we should be optimistic and confident. They have more than lived up to their promise of that day.

Below are life lessons from these events,in his own words.
Note: “I” in the article refers to Narayana Murthy

1. I will begin with the importance of learning from experience. It is less important, I believe, where you start. It is more important how and what you learn. If the quality of the learning is high, the development gradient is steep, and, given time, you can find yourself in a previously unattainable place. I believe the Infosys story is living proof of this.

Learning from experience, however, can be complicated. It can be much more difficult to learn from success than from failure. If we fail, we think carefully about the precise cause. Success can indiscriminately reinforce all our prior actions.

2. A second theme concerns the power of chance events. As I think across a wide variety of settings in my life, I am struck by the incredible role played by the interplay of chance events with intentional choices. While the turning points themselves are indeed often fortuitous, how we respond to them is anything but so. It is this very quality of how we respond systematically to chance events that is crucial.

3. Of course, the mindset one works with is also quite critical. As recent work by the psychologist, Carol Dweck, has shown, it matters greatly whether one believes in ability as inherent or that it can be developed. Put simply, the former view, a fixed mindset, creates a tendency to avoid challenges, to ignore useful negative feedback and leads such people to plateau early and not achieve their full potential.

The latter view, a growth mindset, leads to a tendency to embrace challenges, to learn from criticism and such people reach ever higher levels of achievement.

4. The fourth theme is a cornerstone of the Indian spiritual tradition: self-knowledge. Indeed, the highest form of knowledge, it is said, is self-knowledge. I believe this greater awareness and knowledge of oneself is what ultimately helps develop a more grounded belief in oneself, courage, determination, and, above all, humility, all qualities which enable one to wear one’s success with dignity and grace.

Read the complete article here

Was just checking Amit Ranjan’s blog and came across a slide , which shows the funny side of blogging biggrin The presentation touches the different aspects of blogging and my favourite slide is Slide#6 , which is given below:

As per my understanding,this slide suggests : “Blogging is an addiction and this is what suggests the same.After marriage if you cannot blog(which is , if you are short of ideas) than you can have kids…”

Check out the funny presentation below:


Which is your favourite slide?

Failures seems a very familiar word to everyone.Everyone might have failed in some way or the other.Different phases of life has different failures associated with it starting from the day a person is born–>becomes a teenager–>person starts working–>gets married and so on…

Leaving the teen age aside(which is more for enjoying rather than taking things too seriously),the age when a person starts working is very important.A person looking out for a new job could be facing failures by not clearing interviews though talent/knowledge is not proportional to clearance in the interview.When a person starts to venture out,difficulties become double but the excitement is also doubled since , it is your own baby wink

But failing (again and again) leads to de-motivation and you tend to look into yourself “Are you worth it?” but the important thing what we forget is “Trying” which is more than “Failing”.With every failure you see yourself improving(which also depends on the individual whether he wants to improve or not) and the distance between you and your destination becomes lesser and lesser and one day “You are there at your desired destination”

Some of my personal failures(or ares of improvement, which I always remember):

  1. Not getting a job, after passing out from the college
  2. Crisis in my personal life (which makes you stronger day by day)
  3. Some of the technologies which I wished to learn but could not learn and many more ….
I remember an interview in Datamatics(4 years back) which I cleared only because I could answer one question(which was from the Program Manager of the company) – Who is Gururaj (Desh) Deshpande?” and my memories became fresh when I read a chapter in “How Innovators connect” which speaks about FAILURES.I would like to share “Gururaj (Desh) Despande’s story along with some of the important points revolving around “Failures and Success” and the lessons we get from them.Let me try to note down some of the interesting findings from the chapter “Connecting with failure

It is not so much that people like to fail but rather than they see “Failure” as a necessary side trip in the journey to bring great offerings to the market.

“It is very important to break away from your past in order to absorb new ideas.You should be comfortable in saying “I’m going to start something new,I better shut off the past and begin a different chapter in my life” – Umang Gupta,CEO of Keynote Systems

Never lose sight of the past (The Gururaj (Desh) Deshpande story):

Gururaj “Desh” Deshpande is the chairman of Sycamore Networks and he is on the board of directors of many IT companies.But he was not successful like this before.He has a pay cheque of $26.95 framed in his office.This cheque helps him to remember how someone can overcome failure with success.As Deshpande says: “Failures broaden your comfort zone and allow you to view risk a little differently”

He co-founded network hardware company Coral Network Corp in 1988 and “boot-strapped” th company while trying to raise $4 million in VC funding.When funding came in , it was a dream come true for him and his wife.His wife who was in IT also quit her job to take care of their two young children.
But soon,there was an ugly misunderstanding between him and his co-founder and they parted ways.When Coral Networks was sold to Synoptics,$26.95 was all that Mr Deshpande earned from the sale.

But Coral’s experience strengthened Deshpande’s belief that it is important to find things that excite you and do things you want to do and you should not be afraid of making a living.In India,culturally, people don’t want to accept failure because if you fail,you are marked for life.The irony he says is more you can deal with failure,the faster you can bounce back,whether you are an individual, a company or even a national economy.

After a (so called) failure,Deshpande was out with his new venture Cascade Communications Corp.Cascade became a huge success and very soon grew to $500 million in revenues.In 1997,Ascend Communications acquired Cascade for $3.7 billion.

From his early days,Deshpande learnt a lot: “To get things started , you have to be slightly crazy ,since if you are too thoughtful and too analytical , you would probably never pull the trigger“.These things are not so different from the critical decisions that we take in personal life like when to get married,having children or buying a house etc

Once Cascade was sold,Gururaj Deshpande went on to start his new venture Sycamore Networks.This time around he was able to finance himself and raising money for this venture took him only 15 seconds biggrin Today,along with his work with Sycamore,Deshpande also acts as a VC and is an investor in many startups in India and the US.

This is just a small story of a successful Entrepreneur who was hit by failures and bounced back well.Every Entrepreneur(or should I say person) is hit by failures but it all depends on how you come back after failure.

If you have reached so long in this post,I really appreciate it but you would ask this question “Why only Gururaj Deshpande? The reason is a. I cleared the Datamatics Interview (4 years back) but I did not join there biggrin and b. I keep his photograph on my desk in the office since,I really appreciate his effort.

Finally before I end this article,last words of success: “The successful innovators don’t let failure stop their internal quest to succeed

You can also check out “The Steve Jobs Story about failures and success” here , which is really very motivating and also also teaches you many lessons in just 14 minutes biggrin

Time to collect and put some of the interesting links for the month of May,2007.Below are some of the links which I found interesting:

  1. Ken speaks about Things to talk when meetup with a Venture Capital
  2. Professor Sadagopan speaks about Advice to graduating students (Must read for the new entrants in the industry)
  3. Udayan Bose speaks on Retaining good team members through Loosing a good team member
  4. Business Punditon What Tiger Woods can teach you about running a business

Interesting points from Professor Sadagopan’s article:

The Internet generation has lots of strengths but one major weakness. They seem to have substituted “read” with “browse”.


Interesting points from the Business Pundit article:

In business, I think we often know the things we should do, but instead we try to do the things we want to do. We like the random fun things. We want to plan, brainstorm, hold meetings, all the stuff that doesn’t require any discipline or focus. Unfortunately it’s also all the stuff that doesn’t make us better at what we are ultimately trying to do. We know we should be putting, but we want to take out the big driver and have a good time. Then we complain about our score.

It’s hard to be the best. To do it, you have to be willing to go above and beyond what everyone else is doing. You have to spend 4 hours at the range with a single club, if that’s what it takes. Is it fun? Of course not. But if you can make the short term sacrifices in order to reap those long-term successes, you’ll experience a joy that most people never do.

Related Posts:
Spawners February , 2007
Spawners April , 2007