Disqus - Latest Comments for arjunram

Re: moving on and starting up

arjunram — Mon, 12 Aug 2013 14:22:45 -0000

Good Luck Aakrit! Look forward to following your journey!

Re: Four Years And Still Figuring It Out

arjunram — Thu, 11 Apr 2013 11:30:49 -0000

Failure is so hard to admit and painfully deep! Kudos to you for writing your thoughts. But for the ones that roll with the punches (something Im learning the hard way) it serves as a experience to fight another day for something bigger and more satisfying! Hang in there!

Re: I'm rooting for Yahoo

arjunram — Mon, 16 Jul 2012 17:59:14 -0000

The first 60-90 days will be crucial. Will be interesting to see what she does to these 5 products - Yahoo News, Finance, Flickr, Local & Mail. If nothing happens with these in the first 90 days .. wont be surprised if they break and sell the company in pieces!

Re: Engagio Followup

arjunram — Thu, 02 Feb 2012 07:20:40 -0000

Have a lot of respect for VCs that put their money where their mouth is. Kudos to you!

Re: TaazzaGo Relaunches as Localbeat. Debuts An iPhone App; What Next?

arjunram — Wed, 25 Jan 2012 00:42:04 -0000

Thanks for you coverage. Its not that we have shifted focus - as a startup focus is key.

Re: Indian Mobile Handset Shipments At 166M During Jan-Nov 2011: Report

arjunram — Tue, 24 Jan 2012 10:36:54 -0000

Shipment != Sale

Nokia could be shipping a butt load of phones while Samsung out sells them. Never understood the reason for reporting shipment numbers. It largely distorts the reality on the ground.

Re: Rediff’s RealTime News Search: Search vs Front Page vs River Of News

arjunram — Fri, 13 Jan 2012 08:01:09 -0000

RSS is the delivery mechanism. You still have to index the page which is where robots.txt comes in.

Re: Rediff’s RealTime News Search: Search vs Front Page vs River Of News

arjunram — Thu, 12 Jan 2012 15:35:05 -0000

35K sources seems like a hugely inflated number. The real question is how many sources in India do they cover. They dont seem to obey robots.txt - case in point expressbuzz.com which doesnt let anyone but google to index them.

Re: Sampad Swain: What Do Local Businesses Really Want?

arjunram — Fri, 06 Jan 2012 12:13:08 -0000

Good post Sampad. Couldn't agree more on the fundamental requirements of the local business. However I always thought in the context of India and local businesses - the deals was and is an interesting play heres why. Deals was probably the first exposure to the internet for most local businesses. Just Dial was still an offline model thru telephones/mobile.
It would be interesting to see how business feel about them today. Loyalty and discounts have been tried before by folks like Metromela, Open2save but may be their timing was off. The issue has always been how do you close the loop with the consumer. That in essence is the holy grail of local merchants IMHO.

Any business that figures out how to close the loop is bound to make a lot more money than simple lead generation. My 2cents.

-Arjun

Re: GetIt Launches Deals Service Hot Deals; Our Take

arjunram — Wed, 09 Nov 2011 07:43:18 -0000

Looks like more like metromela or taggle plus. Wouldnt really call it deals. More the merrier ;) Now the consumer has a real problem for discovering them!

Re: Jagran Prakashan’s Digital Revenues Increase 7.7% YoY To Rs 1.94 Crore

arjunram — Tue, 25 Oct 2011 07:31:42 -0000

Cityplus isnt a tabloid but a locality newspaper and its has expanded to 37 editions (not 23 as stated). They have also launched their own english portal silently.

Re: Rediff’s Micro-Blogging Service Has Nothing New To Offer

arjunram — Tue, 18 Oct 2011 13:34:39 -0000

I am not sure I would give up on their deals product just yet. They have genuine deals in tier 2 and 3 cities while others are focussed n Tier I and offer National deals to these folks.

Re: Patch Pushback: Warren Webster Fires Back Amid Analysis and Criticism

arjunram — Wed, 28 Sep 2011 23:49:00 -0000

Good interview Rick. Respectful but firm and addressed most issues. Would have expected you to ask about mobile.

Re: BSNL Launches ‘Apps Store’; 80% Apps To Be Paid

arjunram — Wed, 28 Sep 2011 16:09:31 -0000

Some company out of delhi seems to power this app. How do developers get onboard? Or is it one of those vaporware products that disappear after a while?

Re: 5 Things We Wanted To Hear Nokia’s Stephen Elop Talk About In India

arjunram — Wed, 21 Sep 2011 13:05:19 -0000

Delay in QA testing running into months.

Re: 5 Things We Wanted To Hear Nokia’s Stephen Elop Talk About In India

arjunram — Tue, 13 Sep 2011 08:06:14 -0000

Bang on, nicely done. I would also include the issues on Nokia store in India. Have been hearing horror stories about it which have largely prevented us from venturing in.

Re: SXSW 2012 - The Hyperlocal Hoax: Where's the Holy Grail?

arjunram — Mon, 15 Aug 2011 17:06:04 -0000

A lot might change between now and then in hyperlocal ;)

Re: Why I’m Doubling Down on the Twitter Ecosystem

arjunram — Mon, 11 Jul 2011 05:10:48 -0000

Have respect for what Nik has done with Datasift. I think Datasift has the platform to do great things. However they need to get two things right & right away - Pricing & PSO. Hope they use the money to do so. Cheers!

Re: Why I’m Doubling Down on the Twitter Ecosystem

arjunram — Mon, 11 Jul 2011 05:08:50 -0000

Gnip is the other company.

Re: Turning 3 Today…Onwards & Upwards

arjunram — Mon, 27 Jun 2011 10:38:36 -0000

Congratulations Nikhil! Posts like these are the very reason why folks like me return to Medianama. Heres wishing you many more & continued success. Enjoy the break at Leh, well deserved.

Re: Developers: why you should build for Android tablets

arjunram — Sat, 05 Mar 2011 00:21:55 -0000

Scoble,

Good idea but has a big pitfalls based on our experience.

We went down the same path that you describe for our local app for India, TaazzaGO. It has yielded mixed results. http://www.taazza.com/mobile

Pros:
- We have been recognized as a Top App for the Indian market - Thx to appbrain for their country pages. http://www.appbrain.com/app...
- Android is exploding in India with no of shipments growing at 300-400% every quarter
- End users are thirsty for content given that they have capable phones
- Buses in Bangalore have Android tablet like devices on every seat & this is expanding.

Cons:
- Android is still fragmented. We have to support phones from Android 1.6 to Android 2.3. In India there are other permutations on the device - they ship with low onboard memory & screen resolution can be lower than 320x480
- While the opportunity to bundle the app with an OEM exists - OEMs are still coming from traditional VAS mindset where they control the market & still move very slowly. For instance an OEM wants a 4 month testing cycle before the device is shipped. We have done 6 releases in the last 10 weeks.

Getting noticed in the US is probably a whole lot easier given that you dont have to sell the idea of an app economy. In the east this is still a challenge although its changing rapidly.

Google can do a whole lot to foster this environment but havent seen much from them. In fact for all the take of not Apple's wall garden - google just launched their web version of the app store which is why you will find the likes of AppBrain doing very well.

My 2 cents from our experience. Hope it helps.

Re: Blogroll Widget

arjunram — Sun, 15 Feb 2009 19:28:21 -0000

Glad to see you take feedback seriously and implement it right away! Kudos!

Re: The Blogroll I Want For AVC

arjunram — Sat, 14 Feb 2009 08:33:18 -0000

I agree! A very simple way to do it would be through a browser plugin, but privacy concerns exist (atleast for me).

I wonder if any analysis of backtype + twitter links (posted + favorites) + delicous + friendfeed likes would do the trick!

The underlying theme that is emerging is this, we have all given our data in the web20 era & now we are demanding information back. I wrote about it at http://arjunram.com/2008/12...

Thoughts welcome!

Re: The Blogroll I Want For AVC

arjunram — Thu, 12 Feb 2009 09:19:46 -0000

Fred, You already sort of have it. If you ever commented on a blog entry that you have it at http://www.backtype.com/fre...

With 5000+ comments you do have a blogroll, now if you can get backtype to make it available as a widget than u have it!

It wont be comprehensive but it will have quality!

Re: Time for heads to roll at Meet The Press (Scripting News)

arjunram — Thu, 05 Feb 2009 22:08:52 -0000

Not sure I agree with him being the king of gotchas, although he had his moments. The political climate in the nighties/2000s was ripe for gotchas.. The climate has changed after 2008. But the bottom line is this .. You watched the show when he was on, atleast I did!

Sunday mornings to be meant something! Not anymore.

Dave, its time you gave Russert a hug! Let the mans soul rest in peace, he deserves it!