Peter asked on LinkedIn: How does LinkedIn compare with Facebook?

I just randomly punched these, but this is how they are perhaps:

1. Linked in Static bio.
2. Facebook Living and breathing you me.
3. Linked in When you want to know what work I did/ do.
4. Facebook What am I doing now!
5. Linked in Useful for business networking
6. Facebook Integrating my online presence at one place - RSS feed for my blog, my business groups, my Twitter, my Truemors widget.
7. Linked in Replacing business cards.
8. Facebook Replacing email.

This I am adding now:

1. Linked in I love the Answers and Jobs features.
2. Facebook I just love it - has gotten me back me with a few precious friends and built a few precious new.

Say what?

Blogworks™ Ad Affiliate Network is committed to connecting influential bloggers with relevant advertisers/marketers and vice versa.

Micro Marketing is the acknowledged way forward for many a brand today. Many individual publishers today enjoy as much credibility, and sometimes reach, as traditional media and marketers are beginning to see value in associating with them.

However, blog advertising, isn't necessarily the same as mainstream advertising - it doesn't have to be; maybe it shouldn't even be...

Reasons are many: where mainstream online ads are mostly focused on numbers and clicks, advertising on blogs and independent author sites may need to focus on brand associations and sponsorships with the site, its popular properties; widgets and other creative and dynamic ways of reaching the audience.

An injudicious focus on plain numbers and traffic, on these neo-publishing platforms, usually leads to disappointment for both the advertiser and the publisher - certainly the publisher.

For example, a blog with page views running into millions is no-brainer, but what is the value of a top research scientist's blog - read in-turn only by a few hundred other scientists - as a recruitment ad vehicle for a research lab? Or to build traction with that community? We think very high - focus on pure numbers, in this case, is not that important. On the other hand a youth blog will perhaps need numbers to support it's advertising claim. Both publishers are valuable, but need different approaches.

Similarly credibility matrix' that are purely based on just 'number of links' can often be misguiding - it is not lost upon any of us how easy it is to generate fake links.

That's where the Blogworks™ Ad Affiliate Network comes in:

What's in it for blog writers and publishers!

1. No worries - you write; we market
2. Creative options - we deploy our past learnings
3. Transparent deals - we value your content and effort
4. Choices - does advertising in traditional media compromise credibility, it doesn't 'have to'. You stay in control, you choose

What's in it for the advertisers/ marketers!

1. Influencers - high-quality; hand-picked
2. Bouquet Offerings - by verticals/ readership/ geographies
3. Single Window - so you could painlessly participate in blogs/ social media
4. Risk free - many options, reduced impact in case of dropouts

If you wish to register your blog into the programme, fill in these details on and send across, with subject line - Enroll for Ads. Feel free to tell your friends too.

We are constantly learning and participating, join in with us.

Disclaimer: Please note:

This is not a 'pay-per-post offer' and wouldn't infringe upon your editorial integrity.

Writing in to us doesn't necessarily 'include' you into the panel or guarantee any advertising

Blogworks- Blog the Talk discussion series was conceived to feature the best of learning from the ‘live web’ through panel discussions, talks and one-on-ones – mostly conducted online. Blog the Talk series is presented by HP India, Personal Systems Group– Commercial, which is responsible for HP’s range of business notebooks, business desktops and handheld devices; in association with Impact – the media, marketing and advertising weekly.

Guy Kawasaki on Internet, Investment and Investors.

How this edition of the discussion came about still seems a bit surreal to me, but the entire sequence of events again validated something that I have always believed – truly successful people are often very approachable; that they reply to their own mails - find time to do so, however busy they maybe; that there are no degrees of separation - that we really live in a connected world…

I discovered Truemors a couple of months ago, wrote a brief post about it and followed it with a mail to the Truemors team regarding their Truemorist programme. I got a reply back from Guy and that's how we got in touch. Won’t waste your time with details but I asked Guy if he would consider being on Blog the Talk, he agreed, simple and straightforward - tells me a lot!

Delighted to have Guy Kawasaki - successful entrepreneur, global investor, best-selling author and columnist. Guy doesn’t really need a formal introduction, but here goes anyway:

Guy Kawasaki is a managing director of Garage Technology Ventures, an early-stage venture capital firm and a columnist for Entrepreneur Magazine. Previously, he was an Apple Fellow at Apple Computer, Inc. Guy is the author of eight books including The Art of the Start, Rules for Revolutionaries, How to Drive Your Competition Crazy, Selling the Dream, and The Macintosh Way. He has a BA from Stanford University and an MBA from UCLA as well as an honorary doctorate from Babson College.

Guy is presently located in Palo Alto, California.

The talk is typical 'Guy' - simple and straightforward; and a little different... this one was done over email so more like a Q & A. Enjoy!

All thoughts expressed by participants are personal opinion of respective speakers and do not represent the views of Blogworks or any other company/ organization..

Rajesh Lalwani: Guy, thanks for joining us on Blog the Talk today.

Web 2.0(!) - Blogs; Social Networks; Forums; Widgets - we have seen them connect people, add value at more than one level, but has the new Internet scene also become an information overdose? Do you think there would be consolidation? How would one simplify?

Guy Kawasaki:Thanks. There is overload, but that's what it takes to have a few winners emerge. There's no way to simplify - well, maybe there's one. Have ‘experts’ pick the smartest and dumbest ideas and then throw away the smart ones and do the dumb ones.

There isn't a way to predict the winners. It would be like being around billions of years ago and predicting what forms of life would survive. Only God would know, and we aren't God.

Rajesh Lalwani:Smiles.

The whole of the internet seems to be congregating on Facebook. There is a new application getting added every half an hour (figuratively speaking). One doesn’t really need to go anywhere else to do anything. eCommerce possibilities look immense. What are your thoughts? Is FB here to stay? What do you think is happening here?

Guy Kawasaki: Facebook is just-about the most exciting thing I’ve seen in years. The integration of its parts is so well done—for example, how it sucks in your Entourage address book to send invitations. It could become the way a large percentage of users interact with the Internet. In a sense Western Union should be PayPal, and AOL should be Facebook.

Rajesh Lalwani:Tech purists feel technology by itself is capable of achieving a lot of this simplification, what is the scope for human intervention - Digg; ChaCha and
many others are as much about people as technology. What are your thoughts about this?

Guy Kawasaki: Tech purists are the worst people to ask about this!

It's like asking a carpenter if everything can be fixed with a hammer and saw. Technology can accelerate, extend, supplement, but it cannot replace human interaction. Ever notice that the companies that spend the most on CRM have the worst customer relations?

Rajesh Lalwani:'Bubble’ is what one is hearing yet again - is it a bubble?

How will, in your opinion, these platforms monetize? Are the valuations going over the top again?

Guy Kawasaki: It is a bubble, and a bubble is a good thing.

It makes people want to start businesses. If we all carefully thought out every possible contingency, we'd never try anything.

Rajesh Lalwani :“The business plan will emerge!” Does that thought still hold true then?

Guy Kawasaki: Yes, more than ever though I think it was never true that people wrote plans and strictly adhered to them.

Companies that survive had plans that emerged. Companies that didn't survive didn't. I doubt that Steve and Woz ever wrote a business plan. What was YouTube’s business plan: give away infinite storage and bandwidth to copyright violators?

Rajesh Lalwani:What do you look at when you decide which new business your company will invest into? How important is the entrepreneur in this?

I was reading this TechCrunch post about Evan Williams, Twitter and Kevin Rose, Pownce - the comment about the fact that both were 'liked a lot in silicon valley' caught my attention - how much of the early adoption on a product would be basis such liking?

Guy Kawasaki:I look at a product or service and imagine if I would use it. Not a theoretical MIS manager, but if I personally would use it. If I wouldn't, then I probably wouldn't invest.

Being liked a lot in Silicon Valley isn't a prerequisite for success because popularity usually occurs after success. It doesn't cause success. At the start, most entrepreneurs aren't even known.

If I had to choose between being liked and having a great product to make a company successful, I'd choose a great product. If you become a billionaire in Silicon Valley, you will be popular-albeit with the wrong kind of people or for the wrong reasons- but people will suck up to you.

By contrast, if you have the greatest personality in the world but your product sucks, it will still suck.

Rajesh Lalwani:Indian software professionals have been on the technology forefront on the world scene and bar Hotmail, we haven't seen too many big Indian successes on the Internet. What do you think could be the reasons?

Guy Kawasaki: Maybe it's because Indians are too smart, too diligent, and too sincere. Maybe in order to achieve successful with ‘Internet companies’, you have to be full of crap.

Rajesh Lalwani:Are Indian investors risk averse in general?

Guy Kawasaki: There are lots of Indian VCs who are investing in US Internet startups created by Indians and non-Indians. I don't think race plays any role in investment decisions. Three things you can depend on from VCs are
color-blind and gender-blind greed.

Rajesh Lalwani:Would you consider investing into Indian entrepreneurs/ Indian companies?

Guy Kawasaki:Sure, why not?

In fact, I would prefer investing in Indian entrepreneurs and companies because they are smart, diligent,and sincere. We have:

1. simplyhired
Kaboodle
2. Xora
3. cFares

... already in our portfolio.

Rajesh Lalwani : Any current favorites of yours - technology products; companies; ideas.

Guy Kawasaki: I love "credit card" startups. That is, companies you can start with $25,000 or less. Truemors was my experiment in this. This is the Ycombinator theory, and I like it.

I certainly don't think that a company funded with $1,000,000 is forty times more likely to succeed.

Rajesh Lalwani:Any sectors that that you maybe specifically are interested in? Not interested in?

Guy Kawasaki:Garage is primarily a West-Coast, IT, software, and clean-tech fund. We don’t do life sciences.

We’re looking for companies that are raising $1-2 million in a seed or Series A Round.

Rajesh Lalwani: What would you expect as part of a proposal that someone may want to send and what criteria do you normally apply to selection?

Guy Kawasaki:The ideal proposal is a three paragraph email with a link that leads to a working prototype. End of discussion.

Rajesh Lalwani:Any investment limits Garage normally doesn't invest beyond?

Guy Kawasaki: We are a small fund, so companies that will require $10 million to break-even are not for us. I’d also like to be rich in this lifetime, so this narrows our focus some too. :-)

Rajesh Lalwani:Lol. Any plans to visit India soon?

Guy Kawasaki:No, sorry. I was in Mumbai earlier this year and loved it, though.

Rajesh Lalwani:Any of your current/ upcoming initiatives that one should be looking out for? What are the plans for Truemors?

Guy Kawasaki: Truemors is my baby.

I love the idea on two fronts:

1. The democratization of information so that anyone can be a journalist/editor
2. The blogosphere has universally condemned the idea-which makes me even more dedicated to make it succeed

Also, as you can imagine based on my earlier response, we’ve released a Truemors for Facebook so that people can create their own network of Truemorists among their friends.

Rajesh Lalwani :That is super cool. Yes, I already added the version ;) – the link's here.

Can't resist asking you this...

Are you an iPhone fan? Any experiences/ thoughts you want to share?

Guy Kawasaki:I don't have one. I can't stand AT&T's data network performance, and I really need Exchange server compatibility.

Rajesh Lalwani:Smiles.

Guy is clearly not buying an iPhone yet. Neither am I, for different reasons though :).

BTW - Do read this iPhone review by Guy, to get an update on his AT&T experience.

Thanks a lot Guy! Do look forward to having you here in India, sometime soon. Cheers.

Dear all, please take the conversation forward.

If you missed the update on my previous post, here it is, up and about. Coming up this Sunday - a Blog the Talk Exclusive! Guy Kawasaki on Internet, Investment and Investors.

Guy Kawasaki’s thoughts on today’s Internet scene; Facebook; Truemors; the ‘Bubble’ - and why is it a good thing; Indian entrepreneurs and whether he will invest into them – pretty straight! Hope you enjoy. See you.

Blogworks- Blog the Talk discussion series was conceived to feature the best of learning from the ‘live web’ through panel discussions, talks and one-on-ones – mostly conducted online. Blog the Talk series is presented by HP India, Personal Systems Group– Commercial, which is responsible for HP’s range of business notebooks, business desktops and handheld devices; in association with Impact – the media, marketing and advertising weekly.

Technology tips to get started with business blogging and more – the FOSS way.

How does one introduce someone who was on the Internet before the term World Wide Web was even conceived? Someone who has participated in the net scene when the total Internet population in the country was not in millions, but in dozens – ok, let’s make that a few hundred? When search was still about gopher?

Delighted to have Kishore Bhargava - the original geek; FOSS exponent, the guru behind Gadget Guru; I could go on…

It was in one of Kishore’s talks, about 2 and half years ago, that Blogworks really took seed. I have never believed in coincidences, so I don’t think it was one that I attended that talk. Since then, a dear friend, Kishore has been around to counsel & guide.

Today, on Blog the Talk, Kishore helps us understand some of the pertinent technology related issues that we need addressing when we think about business blogging. Technology issues in a language that’s friendly and English you and I understand.

I must point out that keeping with, not just the Blog the Talk tradition of conducting these talks over IM, which we did, this conversation was actually conducted in true Bhargava family style, over IM, but sitting face-to-face. Discussing ‘way forward’ across the table, but actually punching the Questions and the Answers over an IM. Fun it was… :)

Enjoy!

Kishore Bhargava, CEO, Linkaxis Technologies has assisted large global corporations, as well as non-governmental organisations, define their technology roadmap installing world-class solutions for their operations in India and elsewhere in the world – all of this using free and opensource technologies.

Kishore is presently based in New Delhi.

Yours truly continues to be based right here too, in New Delhi ;)


All thoughts expressed by participants are personal opinion of respective speakers and do not represent the views of Blogworks or any other company/ organization.

Rajesh, Blogworks: Kishore, thanks for being on Blog the Talk.

We have spoken about this earlier…

Among the most crucial aspects that need consideration following an organization or a brand’s decision to go forward with a blogging or a similar initiative is: Which blogging engine to use? Which technology platform? What are your thoughts?

Kishore, Linkaxis: Thanks Rajesh. That’s a loaded question – it will need a long answer.

- First of all, the important question to ask is why do I need to blog? If there is a compelling reason, coupled with a well thought out strategy, then setting up the technology behind it is actually quite trivial

- There are many options to choose from. You have a plethora of free sites which offer templates, plugins and all the stuff you need to get you started or you the have the choice of setting up/ creating your own

Rajesh, Blogworks: I hope you are not saying set it up on a free blog site, but that there are several free options available in terms of engines; management systems; templates that one can play with on YOUR server, right?

Kishore, Linkaxis: Yes, that’s the point; if you are serious about it, then you really need to setup a blog on hosted/dedicated server and certainly not on the free servers and free services available.

If you just want a quick and dirty job, then go to any of the free engines but if you want a real blog for your organisation, then set it up on the server, ideally where your corporate website is hosted, as blogs.mycompany.com or mycompany.com/blog. The idea is to never lose focus of your brand.

By hosting on a free server, you may still be able to do some amount of branding, but the real impact is when all the stuff resides on your site. Of course, there are tons of other advantages, which we will discuss as we go along.

But just to give you an idea, there would even be issues in legal position if the blog is not your property?

But, coming back to the question.

Rajesh, Blogworks: Please do elaborate on the legal bit before we move on…

Kishore, Linkaxis: Ok take a simple example, if I have a blog on a free engine and I place a company advertisement on it. If the provider says that you can't have advertisements on the site, then they can actually just turn around and shut the blog down.

This is known to have happened in the past.
Content on a free site will be difficult to copyright and protect. Disclaimers, Privacy Policy etc are all under your own control, if hosted on your server, rather than being the ones that the provider enforces.

There is also the issue of the total service offering on a free site, one will never be able to get access to the RAW logs of traffic, and therefore, never have accurate web analytics.

Rajesh, Blogworks: To me the most important part has always been just the message that we are sending out to the world on the seriousness of the initiative - the perception of a free blog site is so non-business like.

Also, forbid a service is down/ taken down for any reason (like it happened last year) you don’t end up losing your business blog, a very crucial piece in your internal/ external communication outreach programme now.

Kishore, Linkaxis: True. Ok so coming back to the question of which platform does the corporate use for a blog.

The answer is they host their own blog on their own server. In order to do this a corporate will need a blogging engine or platform. There are many options to choose from there.

This is where I tend to favour the Free and Open Source Software (FOSS) and community. There are commercial engines available, but the real innovation is happening in the FOSS world.

Take for example what would today be the most commonly used blog platform on the Internet – Wordpress (WP). Wordpress has tons of features, fantastic templates, and a vibrant community of developers and users supporting it

Rajesh, Blogworks:You mean ‘free’ software?

Kishore, Linkaxis: No free and open source. I mean, that which costs nothing as in ‘muft’ and that which is ‘free’ as in freedom or ‘mukt’

Rajesh, Blogworks:Freedom to do what?

Kishore, Linkaxis: You have the freedom to do pretty much as you please. You can share it with your friends, you can examine the code, and you can change the code to improve it. The list just goes on and on.

Kishore, Linkaxis: Apart from Wordpress there is also Moveable Type (MT), which is also a great engine.

Rajesh, Blogworks: Yup, we are on MT.

Kishore, Linkaxis: But at the end of the day, you need to ask, where do I get my support and where are the skills to help us manage the site?

Rajesh, Blogworks: Let’s just talk about these two, what are the key differences?

Kishore, Linkaxis: In principle the two engines are very similar. They form the basis of what are known as Content Management Systems. There are really several hundreds of such engines and the main difference between them is the platform or programming languages used along with the database used.

MT uses a great programming language called Perl, which was originally designed as a scripting engine for text manipulation and automation of mundane tasks by System Administrators but it is now used for just about any job. I have seen some amazing applications written in Perl.

The only problem with Perl is finding people who know it well and who can exploit its true power.

Rajesh, Blogworks:Why, is it a difficult language?

Kishore, Linkaxis: Perl is not really difficult, it’s just that not many current generation of programmers know anything about it so it gets ignored and used mainly by old-timers.

Rajesh, Blogworks:Hmmm, you just called Guru, an old timer!

Kishore, Linkaxis: You must also understand that a 30 yr old in the IT industry is considered an old timer.

Rajesh, Blogworks: You will have to explain this to Guru I think, lol.

Kishore, Linkaxis: Guru and I are about the same age.

Rajesh, Blogworks: Lol.

Kishore, Linkaxis: On the other hand, WP uses the one thing that really gave a boost to FOSS. What is popularly known as the LAMP - Linux Apache MySQL and PHP.

Perl is considered an old language and is just not used by most. Only the really, smart guys use it.

Rajesh, Blogworks: ;)

Kishore, Linkaxis: What is very popular today is this language called PHP. This was designed from the ground up to be a web language and is therefore just more suitable.

Kishore, Linkaxis: Wordpress is based on PHP and the PHP community world-wide is HUGE!

Rajesh, Blogworks:Is the technology the only difference between the two?

What about paid/ unpaid; what about the key area of support - as a business I need support, doesn't matter, many times, if I need to pay to assure that.

"When it rains, it pours!" Right!!!

We have an exciting line-up coming up in our Blog the Talk Series.

1. Check back from anytime late Sunday evening - 15 July - to read my conversation with Kishore Bhargava on "Technology tips to get started with business blogging and more - the FOSS way".
2. Then next Sunday we have an exciting talk lined up with one of the foremost names, globally, in entrepreneurship, venture funding, business blogging and what have you - "Who, who???", I hear you say? Yes, but wait a bit, a little suspense never hurt anyone. Promise to tell you Tuesday.

   We discuss "Internet, Investment and Investors".

UPDATED: 12.54 pm - 18 July 2007. Sorry, couldn't do this yesterday. So, here's the promised name. Joining us on Blog the Talk, Edition 4 is his straightforward self, Guy Kawasaki - an India first? Not sure but definitely a Blog the Talk first. Hope to see you then :).

Hope you enjoy.

I will keep this one short and sweet.

Yesterday when Priyanka called me to speak regarding iShare - the new content platform from Rediff , I was quite excited. For this is the second major initiative from Rediff, on the blog & social media front, in an equal number of weeks...

Rediff was, I think, the original Indian blog platform years ago (now Rediff iLand), so to me it is only natural that they are taking the lead on the social media initiatives. Two weeks ago they launched Rediff Blogshowcase - allowing bloggers to share an RSS feed, even as they continue to blog from their original platforms. I do believe aggregation is the way forward, though I think this particular initiative will still be adopted by the casual blogger , which is fine because that's what the large population wants to be... write and be read by more people. No business, advertising revenue etc ambitions...

Coming back to iShare, I tend to agree with Amit Ranjan's thought "I for one believe that there is a strong case for Indian versions of Flickr & Youtube to gain ascendancy inspite of the popularity of the global sites." Though not in all categories. Early days to say more about iShare, but I like it. Also I am a bit old fashioned and really like to see content by 'Categories'. Tags are great, but sometimes Categories are what you need - say I quickly want to see just uploaded 'Advertisements' and nothing else - iShare lets me do that with zero effort and I like that :).

I didn't quite understand what Ajit Balakrishnan meant by "It’s like combining properties of YouTube and Orkut,”. It didn't come across like that to me - YouTube, Flickr and 'your pick' of music site but 'Content Platform', not like Orkut or an obvious networking site. Sure networking will evolve around similar 'likes' etc. but that's an outtake of the content. Maybe there are plans to add new elements soon.

Anyway, I have INSISTED that some of my friends, associates, clients join up Facebook and see what is happening - it is too damn fascinating - that's another post though.

Half the year, and more, is already gone...I decided to put up the top 10 posts on the blog (some were originally written on Verbum and may actually be more popular, but there's no way to tell. Here's what the server logs tell me:

1. Blog the Talk, Edition 1 - Impact of Blogs & Social Media on Business & Marketing
2. Blog the Talk, Edition 2 - Impact of Social Networks and User Generated Content – an India perspective.
3. Blog helping Indian Marketers.
4. Actually the post announcing the 1st Blogworks Social Media Workshop is next in the list, but this post-event update covers all.
5. Interesting, :).
6. My first Blogs for Marketing Talk.
7. The king is dead, long live the king.
8. Horsing around is serious business
9. I was decided on buying the Scorpio, even test drove one, then I turned an entrepreneur. 43? new features of the Scorpio
10. Of customers, happy & unhappy.

Do leave your feedback.

BTW- We concluded major part of the next edition of Blog the Talk yesterday (some work still to go). It goes up next Monday. Kishore Bhargava - the Guru behind 'Gadget Guru' and the original geek - helps us understand technology aspects of blogs & other social media tools. Sexy and fun the script reads! And, we already have 2 more in the pipeline - both very exciting discussions with thought leaders from India & Overseas.

Cheers.

IF YOU PUNJABI & YOU KNOW IT - CLAP YOUR HANDS read one of Richus Horribulus' - AKA Richa - group on Facebook.

Even before I took a peek inside, I knew this was gonna be a fun group. Of course I joined, so what if I am not a Punjabi, I can still clap and know am welcome :). And that my friends led me to post this...

1. Step 1 - You've heard this before; listen to it again and tell me your interpretation of what it means. Remember I am not a Punjabi...so tell me.

   Let's keep it fun and 'clean' to make it through moderation :)

2. Step 2 - You know why they are so successful, they never lose their sense of fun and humour. Enjoy this really cool video...

   CLAP - CLAP on comments if you like it.

I have been meaning to create a category where I could just write a one-two sentence post to share a thought. Here goes:

Toll Free Number - Ads/ press releases/collateral...ubiquitous the mention has become.

Lifted straight from American jargon, understanding (and therefore impact) of the word 'Toll' is limited in my opinion(You may say "but now highways have toll gates", still :) ). I suggested changing this to Free to Caller and Muft Call on two occasions in the past. I think it works...

Try?

I discovered Truemors a few weeks ago but hadn't been able to post anything on the site yet. Today I opened my account with this post essentially asking if Facebook is likely to post a threat to Orkut's social networking leadership in India.

If the number of friends adding me on FB suddenly is any indication, then it does seem possible. I was seeing that when I wrote this about new beginnings in social networking. FB hadn't announced opening of 3rd party applications then and post that has been nothing short of a flood.

Do vote on the Truemors post here and comment if the same is happening with you.