Finally Google Has Figured Out A Way To Keep Up With My Blog

Image via Wikipedia

For the longest time I have wondered why my blog posts don't show higher up in the Google search results. For a few days about a year ago Google had me happy. When I did a search on Cupcake Android or Donut Android, I showed up among the first few results. I expected my page hits to jump into the hundreds of thousands. It did not happen. It took me a while to get a sense that Google results are tied to zip code, or something like that. So it was not like everyone in the world who was doing a search on Cupcake Android or Donut Android was seeing my blog on the first page. So I have been lukewarm about FroYo.

But now news is Google is out with Caffeine. I mean, I am on Google's Blogger platform for a reason. I did not go for WordPress. I figured if I am already on Google property they will have no excuse not to index me as soon as possible, sooner the better.

I see Caffeine as Google's way of saying thank you for using our blogging platform. We are going to try and remove a few more layers between you and your potential audience. There are bloggers who blog daily. In the recent weeks I have been doing more than that. I have been blogging several times a day on average. That is profuse. I am glad Google has now enhanced its capabilities for the growing web. I blog often, I often have smart, insightful things to say. I share interesting uptakes on tech events in town. What's the use in not sharing?

Google, thanks for catching up. Keep up the good work.

Via TechMeme

The Official Google Blog: Our New Search Index: Caffeine: Searchers want to find the latest relevant content and publishers expect to be found the instant they publish. ..... With Caffeine, we analyze the web in small portions and update our search index on a continuous basis, globally...... Caffeine takes up nearly 100 million gigabytes of storage in one database and adds new information at a rate of hundreds of thousands of gigabytes per day.
The Official Gmail Blog: Making It Easier To Video Chat, Voice Chat, And Group Chat In Gmail
The Chromium Blog: An Update On Google Cloud Print: Google Cloud Print, a service that enables any app (web, mobile, desktop), on any device, OS, or browser, to print to any printer. Development is progressing quickly and we are now testing the service internally at Google ....... Google Cloud Print will work with all printers, including those that are not themselves web-connected (we call these “legacy printers”). ....... Today, HP announced a full suite of cloud-aware printers ranging from $99 consumer printers to business-oriented printers. This pioneering work is a big enabler for the cloud print vision and all these printers will work with Google Cloud Print out of the box.
Electronista: Skype Won't Use FaceTime, Still Hints At iPhone 4 Video Chat
Search Engine Land: Google’s New Indexing Infrastructure “Caffeine” Now Live: Google’s Matt Cutts added that “Caffeine benefits both searchers and content owners because it means that all content (and not just content deemed “real time”) can be searchable within seconds after its crawled.” ...... Caffeine is a revamp of Google’s indexing infrastructure. It is not a change to Google’s ranking algorithms. It is live across all data centers, regions, and languages. ..... you can estimate how often your pages are crawled by taking a look at your server logs or checking the cache dates in Google ....... ......Content owners will reap the benefits of Caffeine without doing anything at all. In fact, there’s really not much, if anything content owners can do.
Bing Community: Use Bing To Search Facebook And Twitter: bing.com/social ..... a re-designed homepage that shows improved trending topics derived from both Twitter and Facebook data
TechFlash: Bing Updates Social Search, Adds Top Facebook Shared Links: a new section of search results on its Bing search engine that will aggregate tweets, Twitter trends and the top links being shared at any given moment by users of Facebook
Twitter Blog: Links And Twitter: Length Shouldn't Matter: Since early March, we have been routing links within Direct Messages through our link service to detect, intercept, and prevent the spread of malware, phishing, and other dangers. ...... We want users to have this benefit on all tweets. ..... It should be easy for people to share shortened links from the Tweet box on Twitter.com. ...... When this is rolled out more broadly to users this summer, all links shared on Twitter.com or third-party apps will be wrapped with a t.co URL. ..... Ultimately, we want to display links in a way that removes the obscurity of shortened link and lets you know where a link will take you. ..... routing links through this service will eventually contribute to the metrics behind our Promoted Tweets platform and provide an important quality signal for our Resonance algorithm ....... analytics within our eventual commercial accounts service. ..... Ultimately, every link on Twitter will be wrapped. ...... we'll wrap the shortened links you submit.
Advertising Age: AOL To Hire 'Hundreds' Of Journalists, Reorganize Content Division: grouping all the sites into 17 "super-networks." ...... one overarching conclusion: produce more content, faster. ..... to be the world's largest producer of high-quality content ....... "We are going to be the largest net hirer of journalists in the world next year" ....... produce content they want, which leads to engagement, which leads to what advertisers want ..... will also look to new launches, acquisitions and partnerships ....... Currently there are about 40,000 freelancers contributing to AOL ......... the number of people that click, how long they stay, and the amount of ad revenue associated with it. ...... Yahoo is now calling itself "the world's largest media company" ...... Like AOL, Yahoo has concluded that its original content performs and monetizes better ...... a key rationale for acquiring Associated Content is the sheer number of contributors (340,000) on its freelance rolls.
Paid Content: David Eun Puts AOL On A URL Diet With ‘Super Net’ Strategy: the new AOL content structure—a slimmed-down 30-plus sites channeled into 17 “super” networks— ..... the previous URL-based approach with more than 80 distinct sites ...... —AOL News & Info, AOL Entertainment, AOL Life, and AOL Commerce (plus the AOL.com front page as its own)—but with a TV-like emphasis on programming and production. ...... bringing together the best of media and technology. ...... the company has shifted the ratio from 20 produced internally to 80 percent produced in house...... “You iterate, gather intelligence. Iterate, gather intelligence. Rinse. Repeat.” ...... the digital media company of the 21st century. ...... “we will end up having the most amount of content at the deepest level to drive the most engaged audiences on the web.” ...... a data driven way to organize around the most important networks of information. ..... more than 100 million uniques in the U.S. and some 250 million globally
GigaOm: How Zynga Survived Farmville: “Zynga has been horrible in terms of its ability to predict its success,” said Williams, the company’s VP of network operations. Not that it’s a bad problem to have. Under his watch, Zynga has grown from a few dozen servers to “several thousand” ...... without Amazon FarmVille would have failed ...... Zynga uses Apache PHP on the front end, memcached for active user play and MySQL on the back end. ..... Post-FarmVille, Zynga has a new model for rolling out game launches. ..... tries to maintain a 50-50 split between using EC2 and data centers
TechCrunch: Zynga’s FrontierVille Looks To Recreate The Success Of FarmVille In The Wild West: It’s been almost exactly one year since social gaming powerhouse Zyngaunleashed what was destined to become an online phenomenon: FarmVille.
The Daily Beast: John Sculley On Why He Fired Steve Jobs: “I haven’t spoken to Steve in 20-odd years,” Sculley tells The Daily Beast. “Even though he still doesn’t speak to me, and I expect he never will

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After Entry Level Jobs, An Internship

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On Thu, Jun 3, 2010 at 3:59 PM, Ed Carroll wrote:

Paramendra,

I haven't talked you in a little bit, so I am not sure what you are up to....but I came across something that might be perfectly suited to your talents:

http://ambassadoroflifestream.com/

I am curious to know what you think....

-ed







A guy called Ed who is a good friend of Alex Great Minds Think Alike Cybriwsky yesterday talked me into applying for an internship with AOL. The next person is going to ask me to apply for college: Back To The Future.

Lady Liberty Whispers
Entry Level Jobs
Job Search
Me @ BBC

Luxury apartment in SF; swank hotel in NYC?
VIP access to concerts & events?
Input on core product decisions?
Reporting to Tim Armstrong, CEO of AOL?
Basically, the internship of a lifetime. 

Job Overview

We're looking for one very savvy individual to fill an important position. It's an easy job because all you have to do is be yourself. There's not a job like this anywhere else...guaranteed. Intrigued? Read on...

A Little About You

You're the type of person we can see spending a lot of quality time with this summer. You have the perfect balance of charisma, insight and ambition. You might be thinking, "Sure, but what's in it for me?"

Frankly, a lot.

But we'll get to that later.

First, let's talk more about you.

Like a bloodhound on the hunt, you've got an uncanny ability to sniff out new trends. You go with your gut. Like a sixth sense, it always leads the way.

Your enemy is the status quo. Status updates, however, are your friend. You judge others not only on the content of their character, but also on the content of their Tweets.

People listen to what you have to say, because they know that you know what's up. You’re a social-media butterfly with the wingspan of a jumbo jet—you don't flutter, you soar.

You're comfortable in your own shoes and your friends love that about you.

Why? Because you’re cool, that's why.

Like it's your job.

Which brings us to why we're here...

The Job

For two solid months you'll be an integral part of the Lifestream Team and have the opportunity to work directly with Tim Armstrong, CEO of AOL. You'll sit in high-level meetings and speak your mind to our top product engineers, marketers and executives. You’ll tell them what you like and what you don't like about AOL products. We're depending on you to tell it like it is, and we know that you will.

Ok, we know. You’re still wondering what’s in it for you.

Here's The Deal

This is not your average summer internship. In fact, if we didn't know better, we'd think this was some sort of Employment rickroll.

You, friend, will not only receive a paycheck, but you'll also be living the bi-coastal lifestyle. A luxury apartment in San Francisco. A hip hotel in NYC.

Through AOL Lifestream, you'll be sharing all your experiences with your social networks via Facebook updates, Tweets, Flickr uploads, Foursquare check-ins and YouTube videos. Give your followers a glimpse into the behind-the-scenes culture of AOL. Remember, your friends are our friends, too. And if our friends have something to say, we want to hear it.

We've been making a lot of changes around here and we're not afraid to take risks. To inform those risks, we're counting on you to bring us weekly dispatches from the frontlines of the latest pop culture trends. So throughout the summer, you'll have in your possession VIP access to events around the country—the hottest clubs and restaurants, the most coveted live concerts, sporting events and industry social gatherings. Your loyal followers will benefit too, all because they know you.

You'll get all this and more for allowing us to harness the awesome power that is you.

(Oh, and did we mention the expense account?)

Think you can handle it?

If so, please fill out the application.

We can't wait to start working with you this summer!

Key Dates:
June 8th: Last day to submit applications

June 9th: Finalists will be notified; in-person interview may be required this week

Week of June 14th: Videos of Top 3 candidates posted to this site; final winner is determined by an online vote

June 28th: First day on the job in San Francisco

Mid-August: End of internship

Social media, as opposed to broadcast/mass/old/traditional media, is going to drop that first word in a few years and simply become media. Social media is the way media should always have been. The talkers matter, but so do listeners. Thanks to social media we are now having two way conversations at small and large scales. It has become easier now to participate in family and social/political lives. It has become easier to stay in touch with friends. As for businesses, finally the dog has caught up with the car. Businesses have always wanted to have intimate conversations with customers, all customers, and now that is actually possible. This total feedback loop will only get more sophisticated over time. And customers will see through all aspects of businesses. They will be designing products and services. They will be participating in customer support. They will become small investors. Social media is about bringing democracy into our everyday lives. We are now constantly voting, every hour of the day.

This description totally speaks to me. I kid you not, but I put out this blog post this morning several hours before a friend emailed me the link to this opportunity: http://technbiz.blogspot.com/2010/06/top-web-properties.html AOL is still one of the top web properties in the world, but you don't have the buzz you had 10 years ago. It might not be possible to recapture that buzz, but I think Tim is walking down the right path in trying to turn AOL into a major content platform. Me, or anyone else who might fill this intern position, is not going to be your turn around artist. That is Tim. But you are looking for someone who will offer some brutal out of the box thinking in the ways you do business. You are looking for someone who gets visibly uncomfortable in formal clothes. Big, old corporations are yawn, yawn, they are scary. You are looking for a Maverick, like in Top Gun. That is me. I got the attitude. Not only that, I am deep into social media. My entire social media presence and more would be at your disposal. Whatever you pay me and spend on me, you are going to get back in all the marketing buzz I will create five times over, before the internship is even over.

And Steve Case follows me on Twitter. I have a Direct Message from him. That has to count for something.

http://technbiz.blogspot.com/2010/05/direct-messages-from-ann-curry-steve.html

What I am is a tech entrepreneur at heart, but I am a year away from getting my green card. Until then I need to go work for someone else. This allows me to postpone going to work for someone else for a few months. And if things work out, hey, I could be with AOL for that year before I get my green card and go launch my company. I would love to have Tim Armstrong as one of my angel investors. http://technbiz.blogspot.com/2010/06/larry-ellisons-1995-network-computer.html

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The Mashable Success Story

Image via CrunchBase

Mashable has been a remarkable success story in blogging. Pete Cashmore started it when he was 19. He started it in his bedroom in Scotland where he is from. By now it gets more page hits then the top tech blog TechCrunch. That has been true for months. Mashable has a more well defined niche than TechCrunch, and it is more focused on the user.

Switching from being a one person blog to a team blog must have been a major milestone for Mashable. The fact that Mashable has no plans to be sold - "Everyone has a price, but ours is a really high" - should tell you the blog has serious plans to keep digging in its niche. Getting sold to a bigger name company might only blunt that one edge the blog has, that it is your ultimate social media guide. Why not just keep building the traffic, and keep adding to the content, and keep charging more for the ads, right?

The Facebook founder was also 19 when he launched Facebook.

Mashable Did It
Facebook And Mashable: Social Media And Social Media Blog
2010 Trends: Pete Cashmore's Take

TechCrunch Vs. Mashable: There's No Competition Mashable is more about internet culture than pure tech news these days..... if there's a hot celebrity story trending on Twitter they'll find a way of covering it to reap the search engine traffic, if there's a viral video doing well they'll embed it to get the retweets.
AOL In Talks To Acquire Mashable -- Reports AOL is trying to transition from an ISP to a next-generation media company. .... It already has 80 or so independently branded blogs and is planning to grow to more than 100.
The Man Behind Mashable He's been crowned the king of Twitter and is one of the most influential figures in the technology industry. ..... Since setting up Mashable in 2005, while working as a web technology consultant, Cashmore has divided his time between his home town of Aberdeen and the bright lights of Silicon Valley. He's been in Scotland since October, and won't return to the US until January, relying on his team of 15 full-time bloggers and 50 regular contributors to help him keep on top of the key stories.
Mashable’s Identity Crisis They’ve reached that point of critical mass that most bloggers only dream of. The last I heard they had suprassed 20 million page views a month ...... a few months ago Mashable made BIG NEWS by announcing they were going to be hiring real, actual journalists .... some kind of direction shift for Mashable and that they were now interested in serious reportage and investigative journalism ....... s sensationalist and often pedantic blogging ..... Right now it is on track to be the People Magazine of social media. ..... they are interested more in acting like a tabloid.
So What Do You Do, Pete Cashmore, Mashable Founder and CEO? not yet 25. ..... Founding the site was pretty much his first job, as he worked as a Web consultant for a short time beforehand. The site's mission is to be "the social media guide" and cover all things social media. ...... starting Mashable in 2006 from his bedroom in Scotland. He was 19 at the time. ....... I just was really passionate about the space, and wanted to get involved, and I felt like social networking wasn't being covered to the degree it could be. ....... It was personal interest. I didn't necessarily know there was an audience for it. ...... In 2006, we did our first ad deal. It was only a few thousand per month, but it kind of legitimized blogging as a business. Selling a first ad legitimized that this may go somewhere -- this may actually work. ....... When you compare [Mashable] to old school tech magazines, we certainly say we're more focused on the user and the utility for users. For example, we don't cover things like funding announcements. We focus on the user. ...... there is value in both original reporting and curation ...... They're going to cover what they're going to cover. It's up to them. ...... There is no point in writing like the pyramid anymore. You have to write the story in three paragraphs. ..... They need to become both sources of news and curators of community-sourced news. ..... Content is not a scarce resource; attention is a scarce resource. If you put [up] barriers, they will go elsewhere. In the vast majority of cases, a pay wall is a hindrance. We should be focusing on how we [can] make ad models that are more engaging rather than push readers to other sites. ....... We're in a niche where we feel we're leading.
History Of Pete Cashmore's Mashable.com
Mashable Lost its Visitors after the 2010 Redesign Techcrunch now has more unique visitors than Mashable. Techcrunch also seems to have grown ‘only’ +35.54% since last year where Mashable has grown +29.00%. ..... Pete Cashmore’s ‘little’ start-up blog Mashable first overtook the might of Michael Arrington’s TechCrunch back in May 2009 ..... Its Change of pure tech news into tech news + Celebrity news

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Top Web Properties

Fred Wilson has displayed this chart at his blog this morning.

Compare this to some of the charts from the past years. Facebook's rise is amazing.

Yahoo, AOL and eBay are still going strong. Wisdom has it they are also rans. The numbers tell you otherwise.

I am surprised by Apple.com's numbers. Are there aspects of their site I am not aware of? That is very possible considering I have never bought an Apple product. My next computer might be an Acer.

Apple: Remarkable

I am glad to see Twitter at 29, but they could be doing much better. 2009 was the year they worked on scaling. But I strongly felt they needed to walk and chew gum at the same time. They needed to add features and simplify the service while they had the buzz.

And I am glad my blogging platform of choice - Blogger - is doing so well.

Fred notes the US has only 17% of the internet audience, but that 75% of the top web properties are based in the US. The number that I find myself looking at is the 1.2 billion number. I want that number to go up substantially. The new country - the Internet - is the biggest country in the world.

Fred's observation is extra true in the blogosphere. There are more bloggers than lawyers in America. Go pro.

The Big Money Is Not In Blogging

Here's Google's chart.

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Social Networking Ranks as Fastest-Growing Mobile Content Category
comScore Releases April 2010 U.S. Online Video Rankings
Nearly 9 out of 10 Internet Users in Hong Kong View Online Video
comScore Announces Introduction of AdEffx Smart Control™ Ground-Breaking Methodology for Measuring Digital Advertising Effectiveness< comScore Reports Q1 2010 U.S. E-Commerce Spending Accelerates to a 10 Percent Growth vs. Year Ago
comScore Media Metrix Ranks Top-Growing Properties and Site Categories for April 2010
Mobile Music on the Increase Across Europe
Americans Received 1 Trillion Display Ads in Q1 2010 as Online Advertising Market Rebounds from 2009 Recession
Customer Experience Takes Center Stage in Online Banking
comScore Releases April 2010 U.S. Search Engine Rankings
Regional ISPs Drive Broadband Growth in Rural Markets
comScore to Speak at Upcoming Investor Conferences in May
Mexico’s Online Population Soars 20 Percent in Past Year

The Next Web, January 2010: comScore, Calacanis, Wilson, And TechCrunch – Oh My!

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Selling FourSquare Would Be A Mistake, Partnering Would Be Genius

Dennis, Fred, Scott: Tweet Boom Tweet Boom
4/16: I Found Myself A Party: Tonight's Gonna Be A Good Night
If The Tweet Is The Atom, What Is Location?
Location! Location! Location!
Craig Newmark, Dennis Crowley, Jennifer 8 Lee: Koreatown

First there was talk that Vinod Khosla wants to pump 10 million dollars and above into FourSquare at a 80 million dollar valuation. Vinod Khosla, mind you, raised half of all money all VCs raised last year. He is a top dog in the game. (I Just Became Friends With Anu Shukla, Anu Shukla Has Found The New Frontier In Advertising)

Then there was talk Yahoo wants to buy FourSquare for over 100 million dollars, some figures put it at 125 million. More recently there have been reports other big fishes are also looking, namely Microsoft and Facebook. These stories are relevant whether they are true or not. It is entirely possible the different players are exploring their options. Feelers might have been sent out. Formal talks might or might not have happened.

I think selling FourSquare would be a mistake. Selling Hotmail was not a mistake. Sabeer Bhatia sold it to Microsoft for 400 million. But Hotmail was pretty much a finished product. FourSquare is nowhere close to being a finished product. I could argue it has not even started to start. And if it is about money, waiting a few years makes money sense too. Sell for more in a few years if you really, really want to sell it. But I am going to argue against that as well.

For me it is not about price. I am not saying don't sell to Yahoo for 125 million, but if they give you 200 million, then maybe. I am saying don't sell it, period. Google buying Facebook would have made no sense. Facebook could not have digested Twitter and instead would have ended up with constipation.

I can't think of one company that could buy and digest FourSquare and do the location space justice. Facebook could not do it, Twitter could not do it, and I am not even thinking about any other name.

The mobile web is bigger than the old web and also is growing faster. With the mobile web, location is key. Where you are when you are playing with your smartphone is so very important. And for FourSquare location is not an afterthought, location is the beginning point, and that makes all the difference.

FourSquare should be flattered by all the attention. Things have not always looked this rosy for FourSquare or its two founders. So they should take all this attention as ways to boost their self-esteem.

But flat out saying no might also be a bad move to make. The attitude should be, selling to you would be injustice to the location space, but let's work together, let's see if we can add the location feature to your many web properties wherever they make sense, and pay us for that instead. I think that would be the smart thing to do.

FourSquare has only a million users. That is nothing. The FourSquare team knows better than to wallow in all of the buzz. It is always safer to stay focused on the fundamentals of the business. Buzz comes and goes, ask Twitter. Twitter is in a better shape as a business today than ever before, but it does not have the buzz it had a year back.

FourSquare should use all this offer talk to expand its user base. Google expanded its user base dramatically by becoming the search engine for web properties like Yahoo and AOL. FourSquare should make similar moves. Create location space where it does not exist, and inhabit that space. It makes a ton of sense to talk to the big dogs in town. Cut deals.

2010 is location's year and FourSquare has the clear lead in that space. I see FourSquare never getting sold. Just like I never saw Facebook or Twitter getting sold. FourSquare has IPO potential, not now, I don't know when precisely, but it has IPO potential. If I had my way, Twitter would go for an IPO this year, before Facebook. (Twitter Should Go For A Netscape-Like IPO) I can see FourSquare going IPO somewhere in the mid 10s.

FourSquare is a business. For a business it is about money. The big money is in going IPO. FourSquare has reached that rare threshold for a tech company that it will never have any problems raising money ever again. That gives the FourSquare team the luxury of superb execution.

FourSquare will not get bought. FourSquare will buy. It could makes its first major acquisition later this year or early next. Stay tuned.

Fractals: Apple, Windows 95, Netscape, Google, Facebook, Twitter

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Presenting At The Dot Com Hatchery

Image via Wikipedia

Image via Wikipedia
JyotiConnect: Executive Summary

So last night I presented at the Dot Com Hatchery for five minutes, took questions for five, and then listened to comments from the panelists for a few more minutes. Overall it was a wonderful, wonderful experience.

Sun Microsystems
101 Park Avenue
4th floor, Gramercy Park Room
New York, NY 10017



I was hoping to put out a series of posts at this blog leading to the day of the presentation, but I did not do. That was a mistake.

1. How many people are online today? What has been the history? What are the projections?
2. A survey of the global mobile market. 
3. A long, definitive post about Wimax. Where is it coming from? Where is it going?
4. A history of the ISP business. AOL, Juno etc.
   
   
   
   Image via CrunchBase
   
   
   
5. ISPs today, in the US, in the world. 
6. A definitive post about Netbooks. 
7. A definitive post about the Chrome OS.
8. A definitive post about PC market share. Which are the top companies? What have been their trajectories?
9. One Laptop Per Child: what happened?
10. A survey of the ad industry in India, China, South Africa, Brazil.
    

I did not rehearse once before. How did Yao find out? She said as much during one of her comments. I did not rehearse once before my social media talk at the Science House MeetUp, and that went really well. (My Talk On Social Media At The Science House MeetUp) I guess there I had no time limit. Here it was five minutes by the clock. You needed to have rehearsed every single word, every single phrase. Not doing so was a big mistake. You have to deliver your lines like you are in a movie. There are not that many words you can pack into five minutes, especially if you want to deliver well.

What would my 30 second pitch be?

My tech startup wants to figure out ways to bring hundreds of millions of new people online. You do that by bringing the costs down for internet access. You do that by serving ads. Down the line we might also go into hardware if necessary for what I call the IC, the Internet Computer. For our core business we want to polish up the business model through a pilot project and grow it globally through the franchise concept.

What would be the five minute version?

Hi. My name is Paramendra. That is my name on Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, Gmail and you can google my name up.

The idea that I am trying to present can be caputured in two letters: IC, as in Internet Computer. Back in the 70s we were in the era of the mainframes, those big, ugly computers only big universities and companies could afford. For the past 30 years and more we have been in the era of PCs. I feel we are at the cusp of a new era, the IC era.

I also have to introduce the Web 3.0 concept as I define it. Web 1.0 was when websites were pretty posters. Web 2.0 has been when the websites have been populated.  The semantic web is not Web 3.0, that would be Web 2.1. Getting a ton of new people online would be Web 3.0.

A little about me. There is a concrete mathematical theory called the butterfly effect. A butterfly flapping its wings in the Amazon could be the reason a cyclone hit Bangladesh. During April 2006 over a period of 19 days, over 8 million out of Nepal's 27 million people thronged the streets to shut the country down completely to oust a king dictator. I was the butterfly flapping my wings in New York City. I am extremely good with vision and group dynamics.

How many of you have been to the first KFC restaurant in Kentucky? I have. I will tie that KFC mention later in the presentation.

This is my startup's relaunch. I am trying to raise 100K for my round one right now. I was done doing that, and then in February 09, reacting to the worst economy in 70 years most of my investors walked away. I took time off, focused on social media, accumulated almost as many followers on Twitter as Donald Trump, experimented with pro blogging, and now I am back in the game.

My former business partner Adam Carson was a Morgan Stanley banker, now at Tuck Business School. My primary engineer was Khushboo Vaish, still in Mumbai, an IIT, IIM graduate, one of the finest Indian engineers of her generation. I still have all the contacts to reassemble my engineering team. Khushboo went to the same business school as the Pepsi CEO.

My round one goal is to raise 100K. My round two goal would be to raise between one to five million. During round three I hope to splash out the franchise concept to grow fast. The first person who put in 100K into Google, that money is now north of a billion. I don't expect to do that well. But even if I can do one third as good in twice as much time, that will still be very good. If you have 5K, 10K or 20K that you are in a position to invest, and you have absolutely no chances of ever becoming a millionaire, I am very interested in your money.

Of the 100K, 20-30K will go towards the pilot project, 20-30K towards a global team, and 50K towards one full timer in NYC.

We in the New York tech community envy Boston and Silicon Valley. If the center of gravity in tech is going to shift from California to New York it will not be because we came up with the next big dot com. Like Steve Jobs said a few years back, the PC wars are over, Microsoft won, let's move on. And he gave us the iPod and the iPhone. Web 3.0 is what will put New York City on the technology map, this capital city of the world where people not from just every country, but every town in every country live. My company would like to take the lead.

Steve Ballmer said in a speech recently that by 2035 we will have four billion people online. That will be too little too late. We have to get there much faster.

These were the four panelists.

Scott Gingold - Director, Strategy at Hatchery
James Jorasch - Founder, Science House
Ken Kharbanda - Director, Strategy at Hatchery
Tereza Nemessanyi - Director, Strategy at Hatchery

James started by throwing me an easy question. After you raise the 100K, what are you going to do? I guess I did not emphasize the pilot project part enough. I said you can set up a pilot project for about 15-20K in my hometown in Nepal. You can start by charging people $25 a month, which is the going rate now, but you also end up with a small pool of users. The idea would be to bring the cost down by serving ads, to move from 25 to 15 to 5 to end up with a much larger pool of users.

That gave Ken an opening. He asked me why I did not mention those figures in any of my slides. I said I agree with you. The slides would have been better if those figures had been mentioned.

Scott said he knew a few people for whom my startup might be a good fit. I made a point to get his card later. Then he said, what's in it for me? I said you are already online, this is more for people who are not online yet. But this would be a great investment opportunity for someone like you. On the other hand there are a lot of people in the outer boroughs who go to the public library to check their email.

The Hatchery folks are religious about their 11 points.

1. Your team
2. What your product/service does
3. What issue/pain is it looking to solve/address
4. What is the solution
5. What is the addressable market
6. What is the competitive landscape
7. Any current customer/client/pilot pipeline
8. What is the revenue stream/source
9. What are your financial projections
10. How much are you looking for in investment
11. What will you do with the money, how will it be spent

Yao was very frank on the topic. She said my presentation did not cover "any" of the 11 points. Holy Moses.

It was curious to me that a guy who presented the idea of a print magazine - many say a dying art form - scored the highest, whereas I was not even scored and here I am saying I want to help shift the center of gravity in tech from California to New York. But I truly appreciated the frank feedback. And I do value the 11 points. I would do much better the next time I have a chance to present for five minutes.

My friends Ed, Alex and I went for drinks later. Ed kept saying I was Rocky, I will keep coming back.

The Sun guy, the all Indian Angelo Rajadurai, approached me on the floor later. Some of the feedback was "harsh," he said. "You might have done well if you had said there are 1.2 billion Indians, only 10 million of them are online today." I grabbed his card as well.

Everybody but everybody goes to the movie theater on the Indian subcontinent. That was true when I was a kid growing up. And they serve a ton of ads on those big screens. Of course the ad market exists and is vibrant out there. The ad market - local and global - will have to be tapped. Imagine Google charging us two cents per search. You can't.

 The best part of the evening was the four panelists talked for about 15 minutes each towards the end about four broad topics in business. James talked about the idea, the product, the business. Ken talked about finance. Scott talked about market research. Tereza focused on business to business.

• The Hatchery
• NYDailyNews.com: At The Gauntlet, Ideas Get Business Judgment And Possibly Funding
  

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