Plus, Face

Image via CrunchBaseGoogle's first successful social experiment is - you might have heard - called Google Plus. Plus is arithmetic. It is to do with numbers. Google has always been about numbers. The name Google itself is googol misspelt. Googol is "the digit 1 followed by one hundred zeros."

With the Facebook name, the emphasis is on Face. The emphasis is on human relationships not on algorithms.

It was this very mismatch in DNA that prevented Google from cracking the social nut for the longest time. But finally they did it.

Australian Woes

A high school classmate from Kathmandu days, now in Australia.

Kathmandu Woes

Kathmandu Woes

A high school classmate in Kathmandu.

"Do You Have An Email Address?"

This had to have been in 2005, 2006. I was doing democracy work for Nepal. My blog was my primary tool. And I had the largest Nepali mailing list in the world. I had managed to penetrate all the key organizations inside the country and out. And I stayed on a constant lookout for new email addresses.

So I am at this event in Queens. It has not started yet. I am working the room, meeting people, blatantly asking for email addresses.

I came across this guy who apparently did not know what an email address was. Every Nepali in the city has a phone, but only a minority even today have email addresses.

"Would you have an email address?" I asked.

"I do, but I forgot it at home," he said and saved face.

The guy apparently thought I was talking about some kind of a physical object. Like, do you have a Vespa?