Showing posts with label Huffington Post. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Huffington Post. Show all posts

Friday, October 04, 2013

Tech In Jackson Heights

English: Looking northeast across 74th Street ...
English: Looking northeast across 74th Street at Jackson Diner on a mostl cloudy midday. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
(published in Vishwa Sandesh)

Tech In Jackson Heights
By Paramendra Bhagat
www.paramendra.com

March Andreessen’s advice to the New York Times – and this was a few years back – was to kill the paper and go 100% digital, Andreessen being the guy who gave the world the Netscape browser back in 1995 that ushered the dot com era. He is now a top venture capitalist. The Huffington Post that was sold to AOL for 300 million dollars does not have a paper edition, never did. It would be hard to have a comments section in a paper newspaper, don’t you think?

But in Jackson Heights, the most famous Desi part of North America, there are a whole bunch of paper newspapers that are doing a thriving business. What gives? There is a lagging behind element to it, but there is also a counter current element to it.

Ecommerce is swell and grew like crazy through the Great Recession. But the intimacy of shopping in person will never go away, and I think the best ecommerce solutions of the future will enhance rather than wholesale replace that in person shopping. I dream of a smart mall. A smart mall is smart the way a smartphone is smart. There are dumb phones, and then there are smartphones.

The lagging behind element can be seen out in the streets of Jackson Heights. Smartphone penetration is not as much as it can be. With some carriers offering four phones with unlimited talk, text and data for $100 a month – which comes to $25 per phone per month – you can argue maybe it is not the monthly bill that is the roadblock. It is the hardware. There is a lot of room for smartphones that might cost less than $50.

The counter current element is that in this foreign land when you are 10,000 miles away from home and where all the road signs are in English, a newspaper written in your language that you can hold in your hand, take home with you perhaps speaks to your homesickness. But then it is not like newspapers from home are not online, all the good ones are. And the top newspapers in Jackson Heights are all free. They are ad supported. You pick up your free copy and take home to read.

I have been walking the streets relentlessly for weeks now, I have had numerous meetings with local merchants. There is this mild cloud of despair that you sense. The neighborhood has been losing business year after year for a few years now. There is a saying in the US South in states like Alabama about snow that falls from the sky. God brought the snow, God will take it away. As in, they are not big on snow ploughs down there, like they are in places like, say, Connecticut. Many merchants in Jackson Heights have that Alabama attitude about the downturn. It will go back on its own, they seem to suggest. I belong in the snow plough school of thought.

I believe use of tech can help put the entire neighborhood on the upswing. There is no place quite like Jackson Heights in all of North America. Jackson Heights has a special appeal all over NYC, and across the tri-state area. Tech can help the local merchants cash into that.

Jackson Heights has a ton of the old economy mindset. The place reminds me of a small town like Sitamadhi in Bihar, not the Connaught Place in Delhi. There has to be a collective effort to break out of that old economy mindset and try out new things, and new ways.

The pie has to be expanded. The local merchants will have to reinvent themselves in ways so more people from near and far show up to shop. If the neighborhood is going to look the exact same that it did 10 years ago, that inflow is not going to happen.

Tech is the way out. Much of the rejuvenation will come through use of tech. There’s also a ton of room for social cross pollinations across the various country groups that are represented in the area. New kinds of businesses will have to sprout out. A further diversification in the local economy would be a good thing.

It is surprising how many of the local businesses don’t even have a simple website online. No business however small can afford to not have a website. A lot of businesses have only token websites when they need interactive ones. There are businesses that should but don’t have ecommerce sites. Only one out of 16 jewelry stores on 74th St has an ecommerce store, and even that one is a dud because it does not do active, monthly online marketing. People have to know you exist. There are businesses that could use business software but don’t. There are businesses that should be looking into mobile apps.

Some of the basic tech steps require only small investments but go a long way. Some of the more ambitious moves are bigger investments but pay for themselves many times over if done right.

Tech can drive up the local commerce. Tech can help build a more close knit local community. Tech can do what bricks and mortar simply cannot do.

A few months back Patel Brothers, perhaps the largest store in the neighborhood, completely redid its checkout lines for the better. Now buyers move faster, and that is a good thing. But there are better, cheaper software solutions that would take the store’s business volumes to whole new levels. To that the local manager says, “We don’t need it!”

That mindset gets in the way and has to change.
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Monday, April 01, 2013

Business Insider Is Doing Something Right

English: Arianna Huffington attending the prem...
English: Arianna Huffington attending the premiere of The Union at the 2011 Tribeca Film Festival (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
The online publication Business Insider is doing something right and it reminds me of The Huffington Post. The Post did commenting really, really well, and it was and is very good at linking to others, but a paragraph of quote first. Business Insider does that too. It often links to others. But what it does really good is taking you to read other related stories. You read one, and the next thing you know you are reading five others. And it is also smart about getting page hits from pictures and infographics. It sure "gets" digital. It feels lightweight but deals with plenty of heavy topics.

Timothy Thomas: Why China Is Reading Your Email
Henry Blodget Is Quietly Planning a Stunning Return to Wall Street
Exclusive: Snapdeal raises $50 million from eBay and existing investors
YouTube co-founder Chad Hurley announces MixBit video collaboration site
E-Commerce Companies Bypass the Middlemen

NYC Subways Deploy A Touch-Screen Network, Complete With Apps
Washington Post seeks blogger for Style section
Why did Apple hire Adobe CTO Kevin Lynch?
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Friday, February 24, 2012

New Technology And Old Media

Earlier I got back from a dinner party at Arianna's place. (Dinner At Arianna's) If it had been a private party it would have been bad taste to blog about it.

I had no idea The Huffington Post has major international expansion gameplans. I am so impressed. The Huffington Post is still very much a startup, just with more resources.

Paramendra, I very much hope you can join me for a dinner for Juan Luis Cebrian, who heads El Pais, our partner in launching The Huffington Post in Spain. It is at 7pm at my home at _________ 17th Street_______. Let me know if you can make it. All the best, Arianna.
The Huffington Post has been in Canada for a while now. I did not know. It even has a French edition in Canada. And it has already teamed up with the top French newspaper. I did not know. And I thought Arianna bought a yacht and went on a world tour after selling The Huffington Post to AOL. Not so. She is hard at work. If you think the newspaper is dead, talk to Arianna. I did not know El Pais was the biggest newspaper in the Spanish speaking world. I had never heard of that brand name.

I got to meet a whole bunch of people on the El Pais team. And I congratulated each of them. I told them I was not with The Huffington Post, although looks like I might do a few projects for them. ("How do you know Arianna?" "I met her at a party a few days back.")

I told them, this is a really smart move for both of you to be making. You have the content and the culture and the local reach that The Huffington Post does not have. The Huffington Post has the magic that you don't have. They do not embrace new technology, they have not mastered new technology, it is more like they were born out of new technology. Being big will not save you. RIM of Blackberry fame was big. The Huffington Post does new technology better than any newspaper in the world. Teaming up with them will rub off on you.

And I got to meet Joe Klein, the Time columnist. "You are Joe Klein, right?"

And - take this - I got to meet Charlie Rose, the man himself. "Charlie, I am a huge fan of your show." So true. Nobody quite like Charlie in the business.

I also met the president of MSNBC, but he had to tell me that.

I met a Danish guy out of London who sold a video startup to AOL for $100 million, and another guy who sold a startup to AOL for an undisclosed sum.

Towards the very end I got to meet Arianna's sister: "I am the artist in the family."

Meeting Arianna Huffington

Ends up Arianna did not buy a yacht. She bought something better. She has a great, great apartment. The big, open space of the living room, the view of the Freedom Tower, the white coloring of the walls. It is nice.

Mike Arrington and Arianna Huffington are a study in contrasts. One sold the top tech blog in the world to AOL, another sold the top blog in the world to AOL. And the similarities kind of end there. Arianna's is the biggest startup newspaper in the world, a newspaper for the digital era. In short, you ain't seen nothing yet.

If AOL remakes itself in Arianna's image, it will more than thrive. It will not end up a Yahoo.

Wednesday, February 22, 2012

Meeting Arianna Huffington


I still don't know how I got invited to this event, but there I was. I was the first person to show. The second two people to show asked me, "How do you know Reid?" Reid, as in Reid Hoffman.

"I don't know Reid," I said.

And then Reid Hoffman was the fourth person to show and he stood next to me and waxed eloquent for a full 10 minutes or so. To the person who asked how I knew Reid. Apparently they knew each other.


Mayor Bloomberg showed up not long after. He walked a step towards me and shook my hand. I was about to say, Mr. Mayor, I was Barack Obama's first full time volunteer in all of New York City. But with Bloomberg you don't know if you are talking to an entrepreneur or a politician or a soon to be full time philanthropist.

Arianna must have showed up fashionably late. Because I only spotted her when I thought I might leave soon, and the room was by then two thirds empty. She has the cutest accent.


This woman has enough money to bail out Greece.

I had teamed with Mike who I met at the event for the first time. Let's go say hello to as many people as possible, I said. One person we said hello to was president of MTV, or so he said.

When I spotted Arianna across the room, I dragged Mike along.


"Hi. We just wanted to say hello," I said. The guy who had been talking to her for the prior 15 minutes or so disappeared within a second. And Arianna engaged me, Mike and three, four other people who quickly gathered around her for a comfortable 15 minutes or so.

I am going to say Arianna was the most interesting person I met at the party.

I want to write for The Huffington Post. And I don't want to get paid. I think I could make more money through the publicity and exposure writing for The Huffington Post could give me than the Post could pay me.

The top blog in the world. Arianna turned it into a powerhouse right before my eyes, it feels like. I remember watching her debate The Terminator. I mean, the guy is an action hero, and Arianna couldn't have cared less. Next thing you know she had launched the Post. Next thing you know she had sold it to AOL for hundreds of millions. That is an entrepreneur.

Wikipedia: Arianna Huffington
Huffington Post: Arianna Huffington
Twitter: Arianna Huffington
Facebook: Arianna Huffington

HuffPost + AOL: The First Year in Numbers
My Favorite Black Dress: Love Story or Cautionary Tale?

Monday, September 06, 2010

The Facebook Search Engine

Facebook founder Mark ZuckerbergImage via WikipediaNo surprise there. The whole idea behind the like button has been to take over the web. Mark Zuckerberg made it very clear in his speech at the F8 conference that that is what the like button was for. Just like Facebook should be your primary place online, the like button should tell you where to go instead of the links that the Google engine depends on. That was the hint.
GigaOm: Facebook Ramping Up The Social In Its Search Engine: The new feature is the latest step in rolling out the network’s social-search engine — which could become a competitive threat for Google and other traditional search companies, as more users turn to recommendations from their networks instead of those determined by algorithms.
What has been giving me headaches for months and months now is as to why Facebook will not make it possible for me to search my own wall, and that of my friends. If I could I might be able to use my Facebook wall as the repository of links I might want to visit later on. That would be a huge incentive for me to share more links on Facebook. That in turn would make Facebook searches even better.
GigaOm: Is Facebook's Social Search Engine A Google Killer?: one of the company’s goals was to use the resulting behavioral data to power a social search engine — one based on likes instead of links .... more than a million websites — including some highly trafficked sites such as The Huffington Post — have integrated its features, and 150 million of the network’s more than 400 million users “engage with Facebook” in some way through external sites every month. ...... Being able to search for recommendations from close to half a billion users could be very powerful..... since Facebook’s Open Graph protocol is theoretically an open standard, there is the potential for Google to use that to pull in the network’s results in the same way it uses Twitter’s API ...... gave the network a relatively puny 2.7 percent share of the U.S. search business, but still put it ahead of AOL.
The human part is when I press that like button, which I do all the time. (Hello Mark!) The machine part is what Facebook does after I have already pressed that like button. The human part was when someone placed that link. The machine part was Google making sense of the link. There are clear parallels.
All Facebook: BREAKING: Facebook Now Displaying All Liked News Articles In Search Results: based on two things: the number of likes and the number of friends who liked that object ..... shows how important Facebook’s Open Graph is to the future of the company. ..... the content displayed “is only available for articles shared by your direct friends (not globally to all users on Facebook).” Additionally, “This is not surfaced to you based solely on number of ‘Likes’ for the article.”

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