Curiosity driven ‘Evolution of Social Networking Media’

Long time pending blog, I simply love it.

Few years before names like Facebook, MySpace, Orkut, Linked-In and Twitter were jargons or non-existent. But now Orkutting, twitting, poking and liking on Facebook are very common terminologies among people who have some knowledge of internet and social networking media. Yes, as the technology started to diffuse at a rapid phase, people started to use that extensively for getting together with others. But there is also a considerable difference between the evolutions of these social networking websites. This is an attempt to bring together the sociological need of people to get together with others and consequently the evolution of social networking media.
One of the popular successes stories of social networking media is Orkut. Long back the founder of Orkut wanted to search his girlfriend with whom he had lost touch for long time. That was the story behind and rest is history. It led to birth of Orkut which brought and is bringing number of such peoples together daily. After its acquisition by Google, Orkut grew leaps and bounds by reaching almost all the population on internet. People used that extensively for networking with each other. So the basic need of keep in touch with your good old friends and relatives, sharing momentous pictures with friends were adequately addressed by Orkut and its expanding user base community. But recently we notice a decline in the activities on Orkut. People attribute this decline to the upcoming of Facebook and twitter. But going behind the discussion we see a paradigm shift in the needs of people who use Orkut. After Orkut, lot of such social networking sites sprung up. Sites like Linked-In were born to address very niche needs of people like networking with your colleagues and professional communities of people who used that extensively for business networking and job searching. With these kinds of website reaching maturity, which is measured by level of penetration, people looked for some added features in which I should say Orkut failed miserably. Orkut launched number of steps like including gaming etc on their site which didn’t capture the pulse of its target group and here comes the innovation of Facebook and Twitter.
With people getting rapidly contented by getting to know about their good old friends and relatives, the preferences of people started changing. There existed a want for people to better know about their near and dear. This was adequately captured by Facebook and Twitter which solved their basic need of getting together with their near and dears and also allowed them to know better by promoting people to regularly update about themselves. This was a special and dynamic feature of Facebook which allowed people to easily post what they do and what they think currently. This also formed the major part of users’ home page and it forced them to take a look at what their friends are doing, there by satisfying their want of getting to know better about their near and dears. Though this feature was lately introduced by Orkut, this was not as effective as Facebook and didn’t capture users’ attention.
Initially it didn’t make much sense for me to use Facebook but later I became an ardent user of Facebook and I have become an addict to Facebook. Thinking beyond the success and evolution of these sites, I feel that after addressing the basic need of getting together with friends and relatives, people were rather curious to know better about them and wanted to keep up with them daily. The curiosity factor which is an innate need for many of us was very well captured by Twitter and Facebook, which ultimately led to success of Facebook and twitter. Who knows, there might be another innate need within us, later which will be addressed by another social networking website ultimately turning out to be the next success story on social networking media.

My Article in Fin Express@Campus - November 9th edition

Guess im improving on my writing skills :)

Find below my article on Financial Express November 9th edition. It was written for FE@Campus contest and i was lucky :) The topic given was "Corporate governance issues that came to fore with recent Reliance Communication issue of inflating revenue".

“The foundation of any structure of corporate governance is disclosure. Openness is the basis of public confidence in the corporate system and funds will flow to centers of economic activity that inspire trust.” -Sir Adrian Cadbury

The issue of Reliance Communication reporting inflated wireless revenues to bourses for improving its valuation and at the same time underreporting its wireless revenues to TRAI for avoiding license fees is a typical corporate governance problem arising out of multiple reporting standards. Nowadays, a company’s innovations do not stop with its products and extends to finding innovative ways of using the loopholes that these multiple reporting standards provide. According to Parekh and Co., an independent audit firm appointed by DoT for looking over this issue, RCom had reported revenue of Rs. 15,213 crores to the stock markets for FY07-08, a 23% over its actual revenue of Rs. 12,298. At the same time it underreported its wireless revenues to TRAI and doing so it avoided license fee payment of Rs.224.79 crores for FY07-08. Moreover this was not the first time RCom avoided the license fee by underreporting. It avoided Rs.91.11 crores license fee for FY 06-07 by adhering to similar practices as per the Parekh and Co. report.

The above issue raises some serious concerns over the relevance of corporate governance to the corporate performance. The excessive importance for short term profits can have major impact on upcoming sectors like Indian wireless market in a long run. Companies should realize this and adhere to proper reporting standards for its sustainability. But it’s easier said than done due to the different needs of its stakeholders and hence the regulatory bodies need to play a pivotal role. In RCom’s case the regulatory bodies SEBI and TRAI failed to check the consistency of the financials submitted by Reliance communication with each other. The whole issue was brought to forefront by Kotak securities an equity research firm after two years of license fee evasion by RCom causing a total loss of Rs.315.90 to exchequer. When the need for different reporting standards is unavoidable, in such case the different stakeholders including regulatory bodies need to work in liaison to avoid such corporate governance issues.

Even though RCom’s corporate governance issue is no where comparable to Satyam, Enron, WorldCom and Tyco, the seriousness of the issue needs to be addressed properly. This brings to forefront the inefficiency of the penalties that companies might face if in case of any corporate governance issues. The implications that RCom might face if incase proved guilty will be a fine by regulators and the stock price will adjust according to its actual revenues. The impact on stock price might be minimal as the money involved is less compared to other major corporate scandals, and hence will not be effective enough to stop the companies from doing so in the future. Hence a proper watchdog and relatively heavier penalizing mechanisms should be in place to prevent such issues in the future.

Its recession dude

Exactly a year ago, when I was giving my Bschool interviews the topic of discussion was all about the glittering Indian economy. Now, after I got into IIMK, the one single word which keeps ringing everywhere is “recession”. This eventful year has found a prominent place in my books of history and in fact for many of us. As a part of my CAT preparation I used to read ET regularly and when I turn the pages of ET hardly I would see a graph sloping downwards. But now, all I could see are only those down downward sloping indicators till the last page. Blame the subprime crisis, mortgage meltdown in US or global liquidity crunch, we are officially marching downwards and the scenario is not very conducive for businesses to flourish. When this topic of global recession and its impact on India was discussed in one of our lectures, the correlation between global meltdown and downturn of Indian economy was brought out. Though it was an interesting topic but I was really fed up with hearing those stuffs again and again and started to work out my new correlation. This time it is a negative correlation between the health of Indian economy and my MBA journey and I came up with this time series graph. If you like this one then you really got to thank our professor who forced me to the state of trance.

The placement scenario which was at its peak during last year, started to cool off during our summer internship selection process and gone bust during current placements. This is the case with all the IIMs and in fact all the academic institutions. The nightmare called recession is currently haunting all of our dreams and has affected the entire student community (taking a narrow perspective here, but the depth of recession has hit the entire population) irrespective of IITs or IIMs. Meanwhile the billion dollar question that needs an immediate answer is “When the economy is going to bounce back and when do the things get normal? “. Putting it blatantly “When do the job market return to normalcy?” is the hot topic of discussion across all academic institutions and in fact the topic for discussion used in selection processes of many bschools this year. 

Tirumala Tirupathi Visit - 2 days and 3 states

Midterm exams on Friday, Chennai on Saturday, Tirupathi on Sunday and Monday back to tiring classes, last weekend’s trip was one of my worst planned. I started from Kozhikode to chennai with no plans of visiting tirupathi coz I was exhausted with all the travel plans suggested by my relatives and could not get tickets for tirumala darshan either on Saturday or Sunday. But after reaching Chennai my gut feeling said “why not give a try?” I made up my mind to visit tirupathi, irrespective of getting tickets for darshan. No words to describe the encouraging scene at home, as if I’m preparing for a battlefield, with statements like “Lord Venki won’t let you down by denying his darshan” were floating around. I packed my bags to tirupathi at 10 pm Saturday, from Chennai with only constraint of returning back by Sunday evening 6 pm as I had to catch my train back to Kozhikode at 8 pm. With literally no sleep during the journey, I reached Tirupathi the next day at early morning 2.30 am and enquired people around there about the 5 am darshan ticket counter. There is a special counter for darshan tickets (Rs.50) for the same day. This is issued daily at 5.00 in morning and will run out in few hours, especially in weekends. I reached the counter at 3 am and was awe struck by the crowd there. People were sleeping there in the queue path, right from the last day night. I literally gave up my hope of getting a darshan ticket on seeing the queue. But I was extremely fortunate to get a darshan ticket and that too in for morning 8.00 am darshan. After this everything went on my way. I had Lord Srinivas’s darshan and returned to Chennai on time. This trip should have otherwise been a planned and peaceful trip but I spoiled it with my poor planning. Asymmetry of information regarding the ways to get tickets was also an important factor contributing to this mess. But if you guys are planning for such a trip to Tirupathi then you can go for any one of the options below for booking darshan tickets (Based on my research and learning I had prepared the following list)

1. If you are a person who plan things well in advance then this is for you. Based on my research I found that darshan tickets are available at few of the major cities in respective states. In Tamil Nadu, there is a counter a Chennai – TNagar (Venkat Narayana Road) where you can go individually and book tickets. As they take your finger print and photo, it’s mandatory that you go in person. I have no information regarding other states but this kind of facility should be there in all states I guess.
   
2. This is also for people who plan very well in advance. There is an online facility for booking various darshan tickets (Many types of darshans are available according to time and special dates). But the problem with this is you need to book two months in advance as it gets filled very rapidly.
   
3. This is for people who plan with a month horizon. There are travel packages offered by state tourism development corporations which usually take care of your travel along with darshan. This works out to be a convenient one as we don’t need any finger prints or so for booking tickets. 
   
4. This is for people like me who make decision on the eleventh hour. As said above there is a counter for the day’s darshan which will open at 5 in the morning. There are several disadvantages associated with this. There will be a huge queue in front of you even if you go an hour earlier. This might be low during weekdays but during weekends the crowd will be humongous. You might get tickets at odd timings and also you need to go in person as they collect our finger print and photo. This can be an option if you are going individually or with a group of friends and not with your family.
   

The final one which I don’t want to mention but many would prefer is using influence of localities. If you have a friend or relative who knows people in Tiruamla-Tirupathi then he/she might be helpful a lot.
If ever you plan such a trip in future then I sincerely request you to go for any one of the above and don’t make the same mistake as I did.

Im bacK

Hello everybody and wish you a Happy and Prosperous 2009. By the dawn of 2009 i bid farwell to my old blog and started this new one . There is no specific reason for this as i lost track of blogging ever since i joined IIM Kozhikode and thought of making a new start and to blog more often (one of my new year resolutions :) ) . With more demanding acads, more lazy i became and thats the sole reason i lost tract of my old blog. Meanwhile a lot of unfortunate events happened during this gap with the global economy receeding, Cowardly attack by terrorist on Mumbai etc. and a very few fortunate events along, 2008 had been a "not so good" year for most of us. With hopes of 2009 bringing lights to the lives of people, i begin this new blog with a commitment of updating it regularly.  

Adios for now .