Independent Analysis: AI, SaaS, and Revenue Growth Strategy

This question must get a lot of attention at the Washington Post. I asked myself this question pondering this morning's Washington Post Book World. I was thinking of Rohit Bhargava and his book " Personality not included ". He is a local author and a brilliant guy. The topic of his book is not politics, fiction or prose but a easy to understand book on how businesses can win in the changed new media world. I hope Rohit's book makes it to the Washington area bestsellers list. Rohit told me he was writing a book when we met at the Digital Media Wire conference  in 2007. He wrote on Fridays and his book is based on his experiences working in the Digital Influence team at Ogilvy. The book arrived almost the same time as his second child was born. As Rohit's wife Chaavi says they actually had twins late last year! We met again in SXSW and this time Rohit told a bunch of us he met at lunch about the book and had some publicity materials to give away. I got a previe...

Stephen Shankland of CNET news posted this http://news.cnet.com/8301-10784_3-9979697-7.html • Ever wonder what the limits on Gmail activity are? Well, here's the answer, according to a Google Apps posting : "500 messages per day (i.e., you can hit 'Send' a maximum of 500 times); 500 unique recipients; 2000 total emails (for example, you could send one message to a group of 500 people four times)."

I say this in a lighter vein ;) as  I was glad to see that Shel Israel posted the news of Connie Bensen joining the Network Solutions blogging team . Connie is a great person to have on our team and I depend on her to keep me straight. This is also a exciting time for us at Network Solutions with a lot of social media activity and the excitement within the company as we take more steps in reaching out wherever our customers are. I am also happy that Steven Fisher is also helping us with covering local events and interviews for Solutionsarepower.com. With such a star studded team I am hoping some of the brilliance rubs off on me :) Thanks Connie and Steve. Shel Israel gave me an opportunity to talk about my new job as a Social Media Swami for Network Solutionsin an interview on his blog in February .

Today at the Digital Media Conference I randomly chose a table and had great company. Melissa Clark from Siteworx and Dan Werbel. of http://www.kiddesktop.com . As we ate lunch Dan told us about http://www.kiddesktop.com . and how he got the idea from his kid deleting important files by mistakes on his computer. As he described the features I was virtually drooling as these are things any parent wants for their family computer. I got inspired to take a live video interview that 11 other people have seen so far. Features of kiddesktop.com: Protect your files, pictures, music and other programs. Kids don't even see your desktop so they can't open, change, or delete anything. Simplify computer use with our kid-friendly start screen, customizable Activity Bar, icon-driven features, and spoken help. Your child will love having everything he or she wants to use in one place! Set up a favorite activity once and your child can re-start it without your help. No need to re-type URLs ag...

Fox interactive 186 million unique visitors per month to Fox interactive properties ppl spend 3 hrs and 22 min online ppl spend 3 hrs and 45 min watching TV Media moved from print to Radio newspapers depended on ads, subscription and position Radio had advertising Entry of Satellite radio provided subscition models Then TV came in TV subscription models came in with cable and satellite Most business models remain intact and more emerge TIVO, DVR, VCR new business models CPM,CPC, Lead generation, etc Viewers don't want to pay to watch TV shows online On demand content showing ads when the show is paused ( Cool !) showing ads based on local area online

Shawn DuBravac, Chief Economist, CEA 11 phenomenon Alive and Well moving to a 2nd generation devices analog to digital cameras digital DVDs 360 deg solutions emerging Companies providing way to create media from strat to finish, Example - Amazon kindle Distribution is evolving living room is digital device battle field Broadband moves to more than 50% users setup boxes emerging as a viable alternative to content MSOs are changing the landscape - DVRs, digital feature rich Gaming and computers play a important role WII, XBOX Physical media - 30% of consumers will have docking stations Consumers are comfortable with physical media 3D video in the homewill emerge 20% of digital tvs are 1080p i.e full hD What's next for television view digital video files access internet control and personalize experience share content on tvs Mobile ...

Liana Evans Interviewed people at Blog Potomac on “Why I Love Blogging”. See the completed masterpiece here: SMG Post on Why I Love Blogging Videos: http://www.searchmarketinggurus.com/search_marketing_gurus/2008/06/why-i-love-blog.html My Video on YouTube: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kBZ68iPohQQ Blogs: Technology & Social Media : http://www.shashi.name Digital Thoughts: http://readythoughts.blogspot.com Restaurant Reviews: http://eatcurry.blogspot.com Network Solutions: http://www.solutionsarepower.com

I have met Saul Colt - Head if Magic at Fresh Books twice before and he is always so full of ideas and experiences. Did you know he worked for ZipCar before? I am also excited that he is coming to Network Solutions tomorrow to talk at a learning lunch. He organized a dinner today with a few Fresh Books customers and friends  at Lauriol Plaza in DC ad I was honored to be invited. Did'nt get to see if Saul wore any funky shoes today but here is a picture courtesy of David Crow) Among the people I already knew at the dinner were Technosailor , Maddiegrant , Lindy Dreyer Matt and Justin Thorp . I enjoyed the conversation with Gabe Klein ontheflydc.com and Tiago Soromenho of Salongeeks.com and http://www.stickystreet.com . Gabe and Stephanie ( I hope I spelt it right and atleast i didnt say Bethany) were great company and Gabe told us about his experiences in growing his company http://www.ontheflydc.com . The theme is eco friendly catering and I think he told me that a...

Here is a Qik video made by a Member of Congress John Culberson who is also on Twitter http://twitter.com/johnculberson . I am really impressed about how tech savvy this Congressman is and he proves that responsible members of the Legislature should always be in tune with technological advances. This is a must see video and I got to this video from Robert Scoble's Tweet and Blog post on his trip to Washington DC. Andrew Feinberg is the guy who is making many connections for Scoble and has also organized a event tomorrow nigh t which I am attending. I am having problems embedding the video so here is the link http://qik.com/video/112713

I just saw a couple of blogs mention that Google has started Voice search in Hyderabad ( I am going to be there in July). The Economic Times has a story where Microsoft is introducing local Search using SMS. Hyderabad already had a similar service called JustDial .you cannot use the Google Hyderabad voice search on Vodafone because you have to dial a 1-800 number for Google voice search 1 800 41 99 99 99. I am going to check it out when I am there. I am thrilled that Google has decided to try this service first in Hyderabad. One of the first services that I liked here in the US was Tellme that microsoft has since bought. When I was in Hyderabad India last summer I got a pre paid card from Airtel . getting the intenrnet was easy -I would just send a SMS message "Internet On" and get a GPRS internet connection for my phone.

Washington Post Literary calendar has listed this book signing event with @GaryVee 26th june 2008 7:30 P.M. Gary Vaynerchuk, director of operations at the Wine Library and creator of the Internet site http://www.winelibrarytv.com, discusses and signs his new book, Gary Vaynerchuk's 101 Wines: Guaranteed to Inspire, Delight, and Bring Thunder to Your World, at Barnes & Noble-Rockville, 12089 Rockville Pike, Rockville, Md., 301-881-0237. I will be going to an event that Andrew Feinberg is organizing on 25th where Robert Scoble and Gary Vee will be making an appearence:)

Jeremiah Owyang has a list on his blog W eb-Strategist of Social Media Strategists and Community managers of Enterprise companies (His definition is 1000 employees or more) The difference between Social Media Strategist and Community Manager according to the post is : The Social Media Strategist, whose job is to lead the internal charge, develops the program, gains resources, convinces management, and measures success. Key differentiator for this group? They are primarily internally focused program managers. And The Community Manager, who’s job is to primarily be a community advocate is a social media user, and is externally focused, they are primarily the face to the online community. As companies scale, I expect to see these types or roles appear often for each product group at larger companies, they often report directly to the strategist or at least have a dotted line. Key differentiator for this group? They are primarily an externally (customer/community) facing role. The people ...

In advance of next week’s ICANN conference, Network Solutions is putting pressure on the entire industry to place penalty fees on Domain Testing, in hopes of front running forever.  I posted this on Solutionsarepower.com today and am looking for the community support . I think this is good for everyone.

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I enjoyed being on the Adam Zand's Really Big Shoe today Tuesday June 17th. We discussed a lot of things about my career, my background and how I got my present job as the Social Media Swami of Network Solutions. I was honored to be on. Thank you Adam Zand. I am looking forward to a curry dinner with you soon some where soon.

I am honored to be invited to the Adam Zand's Really Big Shoe today Tuesday June 17th at 2 p.m. I met Adam Zand at Blog Potomac last week and we had a great corridor conversation and exchanged experiences. Listen to the show today  if you have the time and would love to hear your questions. Check out Adam Zand's  Linkedin profile here http://www.linkedin.com/in/2008adamzand Personal Message from Adam : Hi Really Big Shoe fans, Blog Potomac http://www.blogpotomac.com in fabulous Falls Church, VA on June 13 was awesome. Great job Livingston Communications, presenters, attendees and bartenders. I really wanted to speak more with Social Media Swami Shashi Bellamkonda of Network Solutions www.networksolutions.com . So today, we get to catch up on the conference, his blogs www.shashi.name and www.solutionsarepower.com , his career path and how social media determined his job title at Network Solutions. As always, check out http://www.talkshoe.com/tc/18410 for Shoe detai...

On the 3rd day the first session at GSPEast was a technical overview of "OpenSocial + Google App Engine" by Patrick Chanezon , Paul McDonald   of Google. I met Patrick after the session and we had a nice chat.  Open Social and Google App Engine along with Friend Connect are some of the Social Media initiatives that Google has undertaken. I hope Patrick's job as a Evangelist will bring him to back to the DC area in September. If it does I am looking forward to organizing a local meetup. Here is the video of my interview with him. Here are the slides he presented at GSPEast posted on his blog : http://wordpress.chanezon.com/   | View | Upload your own

I know a lot of celebrities were there at BlogPotomac at the State Theater in Falls Church but I did not meet Angelina Jolie . We all love Flickr and I use it a lot . Well according to Flickr here are pictures of Blog Potomac http://flickr.com/search/?q=blogpotomac&m=tags&page=4 ( pay attention to page 2) Well I would advice you from reading the descriptions on these Angelina pictures.The pics do have the tag "blogpotomac" so someone considers this tag important. I had a good laugh at this.

I read the TechCrunch post about their new policy on AP stories  http://tinyurl.com/464xu8 and then remembered how different the ZDNet blogs were. On the ZDNet blogs you actually have a button that says "Blog This" and they give you the code to add to your blog . example http://blogs.zdnet.com/Greenbaum/index.php?blogthis=1&p=170 Granted most bloggers will choose the quote from a blog post themselves and will appropriately credit the original post but the fact that ZDNet makes it easier is a positive in my mind. Chris Brogan has a plugin on his blog that says "reblog" and it is from Zemanta. I have not tried it yet. Again this is a question of confidence that people will help spread the message by reblogging your content and that is why you write blogs . I think more bloggers who think their content is worth reblogging should have buttons that make it easy for other bloggers to spread the word. What do you think ?

I interviewed Technosailor at BlogPotomac and he mentioned that a project is keeping him awake at night (By his own admission he slept at 3.30 a.m the previous day). The project is http://painintheassblogger.com/ :) Aaron is never short of ideas and this new project will be interesting to watch. :) I am not sure what the secret is to join this list . BREAKING NEWS: @dcconcierge reports "Congrats to @ jjgardner3 on becoming @ technosailor 's latest PITAB!!! http://painintheassblogger.... "

BlogPotomac on Friday the 13th was educational. I got to talk to a lot of the attendees and speakers and share my thoughts. The conference had the right mix of topics and networking time. OF course as you all know the networking continued even after the conference was over. My actual blog post about the conference is still in the "incubator". In the meantime wanted to make sure you saw this feedback link http://tinyurl.com/5c48ov that you should take some time to fill up if you attended the event. Thanks Geoff Livingston , Debbie Weil, Larissa , Qui and the rest of the wonderful people who worked for this event. See the pictures from the event here http://flickr.com/search/?q=blogpotomac&w=all

Monday, June 30, 2008 6:00 PM to 8:00 PM Small Business Networking Event With Rohit Bhargava Author "Personality Not Included" Herndon VA Powerful Solutions for Small Businesses - A Networking Event for Entrepreneurs With Rohit Bhargava Author “Personality Not Included “ Hosted by Frank Gruber Monday June 30th Pres... Network Solutions Offices 13861 Sunrise Valley Dr Herndon , VA 20171    USA

I follow Chris on Utterz so I already listen to him on my phone. Now there is another way I can listen to his Twsitter feed and for that matter to any of my 1971 friends. The way to do it is through Jott. Jott has added an additional feature called Jott Feeds. You can use that feature to have Twitter feed, Blog posts, your gmail (?) or listen to the preloaded feeds - "Lifehacker", "Mashable", "News" or "Weather". If you are Chris Brogan who would you listen to on Jott feeds ? Would love to get your recommendations on people who should be added to the Jott feeds. Details of the feature http://jott.com/jott/feeds.html Mark Gibbs has written a extensive post here http://www.networkworld.com/columnists/2008/060408-gearhead.html

At GSPEast there are several people who were live blogging and the two tools that I saw were. Scribblelive being used by Jimmy Gardner coveritlive used by Technosailor Do you know other applications that can be used for Live blogging?

Not that anyone was sleeping ! Between sessions there was always a funny video on the screen that helped bring a smile to the attendees. Dave McClure spent a lot of time selecting video clips that were played in between sessions. I was among the people who asked him to put the links to these videos up . Here is the link: http://500hats.typepad.com/500blogs/2008/06/graphing-social.html Comment here and let me know which video you liked the best. :) Today was a good day with a lot of content. And here are some takeways : - Widgets are the new ad media - social advertising - people are getting influenced by what their friends do or buy -new term I heard - replacement media - Linkedin seems to be where the businessmen are and opp for highly targeted non-intrusive advertising. 5M linked members in Europe. 50% of Linkedin users are US based. Paul Worsham- http://ChiefSocialofficer.com   "A common thread @ GSPEast08 so far is to have speed. Fast app development & fast app updates....

l pictures tagged : gspeast08 http://www.flickr.com/search/?q=gspeast08&w=all Shashi Bellamkonda feed: http://tinyurl.com/4v87cm

From Zero to Community in 60 Seconds: White-Label Social Networks Frank Gruber (Somewhat Frank / TECH cocktail / AOL), Alex Blum (KickApps), Michael Jones (Userplane / AOL), Kerry Pearce-Parkins (Mixx.com), Sean Roach (Got Access) TakeAways: - subscription model works - give compelling reasons for people to come back to your site - get your passionate customers to manage your community - Go where the users are ( example - one of the panelists found more users from Germany and went there to see what they could develop for their users) This video is courtesy Jimmy Gardner http://eastcoastblogging.com/2008/06/10/gsp-white-label-social-networks/ My Live QIK video sound is not so good since I was away from the stage

5 things that fail on social networks too many friends too many apps virality is dead - go back to working in coal mines ain't no money - bargain rates for women drivers your privacy isn't Top 5 Wins Multiple social platforms News feeds App vertising Data portability Social Commerce The conference 2nd Day stated with a very humorous video and then Dave gave his view on Social Networks. Jimmy Gardner is live blogging at eastcoastblogging.com and Aaron Brazell at technosailor.com

Ages ago I had a Blog post Can .Name be the default for Blogs and Social Media? .I was inspired to do this post when I checked out Jill Foster 's new name for her blog http://jillfoster.name/ . Call it coincidence I noticed Hiten Shah's (@hnshah )blog is http://hitenshah.name/ and he is at Graphing Social East. " where Hiten says whatever he feels like...usually something about Life, Crazy Egg , Serph or ACS . " I know people want a .com first but if you do not have that opportunity then would you go for a .name domain ? Already have a .name domain leave a comment here and I will add you to this list. http://www.shashi.name http://www.jillfoster.name http://hitenshah.name http://www.mayank.name

I spent the weekend reading Kamalesh Dwivedi's book - a translation of "Kalidas' Meghadutam"  The book title translates to " Megha " means cloud and " Dutam " means messenger. The book consists of poems from a husband asking the clouds to carry back a message to his wife who he misses. In the introduction to the book Kamalesh Dwivedi  writes about how his moving to Colorado and leaving his family behind in Minnesota inspired him. I think if more modern techniques of communication had not existed he may have sought the help of the clouds to convey his message to his wife. Now being a CIO with successful stints at tech companies Kamalesh Dwivedi adds a technology twist to the translation. The book contains images from Google Earth to show the places mentioned by Kalidas about 1500 years ago and it must have been a tough job to research and find these places as names must have changed. Kamalesh is a linguist and his mastery over Sanskrit ...

This is courtesy of my wife who saw this article here and decided to share what she was reading :) http://sunshinenjoy.blogspot.com/2008/06/18-reasons-why.html . Interesting article but this blogger is not alone in this kind of sentiment. Try doing a Google Search

Companies have to think of new ways to engage the customer interest in their products in the light of customers being bombarded by ads and marketing all day. According to a PRSA class I went to recently an average American sees 5000 marketing messages a day . This NY Times has a article that confirms it http://www.nytimes.com/2007/01/15/business/media/15everywhere.html . A few weeks ago I saw a thread on SlickDeals.net about a Thomas The Tank Engine for $2.99 with free shipping. I jumped at the offer and ordered one. It was a no brainer - My son loves Thomas and these things retail for $10. Yesterday I received the Thomas Tank engine and my son is thrilled with it and is sleeping with it beside him. This morning he brought the catalog that the company had sent with the engine and we both spent at least 90 minutes reading about the various Thomas products from Learning Curve. I think this is good marketing, You got me hooked and gave me a product that I know about for free and in turn...

Geoff Livingston & Brian Solis : Now is Gone Book Signing Originally uploaded by shashiBellamkonda This week has been a week of meeting, greeting and eating with authors. The Social Media Club DC organized a meet up at the Barnes and Noble , Clarendon. After the book signing we went to the Tandoori Nights next door. I enjoyed the conversation with Brian Solis, Ryan Moede, Jill Foster, Sean Stickle, Qui Diaz, Frank Gruber, Aaron Brazell,Geoff Livingston, Paul Hyland, Jen Consalvo and Jared Goralnick I took a video of the talk here. Pictures from the event: http://flickr.com/photos/drbeachvacation/sets/72157605488121175/ Jimmy Gardner has a recap and video on EastCoastBlogging.com

I met Jay Berkowitz when he came to DC recently for the SIPA conference. Jay is the CEO of Ten Golden Rules and an expert in Internet Marketing.  We had been following each other on Twitter and Facebook and this is the first time I met him in person. He is very down to earth personable guy and we had a great conversation along with other attendees of the SIPA conference. Jay is eagerly looking forward to his new book "Ten Golden Rules" . I interviewed him about his advice for small business  and you can read the post at SolutionsArepower.com His podcasts are very informative and you should subscribe to his podcasts here http://podcast.tengoldenrules.com/