Digging for Meaning

To like a post is to like the person. Or to signal your affection. Or to signal you care. But should it? Should you like something because it matters to the other? One perspective is,  obviously you should. That is what a kind person would do. A low cost act that brings happiness to someone - why not? Another perspective is, obviously you should not - you are validating the other person's addiction to 'likes'. We are all addicted to likes. And we all need intervention. Maybe the kind thing would be to not 'like' the post. The third perspective is, damn - if I like the 10th photo of a baby/ wedding/ travel pics, facebook algorithm will feed me more of it until all that remains of the feed is these pictures of important milestones/ happy moments of others but which are also wholly inconsequential to me. And as my addiction grows, i will be submerged in trivialities and inconsequential projections of others. So choices are - 1. Contribute (or not) to the mo...

Facebook pays $19B for whatsapp. instagram goes for a billion... What kind of desperation is this? how can these acquisitions be justified? Even if you dig in numbers, there is no method to the madness - typically they would compare customer acquisition cost (which are astronomical for a category with such a low entry barrier and high attrition rates of users. And just try to realize the promised full potential of monetization - and see if the userbase doesn't evaporate.). Compare those numbers for geocities, aol, myspace, whatsapp.. (and for a sanity check, other industries). All money down the drain. Why is all the money being made in 'exits'? That is not a sustainable way for an industry to thrive. Then some talk about potential in a monopoly & ecosystems tying down people. But that's the sure sign of a dying desperate game. When the game changes from that of creating awesomeness, to cornering access - that is a sure sign of impending irrelevance. People swi...

Someone just 'liked' an old photo of mine on Facebook. And I was wondering why/how would anyone do that? I mean what makes them either seek out someone else's profiles or more probably go scroll down tens of times, down the rabbit hole of their facebook timeline. Don't get me wrong, I do not dislike it. As a matter of fact, I can't help keeping an eager lookout on the notification from Facebook like those rats in the lab who are made to learn to respond to electric pleasure signals. And I understand that the act of 'liking' is a delicate matter. A like is a badge that one carefully chooses. Every like contributes to one's own sense of self, a carefully constructed persona. 'Am I close enough to the person to react to his/her updates?' 'Hope I do not come across as someone naive/ over eager/ un cool' 'Will it send wrong signal if I like this?' My limited curiosity came up with only these questions/thoughts that possibly ...

I have 445 people on my friend's list on Facebook. 41 yet waiting on invite list. What does it mean? If I pass by these 486 people on the street, would we stop, genuinely smile and have a conversation? Would we really care when we would ask 'how are you?'. I know of these people, mostly. Some of them are really close friends. Some are people I would like to be friends to. But most others are only joined by an association. Mostly through my post graduate school, MICA. If I do a test of walking by all these 486 people, how many would I have to remove from the list? why should I be bothered by this number really? Well, primarily cause it confuses me. Is it right for me to see these photos? should i comment? how will they perceive my comment? With people you know closely enough there is no space for these questions. There are handful of people who I would turn to for any sort of help .There are a few more with whom I would like to share stuff.  The rest are mostly irrelevant...

Digital Natives (DNs) like their information served in 'multimedia' and not just one medium (like the ever so abundant text) and Yahoo knows it. Yahoo has come up with a new spruced up search interface called 'glue'. Glue essentially changes the way one uses the search utility, eliminating the need for a few clicks in certain instances, all the while making the result page much more interesting with videos, images, Y! answers, maps, news and any other relevant sources and multimedia being made available on the result page. The service hasn't been rolled out across geographies and queries yet though. As of now, it is only a Y! India feature with only a few categories of searches (sports, travel, entertainment, health, stocks, and tech). for eg. I wanted to know about good beaches in Konkan (where I plan to spend this weekend :D) and searched for 'konkan' and the result page threw up wikipedia's entry about konkan, news, y! answers, images along with the...