The Age Of Artists Sans Middlemen

The age of the privileged middlemen is over. All along the artist has been at the mercy of that privileged middleman to get their work to the audience. Be it be a publisher, an art gallery or a music records company – for years they have controlled who and what reaches the market. But the times have changed and so has the role of the middleman – from the controller to the facilitator.

The artist is the privileged one now – they can opt for a facilitator but it’s not mandatory. They just need their art to be good enough to reach the market. They can paint, create music or have their own comic strip – and even if they choose to go with the middlemen they can do it at their own terms.

Status, Status everywhere and lots of lines to think..

The title is inspired from Samuel Taylor Coleridge’s classic poem The Rime of the Ancient Mariner.

Status messages have become such an integral part of our lives. A substantial part of our time daily is spent on updating our 'Status’ on Facebook, Twitter, Gmail, Buzz, Orkut and what not?? We humans are social by nature (as I read in textbooks during school days J ) and not so long ago people were complaining that the internet is isolating people and killing the very social fiber itself. But, like all great things, internet did its own thing, evolved its own solution to the problem - the Social Media (SM) tools and right now is flooded by them. And at the very core of this SM phenomenon is the ‘Status’. People update their status, look for other person’s status, comment on it and love being commented upon. So everybody has something to say and everybody has a 'Status' message.

You'll find lyrics of popular songs, lines from some poem or famous quotes from somebody as the status for most people. I, myself often, use them to share the links to the new posts on my blogs apart from sharing other messages which can at times be "just utter nonsense". Then there are status messages that want you to listen to a song, watch a video or read some interesting article on some random website. Well, I like most of them, but what I find interesting is the way people use the status messages to share the mood or the state of mind they are in. I am pretty sure that most of the times the status reflects the mind frame of that person, even if it is not in plain words. The more artistic ones choose a line from a song or quote or poem while others just mention a few words and leave the rest to your imagination. With due respect to all my friends, sample a few status messages on Gmail chat for some of my friends at this time:

"On iPhone with IM+"

“http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A38LH9JvkiI&feature=related”

“Time and Tide waits for none”

"RANJHA RANJHA kardi ve main aape ranjha hoyi" –lines from a popular Hindi film number.

"I believe I can fly....I believe I can touch the sky..."

"Work, work n more work"

"where the hell is my status message.........."

"There is no point in living if you cannot feel alive!!"

"ek simple si coffee bhi kick deti thi, tere sang..." –lines from a popular Hindi film number.

"Why is God after my life????"

Note: For all my friends whose status I have mentioned here, I took the liberty of using these without permission because most of them are not original in the first place J. And for the ones which are originals, they are meant to be shared.. right?? I just shared them with a few more people, knowing that you all are my good friends and won’t mind the "free publicity" a bit ;)

In my personal opinion and with all due respect and love, I like the bottom half in the list more for the simple reason that they generate a curiosity and prompt the readers to initiate a conversation. Conversation is what we crave for; the need to vent out the feelings. Just go through each of the status messages once again and try and figure out the state of mind of the person, I am sure you will make many interesting observations J

OK..so how many times has it happened that a simple status message on your Gmail chat window or your Facebook homepage has lead to an interesting conversation with a friend? In fact, most of the times I start the conversation by saying something relevant to the status message of the person. Recently I had one such conversation, most conversations are interesting but this one took an unexpected turn. It was simply innocuous and never intended to go in the direction it went and even ended abruptly but I wish we can pick up the threads someday and continue from where we left J. It has been mentioned below; I hope you find it interesting too. Also, please do share any incidents where you had a similar experience; I am sure it happens a lot of times to each one of us.

DearFriend’s Status: I am what I am.

me: I know  what u are J

DearFriend: you know me as **********. I am more than that

me: hmm.. for example

DearFriend: To you My “ I” could not be more than a friend. My "I" or close buddy but My “I” cannot be more to you

me: see there is nothing kept in these topics close your eye(I) and just remember God ;)

DearFriend: if ever get a chance i would like to recommend a book "I am That"

me: aur main kehta hun ki “that is me”. its all perception :)

DearFriend: perception is a term when we tend to look at others and compare...there is nothing more than I. so where this perception could exist

me: wrong! perception is what we perceive, it's “my” vision it has 'I' written all over it that's why i said that is me :)

DearFriend: :) so whats your me ?

me: The world is how I see it what I see is what I am :)

DearFriend: thats so true

me: If all I can see is wrong then something is wrong in me If I see good there is something good in me :)

DearFriend: but there is something beyond  that as well. who is judging ... right or wrong. to you .. drinking may be bad.. for me its good

me: there is no judging everything is relative, relative to what I am :)

DearFriend: i live by one word.. experience..whatever comes

me: correct!! when a child comes to this world he is blank, he has no sense of right or wrong, his experiences make him draw his line of reference from which he measures right or wrong

DearFriend: i asked a prostitute.. what is love.. she said. its fucking Rs 1000 per hour.

correct ? right or wrong??

me: depends who is deciding. what his/her line of reference

DearFriend: you just use experience to avoid what you have already faced and didnt like.  but accepting that its all experience and keep on moving, that is what brings you closer to your SELF

me: sorry..I am enjoying the conversation ..but need to take a break..getting a call

DearFriend: same here. need to take offshore call :( cya later

me: tc bye :)

Note: Due permission has been taken from the person involved in the conversation before mentioning it here.

Why I stuck to Blogger despite being lured to Wordpress??

"Between stimulus and response is our greatest power -- the freedom to choose.”

One of my dear friend, philosopher and guide, whose opinion I value, recently suggested that I should move from Blogger to Wordpress(WP) for a better blogging experience. I had almost made up my mind to do so over the last weekend but then I read the above said quote somewhere, so decided to do the obvious, to compare the two options and then make a decision. The easiest way, as usual, Google :)
I found this very useful post which does a step by step comparison between WP and the Blogger: http://bit.ly/bnsYsG. But the good thing is the post is not judgmental. It lists the comparative features of both, tabular format, side by side, lists all the available widgets and in some cases the alternatives too but does not explicitly tell you which one is better but leaves the choice upto the reader.
Now there is no point in my repeating the whole process. However, just to let you know, I have decided to stick with Blogger for now. But for benefit of everybody I will list the so called drawbacks of using Blogger and the work-around that I am or will be using to deal with each of them:

Limited Templates

Around last month, Blogger launched "Template Designer" which should answer most of the concerns around limited templates and the lack of customization options. The "Template Designer" allows for a fair bit of tweaking to the templates….and they still adding features to it. So I believe in the days to come there would be a lot more customizations available. Checkout: http://bloggerindraft.blogspot.com/ for more details on this.

Embedded Comment Form

Blogger now provides one but it’s still very rudimentary with no comment threading options for follow-ups available yet. I haven't been able to get a workaround this. For now I am content with personally acknowledging the comments I get through email or other mediums.

Tracking and Stats
This is touted as a big attraction for WP users but as far as I understand users have only limited access to the stats and data unless they opt for a paid upgrade. If you are interested in stats and about how you good your blog is doing, I would suggest using Google Analytics tracking. It's free and the tracking can be easily installed using the 'HTML/JavaScript' widget available in Blogger. Once you register for a free GA account; just generate the tracking code, copy and paste in the 'HTML/JavaScript' widget and you are good to go. You will have access to user tacking and stats information as good as it can get for any website.


Widgets/Links to Social Widgets

Agreed that WP presents much better widgets than Blogger but most of them are available in Blogger. And again most websites would provide their own widgets code which you can copy and paste in the 'HTML/JavaScript' widget.













Image storage
I know this is a bit of concern as WP offers 3 GB of space for image storage vs. 1 GB of Blogger. But the good news is that Blogger uses Picasa web albums of the associated Google account to store the images. Even in case you opt for an upgrade in Picasa you can use the storage for personal photos also and not just the ones related to the blog.


Final Verdict: I am not ruling out WP as a possibility in the future, but for now will stick to blogger :)

Social Media - Hype, Hoopla and Trends

There has been a lot of hype and hoopla about Social Media applications in recent times ..how their influence is increasing by the minute and how they are impacting what people think, buy, search or look for etc. So I thought of doing my own analysis about how each of these SM applications are doing.


The difficult part was where to start?? I relied on the experts to do it for me: Google. Google has an excellent feature called Google Trends which in my opinion can be an excellent indicator of the online popularity of anything searchable using a "keyword". You can find more information on how Google trends works @ http://bit.ly/9bvjCh.


So I used Google Trends to analyse the popularity of various SM channels and below are some interesting observations. But before I go in any further detail a small disclaimer: Please note that the below illustrations only depict the popularity standings of these SM apps on Google Search and may be completed unrelated to their financial and market standings. And second, I have included only those apps I am aware of , the rest, you need to get your act together :) [Bcos many people like myself still don't know you exist!!]

Note: You can click on each of these images to enlarge the image and have a better view.


Facebook
We all know the popularity of facebook is increasing by the day and as is obvious from the graph below. But what surprises me is that United States does not even feature in the Top10 regions and the list is lead by Turkey followed by Croatia. The popularity of facebook in these two countries is also evident if you look at the top cities and the languages list.

Google Buzz

It seems the popularity of Google Buzz was very short lived. There is only one spike probably around the time it was launched, the curiosity seems to have died there after. But it seems the Asian countries have taken a liking to it. The top four countries are Asian countries with India leading the pack. By language Indonesian is leading the pack.. looks like providing the app in the local language is doing the trick for Buzz in Indonesia 

Twitter

The Brazilians seem to have embraced Twitter quite well; as is evident from all three lists but what is surprising is Waterloo, Canada at the top of city list. A small search in Google Maps told me that it's a small town in Ontario. What is happening here?? Does the whole town every night sits and searches for Twitter on google..just for fun?? How come it left big cities like London and LA behind? Is google taking population vs per head searches into consideration for rank calculation?? I am not sure... Another strange thing is that although Indonesian features as the top language, none of the south east Asian countries feature in the list.

Foursquare
Foursquare featured in my earlier post - http://bit.ly/9SjFrG and I am happy to see it growing leaps and bounds :) Not many surprises here US and Canada lead the pack as does English in the languages list. The Northwestern states are taking the lead in using this location based SM app. Again Waterloo features prominently..this town seems to have a knack for mobile SM apps!!

Gowalla
Another location based mobile SM app which describes itself as "an app born in the heart of Texas" rules the heart of Texas :) if you take a look at the cities list. Although the popularity of the app seem to have taken a drastic dip in recent times, it seems to be quite popular in the western European countries with them taking 7 of the top 10 spots and Swedish, Dutch, German and English being the most popular languages.

Linkedin
Though it is more a professional networking site but it's popularity has been steadily growing over the years. Not surprising with the number of calls I frequently get these days from recruiters who have seen my linkedin profile :). I believe this is one of the most constructive uses of the SM concept. Also the way these guys have been constantly improving the site and making the experience better..they deserve the fan following :)

Loopt
This is another location based mobile SM and is extremely popular in Netherlands (all 10 spots in Cities) and the top language is Dutch. Shows the power of providing the Local content in the Local language. Also that you don't need always need a new idea to be successful, you can put the existing to a better use :) India features poorly in all these location based SM apps which indicates an opportunity here for the entrepreneurs. Any takers???

Myspace
Myspace was one of the most successful SMs and then became a big disaster. I am not sure about the reasons though you can clearly see a decline here ( probably you can find more here - http://bit.ly/9VpeaV. )But it is still quite popular in the US (Top 10 cities) and the top region.