How YouTube Got My Mother To Stop Nagging Me

     My sincere apologies to those who clicked on the link thinking it's a self-help guide to doing what the title says. It is not. But it is about YouTube, yes. Let me take you back to those days when you had to search for hours online for that movie clip or music video you suddenly thought about. By the time you got to it, either your desire to watch the video had vanished, or you found 12 seconds of that video in really bad print. Let me take you farther behind, remember when you had to buy VCDs and DVDs of movies that you would watch only in the first week after you'd bought them, or when someone came over, and soon it just sat in your drawer like a liability and a shameful reminder of how careless you had been?
     Not farther enough, how about the time you had to record on your VCR (Millennial kids: "What?") an episode of your favourite show or a movie on TV you wanted to watch but did not have time to? Pretty often you had to write over an old tape, which would mean watching the video in parts that made no sense at all. Or should I remind you of a time when the whole colony had one TV, and everyone would assemble in that blessed person's house every Sunday morning to watch their favourite show?
     What's the point of all this flashback, you ask? Ask yourself this, then and now, how simple has it become to watch videos? Get a good internet plan, be good at typing what you want to see, and voila! You have every video at your beck and call! Who made that possible? Many people did, with a special mention to Chad Hurley, Steve Chen, and Jawed Karim, and their gift to a world that was struggling with online video streaming - YouTube.
     Hurley, Chen, and Karim, who were all early employees of PayPal. Hurley and Chen developed the idea for YouTube in early 2005, after experiencing difficulty sharing videos from a dinner party at Chen's San Francisco apartment. The original idea for YouTube was a video version of an onlinne dating service, and had been influenced by Hot or Not. But like most successful companies we know today, they did "pivot".
     YouTube began as a venture-funded technology start-up, from an $11.5 million investment by Sequoia Capital in 2005-06. Its early headquarters were situated above a pizzeria and Japanese restaurant in California. The domain name www.youtube.com was activated on February 14, 2005, and the website was developed subsequently.

     From the first YouTube video 'Me at the zoo', uploaded on April 23, 2005, the site grew rapidly, and in July 2006 they announced that more than 65,000 new videos were being uploaded every day, and that the site was receiving 100 million video views per day.
      YouTube says that 300 hours of new videos are uploaded to the site every minute, and that around 60% of the views on a post come from outside the creator's home country. The website has a billion users, and the number of hours people are watching on YouTube each month is up 50% year over year.
     In October-November 2006, Google acquired YouTube for $1.65 billion in Google stock, shortly after YouTube entered into a marketing and advertising partnership with NBC in June. In November 2008, it reached an agreement with MGM, Lions Gate and CBS, allowing the companies to post full-length films and television episodes on the site, accompanied by advertisements in a section for US viewers called "Shows", and the rest, as we know it, is history.
      From "Shows" to an online film rentals service in January 2009, to free streaming of 60 cricket matches of the Indian Premier League, YouTube became the first worldwide free online broadcaster of a major sporting event.
     From providing free content to offering some content providers the ability to charge $0.99 per month or more for certain channels, in May 2013, YouTube went from a mere video sharing website to a vast marketing platform - a brand to watch out for. Be it movie trailers, television episodes or music videos, the producers of the above uploaded these videos themselves in high quality before they got uploaded by someone else, thus curbing video piracy hugely. This has also been true in India, as YouTube is increasingly becoming a platform to showcase your talent, be it Justin Bieber of Canada or Shraddha Sharma of India, or satirical comedy like TVF, AIB, Being Indian and many others.
     Red Bull's Statos campaign was one of the most successful YouTube campaigns to date. The live stream was watched by eight million people, while an additional 32 million watched the video on YouTube. Dollar Shave Club created a hilarious video that went viral and has almost 9.5 million views. Getty Images created an amazing video from 873 images to show how vast its collection is. It has over 2.5 million views to date. GoPro is one of the most popular brands on Facebook, creating amazing videos using its cameras. Here it shows how it got there through the medium of video. ReelSEO shows you how you can drive sales through YouTube and how you can increase your conversion rates.
     The 'You can skip this ad in...' ticker before certain videos has been cleverly made use of by many marketers today, in fact, some advertisements are made in a way that the first 5 seconds are incredibly attractive, so that the viewer does not skip the ad. Who would have thought that a song or movie trailer's popularity would be judged by its YouTube views?
    The future of YouTube is omnipresence. It will be available as widely as TV is today, possibly even more. If it makes itself simple enough to adapt to as many video devices as possible, it will be an every day affair even for a layman with a colour smartphone with an internet connection. It is important for YouTube to be everywhere. If YouTube wants to become as omnipresent on TV as it is on PCs, it should be available on nearly every platform, from Apple TV to the UK’s Freesat satellite service. The future of YouTube’s interface is to be simple enough to work on all sorts of devices, yet rich enough that people can find the videos they care about among vast quantities of available channels.
     Today, PCs, phones, tablets, game consoles and streaming-video boxes can play YouTube videos via apps or web-based interfaces. In future, YouTube itself could involve more gadgets, going wherever people want to watch video. Who would have thought that we would watch a three-hour movie on a 5-inch screen, but that happens now. “If something has a screen, and it makes sense to show a YouTube video on it, let’s make it happen.” For that matter, we should be able to play a YouTube video on a microwave oven’s screen as the timer goes off. That is the future of YouTube.
     And no, I haven't titled this post only to lure some of you into reading it. Ever since YouTube launched its app and we got WiFi in the house, the TV has become the least used gadget in the house. My mother could not be any prouder of her son, who, after working all day, prefers being with his family instead of surfing TV channels only to check out the latest advertisements. Little does she know that the Nescafe cartoonist advertisement has already found its way into the Offline (Or now, 'Saved Videos') section on my phone! And for that, YouTube, I thank you! 

Why We Need Religion

     Don't get me wrong, I'm neither a fanatic, nor an atheist, and definitely not agnostic. I just have a very liberal view towards religion, at least I like to think that I do. Have I read The Shrimad Bhagavad Gita? In detail. The Holy Bible and The Holy Quran? A few excerpts, yes. What I have understood out of each of these holy books, is that they communicate the same things, probably in different ways. One of these things they all abide by is 'There is only one God of this Universe'. You may have heard this being true in the case of Christianity and Islam. But Hinduism? Don't we have a lot of deities? 33 to be precise?

     Contrary to the '33 crore' misconception, in reality, the term ‘trayastrimsati koti’ as quoted in the Atharva Veda, Yajur Veda, and Satapatha-brahmana, is often misunderstood as 33 Crore. However, 'koti' in Sanskrit has two meanings - ‘supreme’ and 'crore'. Hence the basic fact that Hinduism has 33 Supreme Gods and not 33 Crore Gods is lost in translation. Even this is slightly debatable if we go by the theory which will follow in the next paragraph.

     I went slightly awry with the last explanation, but I felt it was necessary to clear that first. Coming back to the concept of monotheism which seems bizarre in Hinduism, it is important to note that Hinduism has evolve from the Ancient Vedic Religion, when Adi Shankaracharya united different streams and cultures and sects emerged. Hence, in the Vedic times the term Hindu was non existent. Vedic religion was based on deep philosophical and practical thinking. Worshiping many different deities did not even exist then. Hence, whatever verses from Vedas are recited in relation of classical Hinduism were written much before its evolution.

     Now that we have established that, the concept of God in the Vedic period would describe or explain the different phenomena occurring in the universe. The 'Gods' - Bramha,Vishnu, Mahesh (Shiva) were created to explain creation, sustenance and destruction of universe respectively. Similarly, more Gods were created for representing the energies in nature: Pavan (wind), Agni (fire), Varuna (Rain) etc. and a female half of the Parmatma (the Ultimate God) - Adi Shakti. The 33 crore deity concept could be attributed to the identification of 330 million different natural phenomena and forms of energy that were represented by corresponding Gods, all aimed at understanding the universe and how it works.

     The evolution of the Hinduism as we know today coincides with decline of Buddhism in India, when due to the dominance of Buddhism Adi Shankaracharya found it necessary to modify the traditional religious practices in the Vedic religion and make them simpler and easier to identify with common masses through idol worship, like that of many figures from Ramayana and Mahabharata like Rama, Krishna, Hanuman, etc. 

     The Vedas, the cradle of present day Hinduism, thus talk of One Parmatma - the Supreme God, who has neither a form nor a gender, but a state, a consciousness, which is similar to the Islamic concept of Allah, who is without a body. Now let's talk about the concept of God in Islam. As goes the popular verse:

لا إله إلا الله محمد رسول الله

lā ʾilāha ʾillā-llāh, muḥammadur rasūlu-llāh

There is no god but Allah. Muhammad is the messenger of Allah.

     This does not mean that the religion says that there is only one God named Allah. 'Allah' in Arabic means 'God'. So the actual translation is : 'There is no god but God. Muhammad is the messenger of God.' Does not seem so fanatic now, does it? Again, the concept of One God, whose messengers span religions, regions and beings.

     There are many such similarities between Hinduism and Islam, Islam and Christianity, Hinduism and Christianity, and the other religions of the world. For example,

Bhagavad Gita: They who worship me with true devotion are in me and I in them. (Ch. VI. 29)
New Testament, Bible: I in them, thou in me, that they may be made perfect in one. (John XVII. 23)

Bhagavad Gita: Be assured that he who worships me, perishes not. (Ch. IX. 31)
New Testament, Bible: He that believeth in me shall never perish, but shall have eternal life. (John III. 5)

Bhagavad Gita: I am the beginning and the middle and the end of things. (Ch. X. 20)
New Testament, Bible: I am Alpha, Omega, the beginning and the ending. (Rev. I. 8)

     We can go on and on with such similarities. But these similarities are not enough to ensure that religion, which is actually a way of life, is free to be practised by anyone and everyone in the world. Sadly, many religions have been interpreted horribly, to the point of exploitation and violence, examples of which need not be mentioned to the well informed reader.

     Then what needs to be done to maintain religious harmony in the world? Have one true religion? No, we have seen the terrorizing ways of ensuring that. Then can it be achieved by practising some of the principles mentioned in these books? After all, aren't these mere moral guidance? They do not have to replace the civil laws governing our countries. Nor will reading a religious book other than yours change your religion. Then why can't we follow the religion that suits us? If each religion claims in all its clichéd-ness that it is 'a way of life', why force someone at gunpoint to follow your religion just because you have interpreted your own religion terribly wrong?

     Religion guides us, sometimes even binds us together. It makes us disciplined and tolerant. No religion advocates killing others for salvation, or mistreating women, or inciting others into uncouth conduct. So please follow any of the 5 pillars of Islam even if you are a Christian, if it suits your ideals, or give charity out of your income if it gives you joy, even if you are a Hindu, or spread joy and cheer during Christmas even if you are a Muslim. 

     All said and done, every religion has evolved over a long period of time. There are many paths to attain enlightenment and only some of them are through God.

Indian Child Is The Father of American Man

     My Facebook timeline these days is currently full of these things:

1. Hilarious animal videos/memes of fake Godmen getting ripped apart

2. People my age getting engaged/married

3. ___ *aeroplane emoticon* is travelling to ____, United States from Chhatrapati Shivaji International Airport, Terminal T2 - Mumbai. - feeling excited *happy face emoticon*

    The third type of posts is usually accompanied by pictures of their family and friends coming to see them off, as they go off across the oceans, to live the American Dream. But 4-5 months later these very people land up on my timeline frolicking at a local pub in Khar or Andheri. 4-5 months away from home? It does not seem too different from when I was studying engineering in Pune. 

     I'm not going to argue how bright Indian minds should stay in the country and utilise the opportunities here, or how the very 'dream countries' they are dying to go to will soon start vomiting them all out due to an overburden on them. Much has been talked about it earlier, yet every year we see a surge in the number of Indian graduates going abroad for higher studies to absolutely any university or course they get. Why the compromise? Why not live in your motherland, flourish here, help the economy here grow and make it a dream nation for people other than terrorists?

     I've probably drawn a lot of flak for this comment, from both - Indians studying abroad, and terrorists, and probably even more for using the two in the same sentence, but that is how it is. Globalization has hit us with its positive effects and negative effects alike. Positively, the job opportunities we have in India today are hardly any different from the ones abroad. Indian companies and the MNCs operating in India are focusing on going global, and it is almost like working abroad, while still being in India. Why work the same amount, for the same job profile in a different country? For a higher pay, you might argue. But isn't the cost of living abroad higher too? Plus, God knows how long the danger of you being deported or losing your Visa status looms over your head, which is already burdened with work pressure. Like it or not, India is the only country which will never ask you, "How long do you intend to live in this country?"

     I certainly do not seek to bring the Indians settled abroad back to India, nor do I mean to discourage those preparing for their GREs, GMATs, TOEFLs, IELTSs and what not from studying. Living in India may not present itself as a very rosy picture, and that is where the negative effects of globalization begin to show in our younger generation.

     What this generation wants is to be well fed and cared for until the end of their days, but they also want the freedom that their American counterparts enjoy. Seldom do they notice that this perceived freedom is because most American children move out of their house at an age no later than 18 years. Whether it is to become a scientist or a punk rockstar, their 'freedom' is actually their 'independence'. To enjoy the free will that they do, our children should be prepared to bid adieu to the care and safety net that awaits them at home after they get back from their parties.

     I am not saying our whole generation is corrupted with this bug, but it forms a major chunk of the high potential, well educated population that can make or break the country's future. One of the nation's most beloved Presidents, or the most beloved I daresay - Dr APJ Abdul Kalam always maintained that he was very happy that he completed his entire course of education in India. Imagine, the very nation you are so keen to leave, made the legend whose birthday - May 26, is celebrated as National Science Day in Switzerland.

     No leader, no matter how dynamic and strong he is, can lead a country to progress if its very population doesn't want to progress. If half of our population is decadent and the other half is waiting to cross that yellow line at emigration, we might as well start calling ourselves the Red Indians, after all, all roads seem to be leading us to the same fate.

Of Positivity, Optimism and Sanguineness

     A professor once announced to his students that he was taking a surprise test.  As they waited for the test to begin, he handed out the question paper, with the side with text facing down as usual.  After handing them all out, he asked the students to turn the page and begin.  To everyone's surprise, there were no questions, just a black dot in the center of the page.  Noticing the surprise on everyone's face, the professor said, "I want you to write what you see there."

     The perplexed students began working on the bizarre task. Once they were done, the professor took all the answer papers and began reading each one of them aloud to the whole class.  Every student described the black dot, trying to explain its position in the middle of the sheet, etc. After reading it all, the professor said to the quiet class:

"I am not going to grade on you this, I just wanted to give you something to think about.  No one wrote about the white part of the paper. Everyone focused on the black dot - and the same happens in our lives. We have a white paper to observe and enjoy, but we always focus on the dark spots. Our life is a gift given to us by God, with love and care, and we always have reasons to celebrate - nature renewing itself everyday, our friends around us, the job that provides our livelihood, the miracles we see everyday.

However we insist on focusing only on the dark spots - the health issues that bother us, the lack of money, the complicated relationship with a family member, the disappointment with a friend, and so on.

The dark spots are very small compared to everything we have in our lives, but they are the ones that pollute our minds.

Take your eyes away from the black spots in your life.  Enjoy each one of your blessings, each moment that life gives you. Be happy and live a life filled with LOVE,"

     I read this story recently. So simple to understand, yes? But is it as easy to practise? We don't hesitate before throwing free advice to everyone who doesn't even ask for it: "Be positive in life!", "Don't compare yourself with others, you wil just be disappointed, you don't know what they had to struggle with".

     But when it comes to us, "Look you don't know what I'm going through, okay? If you had to go through what I have, you would have understood!"

     Why are most of us so good at preaching optimism but bad at practising it? Have you ever begun a Monday on a positive note, right after you open your eyes from sleep? Isn't the first thing that comes to your mind the most disturbing of all? Now if you start your day on a note like this, how can you expect the rest of your day to be good?

     Expectation.. That is another advice that is most commonly given - "Do not expect, you will never be disappointed." But is it possible to not expect anything at all? A slight bout of expectation always exists, followed by the sinking feeling of disappointment.

    So why are you reading this article that is just telling you things you already know and feel every day? Why not just stop and focus on the little joy you have left in life? Guess what, you can have more than a little joy. Ever heard of the term 'train of thought'? Can you take a guess at who the porter for that train might be? You are. Believe me, you can choose which thoughts you let on board that train. Some amount of bad thought is bound to come on board, but it is the power of the good thoughts, which does not let the bad thoughts go beyond the first halt that helps you see clearly. And when you see clearly, things get sorted automatically. You begin to see the right path ahead, and what follows, are the good things in life; the best outcomes of your actions.

     Now this might seem to you as another free advice, but trust me, it is being practised by yours truly. So what do you say, let's fill that train with only those thoughts that we want, and kick the rest back to the platform?

There Is A 'G' In 'Alphabet'!

     Innovation, Technology, Making The World A Better Place. 'Google' stands for all of these. The word, which had no meaning whatsoever about 17 years ago save for its phonetic similarity to the word 'googol' (10 to the power 100) which it was originally going to be called, is now a near inseparable part of our lives. With its numerous products to assist our daily activities, this brainchild of  Larry Page and Sergey Brin has earned its place among the greatest organizations in the world.

     In a recent turn of events, the company announced that it is no longer going to be called Google. WHAT?!

     Please excuse the dramatics, what I meant was that it is now creating a new publicly traded parent company called Alphabet Inc. to house all of its disparate businesses. This conglomerate will have Google as its largest subsidiary, and here's where we Indians have a second of pride, the executive who will replace Larry Page as Google’s CEO is an Indian - Sundar Pichai.

     This is the third time in a year that a person with an Indian-origin who started at the bottom has gone on to become the top executive of a tech-giant. It was only last year when Nokia and Microsoft appointed India-born Rajeev Suri and Satya Nadella, respectively, as their CEOs.

     I am not going to talk about how the restructuring of Google is similar to that of Berkshire Hathaway, or the transparency that it is supposed to bring in, nor am I going to sing praises for Mr. Pichai, who can be called the reason I, and billions of others are using Google Chrome, or how his management of Android is giving Apple a tough fight. There are, by now, thousands of articles on these and many more topics on the web and in print. Don't get me wrong here, I am not trying to undermine his efforts and success. No person in their right mind would do that. 

     Born in a humble family in Chennai, Pichai, who will be the first CEO of Google that isn’t a white man. An engineer from the prestigious Indian Institute of Technology in Kharagpur, his family had to put everything they had on the line to facilitate his coming to America to study materials science and semiconductor physics at Stanford. From a product manager at Google to the SVP of Android, Chrome and Apps, and now CEO designate, he has seen it all. Kudos to that.

     What I really want to bring to the table is, what makes Indians the best choices for such positions? It cannot be a coincidence that the Indians who have been chosen to head these companies have all been really long term employees. 

     Indians have been known worldwide for their academic prowess and managerial skills. They have proved their ability to work and deliver under pressure, and have enabled the change of perception that Indians cannot lead, only follow. 

     The West has realised that the cradle of future technology is on Indian soil, and that in order to get more Indians on board, they must have an exemplary Indian lead them, so as to attract more like him into their fold. If this is true, aren't they getting the better end of the deal? We have been battling a 'brain-drain' from India to the West for decades now. While the drain is due to better living conditions and perceived better opportunities abroad, it is impacting the huge number of untapped vistas we have here. 

     Opportunity is relative. While some may find more opportunity where most people have achieved success, others create opportunities where there has been limited or no success in recorded history. We have stark examples before us that prove this - right from a taxi service on your beck and call to a space shuttle that takes you to the moon and back; right from setting up a marketplace on the internet to an actual affordable market chain across the world; and finally from a search engine to a driverless car. 

     So congratulations Mr. Pichai on your remarkable achievement, we couldn't be any prouder. But for those of you who emulate him, remember, where we stay isn't so bad either. After all, the Americans did not invent the Alphabet!

There's Still Hope, Introverts!

"Your son really needs to speak up!"

"Why don't you join personality development classes?"

"Marketing? For an introvert like you? You should take up finance."

"You have a lot of great ideas. On paper they look superb. Just make sure you're vocal enough about them."

     Didn't quite catch what I was getting at? Or may be you did. The above four verbatim comments are few of the many that have tried to deride my personality as an introvert, self-centered, a recluse, and even a laconic social outcast. Yes, that climax got a bit out of hand, but that just about covers everything that many "introverts" like me are subjected to at different points of life. This is no self-establishing, putting-my-foot-down article; just a fresh look at what the world of marketing needs in terms of personalities.

     It isn't necessary that we fall into one particular personality category or type. We can be "divergent", showing traits belonging to more than one type. And that's what often confuses and even frustrates the conformist world around us. I'm not trying to imply that I'm remarkable, but just consider this for a moment: can a person enjoy both - socialising and solitude at the same time? It's quite possible, you know.

     I just finished reading a book called "Quiet - The Power of Introverts in a World That Can't Stop Talking" by Susan Cain, thanks to a HBR article I stumbled upon. I couldn't help but connect with the book instantly, primarily because I am an introvert. 

     How often do we see extroverts getting all the attention and introverts being sidelined? More often than we can count, yes? And that's no one's fault. Extroverts have an involuntary longing for attention even while they work while introverts prefer concentrating in silence with less commotion around. Introverts prefer listening to talking, think, sometimes even over-think, before they speak, and attach a lot of importance to others' feelings, relationships and rules. In short, and I'm quoting the HBR article here, "introverts focus on the meaning of events around us, while extroverts focus on the events themselves".

     Then what was that I said about belonging to more than one personality types earlier? Does it apply to introversion and extroversion? Yes, it does. It's called being an 'ambivert', and these kinds of people are the future of marketing. Marketing needs more introverts, those who listen to the customers' needs, rather than just shove the product in their face, focus on customer relationships, which also needs them to be a bit extrovert, and ultimately drive long-term business.

     The customer is king, always has been, always will be, and is now more than ever before. Naturally listening to the customer becomes necessary and valuable. The consumer is spoilt for choice. Every day you have someone or the other advertising a price off, websites comparing prices of everything right from handbags to mobile phones to real estates, and the consumer, now more than ever, has a voice, all thanks to social media. Social media can make or break a brand, and the world is hooked to it. Feedback, complaints, online wars are an everyday occurrence now and how leaders react to feedback is often decisive. This is where the relationship-building and feelings-oriented traits of introverts come into play.

     

     We no longer live in a world where all advertisements are monologues. Advertisers are increasingly turning to video and image sharing websites to convey their offerings to their target audience. The "voice" that a customer has now is being tapped to make things go "viral", be it a response of a supposedly "dim" female celebrity, or a World Cup campaign. The patience that is paramount to listen to what the customer has to say exists only in introverts, which is why introverted marketers will be more successful in leaving the creation of their brand in the consumer's hands. According to Susan Cain, “An extrovert can quite unwittingly get so excited about things that they’re putting their own stamp on things and other people’s ideas may not bubble up to the surface.” Gone are the days where the brand manager is the whole and soul of the brand; he HAS to work in tandem with his consumers to decide where his brand is going.

     Most of us are familiar with the Pareto Principle, the law of the vital few, a common rule of thumb in business - "80% of your sales come from 20% of your customers". These "vital few" determine which brands are successful and which aren’t. It is essential to engage in deeper conversations with the few key consumers, which is a classic favourite of most introverts. This even helps forge strong ties and helps in long-term relationships.

     I don't mean to say that extroverts have no future in marketing. In fact, marketing is a field where it won't help you if you're rigidly introvert or extrovert. All I intend to say is introverts can offer more than they are generally thought of. And moreover, their traits are indispensable to business. So let's not confine them to departments where there is trivial human interaction, instead let's build a futuristic society with ambiverts who know when to speak up, and when to shut down.