Back in the day, there were only a few places when you had to prove your identity before entry.

The internet has made it a daily requirement.

You log into your email. Your bank account. Ecommerce sites. Ticket booking sites. Your messenger account. Your social media handles.

I'm sure you can think of more

Sure, most of us have automated it by saving login credentials.

But when you change phones or upgrade laptops, the routine repeats.

Remembering the details for one site is easy.

As the numbers add up, confusion compounds.

Now apps are available to handle the problem.

They promise that you'll have to remember just one password and the app will log you into every other site by default.

But the login sentries have a mind of their own.

Try changing the password on banking sites.

A fresh set of instructions is unleashed . One Capital letter. One special character. One number . Too long. Too short.

Try doing that through your one size fits all password app. On desktop and mobile.

As well as on the TV screen for your streaming sites.

This is a billion dollar opportunity waiting for an elegant solution.

Do you know of one?

Mario's homecoming

You decide the obstacles and preset the course 

Create it on the game screen. Then set off Mario or Luigi in hot pursuit.

Controlling a Mario toy car through the game device.

And add additional drivers and objects through Augmented Reality or AR

Mixed reality by Nintendo arrived in October in the US'

Games are taking the first tentative steps out of screens into real environments

Control the game from your screen and have Mario or Luigi zipping through your house.

You can vary the game and the course by adding new points of interaction.

Start with a simple course plotted around the dining room to complex ones that go under tables, around the sofas and cupboards or beds, for that matter.

Earlier, you drove remote controlled cars controlled from a joystick.

Now Nintendo has expanded that joystick into a screen and created the game environment within it.

And you can unleash it into any room in the house 

I don't think parents will be too pleased. But kids will be delighted.

Pokemon made you step out of the house in search of AR characters.

Mario and Luigi will now run rings around you at home

The lost art of Letraset

It was a blink-and-you'll-miss-it phase in typography. A bit of history.

The transition from solid block type to fonts on a computer

Today, designers see hundreds of typefaces as a drop down option from a menu

They change spaces between words, left align, center align or justify the entire layout with a click.

Serif can change to sans serif in an instant

Now imagine doing all of this one letter at a time.

All type decisions to be made on a blank sheet of paper.

If you made a mistake, you started all over again.

Letraset produced sticker sheets with different typefaces.

Agencies had to keep an inventory of type sheets 

Commas, full stops and punctuation, all in sticker form.

Art directors learned typography by painting each type form in art class.

So they understood typefaces like scultpors understood stone

Even then, they had to position everything perfectly.

Placing the Letraset sheet on top of the artwork being created to rub each letter into place. 

Until a whole sentence was formed

It was precision work after the rough design was approved.

Computer typesetting arrived in the 90s and Letraset was no longer relevant

The slow cooked era of creative production was over

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Statues or art pieces had to be installed. Not software.

Why did a formless creation adopt such a 'heavy' term?

Most of us have no idea what goes on inside of our computers.

Or the operating system, for that matter.

Where does the system operate? 

Software developers are probably shaking their heads.

It's just a set of instructions to be executed.

Why do they have to be executed?

Because they are programmed to execute a defined set of functions

And where are these programs?

In the computer's memory, in a registry.

As if they were posh neighborhoods in virtual real estate

Why are software coders called developers?

Because they develop programs.

So the operating system helps run several programs?

Kind of.

Where exactly?

On the microprocessor inside the computer.

And what is happening in there?

That's hard to explain because several parallel processes are being executed.

Have you understood anything so far? 

Software and computing terms need a rethink from the ground up.

Mixed metaphors from art, engineering, biology and the industrial age have meshed 

Software may be eating the world but does not know how to explain itself 

It keeps getting stuck in a recursive loop.

Let's do some freewheeling

It has been credited with getting civilization going

And thousands of years later, it continues to play a central role in our lives.

Take any form of transport. Wheels take you places.

We've moved from wooden to rubber and carbon fiber wheels for more sophisticated uses

Even airplanes can't take off or land without wheels cushioning the impact.

Online is no different. 

Memory works with stacks of round disks spinning at high speeds inside hard disks

The rotating wheel on our screens indicates a program about to launch

We use wheels, or a form of it in practically every UX interaction.

The buffering symbol in videos 

The circular graph in statistics

Or the concentric circles converging into a bull's eye

It's how we depict time on clocks or the targets we aim for

It's part of the daily rhythms of our lives that tell us things are ok

And when we're not ok

'Going around in circles' is an expression that indicates we're spinning pointlessly in one place.

Or 'Life has come full circle' when we sound off on a philosophical note about how our lives have been lived

Wheels are the symbol and the metaphor that pervades our senses

When brands start riffing

It happens in music studios when a musician plays a few bars of music.

Others in the group join in with their instruments adding their improvisations.

And the melody begins to flow.

For brands, when does a one in a million moment happen?

A conversation begins on a social media thread and gathers pace

What started off as a simple closing comment expands and goes in all directions

Everyone's riffing on it as it gathers steam.

You've been through similar experiences with close friends

Someone makes a remark and the group laughs

Then various people in the group chip in with one-liners and there are roars of delight.

A single joke becomes a cascading wave

And the party transforms from being ok to memorable

A recent tweet on the official Microsoft Twitter account:

*Unmutes mic*

“Nothing from me.”

*Mutes mic*

It got 3.7K Retweets,  860 Quote Tweets,  14.8K Likes

The social media manager must be beaming.

An offhand tweet making a sly comment on virtual meetings

What did people relate to?

Go through the thread and you'll see personal and professional references.

99.99% of the time, brands are diplomats.

But once in a while, they'll show their hand.

Keep watching

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Parents consult astrologers, invoke the gods they believe in and name their child for life.

In school, one quirk of behavior, one careless remark and they're stuck with another memorable one

There was this spindly guy in class blessed with terrific metabolism.

He just wouldn't put on weight.

But he looked like a stick figure on whom clothes had been draped.

Naturally, he was named 'Kaddi', the Kannada word for stick. He hated it

His parents were mortified when they learned of the renaming.

No Indian mother wants the apple of her eye to be compared to a tree branch.

But there was nothing they could do

He graduated, went on to land a perfectly wonderful job and yet, he never outgrew that name.

It was like velcro mixed with glue.

What is it about nicknames that make them so sticky?

They're memory aids. And no one forgets.

But there's more to them.

It's the way the world slots you.

Everyone gets a nickname. Some are smart not to react

The most foolish thing to do is to object and let everyone know you hate it

That ensures it will never be forgotten.

What are some of the nicknames you remember?

Do credit card companies love you?

Finance 101. The first rule of making money is to stop losing it

All your investments add up to zero until you fix this.

Your credit card statements reveal every single one of the spending impulses you acted upon

That shiny 55 inch TV that you dreamed about

Or the latest smart phone with zero lag and lots of RAM

Every purchase captured like entries into a bank account.

You can lie on surveys but here, your spending behavior is on display

It can't record when you managed to control yourself.

But keeps a score of  temptations you could not resist

If you pay back only the minimum balance on your card every month, you just got an 'F' for financial discipline.

You think you're being smart.

The credit card companies love that.

They want more people to do exactly what you're doing

You give them higher profits month on month

By paying only the minimum amount diligently.

Spending money may be a weakness 

But paying it back does not have to be.

If you really want to save money, take a personal loan.

Settle the credit card bill in full and never rotate credit again.

Then, focus on making money.

Breakfast on a ledge

It's a daily ritual now. A habit that began early during the lock down.

And plays out every morning, almost on cue

It started with our putting out scraps of leftovers on the ledge.

About an hour later it was all gone.

Then, if we missed a day, we got reminders.

An insistent cawing outside from the tree overhanging the utility area outside the kitchen

The crow would let us know he (she?) was expecting to be served

He even has his favourites - bread and rotis disappear faster than idlis and upma!

May be he has a fondness for North Indian cuisine.

Swooping down to pick up a piece, he'd fly to a branch and head arched upwards, swallow it whole.

Later, we noticed something strange.

The crow was leaving some food behind. And then we saw why.

A small squirrel came scurrying along the ledge.

Terrified and hungry at the same time. Grabbing scraps and darting away

From another window, we saw him perched on a pipe

Eating furtively with both his front paws. Then darting back for more.

Did they work out some kind of understanding? No idea.

We've grown fond of our daily breakfast guests.

Hopefully, there will be more of them.

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Is that what you do when internal company emails hit your inbox?

Or ignore them because they not important to you?

A webinar invite. An external speaker session. New client wins. Or the launch of new training skills. They remain unread.

You've got work to do.

Your senses are tuned to respond to emails from your immediate boss.

Or from clients you handle.

That's super important. The rest can wait.

This is where the insider bias works against you.

You shrink your world to fit your role and responsibilities.

And become oblivious to how your company is advancing. Or not.

Your eyes are on that promotion in the next year or so.

And you're competing with two or three other contenders in your department.

It's the wrong thing to focus on.

Internal emails tell you everything. Where the company's business is growing and where it's shrinking. And you think it doesn't concern you.

Different dynamics operate at higher levels across the company. And the markets.

And if you don't keep your eyes on it, your role may not even matter in two years.

Learn how the company you are in delivers value. 

And where you can make a difference. 

That's your insurance

University or Google certified?

The competition always comes from a direction the establishment doesn't expect.

Google launched an IT support Certification on Coursera and committed to 10,000 scholarships back in 2018

Now, they will shortly introduce certification for Data Analysts, Project Managers and UX Designers

The courses take 3-6 months to complete, for learners who satisfy all requirements

And certificate holders are eligible for jobs at Google.

In addition to jobs at several other global companies

Here's the fine print: Completing the program can earn you up to 12 college credits, the equivalent of 4 year associate degree-level courses

And with that, Google and some of the biggest employers in the world are telling you a 4 year course does not give you a distinct advantage.

A University degree was a life and career defining choice.

If you can compete for a job at Google spending far less, what would you choose?

Large IT companies always spent months training people for entry level jobs.

Now employees at Google will conduct training and develop material for the courses. 

It costs a fraction of a university degree. With 8 batches of Google Certificate holders passing out in the same period.

Universities have to rethink their value equations right now

Do your marks matter? Yes. And No.

Parents have the deciding vote on it right through school

Your grades and qualifications are all important to land your first job.

After that, it's entirely up to you.

On the job, you don't command more respect because of the grades you got in college.

As your experience grows, it becomes your portfolio.

You'll need your degree for fulfilling statutory and HR norms but that file goes into the records and stays there.

In a sense, it's going back to 1st grade. How you progress depends on what you achieve.

For some people, especially in marketing and sales, the track record is their report card.

And it literally takes them places.

But technology changes can impact careers adversely as well.

It makes sense to watch what's happening within the company you work in.

If your company is pivoting to a different market or changing its business model, it's time to add qualifications that matter

And plan your move to divisions that are seeing explosive growth within.

It keeps you going for a while before the next big thing takes over.

Whether it's IoT, or AI or ML

Adaptability, not experience becomes your guiding factor.

And your trump card

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When you start out with an education or a degree, your largest asset is time. 

You've got nearly four decades of it.

Experience is probably at zero because you're starting off.

As you add years on the job, you spend time freely, even recklessly.

But it cannot be regained.

Experience as an asset has to replace all the time you spend.

It should increase in value exponentially, faster than the time you're losing.

40 years looks reassuringly long.

You'll be surprised at how fast it disappears.

Between the demands of building a career and looking after your family, 20-30 years can go by faster than expected.

Time is a credit card. You can pay back only with experience. No other currency is accepted.

So, what does paying back involve?

Creating a storehouse of value where time does not matter anymore

You've accumulated and built a stock that works long term for you.

If you've understood the business you are in, your experience will matter.

Especially if you have delivered and built a network of people who trust you. 

The value of your experience will be exponential

And you can cash out whenever you choose.

Goldman Sachs now has its own font

For most people, words on a page look the same

And it does not matter as long as they are legible and easy to read.

Maybe they'll notice a script or calligraphic typefaces.

But to designers, fonts, as part of typeface families, have as much character as people.

Fights break out on forum discussions on the use of brand typefaces. The way the letter 'g' is crafted, for example.

You may be wondering what's the fuss about.

Designing a new font is obscenely expensive

Close your eyes. Think of Coca Cola. Nokia. Apple. Nike. Amazon. HDFC. 

Words imprinted on our minds through constant exposure

Big brands have strict rules about the use of fonts. Because they look different when blown up to a large size. Or squeezed into small spaces.

Retaining consistency so people don't notice is an art.

Whether its on a 50 ft billboard or a 5 inch mobile device

That's the challenge for all font designers. Making words equally readable and maintaining the essential character across a wide range of sizes

Goldman Sachs wants to ensure that when you see the company over time, you'll begin to recognise it.

Standing out in an ocean of words and images.

Are newsletters new media?

Newspapers and TV have a structure baked into their business models.

Editors decide lead stories on prime time or the front page.

The 24 hour news cycle has forced newspapers to reassess how they can retain their audiences

And TV channels fight the ratings game with news breaks threatening imminent collapse and people screaming at each other.

So, how do you keep track about subjects you want to know more about?

Strangely enough, the periodical newsletter.

Quietly but effectively, newsletters have made their way into inboxes and stayed there.

Once you build an audience, which takes years, it's all yours.

And if you understand the sector you write about,  a committed set of followers builds over time. All they have to do is click to open.

Email has common protocols. And everyone has to play by the same rules

It has survived the waves of smart phones,  social media and instant gratification.

You go to the customer every week or month or whatever works in your industry.

Practically anyone who starts off on a digital journey makes a first stop to get an email address.

Identify a need and serve the audience. The rest will follow.

Newsletters are the quiet engines of commerce.

Do you have one?

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We may not be aware of it but we're literally creating historyAs we interact with members of our family, friends, and associates, we're building a trail of messages every minuteTime stamped and backed up to servers for years.There's an old saying that history is written by the victors.Not after WhatsApp became the staple diet!With over 400 million Indians on the app interacting everyday, it is the chronicler of our lives.And what do we see?Nothing profound. Good morning messages, sappy love notes and mundane exchanges between people.Or shopping lists.True, there are tense barrages when things go wrong in a city like floods or riots and messages fly back and forth.But it is largely life as usual.For historians to comb through all this later and come up with a narrative of what people were going through at a particular time is next to impossible.Where would the connecting information lie?At the seat of power. Where decisions were being made in crisis situations.Or where major changes were planned.History, like the movie of our lives needs to be heavily edited and artfully presented.Not what we read on WhatsApp

We're interesting because we are different

Did you say you like fried bittergourd chips? Ugh.

I don't understand why you don't lap up the gooey spicy brinjal mash.

Give me Fast and Furious over Breaking Bad any day.

Mad Max Fury Road. Seriously?

It was confusing. A bunch of crazy guys on ridiculous vehicles driving through a desert.

To do what? Find water. Hah.

I find beaches very relaxing. All those waves and eternity and stuff.

Mountain climbing is strenuous. And the bugs. Don't even get me started.

Have you made tea in a tent?

I like it without milk. You ruin tea by adding milk

I love waking up at 11 in the morning. Give me a starlit sky over a sunrise.

Long drives with the wind in my hair any day.

No chance. Not after I spent a fortune and 3 hours in a salon setting it up.

Babies are the ultimate. Their gurgles dissolve my stress.

I don't even know how to hold them. And they cry the moment I look at them.

Imagine a world where everybody was the same.

We want to know about people not like us.

Overheard conversations and unique passions

It's the spice that stirs our lives

Earthquake detection is coming to Android phones

The virus came without much of a warning.

Hopefully, we're going to do better on earthquakes.

Google has launched a global earthquake detection system on Android phones.

It is currently undergoing trials in California and will be rolled out across the world in due course.

So all Android phones will have earthquake detection capability built in.

People in the area of danger will get a notification to take action immediately.

No SMS required.

Instead of governments installing costly seismometers, Google worked out another way

The accelerometer in your phone - the one that figures out which way your phone is tilted is where the magic happens

When it detects unusual activity, it automatically sends out a signal to the closest earthquake detection server 

If the server receives the same signal from several other phones, it sends out advance alerts to those living in the area.

Phone networks function at the speed of light. 

Lucky for us. Because sound travels slower enabling warnings to be triggered and giving people time to react and get to safety.

From search to maps to natural disaster warnings, the ring holds power.

We're married to technology companies now. For better or worse. 

Divorce is not an option

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Well, that one blew up quickly. And what was behind the scenes in gaming moved center stage.

Apple collects a toll of 30% on all the apps purchased at its store. 

Obviously developers aren't happy to part with a hefty amount for every sale.

But they had no choice. 

The business is worth $550 billion for Apple. And just like that, the battle lines were drawn.

EPIC is the game developer behind Fortnite.

And it has a substantial number of players invested in the game - 350 million

When EPIC introduced a direct payment system - a discount inside its app on iOS, Apple booted the company off the platform.

EPIC has taken Apple to court.

And used Apple's most iconic ad against it - 1984.

It had become a part of advertising lore and stands for all things Apple.

Ran just once on Superbowl but got huge publicity as publications and the news talked of this feisty company taking on the establishment.

Now, in 2020, Apple is the most valuable company in the world.

And a feisty game company which is poised to remake the gaming ecosystem, has fired the first shot across the bow.

An update: Apple has reduced commissions for companies earning less than $1 million to 15%.

The good things in life are free. Like Unsplash.

Wikipedia showed that you could get authentic information for free and build a sustainable entity.

Yes, it does threaten to go under every now and then, but there are enough well-wishers to keep it afloat.

Unsplash does that for photography. Great shots on a variety of subjects you can use as you please.

Even for commercial purposes. As a courtesy, just credit the photographer. But it's not essential.

In a world where businesses hold on to their prized intellectual property, Unsplash throws away the keys.

Read the license terms. Pretty clear and comprehensive.

So, how did this wonder come to be?

Mikeal Cho, the CEO of a company called Crew had shot multiple photographs for a job.

Instead of trashing the ones he couldn't use, he put them up on a simple site 

And posted the link on Hacker News, a site that generates a huge amount of traffic from the tech obsessed.

And like ants to a sugar party, people flocked to it.

The photographer called to ask why traffic to his site was exploding.

It started off as a side project for the company

Now, it gets over 1 billion views a month. The photos are still free.

Someone must be making money, right?

The Veery is a bird. And a meteorologist.

It belongs to the thrush species. Small, brown, ordinary. And hard to find.

But it sings.  A veery hitting the high flutey notes has half a million views on YouTube.

And it features on a Netflix show called 'Connected'

Starting with a project to map the veery's migration pattern.

Bird nets are put up in a habitat where they're spotted.

And lured with a ringtone of their own song.

The trapped birds are fitted with tiny GPS devices to track flying patterns.

This is where it gets interesting.

The veery flies from the tip of the US to Brazil, about 4000 miles away. 

Crossing the oceans. And then flies back. Which is remarkable in itself. But migratory patterns are well known.

The stranger pattern was that the birds would begin their nesting at different times each year.

So, what made them vary the timing of the trip?

They had to cross zones with intense hurricane activity.

And this tiny bird seemed to know months in advance when the hurricanes would hit.

If the birds left early, bad hurricane year. Or else, it would be ok.

It's the dream of every meteorologist. An early warning hurricane system.

Already installed by nature in the veery

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Original concept by Gaping Void

It's just dots scattered across space.

Until you see the connections.

And then, it's impossible to go back to where you were.

Information is about making sense from data around us.

Knowing what a dish contains is different from being able to make it.

Or a scientist explaining what gravity means in relation to our understanding

Knowledge is about connecting points logically and making sense.

But it takes the convergence of data points to help people understand concepts and apply them.

Several knowledge gaps have to be filled.

Insight is when two completely disconnected points of information are linked even before the rest of the world realises a connection exists

Wisdom is a slower journey towards insight. Almost as if you have to get through the maze of dots to build an overall understanding

That's the problem entrepreneurs face when they have an insight

To them, the connections are obvious but so far apart from the public's general understanding, only a few manage to make the projection into the future.

They have to spend years converting that insight into a product the world buys into.

Conspiracy theorists weave fantasies from the same information. And they have believers as well.

What's your insight?

Would you use a transparent restroom?

It's being touted as a design breakthrough.

And a winner of a Tokyo design competition for public restrooms.

With transparent glass walls - so you see the inside as you walk past.

The benefit, apparently,  is that visibly clean exteriors will get more people to walk in.

The solution creates a new cultural problem.

Would anyone who doesn't understand how this operates have the guts to walk in?

How does it work? New smartglass technology turns the glass opaque as soon as a person locks the door from the inside.

Somehow, that is lost in translation.

In India, where people are still being weaned off relieving themselves in public, this creates a fresh problem.

How do you convince them they won't be visible to people outside?

That is mortifying and no one will tell you it's the real reason they would not use the restroom.

It's a design solution that fails on the cultural front.

You can communicate the concept in glorious detail.

People will sagely nod their head and tell you it is a great idea but in their minds, they will think it's stupid. And stay away.

Not exactly the way the designer thought the solution would be perceived.

Snoo soothes parents more than babies

Babies are the cutest. 

Except when they're bawling away at 1 am in the morning.

Nothing works. And this is the time parents are stressed the most.

Unlike living in a joint family decades ago

The baby passed through different and willing hands and everyone took turns

But with nuclear households, parents have to learn to navigate the unpredictable months.

Not everyone can afford a 24 hour nanny.

The solution? An automated baby rocker.

Naturally, data is a big part of it. 

It's a smart sleeper for babies. And its named Snoo. 

Ticks all the right boxes - all baby-like and soothing

The cradle rocks gently all night replicating the feel of the mother's womb. And apparently keeps night times tranquil.

At least, that's what the product description says.

It records how many hours the baby slept at night and whether sleep patterns have settled into a normal rhythm.

Parents can't stop raving about it. 

Wondering what took so long for a product that soothes them almost as much as the babies.

The price? A little over $1300. In Indian currency, that's about Rs. 1 lakh.

This is possibly the Ferrari of cradles.

Think it will be a hit in India?

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If it shows up fast, people will stop to take a look.

If it doesn't, they will leave, never to return.

So, how do you increase site speed?

Start with a good web hosting service.

Yes it's basic. Like people who don't understand how critical it is to control and renew business domain names

A website put up in 2010 or earlier is long past it's expiry date.

Worse, it tells potential prospects you're out of touch.

Like wearing bell bottoms to a party

If there's only one thing you do this year, take existing content and flow it into a modern container

Focus on speed. Followed by navigation.

Why do people come to your site ?

When you break it down, there are only three types of websites.

The ones that inform, the ones that entertain and the ones you buy from.

Most digital businesses are rocket ships.

The slower the site, the more customers they lose

Strip everything that slows your site down.

Large images. Pages with outdated information.

Tables and charts stuck in limbo

It's like turning away people who have arrived at your doorstep.

Because they see a museum piece in a digital age.

Why do you want to chase business away?

Software code is the new abcdef

Will Java replace nursery rhymes? And C++ share space with ABC?

30 years of living in a digital world has made it clear. Software code is the new alphabet

Estonia figured it out a couple of decades ago. What a digital nation means.

Learning to code early was as important as math and science and history.

In India, most coders start off on their own in high school or college.

The coding introductions in school are more theory than practice. Hardly the way to learn.

That was the opportunity an Indian company saw in 2018.

The universe of Indian schools was untapped

Parents who already were into IT saw the opportunity much earlier.

So, does it make sense to start teaching children to code at age six?

It gives them a decade long head-start

It was just a question of time before an entrepreneur capitalised on it

According to the UNICEF : The Indian Education System is one of the largest in the world with more than 1.5 million schools, 8.5 million teachers and 250 million children.

That's the size of the pie.

Now, does Byju's snapping up White Hat Jr. for Rs. 300 million make sense?

Next question.

Of Hamam soap and pitch jingles

Back in the early 90s, when I worked at Mudra communications, we got a chance to pitch for Hamam soap.

As usual, some last minute work had to be done overnight.

At the studio, the sound engineer suggested a recent entrant to Chennai, 'Bombay' Jayashri.

Some South Indian names are fairly common, so the place or a little quirk differentiates one from the other.

'Bombay' Jayashri came in and rendered the jingle in a few minutes. With her talent and ability, it was a stroll in the park.

We didn't win the pitch but that was my first and only interaction with the singer.

She went on to make a  major impact on the Carnatic Music scene in Chennai and her body of work shines.

She's one of the revered stars at the Chennai Music season and performs at prime time to packed houses.

So, it was a pleasant surprise to come across her son and brother sing an old Talat Mahmood song on YouTube.

'Aansoo samajh ke yoon mujhe' is beautifully rendered and the ease took me back to that studio decades ago.

Strange how the mind makes connections with forgotten threads.

The song link if you’d like to listen

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Frank was a barista at a coffee shop.

And his lady customers kept asking for used coffee grounds.

He thought it was for their potted plants but it turned out the secret was a face cream scrub.

Apparently the caffeine had a glowing effect on skin texture.

Intrigued and enthused, he went on to create an entire product line

Signed up models to demonstrate a new skin care range

And instead of merely gathering followers, he converted them to customers

On a social media platform growing exponentially - Instagram

With no conventional promotions, the company touched revenues of $30-$40 million a year.

Influencer marketing or Direct to Consumer had barely been conceived, let alone leveraged.

And this company was one of the early movers.

People were largely using Instagram to post pictures and build a social following.

A few entrepreneurs were perceptive and raced into pole position for ecommerce.

As Instagram grew, they accelerated the push provided by the platform's early organic reach - and focused on ramping audience growth.

Instagram became a billion strong platform.

And companies like FrankBody were the ones who surfed the wave.

Before the whole world moved in and claimed to be influencers.

Is there a solution to the 'Likes' problem?

Facebook and LinkedIn likes. Twitter and Instagram love. YouTube likes

What is their true worth?

The rise of vanity metrics shapes public discourse.

Converging around celebrity status and controversy.

It defines trends and spotlights, personalities or subjects.

There's an offline equivalent of likes. Applause.

Spirited applause. Polite applause. Standing ovation.

Even this simple nuance is lost online. It's bunched into binary expressions of love or hate.

And that hits at the heart of what true dialogue is about.

Finding the meeting points. Not traveling along parallel lines.

The problem begins with the way platforms build interaction.

They found quickly enough that asking for anything more than a click dropped exchanges significantly.

So they made it simple. Click to love. Click to like. Click to dislike. 

Don't expect the nuanced interaction that happens in the real world.

Lump it into two categories. Only like or dislike.

Sure, some emojis around celebration and inspiration are being experimented with.

But you can't differentiate between politeness and a standing ovation.

Something without meaning has become the most meaningful way to measure the world.

The sooner we realise this, the better

How do you compete with Tally?

Assume you sell small business accounting software.

You compete with the brand that has been around since 1986

Tally. Hard to find a business that does not use it.

So how did a small company, Profit Books, get new customers? It rode on the GST wave.

GST was the biggest change in indirect taxation introduced in India in 2018

The company understood there would be a significant information gap around specific provisions of the tax.

So it created several pieces of 'pillar content'

One of them was a deep examination of a provision called input tax credit.

Accounts and businesses struggled to understand the application of the law.

And that's where the page delivers prospects .

When GST launched, small businesses was overwhelmed with new tax terminology.

And input tax credit was one of the confusing nodes.

It's the site's single biggest traffic driver of businesses looking for clarifications.

Converging on the areas where questions and confusion around GST abounds.

The site built authority by going into the finer points of how input tax credit works and under what conditions it could be claimed.

Their customer base has expanded to over 75000.

What's the strategic node of your business?

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