Yahoo! Thinking Outside The Search Box, Helps You Find The Meal Box

As aptly out by Frank Watson at SearchEngineWatch, looks like Yahoo!, is now thinking outside the usual search box to come out of the current mess it is in. It has filed a patent for meal search. No comments on this one, I'm full! I need to digest this first.

Bhagawan Aaye Cycle Se

No wonder it won the Bronze at Cannes.

Ads on Wedding Cards and Selling Twitter Backgrounds

We're never short of newer advertising avenues, are we?

Staffing solutions company Teamlease comes up with an innovative idea of placing advertisements on wedding cards which they print for free! This Mint article has the details. Not only do you have your wedding cards being printed for free, but also have people find jobs along with your wedding. On top of that you're treating people with some delicious food during your wedding and the reception following it! What more social good can one do?!


While we're on things social, Ian Schafer, CEO of interactive marketing agency Deep Focus put his twitter background image and profile image on auction and the auction ended with Metacafe winning it with a bid of $1,082.01. Here's how his twitter page looks with the Metacafe branding



Earlier, there was the case of Rocketboom founder Andrew Baron auctioning his twitter account and then pulling out. Notable that the bid touched a price of $1,500 before he decided to pull out of the auction.

Conversation, did we say these are? These seem to come at a price though!

Courtesy: Ashish Tulsian for the TeamLease wedding card story and Valleywag(of all sources!) for the Ian Schafer piece.

Orkuting In Cyber Cafes Of Varanasi

Above photo taken on the streets of Varanasi.

Perhaps they should add Orkuting to the OED, at least in the Indian edition.

Natural Born Clickers - More Clicks Not Equal To Better Brand Building

Findings from a new study by Starcom, Tacoda and comScore’ suggest “the click is dead” as go-to measurement of effectiveness for brand-building display advertising campaigns .

..The study illustrates that heavy clickers represent just 6% of the online population yet account for 50% of all display ad clicks. While many online media companies use click-through rate as an ad negotiation currency, the study shows that heavy clickers are not representative of the general public.

Further preliminary Starcom data suggests no correlation between display ad clicks and brand metrics, and show no connection between measured attitude towards a brand and the number of times an ad for that brand was clicked. The research presentation suggests that when digital campaigns have a branding objective, optimizing for high click rates does not necessarily improve campaign performance.

The study only bring to light the problem faced by marketers(if they are aware of it, that is) and the agencies helping them. action being tracked and metrics clearly defined, using the medium for purposes of brand-building and brand loyalty is a problem waiting to be solved.

More on the study here.

Teaser Campaign Using Websites..

...and offline promotion of the same.




















It's perhaps a campaign for a mall to be launched soon. The stat counter on the site at this point reads 16137. Decent enough numbers one would say for a visit to such a website.

The previous such campaign which is still fresh in one's memory is the whatiteez campaign for Krackjack(?) featuring Cyrus Broacha. Interesting trend this, of using the internet to run teaser campaigns.

A Lot Can Happen Over Coffee. A Lot, Really!

While we're at it, trying to understand if it's just coffee for which people hang out at coffee shops, YouthCurry has an interesting discussion on the same subject.

From Coffee to bahana hai -

I bumped into a friend who has just joined a mobile start up company at Barista in Phoenix Mills. "Aajkal yehi mera office hai," he grinned.


"Hmm.. investors ko bataana padega aap unke kitne paise roz coffee peene mein waste karte ho..."


He replied, only half in jest, "Rs 500 a day is a steal. When our office across the street gets ready we'll be shelling out Rs 1.75 lakhs a month on rent alone!"


Point to hai. Reminds me of the scene during the earlier dotcom boom when junta had made the Oberoi lobby and coffee shop their adda-cum-office. Paanch saal mein kuch progress hua hai: cheaper coffee and data modem cards to access internet anywhere. In the near future we'll see more of public wifi access.

For the start-up types!

Current hotspots for startup types include:
Just Around the Corner, Bandra
lobby of Marriott hotel
And in Bangalore, the Leela coffee shop

Interesting how each coffee shop serves as a convenient location for different people and different purposes.

Of course, coffee shops are not just the preserves of recently-quit-job-looking-for-VC types. There are many other species, and in fact each location has its own peculiar set of customers.

Barista Chembur: popular with MLM (multi-level marketing types). They make snazzy presentations which promise anyone can make 3 crores in 2 years if they work hard enough and get enough other idiots to join.

Barista & CCD Lokhandwala: The preferred hangout spot of filmi and TV wannabes. I suppose they actually hang out here waiting to catch the eye of some hotshot director, or at the very least Ekta Kapoor's casting crew.

Barista, Colaba (near Regal cinema): Always full of backpackers - has it got a mention in Lonely Planet yet? Possible description: 'A place where you can rest your dusty feet and use the free loo, for the price of one black coffee'.

This, is so very true. Having observed quite a few of such interviews.

At all Baristas, everywhere: Arranged marriage 'interviews': ladkas and ladkis who've located each other at shaadi.com. Remember Konkona meeting Irfan Khan in Life in a Metro?

Of course usually there are parents and sometimes even extended family in tow. After a few pleasantries they move six tables away and give the boy and girl a chance to 'talk in private'.

Kuch nahin jama to you don't need to feel like a loser. It was just a casual meeting at a coffee shop!

Definitely, a lot can can happen over coffee. In fact, more than a lot. If nothing happens, it was just for coffee. True, no?

Coffee in CCD - yeah,right.

Trying to understand what makes Café Coffee Day the popular hang-out it is today among the youth.

Ayan says -

I personally dont like coffee at all, but would love to try out kopi luwak coffee simply for so-I-can-talk-about-it-and-gross-others-out benefits. Can't comment on how much people like the coffee there.

What to do at CCD?

But yes, its a nice relaxing place where all one should do is relax, tell the waiter (who'll come wearing a long red skirt) that you are waiting for n+1 friends (where n is the number of friends you are expecting) and you'll order after they come, chat with your friends after they come, then get up and leave. If you order coffee, then you didn't get the point of the last sentence. Of course, after a few such trips, the waiters will become wise to your ways. In that case, simply shift to the next CCD - which wont be more than a 5 minutes walk.

Oh, and in case you were feeling hungry and decided to go to CCD, try this - take out a hundred rupee note, throw it in the gutter, and then buy a dabeli at the nearest stall - the effect will be the same.

What do you think of CCD? Like it or don't like it? Tell us in the comments. An easier way out, just take this poll.