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	<title>Microreviews &#187; search</title>
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		<title>Googlebots Go Smart !</title>
		<link>http://microreviews.org/googlebots-go-smart/</link>
		<comments>http://microreviews.org/googlebots-go-smart/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Tue, 01 Nov 2011 21:32:12 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator>Vikash</dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Analytics]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[google]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Googlebot]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Matt Cutts]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[search]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Search engine optimization]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[SEO]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://microreviews.org/?p=5361</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[Now the smart Googlebot will be able to crawl the comments on web pages, thanks to some improvements from Google. <a href="http://microreviews.org/googlebots-go-smart/">Continue reading <span class="meta-nav">&#8594;</span></a>]]></description>
			<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p style="text-align: justify;">Googlebots are Google&#8217;s search bots -- those spiders that crawl and index the web pages. Well, these bots have just got a little bit smarter. How ? Most of the commenting systems prevalent on websites use a third party commenting software -- Facebook comments/Disqus/Intense Debate etc. And more often these commenting engines use Javascript to display information and are as such difficult to be crawled by search engines, thus missing out on any SEO boost from them. Now, no more. Googlebot can now crawl your comments section as well. Confirmed by a tweet from Matt Cutts :</p>
<p><span id="more-5361"></span></p>
<p><a href="http://microreviews.org/wp-content/uploads/2011/11/matt1.png"><img class="aligncenter size-full wp-image-5362" title="matt1" src="http://microreviews.org/wp-content/uploads/2011/11/matt1.png" alt="" width="727" height="286" /></a></p>
<p style="text-align: justify;">Now Disqus as well as Facebook comments can be searched in normal Google Search. An example here :</p>
<p style="text-align: justify;">The original comment on a TC post (apparently Michael Arrington&#8217;s last !) -</p>
<p><a href="http://microreviews.org/wp-content/uploads/2011/11/comment.png"><img class="aligncenter size-full wp-image-5363" title="comment" src="http://microreviews.org/wp-content/uploads/2011/11/comment.png" alt="" width="997" height="290" /></a></p>
<p>And searching the same through Google -</p>
<p><a href="http://microreviews.org/wp-content/uploads/2011/11/test.png"><img class="aligncenter size-full wp-image-5364" title="test" src="http://microreviews.org/wp-content/uploads/2011/11/test.png" alt="" width="1027" height="262" /></a></p>
<p>&nbsp;</p>
<p style="text-align: justify;">While this is good news, this also calls for better moderation of comments, now that they are crawlable.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify;">I can be reached at vikashbitmesra@gmail.com. My Twitter feed <a href="http://twitter.com/#!/_Vikash" target="_blank">here</a>.</p>
<p>&nbsp;</p>
]]></content:encoded>
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		<slash:comments>2</slash:comments>
		</item>
		<item>
		<title>Greplin : Search your cloud data</title>
		<link>http://microreviews.org/greplin-search-your-cloud-data/</link>
		<comments>http://microreviews.org/greplin-search-your-cloud-data/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Sun, 20 Mar 2011 15:18:20 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator>Vikash</dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Social]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Technology]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Facebook]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Freemium]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Gmail]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[google]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Google Docs]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Google Reader]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Google Voice]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Greplin]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[linkedin]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[search]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[series A funding]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Social Search]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Twitter]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Yammer]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[YC]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://microreviews.org/?p=4433</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[Update : Greplin support got back to me on couple of issues I&#8217;d raised. While they say, work is ongoing on duplicate search instances of a query, and should be fixed soon, they also said in order to index multiple &#8230; <a href="http://microreviews.org/greplin-search-your-cloud-data/">Continue reading <span class="meta-nav">&#8594;</span></a>]]></description>
			<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p style="text-align: justify"><i> Update : Greplin support got back to me on couple of issues I&#8217;d raised. While they say, work is ongoing on duplicate search instances of a query, and should be fixed soon, they also said in order to index multiple Gmail acc, one has to be first logged out of their primary.Have deleted the corresponding concern from this post.</i></p>
<p><span id="more-4433"></span></p>
<p style="text-align: justify">&#8220;A lot of nerds get that&#8221;, says Daniel Gross on what Greplin stands for. For the rest of us (who are not quite nerds), &#8216;Greplin&#8217; stems its name from &#8216;grep&#8217;, a popular CS terminology for search. Search as an online experience (a need rather), is second to none. Google has been around for a while now, to do the job for us, well in most parts. There are different verticals to online search. Google controls the majority but there still is space left in the search market for smaller players to innovate -- Blekko&#8217;s slash tag is an example. While Google can powerfully crawl the entire web, there are places, a search engine can&#8217;t go. Where exactly ? Password protected user data in the cloud and the social online data of those, that it isn&#8217;t on sweetest of terms with.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify"><a href="https://www.greplin.com/" target="_blank">Greplin</a>  tries to be your search partner into these areas. Greplin is a a user-authorized search that can access your data on the cloud -- Facebook, Twitter, Google Docs, LinkedIn, Salesforce, and more. Founded by Daniel Gross, a 19 year old from Israel, 48hrs before his YC DDay (Y Combinator Demo Day). An intersting story -- <a href="http://thenextweb.com/entrepreneur/2011/03/05/greplin-founder-daniel-gross-on-his-amazing-story-behind-building-the-company-interview/" target="_blank">his own words</a>. One might think why didn&#8217;t Google build something such themselves. Well, they could have if they wanted to. But being the search giant they are, they would have had stiff resistance getting into the cloud data of rival social networks and perhaps to a certain extent on the user front as well. So, this vertical of search had to be explored by a newbie.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify"> It wasn&#8217;t a smooth go for Gross at YC with Amazon screwing his initial DDAY project over, completely. And just when the kid was getting a little restless, Paul Graham was there with his simple, yet magical words -- <b>go, build something that you yourself are a target audience for</b>. Thanks Paul -- those words mean something to all of us, me included ! And with a scratch model of Greplin, Gross took the stage. Struggle followed for the series A funding. But once he had it, things only went uphill -- securing another round of VC funding from Sequoia Capital, getting Robby Walker on board. And the valley has been sweet on Greplin since !</p>
<p style="text-align: justify"><a href="http://microreviews.org/wp-content/uploads/2011/03/greplin.png"><img src="http://microreviews.org/wp-content/uploads/2011/03/greplin-1024x575.png" alt="" width="700" height="540" class="aligncenter size-large wp-image-4437" /></a></p>
<p style="text-align: justify"> Once you sign up for the product, you are asked to add your online accounts -- Gmail/Facebook/Twittter/Google Docs/LinkedIn and the like one by one, some 5-10 mins for initial indexing (depending upon how extensive your online presence is!) and you are good to go. A clean intuitive UI helps too! Once you start typing your search query, you start getting indexed results, much like google instant. Corresponding to a search query, you get search results in the form of messages, people, streams from across your indexed networks.. The business model adopted is <b>freemium</b>. Basic necessary indexes are free (Gmail/Facebook/Twitter/Dropbox/Google Docs/LinkedIn) while other Applications like Yammer/Salesforc/Basecamp etc require you to choose a &#8216;Premium model&#8217;. Free and Premium models also differ on the no of messages/people/streams/files indexed. Greplin also plan on rolling out Google Voice and Google Reader soon !</p>
<p style="text-align: justify"> On security concerns, Gross says :</p>
<p style="text-align: justify"><i>For the bulk of the services that we offer for indexing today, we never actually capture your username and password, which I think is important to a lot of users. So you know, if one day, lets say, somehow, our accounts are compromised your password was never exposed to us. So it would still theoretically be safe.</i></p>
<p style="text-align: justify">While fundamentals work fine, there are glitches too. Sometimes a search query shows multiple instances of the same search result (mostly in case of a multi-threaded Gmail conversation). <del datetime="2011-03-21T08:23:50+00:00">While users can index multiple Twitter profiles, the same support for Gmail/Facebook doesnot seem to be there at the moment.</del> Also, perhaps the no. of messages/streams is a little less in the free model, as I couldn&#8217;t get hold of an year old Facebook update. I&#8217;d take the liberty to propose one refinement in the indexing algorithm (considering the limited no. on the messages/streams for FREE users) -- the user&#8217;s streams/messages should be indexed first and then probably those of his friends (this is to say if my understanding is right !). Another feature that I as a user would like (maybe in days to come) : indexing of the user comments on the Facebook status updates. But it again boils down to a trade off between how deep the indexing is being done for a particular model ! And yes, one last thing -- that chrome plugin ad right in the middle of the page is a NO !</p>
<p style="text-align: justify"> Have actually written to Greplin support on these. Hopefully, they will listen to these little demands from their prospective users and provide a better user experience. </p>
<p style="text-align: justify">Overall Greplin is a <b>yes</b> for me.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify">Why ? One, because the user in me feels a need for the service (even though the frequency will be say 1/100th of Google search, but that is only going to increase over time) and two, because the developer in me would love to be a part of this project ! </p>
<p style="text-align: justify"> I can be reached at vikashbitmesra@gmail.com. My twitter feed @<a href="http://twitter.com/_vikash" target="_blank">_Vikash</a>.</p>
]]></content:encoded>
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		<item>
		<title>My thoughts on the Tech Scene in current times – Part1- Search</title>
		<link>http://microreviews.org/my-thoughts-on-the-tech-scene-in-current-time-part1-search/</link>
		<comments>http://microreviews.org/my-thoughts-on-the-tech-scene-in-current-time-part1-search/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Thu, 10 Mar 2011 15:40:44 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator>ArchieIndian</dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Technology]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Blekko]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[DuckDuckGo]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Facebook]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[google]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Matt Cutts]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[quality of search]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[search]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://microreviews.org/?p=4359</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[Internet was always about organizing all the information in the world. Google was the first company which thought of a viable solution for the same. Over the last few months, there has been a lot of criticism about the Google Search Results losing their quality. People have gone all out against companies like DemandMedia for creating what we now call content farming. There have been people who have asked me to try out Blekko or DuckDuckGo. There has been the Google-Microsoft Episode where Matt Cutts calls Micrsoft a cheater. There has been a lot of buzz about real-time search as well as social search. <a href="http://microreviews.org/my-thoughts-on-the-tech-scene-in-current-time-part1-search/">Continue reading <span class="meta-nav">&#8594;</span></a>]]></description>
			<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p style="text-align: justify;"> I have not been writing for the last few months. Call it the writer’s block or the fact that I have been busy with many other things. However, at the same time I have been following TechCrunch, Gigaom, ReadwriteWeb, TheNextweb, BGR, Bloomberg, Slashdot, Quora, Gizmodo, Engadget, Wired and many more sites religiously. Finally, today I thought of putting down my thoughts on the current state of the tech Industry. I will try to cover one of my areas of interest in this post today.  I am not interested in writing about who is making how much revenue through advertisements and  who is going to make how much. I am more interested in how we are going to get better quality search. </p>
<p><span id="more-4359"></span></p>
<p style="text-align: justify;"> <strong>Search Buzz Overall</strong>:  Internet was always about organizing all the information in the world. Google was the first company which thought of a viable solution for the same. Over the last few months, there has been a lot of criticism about the Google Search Results <a href="http://techcrunch.com/2011/02/12/search-still-sucks/">losing their quality</a>. People have gone all out against companies like DemandMedia for creating what we now call content farming. There have been <a href="http://www.quora.com/Vikash-Kumar">people </a>who have asked me to try out <a href="http://blekko.com">Blekko</a> or<a href="http://duckduckgo.com/">DuckDuckGo</a>. There has been the Google-Microsoft Episode where Matt Cutts calls Micrsoft a cheater. There has been a lot of buzz about real-time search as well as social search. </p>
<p style="text-align: justify;"><strong>What do I think about the Google Search Quality, Blekko and DuckDuckGo?:</strong> For me, Google is the best search engine much easier to say than saying IPhone is  the best smart phone.  I am biased for sure. My queries on Google are stuff, which Content Farmers will never write about, and hence the Google Search Quality remains high and has in fact improved for me over the last few years. The mere fact that Google has the biggest hardware power amongst all search engines (and the best indexing power) takes it way ahead of other search engines (Algorithm is no more the secret). I tried Blekk0 and DuckDuckGo and I admit that I was not too impressed. My queries were not too well answered by these search engines. I will just wait and watch and hope that Blekko and DuckDuckGo become as good or even better than Google. </p>
<p style="text-align: justify;"> <strong>My thoughts on Demand Media</strong>: I wonder why the community is so harsh on Demand Media. Actually, I don’t get the point in it. All you blogging guys do it to make money. All of you want to capture that buzzword. Everyone wants to rake in the ad revenues. It is just that Richard Rosenblatt was shrewd enough to take this very unorganized yet well known form of money making to an organized level. Richard Rosenblatt has been long known for coming up with great ideas (He was called an idea machine in one of the blogs I read about him). So, how does Google respond? They have actually responded by tweaking their algorithm in a way that these content farming sites get a lower rating in the search pages. Has it worked? I have heard, that it has worked but as I told you, I was never effected. There is a <a href="https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/nolijncfnkgaikbjbdaogikpmpbdcdef">chrome addon</a> , which lets us block certain websites from appearing in our search results once we block them and yes, I am using it. Come on, we all need a healthy Google to organize all the worlds information (yes, even <a href="http://www.google.com/landing/recipes/">recipes</a>) in a better way. </p>
<p style="text-align: justify;"> <strong>My thoughts on the Google-Microsoft Episode</strong>: Stop <em>whining</em><em> </em>Google. Just stop it. Bing is a good search engine (Bing is not Google) and Microsoft has invested a lot in making it a decent one. So, don&#8217;t expect them to play it all fair and not copy your search results. Take it in your stride and just keep focusing on your own product. And, haven&#8217;t you guys ever stolen a thing?  Didn&#8217;t you guys copy the layout of Bing Image Search. Don&#8217;t you guys have all the yelp information on you Places? So, just stop crying that Microsoft stole this an they stole that. It is very similar to the way in which news publishers (Rupert Murdoch) saying Google is using our news. You are still the best search engine by far and just by copying your results, Bing won&#8217;t win. They can win by writing better code and by increasing their indexing power and concentrating on their own thing than yours. </p>
<p style="text-align: justify;"> <strong>My thoughts on Realtime Search, Social Search and  Facebook</strong>:  There are days when an event is going on I end up using Google Real-time search which is more or less same as Twitter Search (and to some extent a little bit of limited Facebook search), i do find relevant results. I find those streaming links, which I need and I find the current score faster and I am also able to track people&#8217;s view on a certain event much better. I get all this and much more but also a lot of spam. Google is already indexing this information but the question is how do they rate it? How do they make these real-time updates a part of the actual search? They are already doing it but they aren&#8217;t doing it too well. Isn&#8217;t it? This brings us to the question of People Rank (whose updates need to be given attention and it cant be just by no of followers) and the key is in the hands of websites like Stackoverflow, Quora, LinkedIn etc. People rank and using them can be a part of another blog and that is for another day. </p>
<p style="text-align: justify;"> <strong>So, Who are Google’s actual competitors?</strong><strong> </strong>To call Stackoverflow, Quora, Formspring etc a competitor of Google would be harsh. Whenever I would need a programming query resolved, I would search Stackoverflow (through Google because the Stackoverflow search sucks). Whenever I need to know in detail about something which I know is well known, I would just go to Wikipedia. Whenever, I need a piece of opinion about something, I would go to Quora. Whenever I need to know anything about cricket, I would go to Cricinfo. Whenever, I need to search someone I would use Facebook or LinkedIn.  But does this behavior of mine affect Google? I would say, not to a very large extent. I am an informed user and Google depends more on the uninformed users. Overall, my Google Search timespans have decreased as I write the site name along side and get an optimized result. </p>
<p style="text-align: justify;"> <strong>Can Facebook bulid a search engine by hiring a lot of Google employees?</strong><strong> </strong>No. They can&#8217;t. Facebook can give Google a run for its money in online advertising but not in search. One of my friends argued with me that the rate at which Facebook is hiring Google employees, it seems apparent that they will one day have the Google Search Algorithm on their table and they will add their knowledge of social and people&#8217;s likes to make a better search engine. But, it doesn&#8217;t work that way. Does It? You don’t make a great technology by mixing this and that and copying this and that. If they really want to make a better search engine, they need to reinvent the wheel to a certain extent. They need to make it their own way. They have their social information and they have their own great engineers. Let them try their own brain and not use what the Google Engineers are carrying with themselves in their brains. Facebook shouldn’t try and recreate a better Google. They need to create a better search which leverages social.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify;"> These were some of my thoughts on the buzz on Search in the last couple of months and I didn&#8217;t find Bing&#8217;s increased search share worth discussing, as I don&#8217;t think it reflects anything.</p>
<p>You can get in touch with me at mitra[dot]arkid[at]gmail[dot]com.</p>
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		<item>
		<title>Real Time Search &#8211; What does it mean?</title>
		<link>http://microreviews.org/real-time-search-what-does-it-mean/</link>
		<comments>http://microreviews.org/real-time-search-what-does-it-mean/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Sun, 13 Dec 2009 09:33:47 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator>admin</dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Analytics]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Facebook]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[friendfeed]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[google]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Google Trend]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[identi.ca]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Jaiku]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Myspace]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[search]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Twitter]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://microreviews.org/?p=2170</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[Google is up and running with its real time search. We at Microreviews thought of taking a look at the real time search introduced by the search giant in one go. However, let me be very clear, you got to try it to understand it. Before reading my post, you can even take a shot at it. I tried searching "Google" on Google and then tried to get the real-time updates on it. <a href="http://microreviews.org/real-time-search-what-does-it-mean/">Continue reading <span class="meta-nav">&#8594;</span></a>]]></description>
			<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><a class="zem_slink" title="Google" rel="homepage" href="http://google.com">Google</a> is up and running with its <a id="aptureLink_oTYWhOQ0fC" href="http://www.google.co.in/search?hl=en&amp;client=firefox-a&amp;rls=com.ubuntu%3Aen-US%3Aofficial&amp;hs=JIi&amp;tbo=1&amp;tbs=rltm%3A1&amp;q=google+wave&amp;btnG=Search&amp;meta=&amp;aq=f&amp;oq="><span class="zem_slink">real time search</span></a> . We at Microreviews thought of taking a look at the <a class="zem_slink" title="Real-time computing" rel="wikipedia" href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Real-time_computing">real time</a> search introduced by the search giant in one go. However, let this be said, you got to try it to <a id="aptureLink_4K4Y7y64SX" href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WRkYmx4A9Do">understand it</a>. Before reading the post, you can even take a shot at it. I tried searching &#8220;Google&#8221; on Google and then tried to get the real-time updates on it.<br />
In this post, we will not take up the implications of the real time status updates on the <a class="zem_slink" title="Web search engine" rel="wikipedia" href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Web_search_engine">search engine</a> results. Right now, the implications are wide open and is hot. Like other enthusiasts across the globe, we are tracking the same and would come back with an analysis soon on Microreviews.</p>
<p><strong>So what is real time search?</strong></p>
<p>Real time search  basically boils down to searching the information contained in our status updates on the various <a class="zem_slink" title="Microblogging" rel="wikipedia" href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microblogging">micro-blogging</a>, <a class="zem_slink" title="Social network service" rel="wikipedia" href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_network_service">social networking</a> and information sharing sites. These happen to be much quicker than the updates on various news sites around the world. What with, over a billion people sharing information from various parts of the world.</p>
<p><strong>Why was the real time search needed?</strong></p>
<p>Sometime back, this year when there was a lot of hue and cry over the Iran Election, whenever we typed Iraq on Google, we kept on getting the same old <a class="zem_slink" title="Wikipedia" rel="homepage" href="http://www.wikipedia.org/">Wikipedia</a> link which was very relevant to say the least, but was not what we wanted. However, a quick search on <a class="zem_slink" title="Twitter" rel="homepage" href="http://twitter.com">Twitter</a>, the most popular microblogging site, gave us some stunning results. At this point, most search engines started including (and are expanding) &#8216;real-time search&#8217; in some form or the other.Google and other search engines woke up to the importance of our status updates.<span id="more-2170"></span></p>
<div id="attachment_2171" class="wp-caption alignright" style="width: 310px"><img class="size-medium wp-image-2171" title="Iamfeelinglucky" src="http://arkidmitra.files.wordpress.com/2009/12/google_phone_trend.pngfiles/2009/10/Iamfeelinglucky-300x200.png" alt="I am feeling lucky- Google- Counter to 2010" width="300" height="200" /><p class="wp-caption-text">I am feeling lucky- Google- Counter to 2010</p></div>
<p>The Google <a id="aptureLink_zsxa7QxcCe" href="http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2009/12/relevance-meets-real-time-web.html">Blog</a> says &#8220;<em>Of course, none of this would be possible without the support of our new partners that we&#8217;re announcing today: <a href="http://www.facebook.com/">Facebook</a>, <a href="http://www.myspace.com/pressroom?url=/article_display.cfm?article_id=1127">MySpace</a>, <a href="http://friendfeed.com/">FriendFeed</a>, <a href="http://www.jaiku.com/">Jaiku</a> and <a href="http://identi.ca/">Identi.ca</a> — along with <a href="http://twitter.com/">Twitter</a>, which we <a href="http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2009/10/rt-google-tweets-and-updates-and-search.html">announced</a> a few weeks ago.</em>&#8220;</p>
<p>Here are some of the things I tried with Google today, and there were some interesting discoveries right away.</p>
<p>I was on the Google home page and clicked on the I am feeling lucky button without typing in any search query. I saw a counter ad couldn&#8217;t understand what it meant. My natural instinct told me &#8220;Google it&#8221;. The results, I got were not what I was looking for.</p>
<p><img class="size-medium wp-image-2172 " title="Iamfeelinglucky_normal_search" src="http://arkidmitra.files.wordpress.com/2009/12/google_phone_trend.pngfiles/2009/10/Iamfeelinglucky_normal_search-300x229.png" alt="&quot;I am feeling lucky&quot; query gave no relevant realtime search results" width="300" height="229" /></p>
<p>The results were not exactly what I was looking for showing me the original definition of I am feeling lucky and other stuff.</p>
<div id="attachment_2173" class="wp-caption alignright" style="width: 100px"><img class="size-medium wp-image-2173" title="options_on_google search" src="http://arkidmitra.files.wordpress.com/2009/12/google_phone_trend.pngfiles/2009/10/options_on_google-search-90x300.png" alt="Options to filter the google search" width="90" height="300" /><p class="wp-caption-text">Options to filter the google search</p></div>
<p>The realtime stuff had not yet achived the relevance to get to the top of the results. So, I clicked on the &#8220;Show Options&#8221; to get to the filtering options.</p>
<p>From here the filtering got easier and i clicked on the latest filter.</p>
<div id="attachment_2174" class="wp-caption aligncenter" style="width: 310px"><img class="size-medium wp-image-2174" title="latest_filter_on_google" src="http://arkidmitra.files.wordpress.com/2009/12/google_phone_trend.pngfiles/2009/10/latest_filter_on_google-300x181.png" alt="Getting relevant real time results from Google RTS" width="300" height="181" /><p class="wp-caption-text">Getting relevant real time results from Google RTS</p></div>
<p>I quickly realized how the <a class="zem_slink" title="real-time web" rel="homepage" href="http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/introduction_to_the_real_time_web.php">real time web</a> was taking over the search world by a storm. In order to get real time search merged with google, try searching something which is trending on google and you will see it.</p>
<div id="attachment_2175" class="wp-caption aligncenter" style="width: 603px"><img class="size-full wp-image-2175" title="merged_tiger_woods_google_realtime" src="http://arkidmitra.files.wordpress.com/2009/12/google_phone_trend.pngfiles/2009/10/merged_tiger_woods_google_realtime.png" alt="Search for Tiger Woods on Google" width="593" height="390" /><p class="wp-caption-text">Search for Tiger Woods on Google</p></div>
<p>Having seen all this, I quickly realized the problems which Google has with the irrelevant trending hash-tags of Twitter. The fact that Bing has ruled out the possibility of integrating the real-time stuff readily into their search results makes the strategical search engine market even more interesting. Bing will continue to provide the twitter search results at a separate URL at <a id="aptureLink_14OdGXqGTH" href="http://bing.com/twitter">bing.com/twitter</a>.</p>
<p>Google <a class="zem_slink" title="Google Trends" rel="homepage" href="http://www.google.com/trends">Trends</a> has come out of Beta(Donot forget to check <a id="aptureLink_l8c37Pht2g" href="http://www.trendrr.com/">Trendrr</a> which I find more interesting at times than Google trends) and we can see Google trends at the end of the search results, if it happens to be relevant.</p>
<div id="attachment_2176" class="wp-caption aligncenter" style="width: 623px"><img class="size-full wp-image-2176" title="Google_phone_trend" src="http://arkidmitra.files.wordpress.com/2009/12/google_phone_trend.pngfiles/2009/10/Google_phone_trend.png" alt="Google Trends is out of Beta" width="613" height="246" /><p class="wp-caption-text">Google Trends is out of Beta</p></div>
<p>The next big thing which I am looking forward to is the integration of facebook updates and how people react to their social networking Gossips getting crawled by Google just because they clicked on yes to a privacy statement they didn&#8217;t bother to read. There will be a lot of changes in the way search results are seen. There will be privacy policy checks done. The Web Analytics parameters will undergo a huge change. We will also recommend people to have a look at the Yahoo search results which have also started putting twitter status updates along with other results.<a id="aptureLink_WqTYIvQLyT" href="http://www.scoopler.com/">Scoopler</a>, <a id="aptureLink_EAgVH8Z4kl" href="http://www.socialmention.com/">SocialMention</a> and <a id="aptureLink_IYjJYvhsOb" href="http://collecta.com/">Collecta</a> are the other three realtime search engine, I would like the readers to try out.We at microreviews will keep a look at these and try to put them up for you all.</p>
<p><span style="float:none!important;cursor:pointer!important;margin:0!important;padding:0!important;"><a href="http://twitter.com/ArchieIndian"> Follow me</a></span> on Twitter.</p>
<p style="line-height:1.5em;text-align:justify;margin:0 0 10px;padding:0;"><span style="float:none!important;cursor:pointer!important;margin:0!important;padding:0!important;"> <a href="http://twitter.com/microreviewsorg">Follow us</a></span> on Twitter. Mail us <a href="mailto:pingus@npoint0.com" target="_blank">here</a>.</p>
<div class="zemanta-pixie" style="margin-top:10px;height:15px;"><a class="zemanta-pixie-a" title="Reblog this post [with Zemanta]" href="http://reblog.zemanta.com/zemified/e295684a-579a-4076-a927-eb6c7edd13c3/"><img class="zemanta-pixie-img" style="border:medium none;float:right;" src="http://img.zemanta.com/reblog_e.png?x-id=e295684a-579a-4076-a927-eb6c7edd13c3" alt="Reblog this post [with Zemanta]" /></a><span style="color:#800080;"><em>Readers&#8217; opinions are most welcome.</em></span></div>
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		<title>The Bing-Twitter Deal</title>
		<link>http://microreviews.org/the-bing-twitter-deal/</link>
		<comments>http://microreviews.org/the-bing-twitter-deal/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Sun, 25 Oct 2009 02:11:35 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator>Vikash</dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Technology]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Bing]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Facebook]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[google]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[google search]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Microsoft]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[MS]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[real time search]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[search]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[search-engine]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Twitter]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[twitter-deal]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[visual search]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[web 2.0]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://microreviews.org/?p=1494</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[Since  Microsoft Corp. took on Google in its own forte, it  has been making efforts to break grounds in conventional search, through  its search engine Bing. First, we saw  Bing Visual Search and now, at the recently concluded  Web 2.0 summit, &#8230; <a href="http://microreviews.org/the-bing-twitter-deal/">Continue reading <span class="meta-nav">&#8594;</span></a>]]></description>
			<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p>Since  Microsoft Corp. took on Google in its own forte, it  has been making efforts to break grounds in conventional search, through  its search engine <a id="aptureLink_Tnx2qNmkNH" href="http://www.bing.com/">Bing</a>. First, we saw  <a id="aptureLink_mB3kN4J1Xn" href="http://arkidmitra.files.wordpress.com/2009/10/bing-twitter-cloud.pngbing-visual-search/">Bing Visual Search</a> and now, at the recently concluded  <a id="aptureLink_T0tvfwhdnk" href="http://www.web2summit.com/web2009">Web 2.0 summit</a>, MS took the fight to a whole new level -- striking a double punch through the deals it has made with Social Networking giants <a id="aptureLink_LardzmxRkX" href="http://twitter.com/">Twitter </a>and <a id="aptureLink_17zldL9K0F" href="http://www.facebook.com/">Facebook</a>. While you can<a id="aptureLink_uHZ7VatmTY" href="http://www.bing.com/twitter"> take a sneak-peak</a> at Bing&#8217;s Twitter integration, the Facebook deal will materialize much later.</p>
<p><span id="more-1494"></span></p>
<p><a href="http://microreviews.org/wp-content/uploads/2010/08/bing-260.jpg"><img class="alignright size-full wp-image-1495" src="http://microreviews.org/wp-content/uploads/2010/08/bing-260.jpg" alt="Bing-260" width="260" height="166" /></a></p>
<p>MS [and for that matter Google too] have made their respective <span style="color: #800080;"><em>failed attempts to buy out both Twitter and Facebook</em></span>. While both Twitter and Facebook decided to thrive on their own then, they didn&#8217;t mind the cash inflow this time around by making available the vast real time updates they have at their disposal. Even as Twitter CEO Evans Williams humorously downplayed questions regarding this deal (a day earlier at the Web 2.0 summit), Microsoft&#8217;s online services group President Qi Lu went on to explain the deal, a deal that MS likes to call <span style="color: #800080;">&#8220;Bing Wave 2&#8243;</span>.  Lu said the deal with their other prospective partner, Facebook, will come in at a later point. Excerpts from his interview <a id="aptureLink_dcncecTV1E" href="http://www.techcrunch.com/2009/10/21/web-2-0-a-conversation-with-qi-lu/">here</a> and a conversation with &#8216;O Reilly <a id="aptureLink_uJ6268Fic3" href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WT2wqXrBQHI">here</a>.</p>
<p>The official Bing-Twitter Integration is up and live at<a id="aptureLink_KZbbanUd9n" href="http://www.bing.com/twitter"> http://www.bing.com/twitter,</a> for the US only (so change your country preference to US  to check it out). It has a <span style="color: #800080;">tag cloud showing the hottest topics on twitter</span> (similar to Twitter&#8217;s trending topics) and also sample tweets on each of them.When we actually make a particular query, we get the tweets in two categories<span style="color: #800080;"> &#8216;Most recent&#8217; and &#8216;Best match&#8217;</span>. The Tweets corresponding to the search tag are supposedly updated in real time (but when we checked it out, didn&#8217;t quite find it to be so!!). This is just a basic setup live and should get more compact/trendy and feature laden with time. A snapshot :</p>
<p><a href="http://arkidmitra.files.wordpress.com/2009/10/bing-twitter-cloud.png"><img class="aligncenter size-full wp-image-1496" src="http://arkidmitra.files.wordpress.com/2009/10/bing-twitter-cloud.png" alt="bing-twitter-cloud" width="607" height="592" /></a></p>
<p>The deal in itself is huge (and we are not talking in just financial terms here, infact Qi Lu passed the question when asked about the Financial terms of the deal), taking &#8216;Search&#8217; on to the real time corridors.The deal gives MS, the access to full (public) Twitter data feed. This, for sure, is a formidable blow to its arch-rival Google. Twitter too has been looking at options recently for some revenue generation. This deal (and the upcoming one with Google) should suffice for some time now. The other options (read ads) is a scary one in itself.!! If the deal with Twitter is big, that with Facebook is going to be bigger, what with the <span style="color: #800080;"><strong>45 million status updates per day from 30 million unique visitors</strong>.</span></p>
<p>While all this does sound great, the question to be asked is : <span style="color: #800080;">&#8220;Isnt this at some point the invasion of  user privacy?</span><strong>&#8220;</strong>. The question holds less of a significance with respect to Twitter (considering that its user&#8217;s tweets are more in the public domain), but gets pretty significant in the context of Facebook (whose users want to share those updates only amongst their friends). News has it that Facebook is going to provide its users with options in this regard. Wonder how this entire deal looks  in the light of Twitter&#8217;s user friendly TOS (Terms of Service) that says -- users very much own their Tweets. <span style="color: #800080;">So what if MS starts Archiving these tweet streams</span>. Facebook have anyways a non-friendly TOS (as per which, Facebook can use/modify/publish  your status updates and that too even after you terminate your account!!). Probably the Bing-Facebook integration will further fuel the issue. So are the users ready to let these giants invade their privacy (read status updates) for the sake of a perfect real time search?<span style="color: #800080;"><em> Readers&#8217; opinion solicited.</em></span></p>
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		<title>90di.com and Ninety Degree Internet Software Private Limited</title>
		<link>http://microreviews.org/90di-com-and-ninety-degree-internet-software-private-limited/</link>
		<comments>http://microreviews.org/90di-com-and-ninety-degree-internet-software-private-limited/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Tue, 01 Sep 2009 10:51:43 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator>AP</dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Technology]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[90 degrees]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[90di]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[bus]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[degrees]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[flight]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[guide]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[ninety]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[review]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[search]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[start-up]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[startup]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[train]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[travel]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://microreviews.org/?p=482</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[Quick Update: 90di comes up with an update on their blog about the  points discussed by us. Thanks 90di team. 90di is a very innovative and very much needed travel guide. Quite excellent search for well known places. Does not &#8230; <a href="http://microreviews.org/90di-com-and-ninety-degree-internet-software-private-limited/">Continue reading <span class="meta-nav">&#8594;</span></a>]]></description>
			<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p>Quick Update: <a href="http://www.90di.com/blog/2009/09/microreviewsorg-reviews-90di-interviews-me-thanks-to-twitter/" target="_blank">90di comes up with an update on their blog about the  points discussed by us</a>. Thanks 90di team.<span id="more-482"></span></p>
<ul>
<li>90di is a very innovative and very much needed travel guide.</li>
<li>Quite excellent search for well known places.</li>
<li>Does not give satisfactory results when your search for lesser known or smaller towns.</li>
<li>Excellent online interface.</li>
</ul>
<div id="attachment_493" class="wp-caption aligncenter" style="width: 121px"><a href="http://90di.com/" target="_blank"><img class="size-full wp-image-493" src="http://microreviews.org/files/2009/10/90di.jpg" alt="90di.com" width="111" height="52" /></a><p class="wp-caption-text">90di.com</p></div>
<p>Here goes our second post in the series of start-up reviews and interviews. Today it is the turn of Ninety Degree Internet Software Private Limited which is creating quite a lot of buzz with <a href="http://90di.com" target="_blank">90di.com</a>. <a href="http://90di.com" target="_blank">90di.com</a> is  WEB 3.0, the intelligent web as they would say. In brief, it is a  travel search from Ninety Degree Internet Software Private Limited . We have gone through the site ourselves and done some test searches ourselves, to see what the fuss was all about. We must say that the site did impress us with its easy-on-the-eye simple user interface and its functionality to a certain extent.Firstly, we would like to acknowledge the fact that this is a novel attempt at having all the possible travel searches under one roof. However, that tag comes with its portion of setbacks.</p>
<p>Before you go on to read our analysis, lets give a peek into how this thing works and when it fails you.</p>
<ul>
<li>The first search we did was a simple one -- <a href="http://www.90di.com/travel/#search_type=freetext&amp;search_query=mumbai%20to%20cuttack" target="_blank"><strong>Mumbai to Cuttack</strong></a>. Cuttack is a well known town situated in Orissa. The results were quite satisfactory. We got good results for direct routes and a list of backup indirect routes.</li>
</ul>
<ul>
<li>The second search we did was a little more difficult one -- <a href="http://www.90di.com/travel/#search_type=freetext&amp;search_query=mumbai%20to%20nazira" target="_blank"><strong>Mumbai to Nazira</strong></a>. Some background -- Nazira is a small town in Assam, but still a very important one. ONGC has a very big colony in Nazira. Global giants like Schlumberger and Halliburton have their working bases in Nazira. The results which we got were pretty disappointing. <strong>No matching results found</strong>. We were hoping that 90di would list out a train to Nizamuddin and then the Dibrugarh Rajdhani Express and then a bus from Dibrugarh to Nazira. But, we were disappointed. <img src='http://microreviews.org/wp-includes/images/smilies/icon_sad.gif' alt=':(' class='wp-smiley' /> </li>
</ul>
<ul>
<li>The third search was a complex one -- <a href="http://www.90di.com/travel/#search_type=freetext&amp;search_query=mumbai%20to%20jammu%20via%20lucknow" target="_blank"><strong>Mumbai to Jammu via Lucknow</strong></a>. The intent was to search for break journey results. But we were disappointed when the search was not sorted by relevance. The first few results were direct routes to Jammu, bypassing the &#8216;via Lucknow&#8217; condition. Probably a bit more work has to done by the 90di team on identifying tags like <strong>via</strong> and listing the search result according to relevance.</li>
</ul>
<p>Now lets begin our analysis. Positives first. When it comes to major cities and the related travel information available, <a href="http://90di.com" target="_blank">90di.com</a> does a very good job. In addition to the different trains available and their timings it gives you the facility to check the availability of seats. After which you can book your tickets on IRCTC.</p>
<p>So far so good. This feature works great between major towns and cities and to be more specific, for direct routes. If someone wants to travel from Bangalore to Kolkata via Mumbai , the search engine starts to stutter. It gives you information on the direct route first and at the fag end of the list you get to see a very vague set of options that conform to your search criteria. That defeats the purpose of such an offering. It is not always that travelers take direct trains, for a variety of reasons. To them, these results would be disappointing considering the fact that their criteria was given last preference and threw irrelevant data. Google as a search engine prospered only because they believed in placing relevant information at the top of the list, thus achieving their goal of lessening the time spent by the user in getting his information.</p>
<p>The cracks seem to get a lot wider when you search for information between lesser known routes. We admit that a majority of the urban population would be interested in the more popular sectors of travel, but taking only that portion of the population into account would be to miss the whole point of creating such a service. This point becomes more relevant when we consider someone who would need the services of this website, only when he needs to go the lesser known places. His purpose would be defeated in such a scenario.</p>
<p>90di still has a long way to go on a few more things. The fact that 90di gets all its information from online sources keeps the whole 90di team quite busy in checking that whether the information available is the latest one or not. They are doing a commendable job at this one, but still a long way to go. Until and unless they create a very solid offline mode for collecting and validating data, the information provided by 90di cannot be very reliable. It would paint a very sorry picture for 90di if they listed a train timing which was updated a few days ago. We do not intend to question their accountability for the data they provide, but, when we recommend a service to our readers we provide a crystal-clear picture of what they should expect.</p>
<p>One major positive is that, whether or not a route exists between two stations, the search engine recommends the route closest to the one that has been entered. That feature has proven accurate in many cases that we had tested. Overall the intent and package of 90di.com is commendable. Barring the glitches that we had mentioned, it is an extremely useful site. It does have a long way to go before it becomes the one-stop-shop for all travel related searches , but definitely one to be looked-out for.</p>
<p>That being said, we would like you to hear what one of the founders of 90di.com has to say for himself about his pet project and his advice to aspiring entrepreneurs. We got an opportunity to ask him a few questions that might interest you and help you in judging the site yourself. We would like to take this opportunity and thank Kiran for taking time off his busy schedule to help us understand what 90di is all about.</p>
<p>Following is the transcript of our chat with him :</p>
<p><strong>Microreviews</strong>: Hi Kiran. Good evening&#8230;can we get started?</p>
<p><strong>Kiran</strong>: Good evening&#8230;yes lets start.</p>
<p><strong>Microreviews</strong>: Ok&#8230;we have used 90di.com&#8230;but lets hear about it in your own words.</p>
<p><strong>Kiran</strong>: 90di.com is a vertical search engine. Google and others are horizontal search engines. They give information on almost anything, but not the complete information.Vertical search covers information that is deeply hidden in the Internet and focusing on one particular domain, like travel.</p>
<p><strong>Microreviews</strong>: Lets start with the 90di team. I guess you are a group of 3 people. Maybe we could start with a small introduction about your team.</p>
<p><strong>Kiran</strong>: Yes, we are three people&#8230;Mr. Khushnood Naqvi, Abhinit Kumar and myself. All of us earlier worked at Infosys, Bangalore.</p>
<p><strong>Microreviews</strong>: And what background do you all guys have in travel?</p>
<p><strong>Kiran</strong>: Khushnood worked for 12 years at Infy and we both worked together for 4 years. None of us were precisely in travel related domain to say. We started discussing the ideas about starting something on our own&#8230;</p>
<p><strong>&#8230;</strong>In US kayak.com was the most popular travel search site. We have Flight and Train modes of travel which covers most part of India.  But no websites used to give the routes which involved mixed-mode routes. And we saw a scope here.</p>
<p><strong>Microreviews</strong>: So When did u actually start working on this?</p>
<p><strong>Kiran</strong>: We agreed upon this and we both quit Infy and started Ninety Degree Internet Software Private Limited. We started our company in mid May 2007. And our initial version was up in September 2007.</p>
<p><strong>Microreviews</strong>: Wow&#8230;but how did you formulate the  travel logic so easily&#8230;that too within 4 months flat?</p>
<p><strong>Kiran</strong>: (smiles)</p>
<p><strong>Microreviews</strong>: We mean&#8230;what logic did you use?</p>
<p><strong>Kiran</strong>: The logic was not travel specific. It was a routing algorithm which we came up with. And, since we all were from technical background, we didn&#8217;t face much problem in this area (development).</p>
<p><strong>Microreviews</strong>: You must be Comp Sc grads we are assuming&#8230;from which college?</p>
<p><strong>Kiran</strong>: Khushnood holds a Bachelors of  Technology degree in Electronics and Electrical Communication Engineering from IIT Kharagpur. I am a MCA graduate from Mangalore university. Abhinit Kumar holds a Bachelors degree in Information Technology from Delhi University.</p>
<p><strong>Microreviews</strong>: Okay, great&#8230;and is the algorithm pretty complex?</p>
<p><strong>Kiran</strong>: Algorithm is not hi-fi, but definitely a complex bit of code, which needs to be refined now and then.</p>
<p><strong>Microreviews</strong>: That was the algorithm part&#8230;which you had to develop&#8230;probably that must have been the easier part. We guess the difficult part would have been to get so much of travel database built.</p>
<p><strong>Kiran</strong>: The information was freely available on the Internet. We developed some crawlers to get that information.</p>
<p><strong>Microreviews</strong>: And we heard that the Indian railways API is very costly&#8230;have you used it?</p>
<p><strong>Kiran</strong>: No we have not used their APIs.</p>
<p><strong>Microreviews</strong>: Wow&#8230;that means you built some great crawlers.</p>
<p><strong>Kiran</strong>: You may say that&#8230;(smiles)</p>
<p><strong>Microreviews</strong>: How do you show up the railway data then&#8230;to what granularity do you plan to go? Like how are you parsing the response?</p>
<p><strong>Kiran</strong>: It is similar to how we interpret the data manually, i.e, using our browsers. The crawlers are kind of good enough to change the way they look for the data in a given web page.</p>
<p><strong>Microreviews</strong>: Okay&#8230;something like web page scrapping.</p>
<p><strong>Kiran</strong>: Yes.</p>
<p><strong>Microreviews</strong>: So how do your crawlers know that which of the train schedule is the latest one? Are you caching and on availability you are making the request?</p>
<p><strong>Kiran</strong>: Schedules&#8230;it is challenge to keep it updated&#8230;definitely, we do a lot of caching.</p>
<p><strong>Microreviews</strong>: So how difficult is it for only 3 of you to maintain and update so much of data?</p>
<p><strong>Kiran</strong>: Actually it is not that much difficult. Within one day we can update all the data.And it is a parallel and ongoing activity for us.</p>
<p><strong>Microreviews </strong>: We have checked your search quiet a bit&#8230;. there is still some work&#8230;on rural India. Are you taking that up sometime in the future.</p>
<p><strong>Kiran</strong>: We want to become the Google for travel search in India. Hopefully we will cover all the travel related information for any place in India. We are working towards that.</p>
<p><strong>Microreviews</strong>: But we see one roadblock here&#8230;your data is totally dependent on what is available on the internet.</p>
<p><strong>Kiran</strong>: Since we are in Internet space, yes our current source is the Internet. But we are also looking at user driven data also.</p>
<p><strong>Microreviews</strong>: Could our elaborate a more on that&#8230;and how you intend to collect that data?</p>
<p><strong>Kiran</strong>: One can avail our services only if he/she uses Internet. So, if some information is not available, they can share the info with us&#8230;simple, which many are doing already..</p>
<p><strong>Microreviews</strong>: Okay.</p>
<p><strong>Kiran</strong>: A social touch&#8230;(smiles).</p>
<p><strong>Microreviews</strong>: So what is the next thing we are going to see from your team?</p>
<p><strong>Kiran</strong>: We are planning to integrate with small and medium travel agents. We are parallely working on some consulting also. But, 90di.com will be our child.</p>
<p><strong>Microreviews</strong>: But kiran&#8230;time and again one doubt comes up to us that which of the data is credible and which is not? Did you have any good user feedbacks till now?</p>
<p><strong>Kiran</strong>: I guess you are referring to the user driven data. Well, we do get lots of  feedbacks. Good and Bad. Bad helps us to improve. Good keeps us going.</p>
<p><strong>Microreviews</strong>: So what is the accountability quotient for the data which you provide online?</p>
<p><strong>Kiran</strong>: Since we show the data from other sources -- Railways, Airlines, bus providers, we can&#8217;t guarantee 100%. But we do try to keep it up to date and correct.</p>
<p><strong>Microreviews</strong>: So what is the next thing we are going to see from your team? Even if it is outside 90di.com.</p>
<p><strong>Kiran</strong>: As you are aware, we have recently launched a twitter statistics on India, <a href="http://90di.com/twitter/" target="_blank">http://www.90di.com/twitter/ </a>which is becoming popular.</p>
<p><strong>Microreviews</strong>: Yes,we have seen that.</p>
<p><strong>Kiran</strong>: We are planning to do something in that area. Also as I said earlier, we are planning couple of things to the small and medium travel agnets. We already have a online travel agnets directory, which many don&#8217;t know -- 90di.com/travelagent/</p>
<p><strong>Microreviews</strong>: Okay&#8230;on to the business model&#8230;what is the revenue source? We do not really see much.</p>
<p><strong>Kiran</strong>: We are self funded. The revenue model is through referrals.</p>
<p><strong>Microreviews</strong>: Referrals&#8230;can u elaborate a bit?</p>
<p><strong>Kiran</strong>: We send highly qualified leads to the airlines and bus provider/booking sites. When a user searches on 90di.com, the book link takes them directly to the actual provider&#8217;s booking page.</p>
<p><strong>Microreviews</strong>: Okay&#8230;and are you taking up any work outside your products like in service industry&#8230;and the prospects for a job at your place? For others&#8230;is that an option?</p>
<p><strong>Kiran</strong>: (smiles)  Good question. The answer is &#8220;Yes, but not now&#8221;.</p>
<p><strong>Microreviews</strong>: And your marketing is completely social media based we guess?</p>
<p><strong>Kiran</strong> : We are focusing on print media as well. Have been covered by few leading news papers like The Hindu. Some links are available at <a href="http://90di.com/travel/getBuzzPage" target="_blank">http://90di.com/travel/getBuzzPage</a></p>
<p><strong>Microreviews</strong>: What are the average hit counts you get in a day?</p>
<p><strong>Kiran</strong> : We get couple of thousand searches daily. We started some kind of marketing very recently. Since last 3-4 months, the traffic is increasing rapidly on month by month basis.</p>
<p><strong>Microreviews</strong>: Thats great to hear. And do you have a small message for the people starting up?</p>
<p><strong>Kiran</strong>: We have lot of messages to say by our learning in these 2 years. Be focused on your product, be ready to accept  lots of criticism. Better to be self-funded rather than VC-funded.</p>
<p><strong>Microreviews</strong>: Well said&#8230;</p>
<p><strong>Kiran</strong>: &#8220;Remember that things take much longer than you plan for&#8221;</p>
<p><strong>Microreviews</strong>: Thanks a lot for your time&#8230;you were brilliant. We shall publish this tomorrow on our collaborative blog.</p>
<p><strong>Kiran</strong>: Very kind of you. Looking forward to that.</p>
<p><strong>Microreviews</strong>: Yeah&#8230;will keep taking updates from you on 90di and more.</p>
<p>That concludes our preliminary analysis of <a href="http://90di.com" target="_blank">www.90di.com</a>. We will keep you updated on further improvements and updates that may be of importance and use to you.</p>
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