Impact on India Media Industry over Google’s payment deal with Australia for News

Google facebook to pay for news

Does this mean Australia has belled the cat…. In a way yes.  Though Google has come into an understanding with France.  It was Australia’s deal that has remained as an eye-opener or indeed a groundbreaker of legislation. Australia’s Seven West Media is supposed to have signed a deal with Google under which Google has to pay for the inclusion of news in its search pages. It’s all started with the Competition and Consumer Commission (ACCC) of Australia, stressing upon media companies to bargain monitory benefits for their news feed featuring on tech giants’ spaces. A large number of internet user get their daily dose of news from these tech giants feeds instead of visiting the media companies’ websites.

Media companies were under burden the world over and have been complaining for years that they were not fairly remunerated for their content that generated ad revenue for platforms like Google and Facebook; but the tech companies kept largely ignored.  But Google’s rush to pay up in Australia only exposed how a little threat could sharply alter the behaviour of the global tech. The question largely remains how far governments can go to compel the tech platforms to pay for news.

In the wake of the situation Indian Newspaper society has urged to pass on 85 per cent of the advertising revenue and that the technology giant to ensure more transparency in revenue reports provided to the publishers. The amount the Google or Facebook has to pay will depend on individual companies deal; either it could be pay per click or a fee per month.

This move is absolutely necessary not just to protect traditional media companies from dying due to technological disruption but to give a level playing ground as the content generated and published by newspapers come up with a considerable expense. As it employs thousands of journalists on the ground at considerable expense for gathering and verifying information. 

With the diminishing share of advertising pie with every passing day will this effort bring the needed respite for the fund starved parched newspaper industry. Let’s wait and watch.

 May this be the beginning of a broader reckoning….

More traffic to your website can impact you negatively for the following reasons

SEO

Getting more traffic to the website organically is one of the fundamental goals of Search Engine Optimization. This is the major metric that reflects in the SEO report as a key indicator to evaluate the performance of the optimized website.

Driving users into the site using keywords

Once the user gets into the site the user finds the content very shallow or the content shown is not the actual answer for the result of the search. This will lead to increased bounce rate and lower the time on site metrics.  Google in its best effort to give every user the best result for every possible search within the stipulated time tends to take this as a negative signal indicating that the site is not the correct result for the search query.

Content Strategy

Content strategy is poorly executed or there is no strategy at all. The visitors driven into the site find the content poorly written; will negatively impact the intent of the visitor

The sites take too longer time to load

The site’s speed is too poor and the if the relevant images take too long to open up then the site is not user friendly to navigate.  This will be a pitiful experience for the user

Conversion Goal

Quality traffic is more important than quantity traffic.  The objective of SEO should not be to bring in more traffic.  It’s the Return of Investment that has to be focused upon. Converting 50% of 1000 visitors is better than to convert 25% of 2000 visitors. Fine tuning the  goal will save up on resources and achieving best organic results.  More traffic without proper purpose will not contribute to the health of the site.

Backfiring traffic

Paid traffic from other portals to a site that is not optimized technically, without proper infra structure,  funneling or even user experience can back fire. It will have a negatively impact on the cost to be paid for PPC – Pay per click and CPA – Cost per acquisition

Driving useful traffic is more important than just traffic

All the traffic is not the same and more traffic is always not commendable.

Elon Reeve Musk is no longer the richest person in the world

Elon Musk

Tesla share price declined after Elon Musk announced that he spent $1.5 Billion of shareholder’s money buying Bitcoin. Tesla stock immediately plunged by 20%. As per Bloomberg Billionaires Index Musk was replaced by Amazon’s CEO Jeff Bezos as the richest person in the world after Tesla shares fell by denting $1.5 billion from Musk’s net wealth.

Who is Elon Musk?

Elon Musk is a serial entrepreneur who continuously comes up with new ideas and starts new businesses. Initially his ideas were termed as just dreams by many.

Musk was born in South Africa to an engineer father and a model mother.  He was always buried in his books and computers during his growing up period.  Musk was never a social being.  He was physically weak which made him an easy target for bullies. Once he was thrown down from a staircase and was beaten black and blue that he even passed out and hospitalised.

His Career

Musk applied for a job in Netscape but he did not receive any reply as he did not have a computer science degree.  He has actually graduated in  economics and physics.  He even went to Netscape office but returned as he was too shy to talk to anyone. So, he decided to pursue his own idea and started Zip2. Something like a yellow pages. Zip2 was cofounded by Musk and his brother.  The board of Directors removed Musk as the CEO of his company as he did not have the necessary operational responsibilities.  When the company was sold to Compaq he received $22 million from it.

There after he founded X.com an online payment company which later became Paypal.  Again, he was ousted while he was on his honeymoon. 

Trials

While on his vacation Musk contacted Cerebral Malaria which had 20 percent mortality rate and it took him six months to recover and he lost 4 lbs in the process.

Musk’s son Nevada Alexander with his long time girl friend and first wife Justine Wilson died of Sudden Infant Death Syndrome (SIDS) at the age of 10 weeks in May 2002.  Having to witness his  own child dying is a horrible experience but Musk never made a mention about this.

Ventures

Musk envisaged “Mars Oasis’ a project to grow plant on Mars soil. He met couple of companies in Russia who rejected his proposal. After six month he again visited Russia and this time he was offered a deal for $8 million for a rocket, which Musk though was too expensive.  Therefore, Musk created his own company to make affordable rockets and SpaceX came into existence.

His next project was Tesla Motors a company aimed to produce cost efficient electric cars and after initial failure his car received great review for its performance.

His style

Musk in his own words has once said that if things are not failing you are not innovating enough. He learnt the trick of the trade to fail successfully the hard way.  He manages three companies and five children. At this juncture, we might not know what is still left within him to evolve and develop

On the flip side… Oh! Sorry. The Personal side of Kiran Bedi – PART 1

Personal side of Kiran Bedi - Part 1

Childhood and Education

Kiran Bedi was born on 9th June 1949 in Amristar into a Punjabi business family.  She was the second child of Prakash Lal and Prem Latha. She has three sisters Shashi, Reeta and Anu.  Bedi’s upbringing was not religious she was brought up in both Hindu and Sikh traditions.  Her father helped with the family’s textile business and also played tennis. Bedi’s grandfather Muni Lal controlled the family business and gave an allowance to Bedi’s father.  But when he enrolled his elder daughter Shashi in Sacred Heart Convent School, Amristar; Muni Lal opposed his granddaughter being educated in a Christian school.  However, Prakash Lal declared financial independence and went ahead and enrolled all his daughters in the same school including Kiran Bedi. Kiran graduated in 1968 with BA (honours) in English.  The same year she won the NCC Cadet Officer Award.  Later she obtained mater’s degree in political science.  After that, she earned a law degree and a PhD from IIT Delhi.

Table Tennis Career

Influenced by her father kiran played tennis from the tender age of Nine.  As a teenager she cut her hair short as it interfered with her game. She has won many awards including national championship.  She was eligible for entry to the Wimbledon Junior championship but was not nominated by the Indian administration

Twitter vs Koo

Twitter vs Koo

Whether people like it or hate it ….. The talk of the town is about ‘KOO’. The micro blogging site is gaining momentum. It’s a version of Twitter or to say an answer to Twitter has got  some prominent followers like Minister Ravi Shankar Prasad, Madhya Pradesh Chief Minister Shivraj Singh Chauhan, Piyush Goyal, Isha Foundation’s Jaggi Vasudev , Anil Kumble etc etc. Koo got it’s lime light after Twitter got engaged with scuffle with Indian Government over the blocking of accounts linked to the farmer’s protest.

Koo is available as a website and the app can be downloaded from IOS and Google play store. It works just like twitter and it gives option to link it facebook and linkedin. Launched 10 months ago as part of India’s Aatma Nirbhar Bharat App Innovation Challenge. PM Narendra Modi also encouraged Indians to use the Koo app in ‘Mann Ki Baat”.

The mind behind the app is Koo’s co-founder CEO Aprameya Radhakrishna.  He previously founded ride-hailing firm ‘TaxiForSure and later sold it to Ola for $200 million in 2016

Companies and individuals will be fined for using the cryptocurrency – DRAFT LAW

cryptocurrency bitcoin

Bill to set the ground for Reserve Bank of India (RBI) to come out with it’s own digital currency.

Corporates and individuals are unlikely to be allowed to buy Tesla and part with unaccounted cash in cryptocurrencies.  If the proposed new bill by the government is cleared by parliament. The draft bill will propose a complete ban on all private cryptocurrencies that is valued for being untraceable. The bill also will make way for the official digital currency which will be regulated by Reserve Bank of India.

Nearly 7 million Indian hold cryptocurrencies worth over $1 billion and there has been over 700 per cent increase in the last year, according to official estimates.

Here is Good News…. Israel’s COVID DRUG on the anvil

COVIDDRUG ISREAL

Israeli’s Coronavirus medicine has got the prime minister’s consent to go ahead with testing as the drug would come a long way for the poor countries who don’t have access to vaccines.  Tel Aviv’s Ichilov Medical Center calls this a major stand point, saying that Prof. Nadir Arber’s EXO-CD24 inhaled medicine had been administered to 30 patients whose conditions were moderate or worse, and all 30 recovered — 29 of them within three to five days.

This medicine fights the cytokine storm — a potentially lethal immune overreaction to the coronavirus infection that is believed to be responsible for much of the deaths associated with this disease.

The Note from Musk has set the Base of Bitcoin parFuming

bitcoin tesla

Cryptocurrency is spiralling up since March 2020 low and it has gained 1150 per cent subsequently.  Bitcoin’s price jumped sharply to an all-time high after Musk let Tesla revealed a big stake in the cryptocurrency and said it would start accepting payments in the digital coin for its products …. Tesla’s stake in bitcoin “will have a ripple effect across corporation around the global” Five years back the currency was trading only for a few hundred dollars but now it’s inching towards $50,000.

VK Sasikala – Once a kingmaker. Will she be a Maker or a Breaker?

VK SASIKALA AIADMK

The disruption over her homecoming marked with so much of speculations. Clad in her green colour saree like the late CM Jayalalitha may be to reiterate that the mantle is still on her. This goes without saying as she is also flying the party’s flag on her car. After being expelled from the position of party chief by the present CM E Palaniswami, the man she handpicked as Chief Minister as part of the reward to comply with her vision and to overturn O Paneersalvam the present Deputy CM.  It’s perceived that she may claim her grounds.  But her modus operandi people keep contemplating.

Tamilnadu is awaiting a great shakening.  Let’s wait and watch what’s getting withered and what is going to stand firm at the wake of this shakening. The acid test is here to pass.