Anamazing Story on Steve Jobs. Our most beloved Indternet Czar of all times who has given so much to the community that 100 thanksgiving are also less. Now we are hoping that some day we will get an announcement from some News Agency about the launch of  ”i-Car” , the thing that most of the car makers are missing would be taken care by steve jobs some day and all of us would dream to buy it.. Here is an interesting story about

15 very less known facts about Steve Jobs from Online Schools which you would certainly love to know.

Steve Jobs Less Known facts

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WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange has agreed to write an autobiography, which should net him around $1.3 million.

In an interview with the Sunday Times (subscription required), Assange revealed that the book will be published in the UK as well as the U.S. He would receive $800,000 from U.S. publisher Alfred A. Knopf, a unit of Random House, and £325,000 ($502,000) from UK publisher Canongate Books Ltd.

A spokesman for Random House confirmed the deal, but not the amount. “We are very excited to be publishing this book. The work that Assange has been doing at WikiLeaks has tremendous importance around the world,” he said.

Assange’s motives for writing an autobiography are quite clear: he needs the money. “I don’t want to write this book, but I have to. I have already spent £200,000 for legal costs and I need to defend myself and to keep WikiLeaks afloat,” Assange told the Sunday Times.

After WikiLeaks came into possession of and started publishing more than 250,000 secret U.S. government cables, the site and its founder have had a great deal of costly problems. The site has been battered by DDoS attacks and was refused service by several companies, such as PayPal and Amazon. Assange is wanted in Sweden on charges of sex crimes and has been denied service by the Swiss bank PostFinance

In a Candid Interview with Dennis Crowley we learned so many great things about him. He is certainly here to stay in the silicon valley, we wish him all the luck.

Dennis:
My name is Dennis Crowley. I am the co-founder of foursquare, a New York based startup that builds mobile products that help make cities easier to use and the world more interesting to explore.

I’ve been working in the startup space for awhile. I’ve worked for a couple of other startups that did mobile stuff that overlapped and tried to make cities easier to navigate. I also used to run a project called Dodgeball which was one of the very early mobile social services. We brought that to Google in 2005 and worked on it for a couple of years.

The project just kind of went away and Google ended up turning it off. After Google turned it off, we decided that we would build something different, maybe a little smarter, something that would work better on iPhones and Android devices.

I think some of the motivations behind foursquare are kind of selfish. We build things primarily that make it easier for us to meet up with our friends. How do you take a Wednesday when you don’t have any plans and suddenly you have something to do? How do you take a lousy party on Saturday night and create software that surfaces up the next best thing to do?

We’re taking baby steps to solve some of those problems. Like social coordination and what to do, what’s interesting in Omaha. This is my first time here in Omaha. I’m a little disappointed that foursquare should be better at telling me the things to do. We don’t do that yet but we’re working on it. So I’m hoping the next time I come to visit Chicago or San Francisco, foursquare is actively prescribing experiences for me to seek out.

Tim:
What one piece of advice would you give to someone, like yourself, who has that drive to create and make change? What one piece of advice would you give to succeed in that?

Dennis:
I have to give this talk tomorrow and I’m kind of struggling with what the talk should be about because everyone here is a fantastic speaker. I think the whole theme of the talk will be about the past 10 years and how I’ve been having people telling me the things I’m working on are bad ideas and not interesting and no one’s going to use them. If you believe it enough yourself, you just keep going for it.

It’s really productive to get feedback from people, except when the feedback is “this is a stupid idea.” If you’re really passionate about it and you feel like there’s a place in the world for the stuff you’re thinking about, you should just try it and see what comes out of it.

That’s really the way I think about it. I was building stuff in 2000 and people thought it was dumb. I kept adding to it, we brought it to Google, they shut it down. We thought maybe that means it’s a bad idea but we still wanted to do it…we’re just constantly hammering away at things we personally find interesting. We find that when we do that, other people usually find the same stuff interesting.

Someone was asking the panel “have you experienced any failure in your career?” My whole career has been one failure after the next. The failure is when you pivot and you start working on something else. When the Dodgeball stuff didn’t work out at Google, I personally took it as a failure. But now, with two or three years hindsight, I’m thinking we learned a lot from that experience, we learned what was wrong with Dodgeball and tried to fix it. We’re still passionate about the same ideas and we’re just going at it and just taking a second take at it.

It’s like when you write a paper in college and the first draft sucks, the second draft is better, and the third draft is the one you end up turning. Instead of doing that over the course of a weekend, I spent ten years writing the same paper.

Tim:
Is foursquare the one you’re turning in, is it another draft, or are you just playing it by ear?

Dennis:
I don’t know, I’m pretty happy with the way this one’s going. But there’s so much more that we want to do with it. It’s hard to get to all the things we’re really excited about. There’s just two many of them. Ask me again in a year or so. I want to take everything that I’ve ever dreamed of building, ten years of dreams and product ideas, and cram them into foursquare.

There are lots of problems to be solved. You have all these people, places, things to do, and I’m constantly thinking of ways to make cities more efficient. When you think about all the data feeds and maps and things we can do on mobile phones now, there’s this huge opportunity to make things that really change the way that people explore and experience the world.

When Jimmy Wales launched Wikipedia in 2001, many thought he was laying the foundation for disaster.  Some even felt the whole concept was borderline insane.

“A public encyclopedia that anyone can write and edit, even without being logged in?!  And this concoction will serve as the sum of all human knowledge! Madness!” the critics wailed.

Today, it’s hard to imagine life without Wikipedia, which has blossomed into the 7th most popular website in the world¹ and inspired the creation of some 2.8 million articles on the English version of the site alone.  Recently, Jimmy “Jimbo” Wales was kind enough to feed my questions about the Wikimedia Foundation’s goals, likely future, and ballooning cultural relevance.  I also gave him an opportunity to respond to Wikipedia’s “professional troublemakers”–er critics.

How do you think Wikipedia will evolve as technology evolves?  Can you foresee, by say 2020, a way for Wikipedians to create editable, interactive videos about a topic?

I think we’ll see a lot of advances in video.  One of the things I like to point out is that Wikipedia is a social innovation, not a technical innovation.  All the tools necessary to create Wikipedia existed in 1995 when Ward Cunningham invented the wiki editing concept.  Webserver, web browser, database, wiki.

What technologies already exist today for collaborative video editing that no one has created the social structures to use?

Well, having said that, I will also say that words are far more fluid than video, and always will be.  If I don’t quite like what you have written, I can adjust it slightly until we are both satisfied.  But once a video has been shot, there is a very limited set of things that can be done about it.

British-American author Andrew Keen, the self-described antichrist of Silicon Valley, gets a kick out of regularly blasting Wikipedia. I watched your February 2008 debate with Keen, and I agreed with some of Keen’s points, but I found his fixation on the length of Wikipedia articles to be a bit odd.  He pointed out that the Harry Potter article is longer than the Hamlet article, and because Hamlet is more historically significant, this somehow represents a shortcoming in Wikipedia.  Do you find his logic lacking?

I don’t think the words “Andrew Keen” and “logic” generally belong in the same sentence.  No, I’m just teasing!

I actually agree with _some_ of Keen’s points, as would any thinking person. But the overall thrust of his argument is not compelling to me.

Regarding the question of the length of Wikipedia entries, I don’t find the argument compelling at all.  Wiki is not paper, and it isn’t as if we “cut” the Hamlet entry in order to make more room for “Harry Potter”.  And I rather suspect that Keen would agree with me when I say that I wouldn’t find it a very good idea to push the Potter fans to write about Hamlet.

Some criticisms about Wikipedia entries of various lengths is actually misplaced simply due to how we slice-and-dice the world.  It is likely that our entry on “China” is shorter than our entry on “Harry Potter” too.  But that’s more because we have a short overview article on “China” and then break out specific topics into separate articles.

What happens normally is that when one entry gets too long, people will naturally want to break it up.  I have been told that Britannica’s entry on “World War II” is more than 100 pages long.  (I haven’t checked.) Wikipedia’s entry is much shorter, but our overall coverage of World War II is much more in-depth than Britannica.  It’s just that in the medium of HTML on the web, it makes little sense to force the reader to download a 100 page document.  Better to give them 5-10 pages in a chunk, with lots of hyperlinks and timelines to help them navigate thousands of pages of detailed material.

When I was a student at Ohio State, I had Wikipedia co-founder Larry Sanger as a philosophy professor.  Sanger had a policy that if you used Wikipedia as a source on a paper, you would receive an automatic five point deduction. Do you think Wikipedia is reliable enough at this stage to pass as a source on an academic paper?

I would do the same thing if I were teaching a course at a university. I would also deduct 5 points for citing Britannica.  This is simply not the proper role for an encyclopedia, no matter how good, in the research process.  A high quality encyclopedia is a starting point, giving us broad background knowledge and helping us to firmly and correctly fill in gaps, not an original source.  The right thing to do is to quickly read the Wikipedia entry to get your bearings, and then go read the original sources.

Do you still dispute Sanger’s designation as Wikipedia’s co-founder?

I think the whole debate is silly.  Ironically, I think Larry is given too little credit for his role in the early days of Wikipedia as the “editor-in-chief” of the project (his actual title).  He was an employee working fully under my direction with no ownership interest of any kind.

Wikia.com, another of your projects, gives people an opportunity to create and develop their own special-interest wiki communities. The site now boasts over 800,000 articles and some 200,000 registered users.  Is Wikia’s growth on pace with your expectations?

Yes, although we’re much bigger than 800,000 articles and 200,000 registered users.  We’ve been growing at a similar pace to Wikipedia, but being 3 years younger, we are 3 years smaller.  I think we’re just now beginning to enter the broader public consciousness, as Neilsen just named us as the 5th fastest growing community site.

Larry Sanger, now the Editor-and-Chief of Citizendium, takes jabs at Wikipedia on a Citizendium page titled Why Citizendium? He writes, “Wikipedia is full of serious problems. Many of the articles are written amateurishly. Too often they are mere disconnected grab-bags of factoids, not made coherent by any sort of narrative.”  Do you see any flaws in Citizendium’s model, and what do you think of Sanger’s decision to critique Wikipedia in what essentially is Citizendium’s sales pitch?

I think Larry’s right on that particular point, and this is a flaw of Wikipedia.  I don’t know if Citizendium (which I haven’t studied in depth) corrects for this or not.

One thing that happens at Wikipedia, particularly on controversial articles, is that the editors get really focused on sentence-by-sentence work on neutrality and factual accuracy.  That’s a great thing.  But what can get lost in the down-and-dirty search for those things is “flow” or what Larry once termed “Brilliant Prose”.

Usually, though, after a period of intense debate resulting in a neutral compromise version of an article that is unfortunately choppy in style, is that some thoughtful good writer who has no stake in the controversy will come in and work gently to make the article more readable.  Such people are the unsung heroes of the information revolution.

In 2007, Wikipedia decided to add no-follow tags to all of its external links. This drew the ire of some and sparked the creation of anti-Wikipedia wordpress plugins that automatically turn all the Wikipedia links on a person’s blog to nofollow.  Has the community’s decision to place no-follow tags around external links kept out spam, and do you think Wikipedia would ever decide to flip the switch back?

I was opposed to the change, and only reluctantly agreed to it after Matt Cutts of Google recommended it.  I am still not sure it is the right answer.  After all, Wikipedia prides itself on public service, and our external links are generally quite carefully vetted.

On the other hand, it is also true than when we were not using ‘nofollow’ we had a bigger problem with skeevy “SEO” experts doing everything they could to get Wikipedia links.  Even today, of course, a link in Wikipedia can drive a significant amount of traffic so we have to deal with inappropriate self-promotion.  But my vague sense is that the troubles have declined.

I don’t know of any pressure within the community to flip the switch back.

Apparently you sat at a long dinner table with Mahalo CEO Jason Calacanis at Wikimania in 2006, and during this dinner, Calacanis “begged you” (his words) to sell ads on Wikipedia.  He claimed that if you put a leaderboard up, Wikipedia would generate over $100 million a year.  He later offered a more modest revenue proposal, one that involved putting a search box on the Wikipedia.  He estimated this would make $6 million a year, which is ironic considering $6 million is what you raised last year via charitable donations.  Can you ever envision a scenario in which the Wikipedia community would agree to put ads on the site, especially in light of the fact that it met its $6 million donation goal last year?

Actually, I sat next to Jason, but I didn’t know who he was.  Afterwards, when he published his post about the dinner, I didn’t really remember him.  I regret saying so publicly, because this seems to have hurt Jason’s feelings. I was exhausted that evening, and the fault was entirely mine.

The thing is, lots and lots of people propose that Wikipedia should accept ads.  And it is not an unreasonable position.  I am opposed to it, but I am actually a moderate about it.

I think there is a set of circumstances in which the Wikipedia community would accept ads, but we are nowhere near it and I personally hope we never get there.  But, time will tell.

My view is that we should all – not just me, not just the board, not just the current community – but everyone who thinks of themselves as a citizen of the Internet, a citizen of the world – we should all think about Wikipedia as part of the infrastructure of the world, not a competitor in the Internet space, not just a website, but something deeper, cultural, and potentially of value to everyone.

As such, we should think about the long run – not the next quarter, not the next year, not the next 5 years.  What about 50 years?  What about 100 years?  What’s best for the world in the long run?

We desperately need to make sure that everyone on the planet has access to high quality information.  We are on a small and crowded planet that will get more crowded in this century.  We need to live together in peace and productivity.  We need to take individual rights seriously. We need to have political decisions that are rational and fact-based.

We need to have cultural and joy and art and love.

These are heavy responsibilities for us all.  And slapping a “leaderboard” on Wikipedia to bring in short-term revenue might not be the best plan.  (Or it might.  But we need to think like adults about it.)

Regarding your dinner with Calacanis, you wrote on your blog that “there were some very much more interesting people at the dinner.”   Have you and Calacanis patched things up, and do you admire, to some degree, Jason’s ability to get a rise out of people through what some call brilliant performance art?

I have come to admire Jason over time, and I very much regret and apologize for that blog post.

Jason and I are very different people.  He’s competitive, I’m collaborative.  He tries to get a rise out of people on a daily basis (and I hope he doesn’t take offense at that) and I try to be soothing and supportive.  But this means that when I throw someone “under the bus” (his phrase, not mine), it resonates deeply, whereas random statements by Jason don’t have as much impact.  So it’s really bad when I make a mistake like that.

Will it be harder or easier for you to reach a $6 million donation goal in 2009?

Since traffic is growing (according to Comscore) by 4% per month still, I think it will be easier to reach $6 million since we will be 66% larger in terms of reach by next fundraiser as compared to last fundraiser.

On the other hand, I suppose everyone is watching with nervousness about the financial crisis!

You’ve set a tone that Wikipedia has a much deeper responsibility to the world than to act, simply, as a giant encyclopedia.  In what ways do you think Wikipedia will permanently change the fabric of humanity?

Well, if we do our job right, we will be a positive change for the world.  Wikipedia will be a little bit dry, a little bit uncontroversial, but a place where people of all stripes turn for clear explanations and information that allows them to have more difficult debates in a rational and evidence-based manner.

Did you catch this CollegeHumor.com satire of Wikipedia?  Did you find it amusing?

Hilarious!

I’d like to see a roundtable discussion involving you, Andrew Keen, Jason Calacanis, Noam Chomsky, and Ron Paul.  55 minutes into the discussion, a thunderous gong would go off and a mystery guest would emerge and immediately inject himself into the conversation.  As odd as this sounds, I am 100% serious about one day setting this up. There’s no doubt a video of the event would serve as tremendous linkbait–quite an interesting collection of people. Would you participate in this roundtable discussion if your airfare was paid for?

Yes, gladly.  What an interesting set of characters.

You can follow Jimmy Wales on Twitter at @Jimmy_Wales and read his blog atblog.jimmywales.com.

Alok Kejriwal is a serial entrepreneur who founded his first venture Contests2win.com as a contest promotion website in 1998. His second venture Mobile2win was acquired by Walt Disney in China and Norwest Ventures in India. Kejriwal’s other ventures include interactive agency Media2win, gaming site Games2win.com and digital creative agency C2W Digital. In an interview , Kejriwal talks about his entrepreneurial journey and gives us insights about the internet industry in India.

What was your inspiration behind becoming an internet entrepreneur in India?

I come from an affluent background and hence money was never a motivation. I think the motivation was the Marwari family setup having a lot of businesses of its own. In any Marwari family, the legacy business is always over-run by people and not under-run. My father had a business of his own and also had two uncles involved in it. So, you can call it concealed employment.

With me there were problems in the state of affairs I was growing up. Firstly, I was not exposed to the real world because of too much comfort and too much of business created around me, and secondly, I couldn’t get along with my father and brothers. So, both drove me to think that I should have a business of my own. But the watershed was the corruption and bureaucracy involved in the business of manufacturing. My father runs a hosiery factory in South Mumbai and every day I used to see about two to three inspectors coming there for bribes. So, mentally I was pained to think that I will have to do the same thing for the rest of my life. Hence, I wanted to do something new.

And finally, Sabeer Bhatia [The Hotmail founder who sold his web-based email service to Microsoft for $400 million in December 1997] happened to the world. Whether now people like him or not, we don’t care, but in 1997-98, he was considered to be God’s gift to mankind who liberated people like me. Through that acquisition, he made us realise and believe that something in the non-manufacturing and non-brick-and-mortar business can create more value than your family has ever created in 100 years. So, that is what made me try out entrepreneurial ventures on the internet.

Walk us through the story of your entrepreneurial journey of launching Contests2win.com and eventually the entire 2win group.

I always believe that one creates a business when there is an opportunity of creating this. The philosophy is to spot problems and figure out whether they are good enough to become large businesses. At that time (1997-98) everybody in India was running contests which were nothing but advertisements in the disguise of a prize so that the consumers pay attention. But the process of getting a response was very poor. Postcards were supposed to be sent to PO Box offices, on TV the contest would play out for 28 seconds and in two seconds they would tell you where to send in the responses. So, they were pretending not to care for you. I found that to be an irritant and thought whether we can create a digital warehouse of promotions and competitions.

My moment of truth came twice at Unilever (Hindustan Unilever). First time when we went to them with the idea, the brand owner of Annapurna (Annapurna Atta) asked me, “What’s the internet?”. I almost fainted because, if Hindustan Lever, who at that time, used to spend about Rs 1 crore a day on advertising — today, they spend about Rs 3 crore — doesn’t know internet, I am dead. On another instance, a brand manager of Liril told me that in this factory we create soaps and not contests. So, if you want us to run a contest, you create contests and bring them to us. So, I had to reinvent my concept time and again. But it has always been that brands like consumers; consumers like prizes and hence, brands like prizes. That is the triangle and if you can spin it in a way that people keep coming back, it works.

Contests2win was an idea in the late 1990s and early 2000s. Since then India has gone through the evolution with people asking, “Do we have enough time to spend on contests trying to win prizes?”. Then the movement went on to the mobile phone, which you always carry with you. At that time the Indian Idol was the biggest contest on TV, after KBC (Kaun Banega Crorepati). But in KBC you could only watch one person winning and not participate, while with the Indian Idol, one could be a winner with their idols. So, we powered the mobile contest of the Indian Idol, and thus started Mobile2win.

As we had broken even in the dot com period itself around 1999-2000, our investors SoftBank and News Corp asked us to bring the concept to China. In China, you can’t rest easy after buying a spot in one television channel (resembling the size of Colors in India) because there are at least 25 more channels which have the same magnitude in coverage. This is just because of the size and magnitude of the country. So, we asked those brands to add a layer of contesting in their TV ads and ask the viewers to respond back. Thus the brands could easily get to know if the people are actually watching the ad or not. So, this (Mobile2win) was an interactive solution to the brands in China and that was eventually acquired by Walt Disney.

In a conference, Sam Balsara (who is currently chairman and managing director of Madison World) once told me that in television, there is no more space to put advertisements and digital is the only solution. Hence, a thought came to my mind that if so and so is saying this; why not create a media agency that is interactive. And hence, Media2win was formed. So, there has always been a cause and effect feeling related.

Again in 2005-06, I saw that gaming had become very popular. Every kid would spend a good amount of time playing those stupid games. Moreover, a lot of creativity was spent in appealing that animal which was definitely not you and me. So, gaming had to go mass and it was almost a prerogative of Electronic Arts or Sony that we only could manufacture games. I felt that gaming has a great consumer wave as it could create involvement and engagement. And if you create it digitally, everyone will play it. Thus, Games2win was setup.

Contests2win was launched at a time when internet was not popular in India? What challenges did you face in convincing various brands to partner with you in launching contests on internet?

There were a lot of challenges. First, internet was not understood my many brands and I feel, even today, it is still not understood by half of the brands. Here the brand owners do not know that if they make a car, they need to have a tyre. They don’t realise that they should be on internet. The second challenge was getting good employees. After the dot com bust, I met people who agreed to work for me under a condition that we should remove the dot com word from the visiting card because their family felt that dot com is a failing business. So, there was a resistance of understanding the medium. Even today, my family can’t tell my relatives what I do. So, the medium itself is so unclear that it makes a very tough business for us to be in. Financing in India has also been a major problem. For a dot com to get financed in the Silicon Valley is very easy but in India people would rather finance a cement factory than a dot com. So, converting the so-called financers into risk takers was not easy as it needed patience.

I believe that India is a land of digital Tsunami. Everything happens here at the same time. Mobile phone in India came along with internet, DTH, WiFi and radio; whereas in the US, every wave took 10 years to establish. Satellite TV came 50 years ago; then came VCR, TV, colour TV and then internet came. Now, they (the people in US) are learning how to text (SMS), something we have been doing for the last eight years. So, every industry in the US has been through a decade to grow, establish and monetise before another guy came over. But in India, everything happened between 1999 and 2005 and so nobody got the chance to create something deep.

It is not easy to create ‘invested branding’ in India because the results take long-term to come. Only Coke has the guts to create a ‘chhoti chhoti boond’ concept, but why can’t Dabur create the same? Because they are so short-termist in their view of ROI (return on investment) that they want to do sales driven advertising. And that is not Dabur’s fault; rather it is the market where the mentality is ‘invest today and get the return tomorrow.’

How tough was it to get consumers adopting the online platform?

Indian consumers are always ready to take new concepts. The beauty about this market is that the people are always ready to try new things. In Japan, the average age is 55 and you can’t try anything new there. Everything has been tried out. But India is a young and vibrant market. But spending money on getting the consumer is not something that is advisable in India. Here, if you are spending money on the consumer you better have something to sell to him on the spot, or else you are dead. The challenge with Indian consumers is in making them adopt. It took 10 years for Barista and Café Coffee Day to make Indians drink coffee. But these companies have never advertised, rather they have been there on the consumer’s face.

What kind of traffic does Contests2win get, and what has been the growth rate of the site in terms of revenue?

I would rather reveal the numbers of the entire group because we have so many interests together that identifying the traffic of individual sites won’t help anybody. So, as a group we have shifted a lot of our content to Games2win because they are game based contests. Besides, we have two new sites called Chimpoo.com for kids and GangofGamers.com. So, if you look at the comScore numbers, we get around 5 million unique visitors per month on our group portals. And outside the Contests2win network, we get around 10 to 20 million unique visitors. So, we cater to around 15 to 20 million users every month and out of that 5 to 7 per cent of users are from India and the rest come from other countries. So, the large per cent of our audiences are still external.

The revenue has always been advertising driven so far. So, the challenge has been to get the revenue recur once and again. Given the entire group’s business which includes Media2win, Contests2win and Games2win, last year (2008-09) we closed at Rs 25 crore and this year (2009-10) we hope to close it around Rs 30 crore.

In 2006, Mobile2win’s China arm was acquired by The Walt Disney Internet Group; and in 2009, the company’s Indian operations were merged with Altruist. Any specific reason for moving out of the mobile business?

Here is an interesting story. Actually in 2006, after Walt Disney acquired Mobile2win China, Norwest Venture Partners (NVP) acquired my stake in Mobile2win India. So actually, I was not involved with Mobile2win India after 2006. I was personally bought out and the company was run by NVP, Nexus India Capital, Rajiv Hiranandani, Tushar Shah and Gopala Krishnan. So, we really got lucky in 2006 as we were acquired twice. Moreover, in 2006, I saw a very dark cloud on the mobile VAS (value added service) horizon. We were going to mobile operators and they were treating us like dogs outside the restaurant; when we were taking content to them, they treated as if it was no big deal; we were paid our dues after six to seven months. So, I found something wrong in the business model. Taking somebody’s content to somebody else and trying to make money out of it is not a sustainable business model. There was no value addition we were creating. Today, we create games and we also create audiences along with it. So, I got out of the mobile business and one paid me lots of money to get out of this, which is like an ultimate fantasy.

How do you plan to unlock the value of your group companies? Do you see yourself exiting your businesses as you did with Mobile2win, or is there any plan for an IPO?

In our kind of businesses, a revenue of Rs 25-30 crore is not an IPO-able business. Today, the Dalal Street speaks about companies with revenues of Rs 500 crore and more. As of now, I do not have an IPO-able business at hand. Moreover, in India, we are over fascinated by IPO. Everything is either IPO or a failure. But the actual success is liquidity. If the business can grow from Rs 10 crore to Rs 20 crore and get liquidity in terms of acquisition, it is also an IPO. One should look at IPOs in being private IPOs and public IPOs. Private IPO means exchange of a business with incremental value and I don’t think public IPO is the answer to everything. Google went IPO because they had to go IPO and their investors dragged them, but Google founders didn’t want to go IPO. So, IPO is a very difficult animal, as once you go IPO, your entire vision is only quarter to quarter. The Wall Street laughs at you if you say your plans are for two years. They want QoQ (quarter-on-quarter) results. It is a curse to tell yourself that I will go IPO. The bottom-line of any business is to create value for your employees and investors.

However, there are two ways to exit the business. Everything is not about strategic sale and acquisition. Some very good businesses can be created if the people and who run that business are enriched by salary and job satisfaction. Having said that, the investors who come in should be retired. As long as you give them their rewards and still manage to run a business, everybody is very happy. So, it is a myth that every business in the internet is successful only when it gets acquired. Before the internet came, people made businesses that lasted for 200 years.

Before Walt Disney bought Mobile2win China, they showed us a 30 or 40 page slideshow depicting how they would have run the business if they were the owners. After seeing that, we realised they could run the business better than us. So, when you see that somebody else can take the business to a completely new orbit, which is when you sell the business. What would Hotmail be without Microsoft? What would YouTube be without Google? So, businesses need to be acquired by people who can create value around the existing business.

C2W Digital is a new entity. How do you expect the business to be in the coming fiscal and what are your future plans for taking it to the next level?

C2W Digital is a passion business that has been drawn out of a team within Contests2win who love to do businesses with brands. We felt that Contests2win was always perceived as a contesting and promoting business where people come, participate and win prizes. This was actually making a wrong conception about the entire business which also serves as a digital agency. So, we carved it (the agency part) out and gave it to Gaurav Sharma to run. He has a 15 to 20 people team. Now, the client also feels that C2W Digital is a separate business of creating digital communications. I have always driven inspiration from Music Television which later became MTV. Now, MTV is not a channel that runs stupid music all throughout. So for me, Contests2win was C2W Digital always.

On the games business, we are going to embark on very serious social games on Facebook where consumers will hopefully pay us money. 2010 is the year we break out of trying to collect money only from brands and go after consumers. Zynga (the creator of FarmVille social game) has already proven that there are lots of money that consumers are ready to spend for a virtual tractor and virtual animals. We believe that given Games2win’s international visitors, we have the population of going after that.

Can internet be regarded as a good place for brand building? How can we get offline brands to spend more on internet?

The answer should be what kind of brands you are trying to sell. For instance, some days back I wanted to buy a pen drive and landed in a shop in Gurgaon that sells peripherals. But I couldn’t relate to any of the brands there. So, if you want to drive a pen drive business in India, internet would be the only medium to be on. As the market grows, more and more brand building will happen on the internet in India. Currently, the market is 40 million unique visitors and not 400 million. For 40 million, the obvious brands suitable for online advertising are those that thrive on the internet. Logitech is pretty much built on the internet. But as that 40 million grows to become 80 million, more and more brands will be able to create a buzz on this medium.

For FMCG (fast moving consumer goods) brands, today, internet can serve as a reminder medium. If Coke launches a new flavour, they can’t build it on the internet as the population is not there. I am not saying that the medium is not capable, but the population is absent. Outside India, brands do get built on the internet. Volkswagen’s new Beetle was launched on the internet; McDonald’s is switching all its money to the internet; movies are being released on the internet worldwide; but in India with this many (40 million) online people, you can’t build a brand on this medium.

Display advertising is where the big money is; big money is not in leads generation as they don’t make much sense to FMCG brands, which happen to be the big ticket advertisers. And online display will increase as more people adopt the internet medium. Display means to see, not to do. So, you have to grow the internet population and that is the job of the government and the entrepreneurs.

I have not met a single entrepreneur who is interested in making a dedicated sport website or dedicated women website in India. It might be because these websites don’t attract enough people and advertisers. But the entrepreneurs fail to understand that if you don’t create it, you can’t grow the audience. Orkut attracts 17 million unique visitors in India because they found a niche that people want. BigAdda and Ibibo have the biggest de-growth in the last four years because the Facebook and Orkut combination has eaten up all their lunch and dinner.

Which is the last finance vertical that you have heard of do well on the internet? MoneyControl does it because they own a TV channel, but apart from that there is nobody creating an online finance vertical today. Similarly, there is no medical vertical in India today. There is also no good car site in the country. Somewhere this is also because of the Digital Tsunami. Entrepreneurs say that there are 500 million users on mobile, but the reality is that only two million people access GPRS (internet) on mobile. Most of the 500 million are people who live below the poverty line for the mobile business.

How can the government help in increasing the internet penetration in the country?

The more the government is out of the business, the better, because they mess up everything. They simply do not know how to deregulate. MTNL and BSNL have got the copper in everybody’s home but they don’t know how to deliver broadband. The first thing the government should do is to make broadband free, because the traffic that will be created through this will be much more than the electric pulse that they charge on today. Bandwidth has become like free air today. If broadband is provided free, there will be a huge economy that will evolve around that. IRCTC’s (Indian Railways’ online ticket booking site) bookings will become triple if broadband is made free.

If broadband is provided free by the government, what will happen to the private telecom operators, as the call rate has already become negligible in the country?

Well, in this case, they (the private telecom operators) will have to find out something else. See, India gives free electricity to farmers so that they can farm their lands well. But if you start charging them for the electricity, farming in India will be hampered. Even operators know that you can’t hurt the backbone and the backbone here is voice and not bandwidth.

For instance, if GPRS is made free, the number of mobile internet users will rise from the current 2 million to 20 million and with that, the mobile VAS revenue which is linked with so much to GPRS, will also increase and therefore operators will get much more money. The sachet needs to come in the form of bandwidth. The fact is Hindustan Unilever doesn’t make money on its (shampoo) sachet. It is almost like the free sample you are giving to the consumer so that they get addicted to buy the bottle.

I think mobile internet is going to be the place where the real explosion is going to happen. The combination of internet and mobile will finally happen on the handset and not on the hard device like a PC. Indian houses are cramped and there is hardly any place for the PC and laptop is expensive. However, mobile phone has entered in everybody’s house. So, the combination of mobile phone, a device which is always with you, and internet, as an entertainment medium, will drive the growth of internet in India. The sooner the operators realise it, the sooner will be the nirvana.

What’s next? Is there another new idea in the pipeline?

We are an incubator. We have got money and we incubate different ideas. We have already incubated and sold Mobile2win; are running Contests2win; and Games2win is likely to be acquired this year and I think it will be our largest acquisition so far. My call to every entrepreneur is that you choose a brand owner in the country and I will make you present to him in less than 72 hours. We know all the brand owners in the country and we know the country well. I think we are in a business that will come out in different formats without sticking to one.

Recently, ecommerce has attracted the interests of a number of entrepreneurs. What do you feel about this trend?

I feel it is going to be very tough. India has a hand economy and all the exchanges are done through hands and everything is physical. Tickets have succeeded as an ecommerce category. IRCTC evolved because people do not want to stand in a queue at the station and wait for the ticket and hence go to IRCTC. But in other categories, you get the delivery through a phone call. For example, if I need a whisky bottle at night in Mumbai, I have the number of the guy who will come and deliver the whisky in my house. But in Manhattan, the retailer will laugh at you if you ask him to deliver at home.

There needs to be a reason for ecommerce. In India, it is a crazy co-existence where the richer people live with the poorest of the people in square inches of distance. I think India is the only country where McDonald’s has a home delivery business. So, I am not sure whether an ecommerce initiative will be hugely successful in India at this point of time. Basically, the number of 40 million internet users has to grow and after that everything will grow.

We have noticed that whenever we do a story about your companies, a certain kind of people become hyperactive in our comment section. Have you also noticed such things? Why do you think it happens?

An interesting thing about this country is that we are allergic to failure. From our parents to grandparents, we have been told to do well in school and try to top the class. Our mentality is predominantly to ‘become a government servant’. I don’t come across people who say I tried three things, out of which two failed and I am happy about that. This mentality that you don’t want to fail is the biggest curse of this country. So, in India one must learn to encourage failure. If you see America, that land has been created out of trial and error. There is no ethnicity in USA. Everything that the US has now, got failed in it before it was successfully created again.

A lot of comments that I have come across on your site come from anonymous people. Nobody wants to identify themselves and this is the biggest kind of failure and inferiority complex. Anybody who can’t identify himself on a public blog is not worthy to be printed. I have no problem with whatever you are saying, if you say it openly.

We have been a finger-pointing country. If you read the newspapers, you will always find what wrong things the government has done so far. There will never be an article hailing the government’s achievements. We are a country that always gets high on other people’s mistakes.

One should have respect towards the person at whom the question is pointed and before asking questions the questioner should show what he or she has achieved so far. It should not be like interviewing somebody wearing a Burqa because you might ask an uncomfortable question and get away unidentified.

What would be your advice to internet entrepreneurs?

This is a very complex business and industry to be in. Of late, I have met a number of VCs who have developed an allergy towards consumer internet business because exits are not being visible. So, I think the internet really needs to first perform before it starts getting investments again. Moreover, one should not think that this is a get-rich business. Rather this is a get blood pressure business. Finally, one should not think that funding is going to be easy here. It is not because we are not trying enough but because it is so tough. I go to a lot of IIMs and IITs where young people want to become an entrepreneur. But entrepreneurship is not like a pill that you consume and you become one. Doing business is not everybody’s cup of tea because you might have to face a situation where you are not given any salary for nine months.

Neeraj Roy started his career with the Taj Group of Hotels. After a successful corporate decade, he decided to make a move and went on to establish Hungama.com in 1999. Today, Hungama is the largest aggregator, developer and publisher of Bollywood and South Asian entertainment content in the world. In an email interview , Roy shares experiences of his entrepreneurial journey and his future plans for Hungama.

You began your career with the Taj Group of Hotels and then shifted to a local investment banking firm. How did Hungama happen and what was your idea behind launching the company?

I came to Bombay for my business studies and graduated from Sydenham (Sydenham Institute of Management Studies, Research and Entrepreneurship Education). Thereafter, I worked with the Taj Group of Hotels as marketing manager for South Asia for close to four and half years. Post that, I moved to investment banking with Prime Securities.

While setting up Hungama, the central theme was aimed at establishing a marketing solutions property which was completely geared towards the end consumer. It offered brands a platform for convergence and we positioned Hungama.com as the interface between the consumer and brand. So literally, both entities looked at it as an entertainment destination coupled with promotions.

Since internet was in its nascent stage, we offered brands to come on board without really charging them a service fee. We asked them to partner with us and in turn we would run an interactive promotions campaign for them. And to make this enticing for the consumer, we asked the brands to give us some prizes which could perhaps be their own products, to be given away as gratification to the consumer. Therefore, the idea was to make it a fun site where people can visit and win prizes.

What were the initial challenges you had to face while launching an online company at a time when internet was not popular in India?

During the initial years we found it difficult to convince brands to explore internet as a medium for promotions as the industry was very small. At that point, traditional media formed the genesis of all promotional and branding activities. Therefore, it took us sometime to successfully break-through with brand managers on board.

What was your reason behind acquiring IndiaFM.com in 2000 and renaming it to BollywoodHungama.com?

We were keen to build and grow an online community. IndiaFM.com had a vibrant community. We believed that movies and music content would grow online and synergized well with our entertainment offering at Hungama.com. We renamed it BollywoodHungama.com in 2009 as we were making all our offerings under one brand, Hungama. Thus, GamingHungama.com, Hungama Mobile, Hungama.com etc.

You are among one of those entrepreneurs who survived the infamous Dotcom Bust. What were your survival strategies then and what are the lessons you learnt during that phase?

Fortunately for us, we learnt some important lessons on operating a successful internet business within six-to-nine months of launch. The most important being, we did not go ballistic with advertising on Hungama. Rather, we built the brand through word of mouth. We reached out to the audience on high density net connected hangouts such as malls, colleges and more such locations. We also ensured that we never over-commit to clients. Considering the limitations of the ecosystem, whatever solutions we were trying to offer had a lot of sincerity. These basic policies became the underlining factors that allowed Hungama to dodge the bust.

Hungama Mobile was started at a time when mobile had probably not picked up as a device for consuming entertainment content. What were the initial challenges that you had to encounter?

There were very few platforms of size and scale for consumption of entertainment content. Whilst we started with Text, Imagery and Video content, it was music that gave us the maximum traction. Services such as Caller Tunes, Ring Tones etc were on the rise and Hungama did well in consolidating the content offering. Today, we work with over 305 original content owners in more than 25 languages globally.

What was your objective behind launching GamingHungama.com? How has the business been performing since launch?

Gaming is one of the fastest growing segments online. Hungama has been into gaming since early 2000. Several of our early e-promotions were actually AdverGames and we have built over 350 casual online and mobile games as a company. We founded GamingHungama.com in 2007 as a standalone destination site. The journey thus far has been satisfactory although the real inflection in gaming will come in 2011.

Recently, the company announced a new corporate identity and became Hungama Digital Media Entertainment from being Virtual Marketing. What was the objective behind changing the identity?

Since the launch of Hungama, significant changes have taken place in the digital marketing ecosystem. Our offerings have evolved and therefore, we identified the need to position ourselves as the preferred partner for all things digital. Also, since our products are focussed entirely towards the end consumer, we decided to refurbish our identity as a young and vibrant brand that offers unlimited entertainment. This change not only reflects our diversified businesses but it also retains the Hungama ethos of innovation and quirky irreverence. As thought leaders in the digital and mobile entertainment space, we constantly strive to give our partners new opportunities in the field of Entertainment and Marketing with the digital media. In many ways, the change in our identity is not just a change, but a reiteration of our core values and excellence in the field.

Hungama.com is now a digital music store and it comes after you launched a similar portal in partnership with BSNL. How is Hungama.com different from BSNL.Hungama.com?

Hungama.com is a digital entertainment store that offers entertainment across categories such as music, ringtones, videos, dialogues, wallpapers and much more. At Hungama.com, consumers have an option of choosing from different price plans which comprise of both DRM protected and MP3 formats. Hungama.com also offers an option of accessing and managing your favourite entertainment through Hungama MyPlay application on the mobile and PC. Users across operators can access Hungama.com on their mobile and enjoy unlimited entertainment on the go.

Besides your own brands, you also have a digital entertainment network which includes Raaga.com, DailyMotion.com, FTV.com, IndiaGlitz.com and Nautanki.tv. Can you please explain what sort of partnerships you have with these properties and how are they functioning?

As you have rightly pointed, these websites form a part of the Digital Entertainment Network (DEN) at Hungama. DEN comprises of Asia’s most visited websites ranging from entertainment, music, lifestyle and more. This digital distribution network allows us to reach across mobile, online and IPTV services. Collectively, these websites are the largest digital entertainment network. Various brands can use the DEN platform to create innovative promotional campaigns that reach out to the end users.

Who is Hungama partnering with in the international and the Indian arena for mobile and internet content?

As per recent developments, Hungama has partnered with EMI Music for the digital distribution of their catalogue in India, Pakistan, Sri Lanka and Bangladesh. This association also allows us to access Warner Music’s catalogue. Recently, we also announced a strategic partnership with T-Series and Big Music, where we will be jointly steering the physical and digital distribution of Big Music’s catalogue across the world. Additionally, we also have partnerships with Universal Music and Sony Pictures. In the Indian hemisphere, we have partnerships with T-Series, Yash Raj Films, Eros etc. These partnerships allow us to distribute their content on internet, mobile, DTH and other digital platforms.

How many content partners are you working with right now and in how many countries are the content distributed?

We are currently working with 305 plus content partners and this content is distributed to consumers in 37 countries.

How has the economic slowdown affected Hungama?

Fortunately, the areas of operations for Hungama, such as mobile and online services continue to grow.

What are Hungama’s major plans for the next 2 years? Are you planning an IPO?

We see Hungama at the forefront of Digital Entertainment globally with a distribution network crossing 100 locations with over 500 telecom, internet, cable and IPTV partners. We will also foray into other forms of digital content including education, information services, etc.

Can internet be regarded as a good place for brand building? How can we get offline brands to spend more on internet?

The internet is a great platform for brand building. It acts as a conduit between the consumer and the brand. Brands can leverage the interactive nature of the internet to establish a personal connect with the consumer. At Hungama, we use our expertise on the digital platform to create services that not only create awareness but instead go a step further to ensure interaction with the brand. We are already experiencing a positive inclination from brands towards the internet. Therefore, we feel that the way forward for internet will be — successful integration of digital services with traditional media practices for holistic communication opportunities.

What are your thoughts on taking the internet penetration in India beyond the 40 million odd users?

Whoever said that India’s internet population is only 40 million? As per our estimates it is 62 million, although people such as Morgan Stanley’s Mary Meeker believe it is in excess of 80 million. If you take 20 million NRIs it tops 80 million. We are the 4th largest internet market in the world. I believe we are over 50 million mobile internet users in India. India should be a 200+ million consumer market by 2013.

What are your views on the debate of vertical vs. horizontal portals in India?

There is tremendous scope for growth of vertical specialized sites in India. We have not even scratched the surface for the same.

What according to you is the scope of mobile internet in India? There is a perception that mobile internet is mostly used to consume and share information and not for transaction based purposes. What’s your take on that and what are the reasons responsible for this?

I do not believe mobile internet in India or indeed the rest of the world will be used so much for transactions, at least for the next two years. However, with nearly 30 per cent devices being data ready phones, the consumer base on mobile will grow to over 200 million by 2013. The newer generation devices which will hit the market mid 2010 which would be a blend between an iPhone and a netbook will further augment the growth of mobile internet.

What would be your advice to today’s entrepreneurs?

Very simple, look at the digital medium. There are at least 100,000 new opportunities waiting to be tapped into. This market needs 100s of thousands of new services which can be powered by the internet and mobile medium. The new applications economy, for example, is very real and businesses can scale very fast by just leveraging a few platforms. If you have a dream, then channelize your energies, focus on what you want to develop and execute, you will see success.

As published in Wired.com

Back in April, I interviewed Mark Zuckerberg as part of my research for Wired’s Great Wall of Facebook piece. Here is an edited transcript in which the Facebook founder and CEO talks about the limitations of walled gardens, the evolution of privacy online and why Home Depot should “humanize” itself.

Wired.com: What is your vision for Facebook?

Mark Zuckerberg: When I started Facebook from my dorm room in 2004, the idea that my roommates and I talked about all the time was a world that was more open. We believed that people being able to share the information they wanted and having access to the information they wanted is just a better world: People can connect better with the people around them, understand more of what’s going on with the people around them, and understand more in general. Also, openness fundamentally affects a lot of the core institutions in society — the media, the economy, how people relate to the government and just their leadership. We thought that stuff was really interesting to pursue.

I think it turns out that the best way to do that is to build a company and an organization. We’ve learned a lot along the way about how to do that. One of the things we learned was that there were two ways to get to this place of more information access. There was the top-down way, right — you can kind of characterize that by the Google, or search approach – where you have a bunch of machines and algorithms going out and crawling the web and bringing information into them.

But we figured that over time that wouldn’t actually be the best approach. We figured it wouldn’t get the most information. It would only get stuff that was publicly available to everyone, and it wouldn’t give people the control that they needed to be really be comfortable. No one wants to live in a surveillance society, which, if you take that to its extreme, could be where that’s going.
And there’s (Facebook) — a kind of a ground-up approach — where people choose to share all this information themselves. It’s a slower approach, right, because what it means is that people need to move through this process of realizing that sharing information is good, and slowly sharing more and more information over time. But by doing that you get a lot richer information; you get information that people don’t want to share with everyone, but they just want to share with some people around them.

You get personal information, like photos from my vacation, or a trip that I want to share with people. And it just ends up being a richer web, and it’s more democratically controlled by the people who are sharing stuff, as opposed to by some central entity that’s going out and indexing all this information, right?

And that’s the path we’ve been on, and it’s really interesting just watching the rate of information production change. I think at this point there are probably more people who are sharing stuff either privately or semi-privately on social networks (than just letting it be crawled by search engines). When I use that word, I mean sharing with 100 or 1,000 or 10,000 people. It’s not e-mail that you’re sending to one or two people, but it’s also not something that you’re making available to everyone.

I think there’s a lot of information that people are sharing like that now, and that’s probably growing a lot quicker than the volume of blogs, or other completely open sites on the web. There’s something like a billion new photos a month (on Facebook), and that’s just one type of media on the site (Facebook) where there is over a billion new pieces of information shared each week.

Wired.com: Let’s be a little bit more specific. You just gave us a 30,000-foot view. Maybe we should do it now from 5,000 or 10,000 feet.

Zuckerberg: So I think there are two big themes: One is just the trend that Facebook is taking for the next couple years, and then there’s more structural stuff that’s underlying that in terms of the platform that we’re building.

First, think about how the Facebook platform has evolved. We started off as this platform inside Facebook; and we were pretty clear from the beginning that that wasn’t where it was going to end up. A lot of people saw it and asked, “Why is Facebook trying to get all these applications inside Facebook when the web is clearly the platform?” And we actually agreed with that. It’s just that we were just getting started. And now as time goes on, we’re shifting away from Platform inside Facebook and shifting more towards Connect (outside of Facebook).

And Connect has just a lot of advantages that I think developers will gravitate towards. So, the ability for developers to have their own website with all the same functionality in it that they could’ve built inside Facebook allows them to build their own brand, allows them to have their own users more than just getting Facebook users inside the site. So, I just think it ends up being a stronger system than the first Facebook platform we had.

The structural change comes from this point of openness. We talk about this concept of openness and transparency as the high level ideal that we’re moving towards at Facebook. The way that we get there is by empowering people to share and connect. The combination of those two things leads the world to become more open. And so as time has gone on, we’ve actually shifted a bit more of a focus not just on directly making it so people can use Facebook and share and be open on Facebook, but instead on making it so that the systems themselves have open properties.

So, one analogy that we think about is a government or a nation. If you want to be free, or you want to preserve freedom for people, you both need to have laws that make it so people have freedom of speech and all the freedoms that they need. You also need to have an open governance system where people can vote and people have representation.

And we think that over the long-term the way that we actually create the most openness and transparency in the world (at Facebook) is both by creating the most powerful applications ourselves and creating a platform that is fundamentally moving more in the direction of being an open platform itself, right?

So we’re aiming for openness on two levels: One on the fact that there’s more sharing, and another on the fact that by having these open standards, you’re constantly moving towards a place in the industry where there will be more and more sharing, right? So people can bring their information anywhere they want. Anyone can use the platform.

Wired.com: Does that mean every Facebook user will have control over how public his/her information is and be able to decide whether or not it can be crawled by search engines?

Zuckerberg: We’ve already started moving in that direction. Just a couple of weeks ago we announced this open privacy setting where prior to that it was impossible for someone to take their profile and say that they wanted it to be open. Now they can do that. They can say it’s open to everyone. And what I would just expect is that as time goes on, we’re just going to keep on moving more and more in that direction.

We launched stuff like Platform, and we get a lot of praise for that. We also get a lot of people saying “But this isn’t as open as it needs to be.” And in a lot of ways I think they’re right, but this stuff takes time. We’re moving a community of 200 million people along this spectrum trying to tell people to share information and be comfortable with that.

Just from the launches that we’ve had, it’s pretty clear that we haven’t mastered the art of moving people along in terms of change, making these changes; but I think we’re getting better at it. And there’s a long way to go, but I think that’s kind of the direction that we’re moving in.

Wired.com: Why not pursue this strategy from the beginning? Why did you wait until now to do all the things that we’re talking about?

Zuckerberg: So this is a really important point. It’s really easy to have a nice philosophy about openness, but moving the world in that direction is a different thing. It requires both understanding where you want to go and being pragmatic about getting there. In politics you get this all the time. It’s easy for people to have a point of view on how things should be, yet the people who are actually in the Senate or Congress or White House need to balance on a daily basis where they want to go with how they actually get stuff done.

Wired.com: So would you agree with the statement, then, that you can’t succeed on the internet by putting up walls?

Zuckerberg: I think it’s not quite that black and white. What I think is true is that over time things trend towards becoming more open, right. I think early on they tend to start closed. And that’s important, right? It’s an important phase. One analogy and example that I look at is personal computers and how they evolved. You started off with people who just built the whole thing themselves. Then as time went on the platforms either for hardware or software became more open, and that has produced a much better outcome in terms of the types of machines that people can use. But it had to start somewhere, right? It couldn’t start off as this open platform. Someone had to put the idea of a computer out there first.

So I think you generally want to move towards more openness. I don’t think anything ever gets completely open. Is there an open format for keyboards? I guess so. There are multiple different keyboard layouts. But basically everyone uses one, right?

Wired.com: Except many believe that the rules that drove the PC industry don’t apply to the rules that are evolving around business on the internet. They say that you actually need to start open and continue to be open.

Zuckerberg: So I think one thing that’s really important is that the rules are constantly changing. I think a lot of the issues that some of these other companies have had is they define themselves too narrowly as a company in a specific medium. Like e-mail could have easily moved into being what social networks are today. I think a lot of e-mail companies now are actually trying to move in that direction. But I feel like because they defined themselves as just e-mail companies, they didn’t adapt quickly enough.

We define ourselves more broadly, as a company that’s trying to bring innovative things to people that help them share more and make the world more open. And I think that that mindset allows us to change very rapidly. Sometimes it’s so rapid that our community isn’t ready for it or isn’t happy about it when it initially happens. But I feel like our approach of just being focused on understanding this trend (of openness and sharing) and moving very quickly along it has been a stronger approach than anyone who’s tried to build a medium for where the world is in any given point in time.

Wired.com: How do you envision what you’re doing today enabling other companies and Facebook to make money?

Zuckerberg: Openness and transparency affects how people and businesses relate to each other. So it used to be the case where only really big companies could do advertising on the web, and then Google came along. And they made it so anyone can do basic direct response advertising. Now they have millions of advertisers.

Wired.com: Right.

Zuckerberg: I think that there could be even a more dramatic change with Facebook. If you look at the space of the people who do brand advertising, which is basically advertising that’s more for the long-term — not to sell something today, but instead to build a relationship – I think that that’s going to be something that’s not only accessible to the largest brands, but accessible to everyone. If you take that idea a step further you might conclude that not only will it be something that’s accessible to everyone, but something that everyone feels they have to participate in.

Think about what people are doing on Facebook today. They’re keeping up with their friends and family, but they’re also building an image and identity for themselves, which in a sense is their brand. They’re connecting with the audience that they want to connect to. It’s almost a disadvantage if you’re not on it now.

If you carry that thinking over from people to things like stores and brands you realize that everyone’s trying to do the same thing, which is communicate, build a reputation, build relationships with people, and just have more information out there.

Wired.com: So give me an example. A year or two from now, what might you be able to do on Facebook that would be an example of what you’re talking about — if you’re a small business. Or a large business, for that matter?

Zuckerberg: You should be able to connect to a business in the same way that you connect to a friend, or a person on the site, and then that business should be able to publish things in the same way that that happens for people you care about.

So, that was a big part of this whole streams release on the homepage that we just did. Now, it’s not completely there yet, right? People are still bi-directional confirmed relationships while Facebook Pages (those for businesses and celebrities) have to be these one-directional relationships. People can send messages to each other. Facebook Pages can only send these updates to all their fans.

Over time we’re going to see that those things are just going to converge completely, right? So a business or celebrity Page will be able to send a message to all their fans. At the same time they’ll be able to send messages to individuals that they’re connected to.

So no matter who you are — a person on the site or a store, or a big brand — you’ll be able to have the same options for how you connect to people. You could make it bi-directional, so you have to confirm each one, or you could make it so people can just connect you.

Wired.com: The part that makes sense to me is the small business part because I can understand wanting to have a relationship with my local butcher or dry cleaner. It’s harder for me to envision how that works with, say, The Gap, or any other big brand out there, because almost by definition people perceive those interactions as not being about relationships, but being about just pure commerce. You can make the case that your local butcher really cares about you and your relationship, but you can’t really say that anymore about your local Home Depot or your bank.

Zuckerberg: Actually I think this is one of the most profound changes that more openness and transparency brings: It puts more weight and importance on building better social relationships and being more trustworthy.

So, I actually do think you’re seeing this trend towards organizations just caring more about their brand and engaging. And so I think Home Depot will want to humanize itself. I think that’s a lot of why companies are starting blogs, are just giving more insight into what’s going on with them. I think it’s actually a big reason why a lot of companies are embracing the green movement, for example.

It’s really easy to portray people running companies as only caring about money, but they care about real things too. And I think part of this trend is that there will be more visibility into that, right? So the Home Depot will have a brand that is about what they sell — different tools and things. But it will also have a brand that is based on their staff and how they relate to customers. And I think that that ends up being really important.

Look at the way celebrities and politicians are using Facebook already. When Ashton Kutcher posts a video, he gets hundreds of pieces of feedback. Maybe he doesn’t have time to read them all or respond to them all, but he’s getting good feedback and getting a good sense of how people are thinking about that and maybe can respond to some of it, right? And that’s still really valuable. And I would expect a similar dynamic to evolve with businesses.

Wired.com: People have been trying for years to make money selling ads on IMs, selling ads on e-mail, selling ads in all forms on communication mediums, But the reality is that when you’re in communication mode, you’re not particularly receptive to advertising. Why is that not an issue for Facebook?

Zuckerberg: Yeah, I agree with that. And I think the difference is that this isn’t a pure communication medium. People use it to share information, but sharing is a bit different than communicating, right? Sharing is putting something out there, and then people are going and getting it asynchronously, right? So a lot more of what we do is trying to surface the right information to the right people, which gives us leverage and opportunities to surface other information, like interesting advertisements that they might want to see as well.

But yeah, I agree that like when people are IM-ing on Facebook, which is one of the behaviors, it wouldn’t make sense for us to have an ad in the IM, right? But when people go to their homepage in the morning to see what’s going on, one of the things that’s going on could be a sponsored thing. I think a lot of the value that Facebook creates is that it opens up communication channels and builds relationships. I think that that’s just a really valuable thing, and it has probably been undervalued to this point

Wired.com: Facebook’s focus on real time streams reminds me a little bit of TV before Tivo. If you’re a business and you want people to see your brand and have a relationship with your brand in peoples’ stream, you have to be looking at the stream at specific times. Doesn’t that mean you have to start selling ads like networks do – based on the size and type of audience at different times of the day?

Zuckerberg: There are different modalities. One is a real time element. There’s also the highlights and news feeds components. And then you have search or behaviors where the person’s actively seeking out some information. We want to make that available to them very, very clearly. So, if I type in tools, then, I think that there’s a good opportunity to show you things that your friends are connected to.

Wired.com: And you’re going to build the search stuff yourself, I would suspect.

Zuckerberg: Yes, or at least we’ll try.