how did LinkedIn get its initial Traction ?

Linkedin's website was officially launched in May 2003 and at the end of the first month in operation, LinkedIn had a total of 4.5k users. As of 2016, LinkedIn operates the world’s largest professional network on the Internet with more than 467M users in over 200 countries and territories. Linkedin was acquired by Microsoft in Dec 2016 for $26B.

Credit: Press.linkedin.com/about-linkedin

Question that we are trying answer in this post is that how did LinkedIn get its initial set of users that triggered this massive growth ? After reading around the web, I was able to figure this out:

• The 13 people associated with the company invited 112 people. And, then it grew from there. The founder also seeded LinkedIn with his successful friends and connections recognizing that cultivating an aspirational brand was crucial to drive mainstream adoption. So, most of the first 12,000 odd people who signed up were either 1st degree (e.g. directly knew someone on founding team) or 2nd degree ("friend of a friend" of someone on founding team) connection. So virtually all of the people who signed up in the first week were part of the startup ecosystem (so predisposed to try out new products) and had a direct or indirect connection to the LinkedIn team.
• In 2003, the founder of LinkedIn refused to meet with potential VCs at the summit until they adopted LinkedIn and ideally recruited their partners as well.
• In 2003, LinkedIn also deployed an Outlook contact uploader (very painful to build/support) to allow viral spread among professionals. This is what gave them a 5x-10x distribution for each invite that was sent out.
• LinkedIn also deferred any features related to revenue or engagement until after the growth path was established, which took 15-20Months.
• Invitation reminder mailers also helped a lot.
• They launched 3 revenue streams in 2005. The first was job listings. The second one was subscriptions (enhanced communications and search capability - People need to talk to people they don't already know in order to get the job done). And advertising - 2 things that persuaded them to launch advertising - (1) demographic was so good (2) they realized that they could build unique business products.

Credit:

Ourstory.linkedin.com

Quora.com/How-did-LinkedIn-product-get-its-initial-traction

Myspace - Social Network - the epic Product Failure

What is MySpace?

• Social networking website.
• Had a significant influence on pop culture and music.
• Created a gaming platform that launched the successes of Zynga and RockYou, among others.
• Started the trend of creating unique URLs for companies and artists
• From 2005 to 2009, Myspace was the largest social networking site in the world.

What's the story of Myspace?

• In August 2003, some eUniverse's employees with Friendster accounts saw potential in its social networking features, and decided to mimic the more popular features of the website. Within 10 days, Myspace was born.
• The project was overseen by Brad Greenspan (eUniverse's Founder, Chairman, CEO) who managed Chris DeWolfe (MySpace's starting CEO), Josh Berman, Tom Anderson (MySpace's starting president), and a team of programmers and resources provided by eUniverse.
• The first Myspace users were eUniverse employees. The company held contests to see who could sign up the most users. eUniverse used its 20 million users and e-mail subscribers to breathe life into Myspace, and move it to the head of the pack of social networking websites.
• A key architect was tech expert Toan Nguyen who helped stabilize the Myspace platform.
• Co-founder and CTO Aber Whitcomb played an integral role in software architecture, utilizing the then superior development speed of ColdFusion over other dynamic database driven server-side languages of the time. Despite over ten times the number of developers, Friendster, which was developed in JavaServer Pages (jsp), could not keep up with the speed of development of Myspace and cfm.
• Jan 2004 - Official Launch.
• Feb 2004 - 1M registered users.
• It rapidly gained recognition among teenage and young adult social groups.
• Nov 2004 - 5M registered users.
• In Feb 2005, DeWolfe held talks with Mark Zuckerberg over acquiring Facebook but DeWolfe rejected Zuckerberg's $75 million asking price for Facebook.
• In Jul 2005, News Corporation purchased Myspace for $580M.
• From 2005 to 2009, Myspace was the largest social networking site in the world.
• In June 2006 surpassed Google as the most visited website in the United States.
• At its peak, when News Corp attempted to merge it with Yahoo! in 2007, Myspace was valued at $12B.
• In Nov 2007, Myspace and Bebo joined the Google-led OpenSocial alliance, which already included Friendster, Hi5, LinkedIn, Plaxo, Ning and Six Apart. OpenSocial was to promote a common set of standards for software developers to write apps/programs/softwares for social networks. Facebook remained independent. Google had been unsuccessful in building its own social networking site Orkut in the U.S. market and was using the alliance to present a counterweight to Facebook.
• In Apr 2008, Myspace was overtaken by Facebook in the number of unique worldwide visitors, and was surpassed in the number of unique USA visitors in May 2009, though Myspace generated $800M in revenue during the 2008 fiscal year. 
• Since then, the number of Myspace users has declined steadily in spite of several redesigns.
• In Jun 2009, Myspace employed approximately 1.6K employees. In Jun 2011, Specific Media Group and Justin Timberlake jointly purchased the company for approximately $35M. Under new ownership, the company had undergone several rounds of layoffs and by Jun 2011, Myspace had reduced its staff to around 200.
• As of Oct 2016, Myspace was ranked 2154 by total web traffic, and 1522 in the USA.

Why did Myspace fail ?

• Bad-UX - Users never put up with a bad product forever no matter how strong the network effects be. The most blatant example is its layout. There is no logic to MySpace's core navigation.  There are links everywhere, and the design lends no clues as to what user should be doing.  Each page lets every element fend for itself, competing for attention and clicks.  The core navigation changes from page to page. Go to 50 Cent's page (http://myspace.com/50cent) and good luck getting back to the home page.
• They love advertisers more than they love users. They over-optimize for the advertisers' experience to the point where it's just embarrassing.  Even if you're logged in, going to myspace.com takes you to the splash page with the big ad of the day (one time, they sold an Incredible Hulk ad where the Hulk jumped out at you).  When viewing a profile, the advertisements are more prominent than the person's picture.  There are at least 3 big visual ads on every page. Their focus on advertisers has gotten in the way of innovation and staying relevant.
• Reliance on closed-source technology stack. This is not normally a problem in most companies, but in companies where the technical operations are world-class in size and scale, it becomes necessary to be able to directly develop and extend the technologies being used since the scale of the operation means that new technological grounds are constantly being broken. Closed-source OTS technology (even with direct on-site assistance from the vendor) places the company at the mercy of the vendor, who implicitly lacks as strong a motivation to solve key scalability challenges because it is not their core business (it's just another vendor, albeit an important one).  The vendor may also lack the ability to extend their technology to the scale at which it is being used, and will resist attempts to evaluate whether their technology should be replaced or re-written.
• Organizations that belong to a larger corporate parent often find themselves unable to focus squarely on strategies or actions which benefit them, because the corporate parent has other overriding priorities. One way in which this seemed to interfere with MySpace's operations is that revenue and advertising priorities set by the corporate parent (News Corporation) would cause them to take decisions that degraded the user experience or product value delivered to users.  This kept them from executing an optimal strategy to appeal to users.
• Inability to recruit top-tier talent - MySpace suffered a stigma of being a trivial entertainment-oriented site and, increasingly as time wore on, a cultural ghetto.  Also, MySpace was headquartered in Los Angeles, far from the talent center of Silicon Valley, so the available recruiting pool was that much smaller.
• Did not adapt to technological and social change as abruptly as other social networking sites such as Facebook. While Facebook was changing and reviving its entire interface and adding applications and other pioneering features to the site, MySpace failed to follow in its competitor’s footsteps. For instance, MySpace’s layout was too overbearing. According to trends, it can be inferred that social networking users prefer simple, minimal and effective approaches, while MySpace’s graphics were too large, the audio and video failed to load properly, and navigation was rather difficult to manage.
• Wrong TG - MySpace was predominantly geared towards a teenage audience, while its competitors, particularly Facebook, consistently focused on a variety of niches. Facebook was more appealing in the sense that it enabled users to easily connect and reconnect with people from around the globe, while MySpace fell short of portraying this “image” to its audience. Instead, MySpace was stagnant and was concerned with building its audience solely around music and entertainment. MySpace was geared more towards users who wished to share their personality through music, videos, images, and layout-design.
• Negative social impacts - It was incredibly easy for users to contact and find other users based on the information and photos provided on their pages. In turn, there were an influx of sex offenders, cyber-bullying people, abductors, etc. on the site who would target teens and young adults.

Buzz - Social networking, Micro blogging, Messaging - Google's Product Failure

What was Google Buzz?

• Social networking, micro-blogging, messaging tool.
• Was integrated into Gmail.
• Let users share - links, photos, videos, status messages, comments - organized in "conversations" and visible in the user's inbox. 
• Enabled users to choose to share publicly with the world; or privately to a group of friends; each time they posted.
• Picasa, Flickr, Google Latitude, Google Reader, Google Sidewiki, YouTube, Blogger, FriendFeed, identi.ca, Twitter were integrated.
• Superseded by Google+
• Was seen as an attempt to compete with Facebook, Twitter.

What was its timeline?

• Launched in Feb 2010
• Discontinued in Dec 2011
• Lived for 22 months

Why did it fail?

• It sneaked up on users - It was automatically added to Gmail, as an opt-out service that sneakily appeared as a folder in the comfy old Inbox without warning.
• Google didn't really launch it - As just mentioned, it just suddenly appeared as part of Gmail without much introduction or explanation. This confused people, they didn't know what to make of it or how it worked.
• If compared with Twitter, there wasn’t any major improvement over Twitter. In fact, its interface was more crowded, & didn’t have a character limit.
• People had no reason to move from Twitter to Buzz.
• Had a severe privacy flaw - By default Buzz publicly disclosed (on the user's Google profile) a list of the names of Gmail contacts that the user has most frequently emailed or chatted with. Users who failed to disable this feature (or did not realize that they had to) could have sensitive information about themselves and their contacts revealed.
• Mobile version of Buzz, by default, published the user's exact location when they posted a message to the service.
• Buzz initially created users' social graphs from their gmail address books - But, not every problem can be solved with an algorithm - The social graphs must always be user-generated.
• The Buzz team did not understand the ramifications of putting something untrusted into a trusted application. For most mainstream users, email is an extremely trusted application. They know how it works, they know when they send an email to someone that it doesn't go to someone else, and they know that unless they give their password out, that others else can't read their private messages. When Buzz launched, people no longer knew how their trusted email program worked. They heard rumors of other people's content being inappropriately displayed and they had no way of knowing whether their personal emails were being displayed to other people. In short, Google broke the trusted environment that the users had in Gmail.
• The Buzz team did not understand how users interact with their social groups. Most user don't want the content their families post to them to be visible to their friends, or to their work colleagues. Users don't want their weekend sh!tty-stuff to be shown to their work colleagues or to their families. They want their social groups and the content that originated from individual groups to be sandboxed. But, when Buzz launched, it inappropriately assumed that you were friends with everyone you email. Not only are you usually not friends with everyone you email, but you're "friends" with these people in every-possible-way. Summary is that often you don't want your social groups to cross-pollinate - But Buzz made an inappropriate assumptions on how people express themselves across social groups and became creepy in the process.
• Buzz; just like Facebook/Twitter; would always have a lot going on it - How wold have Google expected to fit all of it into an email tab?
• The battle for the social graph had already been won by Facebook (reciprocal social graph) and Twitter (non-reciprocal social graph).

Orkut - social network - the epic Product Failure of Google

What was Orkut?
Social networking website.
Quietly launched in Jan 2004 by Google.
Built by Orkut Büyükkökten - a software engineer at Google.
Büyükkökten developed it as an independent project while working at Google.
Shut in Sep 2014.

What's so special about it?
Orkut was one of most visited websites in India & Brazil in 2008.

How did it rise?
Orkut started off with a good seed of users. Just like FB that started of with Ivy League students, Orkut started out with internal Googlers and their Valley friends. At that time when other networks were not around (or sites like Friendster which were always down) Orkut provided a good place to network with Googlers and Valley stalwarts. This led to some initial growth in the US. When it spread into India and Brazil these same seed users were again responsible for making the networking site lucrative for users to join. But it was selective and you needed an invite to join, so there was an intrigue around the site.

Why did it fall?
1.
The first version of the site was more of a hack and it had rather one too many outages. Even after the site was ported to a more robust platform the rather infamous 'No donut for you' error page would turn up more often than one wanted it to.

2.
It was not considered to be cool to work on the Orkut team, within Google. Everything about the site starting from the fact that the site was branded around a person made it quite quirky. So it was difficult to get the best engineers to work on it. Eventually, teams in India and Brazil took over the entire product. However, there was a fair amount of support from the top management.

3.
Orkut was not designed to linguistically walled. So when Brazilians took on the challenge of wanting to be the top country on Orkut, suddenly the rest of the world started to see Portuguese messages everywhere. This led to a decline in interest for English speaking users in the US.

4.
Orkut had very basic privacy settings and did not really envisage an environment where people wanted different privacy settings for different user groups.

5.1
While Orkut was on the decline in the US, it gained a strong foothold in India and Brazil and saw a lot of growth in these two countries. Soon the team started focusing on this market mainly. There was one redesign, which was mostly visual and did not do much to improve all the usability flaws that the site had.

5.2
By this time Facebook had caught on in the US and a lot of the features on Orkut seemed like catchup features. Once Facebook had established itself in the US, users in India slowly began noticing that their friends in the US had been moving to Facebook. This put a lot of pressure on the Indians to be on Facebook as well, since the US based Indians were the influencers and the mavens.

5.3
Meanwhile, as Orkut began spreading to smaller cities in India, people in India started realizing the shortcomings of Orkut's privacy settings.

5.4
Add to that there were a number of things like defamatory comments about politicians and one high profile kidnapping+murder that had an Orkut angle to it. This gave the site some bad press in India.

5.5
Also given the fact that it was difficult to maintain a presence in two networks, users in India started migrating to Facebook in droves. Around the same time, Orkut fixed its privacy and came up with a redesign. The redesign did not address a lot of what users were asking for. Over a period of time, Orkut lost its footing in India and a little later in Brazil as well.

6.
Google's vision has been to organize the world's information and make it universally accessible and useful - Google's vision was never to give people the power to share and make the world more open and connected. And, Google has a very strong culture; to which each employee adheres to; and mission which is why they succeed in doing what they do. With that vision/mission, how can a team at Google built a world-class product like Orkut? Because of the lack of founders' focus the level of innovation & zeal was low for Orkut.

7.
Orkut also spent years dealing with a Brasilian lawsuit. (In Aug 2006, Brazilian Federal Judge ordered Google to release Orkut user’s information; by Sep-end 2006; of a list of about 25 Brazilian nationals, believed to be using Orkut to sell drugs and to be involved in child pornography. The judge ordered Google to pay $23,000 per day in fines until the information is turned over to the Brazilian government. Google declined to release the information, on the grounds that the requested information was on Google servers in the U.S. and not on Google servers in Brazil, and is therefore not subject to Brazilian laws).

8.
Ads were introduced in Orkut for monetization.

9.
Apps introduced by Orkut, led to heavy spamming (spamming was done by App-makers to ensure virality & monetization)

Orkut Büyükkökten

Source:

https://wikipedia.org/

http://logos.wikia.com/

best resources on - Product Management - blogs & websites

• Andrew Chen - Essays on tech, growth, and startups
• Ash Maurya - LEANSTACK Blog
• Avinash Kaushik - http://kaushik.net
• Cindy Alvarez - The Experience is the Product
• Cliff Gilley - The Clever PM
• The Cranky Product Manager - http://crankypm.com
• Daniel Elizalde - Tech Product Management.com
• Derek Morrison - http://allaboutproductmanagement...
• Des Traynor's – Inside Intercom
• Eric Ries - Lessons Learned
• Gopal Shenoy - http://productmanagementtips.com/
• Jackie Bavaro - The Art of Product Management
• Jeff Lash - http://www.goodproductmanager.com/
• John Peltier - The PM Vision
• Jon Shafer's – Jon Shafer's At The Gates
• Ken Norton
• Kevin Lee - Product Manager HQ
• Marty Cagan / Silicon Valley Product Group (SVPG) - http://www.svpg.com/articles
• Nir Eyal - This Explains Everything
• Paul Young - http://www.productbeautiful.com/
• Steve Blank
• Strategic Product Manager - http://www.strategicproductmanag...
• Teresa Torres: Product Talk
• Venkatesh Rao's – Ribbonfarm
• On Product Management
• Medium: On Product Management
• OutsideIn View
• The Product Guy
• 280 Group
• Aha! blog
• Mind the Product
• Pragmatic Marketing
• Product Focus
• ProductPlan Blog
• ProdPad blog
• The Product Management Blog

Products of Google that failed & Lessons we can learn

Wise people learn from their mistakes.
Wiser people learn from others' mistakes.

In this post, we will try to know about some of Google's online/web/internet products that failed, and will also try to gauge why.

Google Lively
Second Life's clone.
Lasted for six months in 2008
Why did it fail?

UI/UX was complex.

Gamification was not done well (all items were available fro free from start - no incentive to explore).

Had many not-well-thought & not-well-done features & faulty-features (you would spend hours decorating your room, then left, then returned later to find strangers had put sofas on the ceiling, tipped over chairs and rearranged plants into a jumbled mess in your room - just because it was too easy to unknowingly allow others to edit your public room) & critical-features-missing (the most basic social web features such as a profile page was absent - nearly every successful online game or web community has a profile page or home screen, as the center of the social experience and to build your own virtual identity - be it for role playing or just making friends).

Google Latitude & Google Dodgeball
Dodgeball was a location-based social networking service for mobile devices where the users texted their location to the service, which then notified them of the crushes, friends, friends' friends and interesting venues nearby.
Dodgeball was founded in 2000 by NYU students Dennis Crowley and Alex Rainert.
Dodgeball was acquired by Google in 2005.
In April 2007, Crowley and Rainert left Google to create a similar service Foursquare.
Dodgeball was shut down and succeeded in February 2009 by Google Latitude.
Google Latitude was a location-aware feature of Google Maps that allowed a mobile phone user to allow certain people to view their current location (Via their own Google Account, the user's cell phone location was mapped on Google Maps. The user could control the accuracy and details of what each of the other users can see - an exact location could be allowed, or it could be limited to identifying the city only. For privacy, it could also be turned off by the user, or a location could be manually entered. Users had to explicitly opt into Latitude, and were only able to see the location of those friends who had decided to share their location with them)
Latitude was discontinued in Aug 2013.
Why did it fail?
Latitude's idea was too prescient - the hardware (smart-phones) took too long to catch up to the idea.

Google Jaiku
Social networking, micro-blogging, life-streaming service (same as Twitter)
Launched; before Twitter; on Jul 2006 by Jyri Engeström, Petteri Koponen
Purchased by Google in Oct 2007.
Shutdown by Google in Jan 2012.
Why did it fail?
The founders were put in charge of some other projects at Google - As a result, Jaiku became stagnant and therefore died.

Google Video
Launched in late Jan 2005.
22 months later Google bought YouTube for $1.65B.
It was kept around for 10 months after the YouTube acquisition, and then discontinued.
It lasted 2 years.
Why did it fail?
Nobody needed another video player.
It was a nice to have.
It didn’t solve any problems.

Google Answers
Let users pay a researcher for an answer to a question they have.
Lasted 4 years and 8 months.
Why did it fail?
There were Free alternatives to it - Yahoo! Answers, Forums, Google search.

Google Notebook
A downgraded version of Yahoo! Notepad.
Had some good features - clipping of web pages with a browser extension, notes-sharing
Lasted 5 years and 4 months.
Launched in May 2006.
In Nov 2011, Google began exporting the contents of existing Notebooks to Google Docs, and made Google Notebooks read-only. As of Jul 2012, all Notebook data had been exported to Google Drive and Google Notebook was shut down.
In Mar 2013, Google launched its new note-taking application Google Keep.
Why did it fail?
Bad UX - difficult to use.
Notebook's user base was considered too small to be worthwhile for Google, and there was a perception that various other Google products (Wave, SearchWiki, Docs) would subsume the uses of Notebook.

Google Wave
It’s tough to explain in a sentence what Google Wave was.
Google explained it as “A wave is a live, shared space on the web where people can discuss and work together using richly formatted text, photos, videos, maps, and more.”
One of Wave’s developers said, “Wave is what email would look like if it were invented today.”
Lasted 15 months.
Why did it fail?
Didn’t launch as an MVP.
Was filled with lots of features that Google assumed people wanted.
Was a complex product that required user’s time-investment just to understand how it works.

Google Buzz

We've discussed Buzz in a separate post. Click the link below to read the post:

saurabhkautilyagupta.blogspot.com/2016/12/buzz-micro-blogging-google-product-fail.html

Orkut
We've discussed Orkut's story in a separate post. Click the link below to read the post:
saurabhkautilyagupta.blogspot.com/2016/12/orkut-social-network-google-product-fail.html

Sources:
https://en.wikipedia.org/
https://www.quora.com/

https://blog.kissmetrics.com/google-products-that-failed/
http://freetoplay.biz/2008/11/26/a-lively-failure-5-other-reasons-lively-flopped/

what on earth is IoT aka Internet Of Things

Imagine a world where every object will be performing optimal & human-like actions. In the night, if you are standing alone at a bus-stop, the bulbs at the bus-stop will light up mildly, but as more people will join you, the bulbs will fully lighten up. While returning home, your refrigerator sends you a text on your phone reminding you of the sausage that you need to buy today. While at dinner, your plate will play mild music for you and will alert you if you try to eat more than normal. This and much more will possible with IoTs :) 

The Internet of things (IoT); also called "connected devices" and "smart devices" by some; is the internetworking of physical devices, vehicles, buildings, appliances, and other items - embedded with electronics, software, sensors, actuators, network connectivity - that enable these objects to perform meaningful; business or personal; tasks for you.

In simple language:

When you convert any given Object into a Smart Object it is called IoT.

What do we mean by Smart Object?

Any given object that can - connect, monitor, manage, control, search - all without human intervention can be called Smart. And, we; humans; will have the ability to remotely control this object.

How do you turn an object into a smart object?

We can do that by giving that object a unique identity, the ability to communicate, applying sensors so it collect data from it's surroundings.

********** Examples **********

Soon every piece of an entire fleet of Virgin Atlantic's aircrafts will be made an IoT.

So, the parts of the plane will report mechanical problems before they would turn into failures.

This Smart Ring keeps you connected with who and what matter most.

Calls, texts, email and social networking in style.

Baby Smart Monitoring system sends you regular updates to your phone about your baby’s body position, breathing level, body temperature, response to activities, health, etc.

Amazon's Echo micro-listens to your voice in your home and does as instructed (like music playback, making to-do lists, setting alarms, streaming podcasts, playing audiobooks, and providing weather, traffic and other real time information).

*********************************************

The word IoT was coined by Kevin Ashton back in 1999.

Following are some good reads on IoT. Click these links to read them:

• Medium.com/Why-everyone-should-care-about-IoT
• An infograph explaining IoT
• What exactly is Internet of Things (IoT)?
• What is the 'Internet of Things'? Is there a course to learn it?
• A storyboard explaining IoT
• What is the scope and future of the Internet of Things?

Artificial Intelligence, Machine Learning, Natural Language Processing, Deep Learning, Data Science, Big Data, Recommendation Engine, Algorithms - Best questions & answers on Quora

• How is Deep Learning implemented in Amazon Go?
• How can you explain Deep neural networks or Deep Learning in layman's terms?
• How can I learn Deep Learning quickly?
• What's the most effective way to get started with Deep Learning?
• What are the open research areas in Deep Learning?
• What is the difference between AI (Artificial Intelligence), ML (Machine Learning), NLP (Natural Language Processing), DL (Deep Learning)?
• How are Big Data and IoT (Internet of Things) related?
• How exactly is Machine Learning used in Recommendation Engines?
• How can I start building a Recommendation Engine?
• What is the future of Recommender Systems research?

Some important questions of Algorithms on Quora:

• What are the top 10 Algorithms every software engineer should know by heart?
• Which are the 10 algorithms every computer science student must implement at least once in life?
• What algorithms should I know to become a good programmer?

Recent Inventions & Innovations (Innovative Products, Designs, Technologies) - Best questions & answers on Quora - Best questions/answers on Quora

• What are the best new products or inventions that most people don't know about?
• What are some of the simplest yet amazing innovations?
• What is that you wish would go away, but still exists?
• What did you invent as a kid, only to find it had already been invented?
• What's the most innovative app?
• What are some mind-blowing technologies that exist that most people don't know about?

Brain-Teasers Puzzles Riddles (vol 11)

1.
I have a locked box.
It can be opened only with its key; that I possess; and can't be broken.

It has an offer letter for you.

We have 1 delivery boy who is willing to carry only the box but not keys.

I send you the box.

How will you get the letter?

2.
3 co-workers (A, B, C) would like to know average of their salaries.

None of them must come to know the individual salary of any of his co-workers.

Help them.

3.

You are driving along in your car on a wild, stormy night.

It's raining heavily.

Suddenly you pass by a bus stop.

You see three people waiting for a bus:

An old lady who looks as if she is about to die. 

An old friend who once saved your life. 

The perfect partner you have been dreaming about. 

Which one would you choose to offer a ride to, knowing very well that there could only be one passenger in your car?

4.

A king would handover entire property to 1 of the 2 sons.

Winner will be the one whose horse will reach the destination in last.

Both of them started riding as slow as they could.

Mid-way they saw a saint standing.

Saint asked them to stop for a while.

Both of them stopped.

He told something to them.

After listening to saint's words they did started riding as fast as they could.

What did the saint say?

5.

You have 8 balls.

7 balls weigh equal while 1 ball is slightly heavier than the others.

You have 1 balance and 2 weighing chances.

How will you find the heavier ball?

6.
There are 2 railway tracks on the equator of the earth.
2 identical  trains are running in opposite direction at same speed on these tracks.
Assuming they have unlimited fuel, which train would worn away faster?

7.
Is it possible to send a telegram to Washington today?

8.
What do you put in a toaster?

9.
Say ‘silk’.
Spell the word ‘silk’.
What do cows drink?

10.

If a red house is made from red bricks, pink house made from pink bricks, a blue house is made from blue brick and a black house is made from black bricks, then what is greenhouse made from?

*********************************************************

You just finished the 11th set of Brain-Teasers Puzzles/Riddles.

There are 10 more such sets of 10 puzzles each, on this blog.

If you wish to solve them, click on the links below:

Set 1

Set 2

Set 3

Set 4

Set 5

Set 6

Set 7

Set 8

Set 9

Set 10

Desktop & Mobile UX (User Experience) design - Best questions & answers on Quora (v2)

• How do IxD, UI, UX Designers introduce themselves at parties?
• How do you explain User Experience design to a layman?
• What are some examples of Bad Design?
• Is there a Science to picking Colors that work well together or is it just Subjective?
• What are the next big & disruptive trends in UX?
• What is the next big thing in HCI (Human Computer Interaction) or IxD (Interaction Design) research?
• What are the best UX/UI projects for disabled people?
• What are the best UI (User Interface) elements (controls, patterns, etc.) that have cropped up in modern web sites and web apps recently?
• What is the next trend in UI design after flat design?
• What are the latest trends in the UI design?
• What are the biggest web design trends of 2014?

Products that have Intentionally-designed bad User Experience (UX)

Park benches with bars between the seating spaces, designed to be bad for sleeping.

Speed-bumps to slow down vehicles.

Confusing Shopping-Mall layouts to make people spend more time.

Grids-amid-road to stop animals from escaping.

Blue-lighted-Bathrooms make it difficult to see the veins in your arms with naked eye and hence deter drug usage in there.

Poles between tram/train doors make impossible to get into the tram with a big cargo.

Our Brains use Body pain to tell us that something is wrong and we need to act on the same ASAP.

Brain-Teasers Puzzles Riddles (vol 10)

1.
How many Alphabets are there in English?

2./
There are many 1 rupee coins and many sacks on a table.
You have to fill the 1 rupee coins into sacks, such that when I will asks you to give me any amount under 500 rupees, you should be able to give it to me by adding some of the filled sacks.
How many sacks do you need?

3.
Break a clock in a creative manner.

4.
You are a street sign.
Which one?
Why?

5.
5+5+5=550
Correct this equation.
Use only 1 straight line.

6.
You looked at your reflection on the window mirror of the 45th floor.
Driven by an irrational impulse, you made a leap through the window on the other side.
You did neither landed on a soft surface nor used a parachute.
Yet you did not encounter even a single bruise.
How?

7.
5-2=4
How?

8.
An airplane crashed into a field.
Every single person died except 2.
How?

9.
How do you spell your name?

10.
You went to buy fruits from nearby state.
You bought 90 fruits.
You also asked the shopkeeper for sacks to carry the fruits.
Because his sacks could hold maximum 30 fruits each, the Shopkeeper gave you 3 sacks.
On your way back to your hometown, you had to pass through 30 check points.
At each check point, you had to give 1 fruit from each sack to the authorities.
How many fruits did you bring home?

Brain-Teasers Puzzles Riddles (vol 9)

1.
Divide a square into 3 equal parts without using a ruler.

2.
You are an astronaut and right now at an arbitrary planet.
You are in a room with 10 glasses of samples of milk with poison dissolved in one of them.
You have 1 rat to test the sample.
If the rat drinks the poisonous sample at a given time, it dies 10 hours later.
You have 24 hours to find out, which sample is poisonous.
How would you do that?
The gravity there is 1.5 times the gravity of earth.

3.
You have 1 sheet of paper.
Obviously, there are 2 surfaces on it.
You are locked in a room and have NOTHING with you.
Convert this 2 surface sheet into a single surface.

4.
You are in Bangalore.
You board an evening flight for Delhi.
On which side would you sit to avoid sunlight?

5.
Tell me a sentence.
If it will be true, you will be hired but will be fired immediately.
If it will be false, you will not be hired.

6.
Approximately how many birthdays do the average Indian woman have?

7.
In this year, do we have a month that has 28 days?
Which month?

8.
Choose a 6 digit number.
It should not have 0, 5, 1 digits.
Express this number in the form of this fomula:
a^b x b^a

9.
What is the length of the smallest bridge?

10.
You are driving a car on a lonely road.
1 of your tyres gets punctured.
You are a Mechanical Engineer.
You have a spare and you know how to change it.
Without wasting any time u fetch your tool kit.
You elevate the tyre using screw jack.
You remove the 4 lug nuts of the punctured tyre.
You keep all the 4 nuts near you, on the road.
Suddenly wind blows, and all the 4 nuts roll, and fall into the nearby gutter.
You do not have spare nuts.
There is no way you can get back those nuts from the gutter - so don not try.
You get a call from your friend who tells you that your mother has been hospitalized.
No other vehicle is expected to pass from that road anytime soon.
How will you reach the hospital ASAP?
You have issues walking - so do not walk.

key Events & Lessons from Indian Startup ecosystem of 2016

1. Unicorns realised that they were just a paper-corns. Most of them are challenged by their global counterparts.
2. We have 2 India - Digital (one that deals online) and Analog (one that deals in cash)
3. Funding is down by almost 50%. Unicorns are struggling - but that’s a good sign. There was too much of easy money.
4. Bootstrapping is still underrated.
5. There are 2 faces investors have these days - One on twitter (where they talk a lot of sense) and another one is the real face where they are still investing in karts/apps. Which one to believe?
6. Tiger and Softbank exit from India has sent the wrong signals to the world.
7. Balance of Power has shifted to investors. It was with startups till 2015, but now investors are calling it a shot.
8. Edutech is hot. Thanks to Byju’s. For others, it’s business as usual.
9. Foodtech is over. Suddenly, investors realised that there was actually no tech in foodtech and all the 2014-15 money just went down the shithole.
10. Healthtech is as hot as 2010.
11. Fintech is either Payment wallet or Lending. It will be a lot more than this.
12. Startups went back on promises made to employees who were laid off for no fault of theirs.
13. Trusting startups has become tough - as a customer, as a candidate and even as a partner.
14. Startup journalism is the new swag.
15. Startup journalism is pretty much over. It’s either about sucking up (all good stories) or bringing startups down. No perspective building. No questions being asked.
16. There is a rush among startup and tech journos to explore future or explore the past (numbers, predictions, heck-i-told-you moment), but nobody wants to look at the present and ask tough questions.
17. Hiring is down. This has made it comparatively easy for not-so-well-funded startups to hire good talent.
18. Great employees are bored. Totally!!!
19. Nothing exciting is happening at unicorns and similar companies. The biggest beneficiary? Well funded not-of-Indian-origin companies who are poaching these fellas.
20. There are vey very few new sexy business ideas right now in the ecosystem.
21. As an ecosystem, we have taken ourselves too seriously. Everybody is too serious. There is very little fun left.
22. Very few startups are solving hard problems.
23. Very few investors are even interested in startups that are solving hard problems.
24. Traction metrics have gotten tough now. Earlier it used to be downloads, pageviews etc.
25. Indian ecosystem has more startup events than the number of serious startups.
26. India had more startup awards than startups exits.
27. Most startups exits were acquihires.
28. Investors are selling off their portfolio companies to each other.
29. Hackathons are dead. They are hireathons now.
30. Local language is super hot. Just that we don’t have enough founders taking a shot at it.
31. Bots - Nobody knows what it is. But everyone wants to build/invest in one. It’s the new sexy/hot/trending phenomena.
32. Clearly, product management is not a thing among Indian startups.
33. Growth hacking = SEO etc, but not product thinking.
34. Indian founders learnt all the wrong things from China and Silicon Valley. Hustling from China and fund raising smarts from Silicon Valley. Frankly, China is about deeper consumer behaviour understanding and SV is a lot about growth hacking/scale thinking.
35. Top industries facing the impact of slowdown in startup space are : PR firms, Interior designers, Hiring consultants, print/TV media.
36. In 2015, several funds and mafia houses came up with a formula to run a startup and make some serious quick money. Thankfully, the markets don’t care and all these stories are over now.

Source:

https://www.nextbigwhat.com/indian-startup-ecosystem-2016-297/

Products that have bad User Experience (UX) but are still used with Ease

Printer's Buttons

Bathroom Faucets

Television Remote Controls

Toilet Flush Buttons

Door Handles

Some more:

QWERTY Layout Keyboards - discussed here:
http://saurabhkautilyagupta.blogspot.in/2016/12/bad-user-experience-design-keyboards.html

Flight Boarding Passes - discussed here:
http://saurabhkautilyagupta.blogspot.in/2016/12/bad-user-experience-design-boardingpass.html

Switches - discussed here:
http://saurabhkautilyagupta.blogspot.in/2016/12/bad-user-experience-design-switches.html

Bad User Experience (UX) design of Flight Boarding Pass

What’s wrong with the UX of any given ailrline's Boarding Pass?

1. Important information is not grouped together. In-fact, non-important information are grouped together.
2. Important information is not given visual importance. In-fact, non-important information are given visual importance.
3. Text is at-times tiny - which causes issues in bad lighting.

What is the correct IA (Information Architecture)?
Till the passenger has boarded, the IA is:
Flight number, Terminal number, Gate number, Boarding time

While the passenger is boarding, the IA is:
Seat number, Seat type (Aisle / Middle / Window)

After the passenger has seated, the IA is:
Departure time, Landing time

Already known information:
Passenger name, From City & To City, Today's date

Redesigned Boarding Pass (examples taken from all over internet):

Redesign attempt 1

Redesign attempt 2

Redesign attempt 3

Redesign attempt 4

Redesign attempt 5

Credit:

Petesmart.co.uk/rethink-the-airline-boarding-pass/

Passfail.squarespace.com/

Medium.com/@adamgf/boarding-pass-redesign-c72084d7793e

Quora.com/What-are-some-examples-of-products-that-have-bad-user-experience-UX-designs-but-are-still-used-with-ease/answer/Ivan-Boyko

Bad User Experience (UX) design of Switches

Switches are an overused product in our daily lives.

Unfortunately we have got extremely accustomed with their bad user experience, at our workplaces or our homes. For all other places, we never have any idea about which switch to use to turn the lights/fans on or off.

Problem; in summary; is that, we cannot tell what the switch is going to do what. And to know the same, we need to actually switch it on.

Many people get irritated with it, but they just blame it on themselves that they don't know about it.

Solution:
Label the switches:

Bad User Experience (UX) design of Keyboards

What is Bad in the User experience of Keyboards?
The Location of the Keys - Q W E R T Y U I O P - Totally Non-intuitive.

How did we arrive at this design?
Modern keyboards have evolved from Typewriters of  the 19th century:

This keyboard style was first adopted in 1873. The reason the letters were placed as they were (rather than in alphabetical order like the early typewriters) was to solve a problem that existed at that time. Some people wound up typing so fast that the mechanical rods attached to the keys would stick to each other. To resolve this, the QWERTY keyboard was developed. It placed keys in such a manner that the most used letters were spaced out so that the rods were less likely to clash into each other when typing. This keyboard layout became standard with the popularity of the Remington typewriter which was the first to use it, and all other manufacturers fell in line. So, we are still using a keyboard layout designed to fix a problem that no longer exists.

What's the Solution?
Over the decades, many people have tried to introduce keyboards that make more sense.
Example 1 - Dvorak Simplified Keyboard which is designed to increase typing speed:

Example 2 - Alphabetical ABCDEF layout Keyboards

But, why do we still see all the QWERTY layout keyboards around?
Because everyone has somehow learned to use it and most of us have become so good at it that we type without even having to look at where individual keys are any more. To get used to a different layout would almost be like learning a different language.

Desktop & Mobile UX (User Experience) design - Best questions & answers on Quora (v1)

• What UX blogs, resources, or books does a prospective User Experience design leader need to read?
• How does a UI/UX designer differ from a UX designer?
• What are the best UX podcasts?
• What are some good articles, books, courses for learning web UI and UX design?
• Where do UI and UX people hang out online?
• What are the top 3 problems you hired a UX designer to solve at your startup?
• Why do people expect great UX nowadays?
• What is the hardest part when you start designing?
• Where can I find UX/UI reviews and case studies of apps and websites?
• What are the best practices for mobile UX?
• What interview questions would you ask a prospective user experience design leader for a Web 2.0 startup?

best resources on - UX (User Experience) design - blogs & websites

• eCommerce UX Design http://ecommerceuxdesign.com/
• A List Apart alistapart.com
• UX Booth uxbooth.com
• 52 weeks of UX 52weeksofux.com
• UX Mag uxmag.com
• UXPin studio.uxpin.com
• Think360 Studio Blog https://think360studio.com/blog/
• UsabilityPost usabilitypost.com
• Codal codal.com/blog
• The IxD Library theixdlibrary.com
• Boxes and Arrows boxesandarrows.com
• UX Myths uxmyths.com
• Use It useit.com
• Little Big Details littlebigdetails.com
• LukeW lukew.com/ff
• Iskeletor Hyperlinks The Iskeletor - Pushing Usability to the Forefront - Hyperlinks
• Core77 core77.com
• Adaptive Path adaptivepath.com/ideas/blog
• Konigi konigi.com
• Information Architects informationarchitects.jp
• Johnny Holland's Blog johnnyholland.org
• Smashing Magazine UX Section http://uxdesign.smashingmagazine.com
• Felt Presence (Ryan Singer) http://feltpresence.com
• Small Nudges http://www.smallnudg.es
• Ling Lim https://medium.com/@uxlifter
• Saurabh Kautilya Gupta https://twitter.com/iAmAProductGuy

Source:

https://www.quora.com/What-are-the-most-influential-UX-design-blogs

Only 4 Crore Indians (3% population of India) Pay Income tax

Only 4 Crore Indians; or 3% of the India's total (125+ Crore) population; pays income tax.

There is nothing shocking about this.
Lets try to understand how have we arrived at this data...

Out of the 125 crore people, only 50 crore people who are working.

Of these almost 50% are employed in agriculture - That is pretty much exempted from income tax.

That leaves only about 25 crore workers who work in factories and the service sector.

To pay income tax you need to be earning Rs. 2.5 Lakhs or more per year.

Lets look at some stats to find out that how many people earn that amount of money in India:

From above data, we can conclude that less than 20% of 25 Crore people earn Rs. 2.5 Lakhs or more per year. That number is not more than 4 crore people.

So, its these 4 Crore Indians who earn Rs. 2.5 Lakhs or more per year, and file/pay the income-tax to the government.

News article:

Less than 3 percent file income tax return in India

Source:

Question: https://www.quora.com/How-is-it-possible-that-only-3-of-Indians-pay-income-tax

Answer given by: https://www.quora.com/profile/Balaji-Viswanathan-2

Brain-Teasers Puzzles Riddles (vol 8)

1.
A human can finish a task X in 6 months.
You have just 1 night.
How will you finish the task X?

2.
How will you attract a married man/woman to have an affair with you?

3.
Say 1 single sentence in which you should sound both happy as well as sad.

4.
What if time stopped for 1 hour?

5.
Smoking helps you relax.
Prove it.

6.
What will you do if I kiss your girlfriend/wife?

7.
You live in my hotel that has 100 rooms.
All room are occupied by your friends.
You had $200.
You kept it in your room's table's drawer.
One of your friend; living in my hotel; stole your money.
What is your strategy to get back your money?
Don't spoil your friendship.
Assume that no one will leave the hotel for the next few days.

8.
There are 100 prisoners in solitary cells.
There's a central living room with one light bulb; this bulb is initially off.
No prisoner can see the light bulb from his or her own cell.
Everyday, the warden picks a prisoner equally at random, and that prisoner visits the living room.
While there, the prisoner can toggle the bulb if he or she wishes.
Each prisoner has the option of asserting that all 100 prisoners have been to the living room by now.
If this assertion is false, all 100 prisoners are shot dead.
If this assertion is true, all prisoners are set free.
The prisoners are allowed to get together one night in the courtyard, with you, to discuss a plan.
What plan do you suggest?

9.
Which animal is your soul?

10.
10 people - Q,W,E,R,T,Y,A,S,D,F - live in a home.
All family members are at home today.
W - is eating dinner.
E - is watching a movie on television.
R - is playing temple run game-app on mobile.
A - is watching a television soap on mobile.
T - is drinking tea.
S - is playing chess.
D - is drinking apple juice.
Y - is dancing.
Q - is washing clothes.
What is F doing?