‘The Marketer Who Went Off Consumption’ is my year-long blog-as-a-book experiment in why we choose to consume, or not.

If you haven’t yet subscribed to ‘The Marketer Who Went Off Consumption’, you should subscribe to it now, for free, in a feed reader, or by e-mail.

Yesterday, my first interview for ‘The Marketer Who Went Off Consumption’ was published in Indian daily Hindustan Times.

The interview was published on the front page of the Delhi edition –

– and the city section in the Mumbai edition –

One interesting thing I learned yesterday is that different editions of a newspaper may publish different versions of a story.

The Mumbai Edition published the full story — see text below — complete with my rules and URL.

The Delhi Edition published a much shorter version of the story — also available online — but it was on the front page and I’m not complaining at all.

The Simple Life

Marketing professional Gaurav Mishra has embarked on an intriguing experiment: a no-frills, no-indulgences, low-consumption life

Riddhi Shah, Mumbai
riddhi.shah@hindustantimes.com
Sunday, April 13, 2008

Imagine never being able to eat out; not even a vada pav at the station. Never being able to go shopping for clothes or for gadgets. Or being able to go to the movies. Imagine not using a car or a taxi, walking as much as you can and taking the train. And having to do all the housework yourself.

Sounds like your worst nightmare? For 28-year-old Gaurav Mishra, it’s just an average day in his life. Not because he’s living a life of poverty; in fact, he’s an assistant general manager at one of India’s leading automobile companies.

But for an entire year, Mishra has set off on an experiment to go “off consumption” - which, by his definition, means that he won’t buy anything unless it’s a necessity .

“I got tired of trying to equate happiness with consumption. I’d bought so many clothes, books, DVDs and immersed myself in luxury I had success, I had money, but . didn’t know the purpose of my life,” says the Patna native.

His yearlong experiment, he says, is an attempt at finding a way to lead a simpler life. “Besides, I’ve realised that people getting tired of consumerism is going to be a big trend. And as a marketer, it’s a trend that I want to study I’m hoping this year will give me insights into what marketers need to prepare for in the future,” says Mishra, who holds an MBA from IIM-Bangalore. And like any good marketer, he also knows the latent potential of his unique experiment - Mishra is waiting for that big book deal to come through even as he writes about his daily experiences on his blog (www.gauravonomics.com). Necessity or not?

Whenever he tells people about his experiment, says Mishra, the first question is always: how does one define a necessity? But he deliberately refrains from a concrete definition. “Part of the point of the project is to figure out what exactly constitutes a necessity. That’s one of the insights I’m looking for,” he argues.

In the three weeks since he’s given up consumption, he’s already learned enough about marketing and the future of consumerism to fill a few chapters of his book: For in- stance, he says that even if he’s given up McDonald’s burgers, he’s still buying relatively expensive muesli because he considers the latter a necessity. So, he concludes, “Health food will continue to grow as a segment even if fast food doesn’t.” Or, he relates, “Because I can’t go to restaurants anymore, I’m beginning to experience the absolute lack of public places in the city It would . be a great marketing tactic for Barista and Café Coffee Day to position them selves as free spaces rather than exclusive cafes.”

He’s also tapping into the increasing populari ty of the ‘swapping economy’, after being forced to look for alternative accommodation instead of a five-star hotel the next time he travels on business. “I signed up for something called couch surfing, in which people offer their couches to strangers for free. Such free or barter arrangements promise to be a huge thing in the future,” says Mishra.

But it’s only early days. There are another 344 days to see through, and he foresees, “The biggest problem promises to be my social life. I’m worried about how I’ll continue to relate to my friends if I can’t go to a restaurant, a movie or a bar. Right now, they’re still willing to come over or meet me for a walk, or cook for me when I visit them, but at some point it’ll become too much of an effort. What will I do then?”

And of course, there’s the problem of maintaining a love life – how does a 28-year-old take a girl out on a low-consumption date? “So far, I’ve been creative and gone to Juhu beach once and cooked dinner twice, but at some point I might run out of options,” Mishra confesses.

There are other possible roadblocks. While cleaning and cooking doesn’t seem like much of a chore right now, there’s always the possibility of coming back to a dirty house, and getting desperate enough to ask his maid to come back.”

For right now though, Mishra is focusing on make the project as much of a public spectacle as possible. “It’s a way of keeping myself in check. The more people know about it, the bigger fool I’ll make of myself if I fail to see this through,” he says.

It’s not going to be easy, of course. “I’ve completely taken out all comfort food from my life. Even something as simple as eating ice cream is a problem. So,” jokes Mishra, “I’m just going to have to be happy all the time.”

Mishra’s Laws of Low Consumption

- Only basic groceries, toiletries and household items are allowed.
- Eating out and going out for paid entertainment are not allowed.
- Buying clothes, accessories and gadgets is not allowed, but repairing and borrowing them is.
- Buying books, music, or movies is not allowed, online or offline.
- Mass media are not allowed.
- Household help is not allowed.
- Buying gifts is not allowed, but giving and receiving gifts is.
- Consuming what he already has is allowed. He will only replenish if necessary.
- Work is sacrosanct; he will not let his experiment interfere with his ability to work.

Check out ‘The Marketer Who Went Off Consumption’, India’s first marketing book-as-a-blog. Subscribe to my full feed in a feed reader or by e-mail.

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I have written an article on Twitter — based on my post on seven reasons you should sign up for Twitter today if you already haven’t — in the March issue of Indian magazine Man’s World.

The issue — and the story — isn’t yet up online, but you can click on the scanned picture above to read the story.

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I was quoted yesterday in Indian daily Hindustan Times’ article on how Indian corporates are embracing blogging and social networking as collaborative tools –

Some, like Gaurav Mishra, the Indica brand head, use their personal brand – created over years of blogging – to promote the brand they work for. “My blog benefits because my real-life experience gives credibility to my posts, and my offline avatar benefits because my online presence makes it possible to meet and build an impression on people who wouldn’t have known of me otherwise.” Lately, Mishra has promoted a new ad campaign for his brand on his blog and Facebook account.

A serious concern for employers could be what their employees say publicly on such sites. Says Mishra, “I ensure that my entire web presence is squeaky clean so that even if I put it on my resume, it can hold up to close scrutiny.”

The article also quotes Webchutney CEO Sidharth Rao, TCS VP & CTO K Ananth Krishnan, Cognizant CKO Sukumar Rajagopal, Sun CTO Santhosh D’Souza, Microsoft India HR Director Joji Gill, and Pinstorm CEO Mahesh Murthy.

The article covers the entire enterprise 2.0 spectrum including CXO blogging, internal enterprise blogs, employee blogging policy, and the use of blogs and social networks as collaborative tools in the enterprise.

Here is the complete text of the article –

Corporates promote blogs as office tools

Neha Tara Mehta, Hindustan Times
New Delhi, March 09, 2008

Social networking sites like Orkut and Facebook and blogs are part of your personal life, right? If you are lucky and these sites aren’t blocked at work, you probably manage to steal a few minutes at work to access them, while pretending to be hard at work. But if you work for a select few companies that see such sites as vital office communication tools, then social networking online could all be in a day’s work. The benefits? The emergence of a whole new, democratic work culture.

Take interactive agency Webchutney’s Mustafa Syed, a marketing analyst and project manager. He follows 40-odd colleagues on Twitter, a microblogging service accessible from cellphones and PCs, among other social networking tools like Facebook to stay in touch with people across three locations – some of whom he has never met. “Work flows smoother with such informal tools. Everyone in the company is on G-chat, so there is no initial awkwardness communicating with people you have never met.” Employees can chat online with the CEO as well, taking up problems and discussing ideas. “A lot of bureaucracy doesn’t exist then,” he says.

When Webchutney CEO Sidharth Rao recently went to Bangalore to make a customer pitch, he was microblogging about the presentation live to employees in Mumbai and Delhi. “People who have worked on the presentation but aren’t making it themselves would want to know what’s happening,” he says. New-age communication tools also help track employee dynamics. “These sites give me a first-hand chance to assess where the teams are — what’s playing up their mood or bringing them down.”

Offices such as Webchutney stand in sharp contrast to many – where social networking online is looked upon as ‘cyberslacking’. Tata Consultancy Services (TCS), too, is trying to leverage social networking technologies for collaborations and knowledge creation within its 110,000 employee-strong organisation. “Social networking is a hugely popular with a very significant employee base. No company can afford to ignore it,” says K Ananth Krishnan, vice president and Chief Technology Officer (CTO).

TCS employees are part of 1,500 company-oriented communities on social networking sites. Many also blog actively on the public platform. Part of the “highly connected and open culture” at TCS is ‘My Site’ — a website for every employee, embedded with social networking tools. Then, there’s ‘Idea Storm’ — a site on which everybody is invited to comment on a theme. “We got 20,000 ideas out of a dialogue in five days,” says Krishnan. There’s also a CTO blog – accessed by 85 per cent of the company in the last three months and ‘Just Ask’, a community where anyone can put forward a question and have it answered.

At Cognizant, newsletters and other types of internal communication have already migrated to the blogging platform. “Blogs are an excellent mechanism for collecting feedback, expanding networks and knowledge sharing across a global employee base,” says Sukumar Rajagopal, Chief Knowledge Officer, Cognizant.

Employee blogging is central to Sun Microsystems’ marketing communications strategy, with top boss Jonathan Schwartz believing that employee blogs have “authenticated the Sun brand as much as or more than a billion dollar ad campaign could have done.”

Schwartz’s own posts neither overhype Sun products, nor over-slay competitors. Employees write about mundane problems like product delays, and invite readers to submit bug reports and suggestions. Says Ananth Shrinivas, 24, a Sun engineer whose posts are among the most widely read ones on technology, “Blogging is a way for employees who aren’t related to a particular product or policy, to write about their valid concerns.” His postings on a public blog go with the disclaimer, “My writings do not express the views of my employer cat, dog or girlfriend.” Santhosh D’Souza, the Sun chief technologist, uses his blog as an extension of himself — to write about what’s new in Sun technologies for potential customers.

Some, like Gaurav Mishra, the Indica brand head, use their personal brand – created over years of blogging – to promote the brand they work for. “My blog benefits because my real-life experience gives credibility to my posts, and my offline avatar benefits because my online presence makes it possible to meet and build an impression on people who wouldn’t have known of me otherwise.” Lately, Mishra has promoted a new ad campaign for his brand on his blog and Facebook account.

A serious concern for employers could be what their employees say publicly on such sites. Says Mishra, “I ensure that my entire web presence is squeaky clean so that even if I put it on my resume, it can hold up to close scrutiny.” Says Krishnan of TCS, “If there is criticism of the company online, it’s a person’s opinion, and we take it constructively,” he says. “Blogging or any other new media of communication shouldn’t override an employee’s common sense, ” says Joseph George, engineering manager, Sun India Engineering Centre.

Microsoft doesn’t review, edit, censor or endorse individual posts, says Joji Gill, director HR, Microsoft India. It’s such freedom that inspires employees to blog responsibly and tap into unstructured knowledge networks online, says Abhishek Kant, a Microsoft community programme manager and one of the founders of the Delhi Bloggers Association. “If the company is willing to take such a risk, I will also write responsibly.”

Mahesh Murthy, CEO of Pinstorm, a search engine-driven marketing company, had to introduce a blogging policy in 2006 after he found two employees engaged in an online duel. The company now guides clients on the “power of positive blogging.” Says cyberlaw expert Pavan Duggal, “Companies should have a blogging policy in place, saying that employees shall neither disclose anything confidential nor post any defamatory or libelous content. Violating this policy should have serious consequences for the employee.”

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I have been tracking social media marketing in India for a while now both in my brand manager and blogger avatars.

I was quoted today in Thinking Aloud, the online magazine of IAMAI (Internet & Mobile Association of India), in a story on social media marketing in India.

The article also quotes Raj Kurup, CEO of Creativeland Asia.

Here’s a quick summary of my thoughts on the social media marketing landscape in India –

- Social media marketing is a great tool for marketers to identify and redress customer dissatisfaction issue early, engage customers and citizens into meaningful conversations, and build customer loyalty at a low cost.

- In India, for most mainstream brands, social media is not yet a significant factor as of now. It is more important for reputation-based, service-oriented, consumer-fronted sectors like auto/ telecom/ financial services/ travel and hospitality. However, over time, social media will become important for all types of companies and brands.

- In India, where most marketers are still coming to terms with digital marketing, there’s no compelling reason as of now for brand managers to include social media in their marketing mix. Brand managers are also wary of experimenting with social media because it requires very high involvement levels, advertising agencies don’t yet understand social media, the measurement metrics are not yet established, and companies are still wary of negative publicity, which means that all communication has to be vetted by the corporate communications department. However, marketers who do experiment with social media now are likely to differentiate their brands and build a first mover advantage.

In summary, while the significance of social media is still limited in India, brand managers in India should start seeding small social media initiatives to build capabilities and communities for the future.

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Yesterday, I was part of a Hindustan Times Young India Forum panel discussion on the Indian Budget 2008. The Young India Forum is an initiative by Hindustan Times to “drive change and reach more people more directly”.

Hindustan Times had put together an interesting panel consisting of young film-makers, entrepreneurs, and corporate fast-trackers and I had a great time at the panel discussion –

Finely tailored suits, chic skirts and fancy designations — a perfect picture of corporate India, but without the grey hair. On Friday, young MDs, VPs and filmmakers, representatives of the changing face of corporate India, got together to take part in the Hindustan Times Young India Forum. To discuss, naturally, the Budget presented by Finance Minister P Chidambaram.

As the FM read out the fiscal Budget — his fifth in a row — clad in a pristine white dhoti, these designer-clad corporate honchos chuckled, sighed, laughed and gave their perspective on one of the biggest events of the year in India.

As some of you know, I don’t read the newspaper or watch TV, so I was quite clueless on what to expect from the budget (tweet). I mean, I understand enough Macro Economics to know what a good budget should focus on — basically initiatives (related to fiscal stability, education, infrastructure etc.) that have multiplier effects across sectors — but I hadn’t bothered to follow all the speculation in the build-up to the budget. An hour on Google, however, gave me enough background to talk about the budget intelligently (tweet).

I also wanted to include a crowd-sourcing angle in the panel discussion by talking about what early adopter Indians on Twitter expect from the budget (tweet1, tweet2, tweet3, tweet4, tweet5), but didn’t get enough responses.

My take on the budget is that it’s the classic pre-election feel-good populist budget that will please a lot of people, leave many feeling neutral and displease very few. Mr. Chidambaram is a master at packaging budgets, and that’s true for all his budgets, not only this one. The one highlight of the budget for me is the Rs. 15000 cr. corpus for “skill development”. But the big question I’m still asking myself is this — where will the money to fund Mr. Chidambaram’s generous budgetary allocations, including the Rs. 50000 cr. debt relief for farmers, come from?

I must say that Hindustan Times has packaged the story very well — there’s a full page story in today’s newspaper, and the online version has a PDF file of the print story and a video. The print story has nice little profiles on the seven of us —

Gaurav Mishra, Assistant General Manager, Indica, Tata Motors

The IIM Bangalore graduate has been with the Tatas ever since he stepped out of the campus six years ago. Mishra believes in sticking around and climbing the corporate ladder. He simplifies his complex job profile to one line — “I sell cars” — and the best part of his job is that his office is located two minutes from his home. When home, he disappears and writes his blog gauravonomics.com, which deals with marketing technology. Eventually, Mishra wants to set up something on his own and create jobs.

It’s fascinating what someone picks up when summarizing a half hour discussion in a paragraph. For instance, I blog about “marketing, technology and social media” and not “marketing technology” and I’m quite sure that whenever I start something on my own, it won’t create a thousand jobs.

Here’s the full text of the story — I’m pleased to tell you that Hindustan Times used a quote from me as the headline –

‘A Budget difficult to argue with’

Finely tailored suits, chic skirts and fancy designations — a perfect picture of corporate India, but without the grey hair. On Friday, young MDs, VPs and filmmakers, representatives of the changing face of corporate India, got together to take part in the Hindustan Times Young India Forum. To discuss, naturally, the Budget presented by Finance Minister P Chidambaram.

As the FM read out the fiscal Budget — his fifth in a row — clad in a pristine white dhoti, these designer-clad corporate honchos chuckled, sighed, laughed and gave their perspective on one of the biggest events of the year in India.

Put seven Young Turks in a room and it would not take very long for any discussion to heat up. And when the issue is as crucial as the Budget, it takes no time at all.

The forum kicked off immediately after Chidambaram’s Budget presentation with one big, noisy agreement: that this Budget was aimed clearly at the forthcoming elections.

“A feel-good, populist budget. It’s very difficult to argue with it,” said Gaurav Mishra, assistant general manager (Indica), Tata Motors. An “inclusive budget,” agreed Nikhil Kaushik, associate vice-president, BTS Investment Advisors.

It was corporate-neutral budget, according to Sarang Wadhawan, managing director, Housing Development and Infrastructure Limited, and one of the moderators for the discussion. “It’s targeting the middle-income and agricultural votes.”

Everyone agreed, however, with Devita Saraf, executive director, Zenith Computers, when she said: “Corporate India has had a long bull run so it’s good if the FM has decided to let it be and focus on the bottom of the pyramid where there are genuine concerns.”

Not everyone was happy though. Filmmaker Vipul Shah complained that the entertainment sector, especially the film industry, had been ignored. “We’ve been fighting against entertainment tax for five years,” he said.

What attracted everyone’s interest was the Rs 60,000-crore wavier of loans for small and marginal farmers. While corporate India agreed that it was worthy to have tackled the agriculture debt crisis, they were wary of its repercussions.

“The headlines will be about wiping out farmer debts, and rightly so, but whether Chidambaram has opened a Pandora’s Box remains to be seen,” said Wadhawan.

The initiatives on education also got the thumbs-up. As the second moderator for the debate Purvi Sheth, vice-president, Shilputsi, put it: “We need more IIT graduates and more skilled young people. If we want India to compete on an international stage, we need more high-grade educational institutes.”

Shweta Joshi felt that educational incentives would now enable India to focus on research and development. “The boost to technology in education and a knowledge network are good news. Moving to being a knowledge-based society from the current consumption-based society will be good for India,” said the former teacher.

Introducing himself as an environmentalist, Sohail Khan, head of sales for Deal Group Media, pointed out that environmental issues had been largely ignored, except for the protection of tigers. “Eventually, it’s an ecosystem we exist in where everything affects everything, directly or indirectly,” he warned.

The discussion was not without its unanswered questions. How will all allocations be implemented effectively? How do you let people at the bottom of the pyramid know of the initiatives for them? What’s the plan on enhancing agricultural productivity?

The forum ended with hearty laughter as Kaushik quipped on Chidambaram’s statement that he was a lucky FM.

“He’s a lucky FM all right! He made an entry when India went into a growth phase; he’s going into the election year in a growth phase.”

No one contradicted Sarang when he ended the session saying it was a budget aimed at “bringing Congress back to power”.

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Indian daily Mid-Day did a story today on cool bachelor pads and featured my own humble bachelor pad as the lead —

Gaurav Mishra, 28, Marketer

After 6 years of slumming it out at hostels and PG setups (through his education and internship), Gaurav Mishra was finally ready to settle down. “Not in the oft-used sense of the term, of course,” the IIM-B alumnus jokes. So, the 28-year-old traded in his nomadic lifestyle for a 2-bedroom flat in Cuffe Parade, that he painstakingly furnished and colour coordinated black upholstery, orange bedroom, blue living room to ensure it feels like home.

Gaurav’s tips: Don’t blindly follow people’s advice. I was told cane furniture is difficult to maintain, but I’ve had mine for the last 4 years. And it’s good as new. Instead of letting stuff (clothes, books, dishes…) pile up, allot spaces for various things, and ensure they go there. Booze bottles and glasses stay in the bar cabinet, books and DVDs in my second bedroom, that I plan to turn into a podcasting studio, the technophile says.

In case you are wondering, I don’t (yet) have the tens of crores one needs to buy a house like this in Mumbai’s Cuffe Parade. I just live there, thanks to my very generous employers.

Finally, w.r.t. converting my second bedroom into a podcast studio, I have been toying with the idea of starting a video podcast for a while now and hope to put up the first episode in March itself. It will be great if you could share tips/ resources on how to do a video podcast series.

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Twitter, a popular microblogging service abroad, recently introduced an India number. Says Biz Stone, Twitter’s co-founder, “The people of India are very sophisticated when it comes to using SMS to stay connected.”

In Mumbai, Twitter recently inspired a ‘tweetup’, when Gaurav Mishra, a marketing professional and an “early adopter of technology”, wrote out a post saying “Blog meets are so passé. I want a Mumbai Twitter meet.”

The article covers the entire spectrum of the micro-blogging space in India, from Twitter to MyToday MOBS and Webaroo SMSGupShup to the Reliance m-blog and Nokia N-Series m-blog.

The article also has quotes from Ideasmith, Veer, Kiran, Rajesh and Biz Stone.

Here is the full text of the article —

Blogging by SMS, new rage in cool India
Neha Tara Mehta, Hindustan Times
New Delhi, February 17, 2008

At 21, Ludhiana management student Harjinder Singh already has a mega project in hand, albeit in a micro medium. His 160-character blog posts, punched out on his Nokia handset, instantaneously reach 57,659 Sikhs across India — all at the cost of a single SMS. “I aim to arouse the pride of young Sikhs through my writings,” says Singh, who started blogging on his phone last May. “Many of my Sikh readers voted for Ludhiana’s Ishmeet Singh in Star Plus’s Voice of India — and contributed to his victory,” he adds. Singh has hired two people to get him cell numbers of 200,000 Sikhs, because he wants to reach “one in ten Sikhs soon”.

In Delhi, Lalchung Siem, a 33-year-old Food Corporation of India employee, whips out his phone several times a day to blog in Hmar, a tribal language spoken by a small group of people in India. His posts are sent free to 6,106 readers in the North-East by SMSGupShup, a microblogging platform. “Recently, I got an SOS call after two boys fell in a river in Saidan village, Manipur. I flashed the SMS on my blog, and within minutes, a hundred people reached the spot, and managed to rescue one of the boys,” he says.

Microblogging, i.e., blogging on cellphones in SMSes is on its way to become an absolute sell-out among compulsive cellphone users and enthusiastic communicators.

HOW?

“Microblogging is redefining what a conversation is all about, blurring the line between SMSing and blogging, and between the private and public,” says Kiran Jonnalagadda, who microblogs as ‘Jace’.

Says Ramya aka IdeaSmith: “Blogging on the phone has no extra baggage that blogging on a computer carries: you don’t have to be grammatically correct and your blog post could be just any stray thought.”

Twitter, a popular microblogging service abroad, recently introduced an India number. Says Biz Stone, Twitter’s co-founder, “The people of India are very sophisticated when it comes to using SMS to stay connected.”

In Mumbai, Twitter recently inspired a ‘tweetup’, when Gaurav Mishra, a marketing professional and an “early adopter of technology”, wrote out a post saying “Blog meets are so passé. I want a Mumbai Twitter meet.”

Webaroo Inc, which launched the free microblogging service SMSGupShup in India last April, claims to be growing at nearly 4 per cent every day - purely through word-of-mouth publicity. “We expect users in excess of 20 million before the end this year,” says Webaroo vice president Chirag Jain.

Costs are recovered by placing contextual ads at the end of the SMS. MyToday MOBS, a microblogging service from Netcore Solutions that took off last July, sees nearly 25,000 people ‘publishing’ on a daily basis - again, with zero advertising and marketing costs.

“India has the world’s third-largest mobile base. If you create services leveraging the mobile as a platform - they will work,” says Netcore MD Rajesh Jain.

It’s not even just text anymore - phone companies are ringing in an era in which pictures, video and audio can be blogged instantaneously.

Nokia Nseries introduced its ‘M-Blog’ last year. “When blogging began in the ’90s, the only way to blog was to get to a computer and upload images, text and video. But not any more,” says Vineet Taneja, GTM head, Nokia India.

Reliance has seen a four-fold increase in its m-blog usage since it started advertising the feature last month, to make blogging appear “less geeky.” And Sony Ericsson, buoyed by the success of its mobile blogging feature, has recently launched the K660i “for the Orkut generation”.

In Japan, five out of ten of last year’s best-selling novels were originally written out on cellphones. Will India’s mobile bloggers end up compiling novels from their writings? Veer Chand Bothra, the organiser of MoMos (meetings of mobile experts on Mondays), doesn’t discount the possibility. “Microblogging is helping people release a lot of creative energy free of cost. They could be inspired to compile the microblogs as books eventually.”

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Yesterday, when I tweeted about wanting to do a Mumbai Twitter Meetup —

Blog meets are so passe. I want to do a Mumbai Twitter meet. Anyone interested? (Twitter)

– I received half a dozen responses within seconds.

Within the hour, I had set up a @MumbaiTwit Twitter account, a dozen people had started following it, Aalaap Ghag (@aalaap) and Kapil Bhatia (@kapilb) had posted about the event and Aalaap had set up a Mumbai Twitter Meetup event on Facebook. Phew!

So, if you are in Mumbai and on Twitter, let’s meet up for the first Mumbai Twitter Meetup.

When? 5 pm, Saturday, December 29, 2007.

Where? Flat No A/65, Sea Lord, Cuffe Parade, Mumbai.

If you are planning to attend, here are a few things you should do in the run up to the event –

- Register for the event by following @MumbaiTwit on Twitter, joining the Mumbai Twitter Meetup event on Facebook, or leaving a comment below. Better still, do all three!

- Promote the event by tweeting about the event, or posting about it, or displaying the event poster or the event logo on your blog. Do remember to include a link to @MumbaiTwit on Twitter and the Mumbai Twitter Meetup event on Facebook in your post.

- Evangelize Twitter and get five interesting people — and I mean really interesting people — who aren’t yet on Twitter to sign-up for Twitter, then invite them for the event. If you want, use this post to explain to them what Twitter is and why they should sign up for it.

- Tweet your ideas for cool things to do for the event. I’ll collect them and put them up for voting. The best idea will get a surprize. Do remember to include a @MumbaiTwit in your tweets for me to track them.

For the event itself, here are a few thoughts to start you off –

- The venue of the event is my house. If more than 30 people sign up for the event, we’ll put our heads together and tweet up a new public venue. This, however, looks unlikely, as of now.

- The event is totally free. I’ll arrange for snacks, beer and wine and we can order pizza for dinner. You don’t need to pay anything, or bring anything, but I’ll not say no to a nice bottle of wine.

- I only have jazz, classic rock and ghazals on my iPod. If you want to listen to something else, bring your own iPod. If enough people being their iPods, we can take turns at playing music and even do an impromptu contest and give a surprize for the ‘Best iJ’.

- Wear all blue. Twitter is blue and my living room curtains/ cushions/ rugs are also blue. All of us in blue against my blue curtains will make for an interesting group photo op. We can even have a surprize for the person whose blue clothes are closest shade to the Twitter blue.

- If one of you can arrange for a projector, we can tweet during the event from our mobile phones and project the tweet-stream on a wall. Once again, we can have a surprize for the best tweet during the event.

So, what are you waiting for? Go register now.

If you aren’t yet on Twitter, you probably don’t know what Twitter is (otherwise, you would have been on Twitter). It’s difficult to explain Twitter to someone who hasn’t used it first hand, but I’ll explain it by drawing analogies with seven other services you might have used. Then, I’ll give you seven reasons to try it out today.

- #1 Twitter is Like a Blog: The most obvious comparison, of course, is with blogging (in fact, Twitter is basically a micro-blogging platform). Think of Twitter as a blog in which your posts can only be upto 140 letters long. Like blogs (Technorati), Twitter has its own hierarchies, and top 100 lists, (Twitterholic and Tweetboard). What’s more, like blogs (Google Blog Search), Twitter also has its own search engine (TweetScan).

- #2 Twitter is Like a Social Network: If you haven’t ever blogged, you have probably used a social networking site. If you like Orkut — and who in India doesn’t — think of Twitter as your scrapbook, only better, because it not only shows what your friends are saying to you and you to them, it also shows what they are saying to each others and to total strangers. If you like Facebook, think of Twitter as your news feed, only better, because it not only shows what your friends are doing, it also allows you to tag them using @username and have conversations with them.

- #3 Twitter is Like a Chat Room:If you haven’t used either blogs or social networks, you would probably have used a chat room. If you like chatting, Twitter is perfect for you, because Twitter becomes like a chat room when you have a few hundred friends who are also friends with each other.

- #4 Twitter is Like a Feed Reader: If you are obsessive about staying on top of news and read hundreds of feeds on your feed reader, you’ll love Twitter because news and blog posts get shared on Twitter faster than anywhere else.

- #5 Twitter is Like a Forum: If you have a few hundred friends, Twitter becomes a forum for topics related to technology, marketing and social media. If you have a problem, or, if you need some advise, you send our a tweet, and a few dozen people would reply to you immediately.

- #6 Twitter is Like a Search Engine: Because Twitter works so well as a forum for topics like technology, marketing and social media, some people even use it as a people powered search engine. And, trust me, for some terms, Twitter almost works as efficiently as Google.

- #7 Twitter is like a SMS Service: Finally, even if you aren’t the online sort of person, you are probably as much into SMSing as everyone else. Twitter works brilliantly well on mobile phones and you can send and receive updates from your mobile phone, either through WAP or through SMS.

Now that I have explained what Twitter is, here are the seven reasons you should join Twitter today, if you already haven’t –

Reason #1: Twitter is many things in one — it is a blog, a social network, a chat room, a feed reader, a forum, a people-powered search engine and an SMS service all at once. What more can you ask for?

Reason #2: As influential early adopters are spending more time on Twitter, conversations are increasingly shifting to Twitter, especially conversations about web 2.0, technology and marketing.

Reason #3: Twitter is a great place to promote ideas amongst these early adopters. Although I have never actively promoted my blog on Twitter, more than 10% of my traffic comes from Twitter.

Reason #4: Twitter is a great place to make new connections, and not only with people who are on Twitter. Yesterday, a Twitter friend in the US introduced me by e-mail to a blogger-marketer in India who isn’t even on Twitter.

Reason #5: Twitter allows you to decide if you want your updates to be public or private. So, you can use it as a public document or as a private diary.

Reason #6: Twitter works brilliantly as a scrapbook for developing a thought thread. I do it so often that I have started a separate category on my blog for Twitter Threads.

Reason #7: The most important reason for joining Twitter is also the one reason for not joining Twitter — it is very very addictive. But when has that stopped us from doing anything?

So, what are you waiting for? If you aren’t already on Twitter, go sign up Twitter, then start following me @Gauravonomics and register for the Mumbai Twitter Meet by following @MumbaiTwit. Then come to the event, make a bunch of new friends, and get dozens of followers.

End of post/ pitch. I’ll see you on Twitter.

Had fun at @MumbaiTwit last night. Nine people turned up, several more SMSed, called, tweeted, registered but didn’t finally make it. (link)

In order of appearance at @MumbaiTwit: yours truly, @ranjanvarma, @vulturo, @kapilb, @aalaap, @adityamishra, @namithaj, @zynx & @rochit. (link)

We drank wine & talked about social graph portability, Facebook application spam, the right format for barcamps, web2.0/ mobile startups… (link)

was in & out of the kitchen & made a dozen plus dishes. Everything I cooked was finished, so I’m assuming it wasn’t a disaster. (link)

Then @Vulturo & I sat up till 3 am & chalked up the business plan for our “why hasn’t anybody else thought of it yet?” startup. (link)

So, I had a great time at @MumbaiTwit, met some old friends, made some new friends, ate, drank, talked. I hope others had a good time too. (link)

Namitha has written a story about the @MumbaiTwit in LiveMint –

Pocket-sized social networking

Twitter is the latest social media platform to catch the fancy of users worldwide, and allows a person to post real- time updates called “tweets”

Mumbai: India had its first Twitter meet last Saturday, when a bunch of working professionals met up at an apartment in uptown Mumbai to talk about their love for the Web application that lets you tell the world about your life and thoughts in 140 characters.
Twitter is the latest social media platform to catch the fancy of users worldwide, and allows a person to post real- time updates called “tweets”, via mobile and instant messaging on its website, which can then be shared with other users. In turn, a user tracks tweets posted by others.

Gaurav Mishra, who hosted the meet, likes to follow everyone who posts on Twitter. For half an hour every day, on weekdays, Mishra reads all the latest updates on the site.

Twitter, which began as a research project within San Francisco-based start-up Obvious Llc. in late 2006, picked up users rapidly in the months that followed. That Twitter is in its early days in India is evident—only nine people turned up for the meet.

Mishra estimates there are less than 2,000 users in India. Most users have been early adopters of social media platforms in the past. Almost everyone at the meet had paid for their own websites long before blogging became free and mainstream.

Discussions revolved around the Twitter ratio, which is a ratio of the number of profiles you track to the number of people who track you. The more popular you are in Twitter circles, the bigger the following. The group also spoke about the charm of Twitter—it is a tool people either love or hate. Each update in itself is trivial, but regularly tracking topics or profiles gives the bigger picture.

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I was quoted today in a Hyderabad Times story on lifestyle entrepreneurship — entrepreneurship in the pursuit of leading a lifestyle that is a perfect balance of health, wealth and relationships –

While Gaurav Mishra, a marketer and a prominent blogger partly agrees, “I think entrepreneurship itself is nebulous in India, given our ‘good boys get a good job’ mindset, ‘lifestyle entrepreneurship’ will be even more rare. At the same time, profit is only part of the reason people become entrepreneurs. This is just taking it a bit further and deciding to be the master of one’s own destiny and one’s own time.”

I still have to figure out why I’m an expert on entrepreneurship, but all buzz is welcome. A link to my blog would have been even more welcome.

On second thoughts, I’ll probably look back at this story a few years later as a sign that helped me answer the question I have been asking myself endlessly — ‘What Should I Do With My Life?’.

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