Monday, August 19, 2013

Survival of the fittest

Adam Smith's Capitalism and Darwin's theory of evolution have some parallels. What seems more interesting to me is their differences.

When Darwin talks about survival of the fittest, he is talking about species not individuals. The strongest dinosaurs didn't survive. Species is nothing but a unit of organization of similar individuals. Bees survive by being together in a monarchy. Ants too work together. We have two extremes to work with. Individual as in a single person for Capitalism and "all members of a species" at the other end for Darwin. And then we have Bees and Ants somewhere in between.

The point I am trying to make is that "individual"  is not just something biological. It could be anything that cannot be divided - indivisible.   It is not a person that needs to be fittest, it is the organization of that set of persons, which acts as indivisible is what decides the fate of that "collective individual".  In the worst case, it is just a single biological unit - a person. In the best case, it could be everyone in the species. Or even a subset of species, including the subset all species.

Parasites won't survive without the host. Deer's won't survive without tigers, because too many deers will probably eat all the grass and die of hunger. To me, it feels like what survives is the system. Individuals are too fragile. It is systems with fault tolerance, systems with self balancing, self regulating  mechanisms, that tend to survive.  Strong kings survived. Their next generations survived longer. But what survived longest was the idea of Kingdom.

We should probably look back and figure out - What is survival? What is the time frame in which we look at survival?  And who is fighting? And with whom?  Before we use the term "survival of the fittest".  

Thursday, July 18, 2013

hi4hi - The Wednesday Story

Swati joined hi4hi at 11:18 AM on 17th July. 
She uploaded a picture of herself and wrote few lines of introduction.
She was ready to see if she likes any of the hi4hi users.
She invited Virat at 11:26 AM, 8 minutes after she had created her account. 
14 minutes later, they had a conversation which lasted 25 minutes. 

We don't know what they talked about or how did it go.
It was the 1000th time, we had connected people to discover each other.

Download from Google Play 
Visit our Website


Friday, July 12, 2013

hi4hi? Why?

I have talked about what is hi4hi multiple times. Today lets just focus on the why part? If you don't know about hi4hi, just watch this small video. Using Hi4hi Matrimony App.

First and foremost matrimony happens between people. Every matrimony site claims to have lakhs if not million of members. How you do we know if they are genuine or fake profiles? The minimum criteria  for being a person on most matrimony sites is email. How many email addresses can a person have? As many as they like. The question we are trying to answer here is the question of identity. At hi4hi, minimum criteria of being a person is a phone number. People do have dual SIM phones, so technically users can still create multiple profiles, but at max may be 2. No one can have 1000 phones numbers all for himself. It is simply too expensive to have. We are small, we don't have too many members, but each and every one of them is a person.

We don't ask users for bio data. We don't ask 100 questions. We don't even ask for their real name or email or their religion or caste or their salary. All we ask or rather provide users is 256 characters to write about themselves. It is not much. But it isn't less either. What we are looking for is a glimpse of the person. Typically all that matters is their education, their profession, caste/religion and location. It isn't too hard to put it in 256 characters. But what makes us different is that now you can actually talk to the person who has written than profile and see for yourself who they are. And that too without sharing your mobile number. What we take away with 256 characters, we return in multiple times by giving you the person himself. 5 emails, 10 chat sessions, 5 page profile or a 2 minutes call. We don't stop people from putting up their email address in profile. If you think that is better, go ahead. Your call.

We don't match profiles. We connect people. And not only we connect people, we connect them at their own terms. Users choose WHO they want to talk to and also WHEN they want to talk. Every time someone wants to talk to you, they need to invite you and unless you accept that invite, the user cannot call you. Once you accept the invite, it only gives the user permission for one call. This is the crux of hi4hi. When you give other your phone number, they can call you anytime and as many times as they want. Not with hi4hi. We make the calls possible without requiring you to share your phone numbers. Have real conversation with real people without any fear. Your number is safe with us and it is our business to keep it safe and still let you talk to people. Talk once, talk twice, talk as many as time as you both want, until you think it is time to take it forward.  Talk in office, talk in restaurant, talk in trail or talk in auto, wherever you want and whenever you want. Ask your friends to talk or ask your parents to talk, it is as simple as that.

It is fresh. It is better. hi4hi.

Sunday, June 16, 2013

Is your Android app in need of an advertisement campaign?


Here is a mail that I got couple of days ago..
This is a nice business. Hire few guys to put negative reviews for your app. This obviously kills your installs. Then charge app developers to remove these comments. I guess this would be the general business model for all customer "review" sites.  
Dear Android developer,

We would like to introduce our new marketing approach for your Android app in two easy steps:

1. Make your Google Play page look very attractive

- Adding 100 5-star ratings and 10 positive reviews to the app
- Removing negative comments from your front page
- Adding 250 Google Plus 1’s
- Creating a professional YouTube video
- Adding 2.000 views and 150 Likes to your YouTube video
- Adding 250 Likes to your Facebook page
2. Driving traffic to the Google Play page

- Creating new threads on 15 most visited Android forums
- Submitting the app to 50 most popular Android review writing websites
- Posting reviews on different Twitter pages with a total of 3 million followers
- Posting on the most popular Facebook groups with a total of 300.000 members
- Posting the app in adds on various sites through the web which generates 100+ views per day for 1 month
Price Standard Package: $299
Additional upgrades:

- Add 25.000 views and 1.000 Likes to your YouTube video for $100
- Add 1.000 Facebook Likes for $100
- Add 1.000 app ratings and comments for an additional $800
- Add 1.500 Google +1’s for an additional $100
- Remove negative comments for $10 per comment
A list of all the forums, review sites, Facebook pages and Twitter pages will be provided after the promotion is completed.

Not convinced yet? Want to order? Got a question? Just reply to this email.
Thanks!

Ilia
You can get it touch with them at androidstandardpack@gmail.com.