Netizen

Thursday, June 03, 2010

How To Date An Indian: Andrea Miller

This blog post by an Andrea Miller normally would not fall in tech and biz categories - technbiz.blogspot.com - except that she is an entrepreneur, and this blog has touched upon the world of online dating before. Besides, anything goes. And this post seems to be Miller's first and only post at The Huffington Post. She comes across as a fairly accomplished individual. Most people start at the collective level. Individual spark comes later. That is why so few of the relationships out there are cross-cultural, inter-racial, even in a diverse city like New York.

Online Dating Newsflash: Race And Religion Matter

Andrea Miller: Bio

.... founder and CEO of YourTango ..... a B.S. in Mechanical Engineering and an M.B.A. from Columbia Business School ..... positions with Goldman Sachs, ICF Consulting and Enron’s international finance team. While with Enron, Andrea was based in Mumbai, India for three years. ...... a frequent panelist and guest speaker in classes at Harvard University, Columbia University, Fordham University, The Wharton School and New York University. .... a licensed private pilot, and is a passionate karate practitioner ..... one of the original co-heads of the New York Chapter of 85 Broads, an independent global network of female professionals and students. She actively seeks to promote entrepreneurship among women; she is the co-founder of the Women Entrepreneurs Network, an active network of females who represent some of the tri-state area's most talented and promising young entrepreneurs.

Andrea Miller: How To Date An Indian

Indians are the true Chosen People .....There are obvious reasons one would want to date an Indian, such as how successful and professionally desirable they are. Indians dominate as engineers, doctors, lawyers, venture capitalists and entrepreneurs. They make up a large proportion of our graduate students -- just walk around the campuses of Harvard, Columbia or Stanford or and you will see these incredibly attractive brown people all over the place....... Indian people tend to be really good looking. ..... According to Wikipedia*, "India holds the highest number of Miss World winners, only to be tied with Venezuela." ...... Most Indians are innately gracious, social creatures; they highly value friends and family and have a calendar filled with various holidays and occasions to celebrate, which they typically do with gusto. Those endless jubilant dance numbers in Bollywood movies pretty much channel the Indian soul. Moreover, Indian men love to dance. If for no other reason other than you want someone to dance with you (or without you for that matter), date an Indian. ....... learn seven things that should ingratiate you with them. The first five have to do with Bollywood. Indians take Bollywood and their celebrities very seriously. ....... If you bust out something like, "Yea, I loved Kuch Kuch Hota Hai," you are very likely to get a second date. .... Major bonus points if you suggest seeing a Hindi movie together. ...... Bhangra ...exhibit the right dance moves, i.e. patting an imaginary dog while screwing in an imaginary light bulb. ..... Indians love their food. Probably more than they love dancing. ...... Indians love when you speak their language. ..... there are several iPhone apps that will give you translations .... I hope Laxmi, Goddess of Prosperity, smiles on you as you endeavor to date one of her people. ..... one more big bonus when it comes to dating an Indian: communication with cabbies. Think I'm kidding? New Yorkers: Just imagine if you could stop a taxi during the 4pm transition time and your date could say, in Hindi, "Hey brother, will you please take us to Spring and 6th?"

Okay, so this blog post is not what I thought it might be. I came here hoping to get all defensive. But this is quite a flattering piece, and, I must say, hilarious to boot. This post is as entertaining as a Bollywood masala movie. The blogger's description of Bhangra is the most hilarious I have ever seen: "Bhangra ...exhibit the right dance moves, i.e. patting an imaginary dog while screwing in an imaginary light bulb."

The post is funny but she is curiously right in some ways. I guess it takes an outsider to get you some perspective. Bollywood movies were stuff you did not watch too much of when I was growing up: good students watched movies only moderately. I came to America and the Bollywood movies became my culture.

She is to the point about food. During my road trip across America I realized I missed Desi food more than my family.

"I hope Laxmi, Goddess of Prosperity, smiles on you as you endeavor to date one of her people." Hilarious. A college friend once said to me, it was a green card, gold card swap.

That cabbie part. I never thought that was an advantage. I mean, I am very much a subway person. But when you talk to a brown person, you might as well talk Hindi. They appreciate it. White guys similarly have advantages on Capitol Hill and Wall Street. Although I am not so sure about Wall Street. Goldman Sachs is one third brown. And we are about to send Reshma to DC, so we will be good there too.

Reshma 2010, Square, And Pro.Act.Ly

Okay, so this picture is me right out of high school. You can see I was trying hard to imitate Amitabh Bachchan's hairstyle. If you don't know who that is, you are an illiterate. He just so happens to be the most recognized face on the planet. You don't have to date an Indian to know that.

There is Hindi, and there is English. There is Bollywood, and there is Hollywood. There is democracy, and there is democracy. We are breaking even. I am all for cross-cultural understanding. Peace and love.

Sree In A Candy Shop

@sreenet

The Mashable Success Story

Image representing Mashable as depicted in Cru...

Image via CrunchBase

Mashable has been a remarkable success story in blogging. Pete Cashmore started it when he was 19. He started it in his bedroom in Scotland where he is from. By now it gets more page hits then the top tech blog TechCrunch. That has been true for months. Mashable has a more well defined niche than TechCrunch, and it is more focused on the user.

Switching from being a one person blog to a team blog must have been a major milestone for Mashable. The fact that Mashable has no plans to be sold - "Everyone has a price, but ours is a really high" - should tell you the blog has serious plans to keep digging in its niche. Getting sold to a bigger name company might only blunt that one edge the blog has, that it is your ultimate social media guide. Why not just keep building the traffic, and keep adding to the content, and keep charging more for the ads, right?

The Facebook founder was also 19 when he launched Facebook.

Mashable Did It
Facebook And Mashable: Social Media And Social Media Blog
2010 Trends: Pete Cashmore's Take

TechCrunch Vs. Mashable: There's No Competition Mashable is more about internet culture than pure tech news these days..... if there's a hot celebrity story trending on Twitter they'll find a way of covering it to reap the search engine traffic, if there's a viral video doing well they'll embed it to get the retweets.
AOL In Talks To Acquire Mashable -- Reports AOL is trying to transition from an ISP to a next-generation media company. .... It already has 80 or so independently branded blogs and is planning to grow to more than 100.
The Man Behind Mashable He's been crowned the king of Twitter and is one of the most influential figures in the technology industry. ..... Since setting up Mashable in 2005, while working as a web technology consultant, Cashmore has divided his time between his home town of Aberdeen and the bright lights of Silicon Valley. He's been in Scotland since October, and won't return to the US until January, relying on his team of 15 full-time bloggers and 50 regular contributors to help him keep on top of the key stories.
Mashable’s Identity Crisis They’ve reached that point of critical mass that most bloggers only dream of. The last I heard they had suprassed 20 million page views a month ...... a few months ago Mashable made BIG NEWS by announcing they were going to be hiring real, actual journalists .... some kind of direction shift for Mashable and that they were now interested in serious reportage and investigative journalism ....... s sensationalist and often pedantic blogging ..... Right now it is on track to be the People Magazine of social media. ..... they are interested more in acting like a tabloid.
So What Do You Do, Pete Cashmore, Mashable Founder and CEO? not yet 25. ..... Founding the site was pretty much his first job, as he worked as a Web consultant for a short time beforehand. The site's mission is to be "the social media guide" and cover all things social media. ...... starting Mashable in 2006 from his bedroom in Scotland. He was 19 at the time. ....... I just was really passionate about the space, and wanted to get involved, and I felt like social networking wasn't being covered to the degree it could be. ....... It was personal interest. I didn't necessarily know there was an audience for it. ...... In 2006, we did our first ad deal. It was only a few thousand per month, but it kind of legitimized blogging as a business. Selling a first ad legitimized that this may go somewhere -- this may actually work. ....... When you compare [Mashable] to old school tech magazines, we certainly say we're more focused on the user and the utility for users. For example, we don't cover things like funding announcements. We focus on the user. ...... there is value in both original reporting and curation ...... They're going to cover what they're going to cover. It's up to them. ...... There is no point in writing like the pyramid anymore. You have to write the story in three paragraphs. ..... They need to become both sources of news and curators of community-sourced news. ..... Content is not a scarce resource; attention is a scarce resource. If you put [up] barriers, they will go elsewhere. In the vast majority of cases, a pay wall is a hindrance. We should be focusing on how we [can] make ad models that are more engaging rather than push readers to other sites. ....... We're in a niche where we feel we're leading.
History Of Pete Cashmore's Mashable.com
Mashable Lost its Visitors after the 2010 Redesign Techcrunch now has more unique visitors than Mashable. Techcrunch also seems to have grown ‘only’ +35.54% since last year where Mashable has grown +29.00%. ..... Pete Cashmore’s ‘little’ start-up blog Mashable first overtook the might of Michael Arrington’s TechCrunch back in May 2009 ..... Its Change of pure tech news into tech news + Celebrity news

Reshma 2010, Square, And Pro.Act.Ly

Reshma Saujani, running for New York City's 14 Congressional District talks to The Next Web from Chad Cat on Vimeo.

Reshma Saujani At The Huffington Post
An Afternoon At The Reshma 2010 Headquarters
A 14-7 Office For Reshma 2010
My Political Resume, Reshma 2010, And September 14
Reshma Saujani, Carolyn Maloney
My Talk With Kevin Lawler Of Reshma 2010
Reshma 2010 Get Together In Little India
Reshma Saujani Ad Spotted At The New York Times Website
Reshma Saujani, Scott Heiferman, Chris Hughes: TechCrunch Disrupt
Reshma Saujani, Haiti Earthquake, Harvard Yale, And 2016
Reshma Saujani "Gets" Tech
Reshma Saujani: Innovation, Ethnic Pride, Thought Leadership

Reshma 2010 has been on the forefront of technological innovation. Reshma 2010 has been the first campaign in America to use Square, Jack Dorsey's revolutionary new product. More people are going to use Square than have used Twitter. And now Reshma 2010 is the first campaign in America to use Pro.Act.Ly.

Pro.Act.Ly is going to define campaigning going into 2012.

Reshma 2010 is not just a campaign for the 14th district, it is a campaign for all of New York City, the entire metro region. She is the embodiment of the New Woman. That has got to speak to the East Side. Women should be able to take equality for granted. The brave new world of technological innovation also has to shift the paradigm on gender relations. They go hand in hand. Technological innovation and social progress have to go hand in hand for technological innovation to be meaningful.

Call Out The Sexism

Reshma Saujani deserves the support of the entire NY tech community. She has huge support among the techies in the Bay Area. New York gets to match that. The only other New York politician wearing the tech hat is Mayor Bloomberg himself. I like the guy. I supported his reelection effort last year.

I became an Independent For Bloomberg, I think Reshma Saujani might be able to pull me back into the Democratic fold.

I call it a double whammy. Obama went to Harvard. Clinton went to Yale. Reshma Saujani went to both. Another double whammy is she is a woman, and she is Indian. Electing Barack Obama was a big deal. Race is America's original sin. But electing someone of Reshma Saujani's background is going to be a bigger deal. It should not matter if people who look like you are 70% or 12% of the country. It should not matter if they are not even 1%. Individual excellence should count. But for anyone to suggest Indians are any kind of a minority is off. We live in a global era.

Reshma Saujani is the national candidate for the tech community, the innovation community across the board. I am not just talking dot coms, but also green tech, bio tech, nano tech.