Just got an email from Adsense team that they are retiring AdSense Referrals. They will be replaced with Google Affiliate Network. This is a big blow to CJs of the world. Google’s affiliate network hasn’t been skinned/domained in Google way. Performics is hosted on connectcommerce.com (an ugly looking UI). This is evident how fast Goog wanted the product to be out for its Adwords and Adsense customers.

Adsense Referrals didn’t perform that well for our site, but that could be because “International Entertainment” hardly has any highly targeted advertisers. Hoping that GAN has a much bigger advertiser base.

Here is the email sent by Adsense team.

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Found this video on a friend’s Orkut profile. It is nostalgic, but it made me realize something I never thought about before. This video is 5 minutes and 48 seconds long. That is a few lakhs Rupees worth air time. I remember that the video was aired 2-3 times a day, which means a lot of missing revenues. No wonder Doordarshan isn’t profitable or has high quality programming.

Obviously I don’t know what exactly was going on in DD’s offices. May be they did not have enough advertisers and used these videos as fillers.
Update: Ashish confirmed that they still play the song.
I realized that I get Doordarshan on Direct TV. If you subscribe to Indian package on Direct, it is channel # 2025 (right after Cricket Plus)

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I sent a tweet about the video, but it deserves a blog post. I wonder how long it took them to shoot the video. Checkout their blog for more cool stuff.

MUTO a wall-painted animation by BLU from blu on Vimeo.

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Plurk is ‘enhanced’ version of Twitter. IMO Twitter got popular because of it is really easy to use. In my busy life, I don’t have enough time to see what my Karma is or some complicated timelines. Twitter works for me because it is a free form short messaging. Back in the days when Twitter’s IM worked fine, I rarely logged on to the web interface.

I think Plurk makes things complicated and might features over done. Although it is great that they have all the major IM support. At this time Plurk looks like a great tool for teenagers (like myspace crowd). They’d love to collect Karma and get starred etc. I don’t see Obama lifestreaming on Plurk any time soon*. Or Jet Blue using it for customer service*.

Right now I am interested to see if this Python based messaging app be able to scale well, unlike Twitter.

* I’ve been wrong in the past.

PS: I am back from India.

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Prius with License Plate "EARTH",
originally uploaded by gsharma.

Good to see environment friendly people!

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I’ll be in and/or around Delhi for next couple of weeks. I’d be happy to meet my *online* contacts and friends in person. Drop me an email if you’d like to meet/talk.

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Code Search results in Google reults,
originally uploaded by gsharma.

Google is trying hard to integrate all its products into its core product. I think it is helpful to the user and more importantly making Google SERPs display dynamic (as compared to text results).

The dynamics in the results will make users explore the page (hint: image, video and other types of ads).

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No wonder Google’s stock is dipping down!

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I was looking for a ticket on Yatra.com, but didn’t find S’pore Airlines on it. I then tried Makemytrip. They seriously need to work on their usability. Add the dammn ticket cost and tax for the consumer. I can’t believe that they don’t let you sort results. The default sort order they show you is totally random based on the ticket cost (not including tax), so it is not even the cheapest ticket on the top. I think most of their orders are placed via phone or their online chat ‘thingy’. I know labor is cheap in India, but my advice to them is, spend resources on the product - then you’ll see less of those calls and online chats.

On another note, I like Ixigo, they got funded recently (congratts!). Ixigo is Indian ‘Kayak’. I like their simple, clean design and a ton of sorting/filtering features. That’s what a good product should look like!

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