These especially concern digital publishers who produce a lot of data and in turn goof up the certain crucial SEO aspects. We take a look at what can go wrong for you. The glance into simple yet deadly SEO mistakes that can kill your Google rankings.

1. Duplicate Content Within the Site:

For big publishers who come up with a lot of content, duplication is common even within their own site. This happens quite often with follow-up articles on a certain topic. One can find at least one paragraph in each article published that is an exactly copy of another article published first (We are not counting quotes).

Then there are technical goof-ups which make your content seem duplicitous. These include same Title tag and description appearing on every page, same article being sourced with multiple URLs, etc. Some studies say on average, 25% of each article is copy. Click To Tweet

Duplicate content and its effect on SEO is a big debate. Even if Google does not penalize you, everyone agrees that duplicate content certainly does harm your ranking. Thus, it is a big NO for publishers who have a good competition and would like every page of theirs to rank.

For small sites it is an easy problem to fix but for large ones it becomes a huge task.

With large amount of content being produced, planned approach is necessary. Multiple tools are available and its easy but what is essential is the continuous attention and action.

2. Duplicate Content in General:

More often than not websites will have content which was originally published by someone else. This is applicable for all news, fashion, trends, tech websites. The topic if hot and trending will have multiple sites posting similar content all at the same time.

It is important to ensure non-duplication.

If your page isn’t ranking for the term it is because 90% of the time the content is published after other big sources have already published it.

This is yet another Big No. Be the first to talk about it or be smart about it. Majority of the internet has duplicate content and search engines know that. But duplication drastically cuts off the authority of your website, which will automatically reduce… Click To Tweet You won’t necessarily need a penalty to harm yourself.

3. Shallow Content

It is understood that time is critical. Many a times you might post content just for the sake of it, trying to make the most of the urgency. Studies report content for lower-ranking sites to be shallower than competitors, more than 80% of the time. Thus, shallow content is another deadly SEO mistake.

Algorithms change, thus the technical aspects will also change. But the quality of your content will always be a crucial factor.

Search Engines always want to serve the most relevant content to its users, hence it will always consider quality of paramount importance.

Spinning off content with no structure has to be avoided. It will spunk your authority and downgrade your back-link game, severely affecting your rank.

4. Broken Links

Your website has been there for so long. So many pages, articles, blogs added every single day, all of which have multiple links mentioned in each of them.

But as days pass the websites you linked to change, pages get altered, content moves, URLs get redirected. Thus, many of those links turn up dead or broken. Being engrossed in the present scenario you might completely overlook the increasing number of links that are turning out to be broken on older articles.

Broken links decrease the relevance of your website. Search Engines recommend pages which which appear updated and most relevant. Pages with broken links even if they have quality content get down-ranked. Click To Tweet

Thus, again continuous awareness and action is important. Several tools are available to help you identify the broken links. Replace the broken links with updated ones.

5. Internal Linking

Linking internal content is a great idea. It is practice used by many. But just linking without any strategy is bad. You might link to pages which rank for the same keyword you want the current page to rank for. That is exactly how you lose out on the ranking.

So get your link game sorted out first hand. Ensure that the links you provide, even if internal are not a competition themselves.

SEO Mistakes: Conclusion

These five SEO mistakes are very relevant for major publishers. These are simple to sort but easy to overlook, but have a damning impact in the long run. Get these straight and you have got the basics right, which won’t be affected by any logical algorithm change.

5 Deadly SEO Mistakes that kill your Google Rankings was originally published in Blogacious on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

For all the spam fighting that Google does it is amply rewarded by a captive GMail audience for targeted advertising. The GMail spam filter has made incredible developments over the years and continues to adapt. Its excellent features have garnered it a devoted engaging audience, the GMail users.

GMail has some powerful lessons to teach digital publishers. The way it has tackled spam, at the same time working on making inbox clutter free and ever-improving its user-experience, is worth looking deeper into. Vuukle has multiple advertising and technology partnerships with Google and we continue to work together to further the state-of-the-art in fighting online spam and trolls.

Use of heuristic/self-learning Technologies

Digital publishers should take note. If you want to tackle any of the following: Spam, hate speech, trolls ; heuristic technologies are the most promising solution.

Google’s vast online services make the use of neural networks- fast,self-learning, brain-like network systems. Even Vuukle uses self-learning technology to curb spam and trolls.

Gmail achieved the most efficiency after having adopted these artificial brains into its spam filters.

Google says that its spam rate is down to 0.1 percent, and its false positive rate has dipped to 0.05 percent. This is a major improvement compared to the state of email systems in 2001.

One of the great things about machine learning is that it adapts to changing situations.John Rae-Grant

JohnRae Grant is a senior product manager for Gmail. It is now used by 900 million people across the globe. Gmail’s spam filters don’t just apply pre-defined rules. They create new rules themselves as they go along.

Adapting these technologies sets a class apart. Especially with most users being spam and troll averse. By using AI one can even gauge how eddectively Vuukle spam filters work. No garbage allowed to be posted at all, plus these filters continuously learn and adapt.

For most digital publishers a partnership with AI users like Vuukle is in itself a great start as compared to having to disable comments to avoid trolls.

Gmail Spam Filter: Individual vs Overall Preferences

Google states that its Spam Filters are stronger than ever. More than merely applying the learning to the overall system, it is also adapting to individual preferences.

Someone’s spam can be your treasure. Machine Learning tools learn the difference Click To Tweet

This difference this makes is the user feedback becomes much more valuable for the user directly. The system adapts to user behavior while continuing to evolve itself overall.

GMail provides an ultra clean UX; Vuukle helps digital publishers do the same Click To Tweet

Usage of User Engagement and Feedback

If there is anything which has made best use of user generated data then it has to be Gmail Spam Filter. It again goes on to show how efficiently the machine learning systems make the most of every user input.

Every time you chose to “Report Spam” or “Not Spam”, it made a difference. The system adapted overall and also to your personal needs. Every user generated input is utilized. This is best ever creative system to deliver to users what they want and keep optimizing the service to the best of demand.

It is not for nothing that GMail has such a loyal following. It makes the user feel cared for, it provides relevance, it makes you feel at home with the system. Fulfilling the few of the most important criteria.

Great User Experience helps your Business

The ability to keep users at the top does not seem to affect the business GMail does in any way. If anything it has only helped.

Targeted Emails from marketers is still a common feature. News letters, advertisements, are all still there but no Spam! The best of it GMail is making most of the data by delivering better and relevant advertisement. Its very effective for marketers as they get to target the most valuable probable consumers.

To that effect Google even launched Postmaster Tools. This enables high quantity bulk senders to get an idea of how GMail treats their emails. Essentially, data captured for GMail Spam Filter is also used for Postmaster Tools.

But again continuing it stance on shutting down Spam, the service will be available only to legitimate users.

The Summary: GMail Spam Filter

GMail Spam Filter although just simply supposed to scan out bad emails has developed a lot. Today it not only delivers optimized performance but also continuously adapts, learns and keeps improving.

Vuukle seems to follow the same principles. The efficient Spam filters, the easy-to-use moderating panel and adapt and learn and keep the user at the forefront while fighting the menace. They have even partnered with Google implementing AI to take down trolling and hate speech.

Making most of the user generated preferences to deliver individually adapted experience. Making most of AI technologies for taking down spam and minimizing errors. While at the same time continuing to improve business opportunities.

This is what makes the story of GMail Spam Filter so worthy of emulating. Vuukle has invested years of product development and working closely with thousands of digital publishers to bring you the same state-of-the-art in spam fighting technology.

Achieve Zero Spam in your website comment section with Vuukle Click To Tweet

Lessons from Gmail Spam Filter: The Most Prolific Spam Fighter Ever was originally published in Blogacious on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

Not all trolling is vicious or misinformed. Much of it is hilarious as well. So here is the list of 5 Hilarious Internet Trolls who delivered the ultimate shits and giggles!

1) Ken M Strikes!

We introduce you to the Legend who was included as one of Time’s 30 most influential people on the internet. Yes, solely on the merit of his trolling prowess. He has owned the best of the Reddit posts with his hilarious comments. Thousands follow each of his dumb comments, waiting for him to strike.

Here are a few for you.. Let loose all that stress. :D :D

Ken M began his crusade in 2011, appalled and frustrated by the toxicity of the threads more than anything else.

Here is what he told Upvoted:

Yahoo has the most beautifully gullible people. The people on Huffington Post are humorless and pedantic. I tried it with Fox News, but that group is such a furious wasp nest. What I do is turn a toxic space into a source of belly laughter, so it’s not gross anymore. That’s what I do.- Ken M

He is classy. One can only imagine the apathy the fellow commentators go through. You can check out more of his exploits here. Not now.. Go through this list first, much more coming up.

2. Patton Oswalt — Trolling the Outragers.

This guy trolled the entire Internet on August 17, 2013 and has continued to do so.

He sent out a series of tweets, which when read individually caused the outragers to open up all their ammunition and fire.

But the same when read as a pack, appeared all fine.

This is how he trolled the Outragers- actually everyone in the habit of jumping the gun. Very well played Mr. Patton. Guess we Indians need some of that treatment before we jump onto any other CEO again.

3. When ISIS tried to avenge defeat in an Non-existent Battle.

Yup! It happened. The people celebrated one of the greatest victories against the Islamic State: a fierce battle in the town of Shichwa. ISIS was badly defeated and flee the place.

Agonized, the ISIS supporters cried foul and declared revenge. They called for righteous retribution. All of this happening in the 140 character limit space- Twitter!

The truth being, there is no such town as Shichwa. There was no Battle. A twitter user just made it up. He even made created fake CNN screen capture to credit his story and boom it went viral.

Other users who got the joke, started adding fuel to the fire. Making up Maps and stuff of the action happening in this battleground.

And things soon got carried away with heavy tweet fire. Thankfully, the prankster came clean before it turned into an actual battle.

The reason for it all? — The popular @IraqSurveys , who used to deliver legit info on the events around ISIS until he got “bored”. Yes, you read that right- He Got Bored!

4. When Tinder Men Flirted With Each Other

Oh.. Yeah! This one is Epic. Tinder- Well who doesn’t know Tinder?! We will never be able to to interpret “Swipe right” or “Swipe Left”, right again.

Who do you find on Tinder? Mostly horny dudes with endless amount of desperation. But one hacker decided to troll these guys up by showing the mirror. He hacked the system so as to match these horny bulls with each other, while each saw the others profile as a beautiful girl.

Some aggressive, while some being pretty mundane. But each flirtatious. The dudes got the taste of what their behaviour does to the females on the platform.

Patrick, according to Verge is a California based hacker, who himself was a tinder user. Rather, it is Tinder where he met his current girlfriend. Reportedly, he was frustrated with how women are often talked to on Tinder and even on Twitter and wanted to give the “bros” a taste of their own medicine.

The most amazing thing here, which even Patrick notes:

So many men would simply ignore the obvious signs that they are talking to another dude and keep going, all for the chance of a quick hookup.

Finally someone stood up for women and showed the mirror all the while being Hilarious to the extreme!

5. When Justin Beiber had to Perform in North Korea.

Well, not exactly. But this was hilarious. We saw individuals wreaking havoc. Here’s an example of what internet mobs hold the power to do.

A website asked users to vote which country Bieber should tour next. Here’s what they got.

No offense to Bieber fans but it received 659,448 votes to send the pop star to North Korea! :D :D :D

The five most hilarious Internet Trolls! Internet is the den of creativity.

You never know what frustration and wit together can end up doing. Click To Tweet Time to rest you tummy for a while. That’s it for the day from our end. :)

The 5 Most Hilarious Internet Trolls was originally published in Blogacious on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

What do we aspiring super writers can learn from these artists? All world’s a stage and we play our role.

True Alchemists do not change lead into Gold, they change the world into words.William H. Gass.

These words by William H. Gass truly define what a writer is- an alchemist; changing the routine, mundane world, into something extraordinary. This might seem like a piece of cake to many of you, but, trust me it’s NOT. To play with words, you have to first learn to romance your soul, dance to the rhythm of your thoughts, embellish them. And then finally, frame them into words that touch hearts, move souls and change lives! Does that sound “easy” to you now? I bet it doesn’t!

Naturally, a writer is someone for whom writing is much more difficult and challenging than it is for the other people. A writer does so much more than just frame words. He puts his soul within the particular framework, sets his focus on his perspective and then moves on with writing.

Naturally, a writer is someone for whom writing is much more difficult and challenging than it is for the other… Click To Tweet

Scary, not so scary!

A writer has to be willing to be courageous enough and write in a way that scares him a little. A way which is beyond his comfort zone, a way that pushes his limit to a whole new level and discovers possibilities that he’d never thought existed in the first place.

A lot of introspection goes into the entire process of writing. If you thought it was only altering their words according to a situation, you’re wrong! It is not just the way they write, it’s the way they think that has to go through the changes as per the requirement of a particular theme. They have to transform themselves into some totally different individuals to get the actual feel of the characters.

The Mystery Decoding

Whereas a big majority of careers are built on concrete and solid substantiation and an apparent goal for every day, writers typically operate from a sort of murky, indistinct subliminal desire. Their goals are determined by a mysterious and more often inexplicable voice that sometimes chooses to speak to them and sometimes absolutely doesn’t.

Writers aren’t writers because they desire universal recognition and humongous amounts of wealth. They’re writers because they’re passionate about writing and because they have something they wish to say to the humankind.

While there’s almost everything that has the ability to inspire a writer, we would want to talk about some big-screen actors who totally nailed it. They nailed it when it came to getting into the skin of the character, and how they can be a big inspiration to the writers who want to create some magical pieces of work.

Baron Cohen; An artist full of spirit!

Baron Cohen is one such inspiration to all aspiring writers out there! Baron in the late 1990s was known for his enormous talent of seeping into the character as he portrayed a wide range of characters by using different guises and accents. Having taken clown training in Paris at the Ecole Philippe Gaulier, from master clown Philippe Gaulier, Baron was known to his master as a clown “full of spirit”. Wow! And, how did he made his first film appearance in ‘The jolly Boys’ last stand’ in which his performance was worth an applause! That’s something worth learning from, Folks!

Let’s put a smile on that face people; It’s Heath Ledger!

“Why so serious?” We all know who comes to our mind when we say these three words. It’s none other than Heath Ledger. When Christopher Nolan offers a movie to an artist, the importance of the role enhances on its own! Thus, for Batman begins, Ledger had been offered the role of batman which he rejected stating that the role wasn’t of his kind. Impressed by Ledger’s performance in Brokeback Mountains, Nolan offered him the role of Joker in the Dark Knight to which he agreed saying he was determined and fully resolute to do it. That’s not all!

Here comes the most intriguingly interesting part: Cheers!

To prepare himself for the role Ledger locked himself in a Hotel room for a month and maintained a “Joker” journal. He interpreted many voices, the voice that suited him best was psychopathic and it scared the hell out of his co-actors so much so that they forgot their lines when Heath performed! Dear ones here’s to creating the character from within!

The king of all hearts; Sylvester Stallone!

We all know Sylvester Stallone for his sensational performances in Rambo! We couldn’t help but become a fan of his! But if you think his journey to stardom was a cake-walk, we’ll have to restructure some factoids for you. Stallone started school in Philadelphia where he had to struggle a lot before he was rendered upon with mainstream success. He got rejected by almost every casting agency when he moved to New York. He spent his time at the library reading books from writers like Edgar Allan Poe and Tolstoy. This gave him an extra edge in his endeavours of writing and so he went on to continue it with passion.

He would reject any other job opportunities that knocked his door. Soon, he went bankrupt and was evicted out of his apartment and had to spend his days on the streets.

All I Want is (Not English Marie..)

All he wanted to do was acting. One day, he wrote a script for Rocky and that was for 24 hours straight! This was all after getting inspired by a fight he saw between Wepner and Ali on television. He had many film-makers interested in buying the script, but he insisted on playing ‘Rocky’- his first character as a wrestler. Despite all the rejections on acting in the movie, Stallone stuck with his determination to act even when he had absolutely no money. Finally, he received an offer of $25000 to which he agreed, which was much less than the price he was offered for the script alone.

Finally, Rocky was a huge success and got the best film award in 1976. Now, this is something that we do not get to hear every day! Stallone’s story just inspires us to be consistent in our efforts and how even the smallest things can move us, and inspire us to come up with something extremely sensational!

We believe good writing is supposed to stir up sensation in the reader- Not the fact that it is raining, but the feeling of being rained upon. So, go ahead! That’s some nice bunch of inspiration for you! Keep writing big! :)

We believe good writing is supposed to stir up sensation in the reader- Not the fact that it is raining, but the… Click To Tweet

Originally published at Blogacious — World Class Bloggers for Startups and Businesses.

Inspiration for Fiction Writing from Elite Actors was originally published in Blogacious on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

Shekhar Chandra is an IIT Delhi alumnus with over a decade experience in starting companies and leading teams to success. He started his career with a bang. Fresh out of college, he worked on designing desktop search algorithms for a startup called Stata Labs, which was later acquired by Yahoo. He quit Yahoo to start Tensor Technologies and came very close to getting his search and recommendation engine acquired by Google. This led him to start T6 Ventures where Shekhar consults in technology and business to big businesses and early stage startups. What is he working on these days? I recently caught up with him after a long time and the result is this interview. There are lessons for everyone from someone who has mastered the craft of story telling.

The Early Days of Starting Up at IIT Delhi

Abhishek: Hi Shekhar, welcome to Blogacious.com! I have known you for more than 10 years now and sure you have come a long way from your startup days at IIT Delhi! Let’s start off by listening to a quick summary of the life you have lived so far

Shekhar: Thanks Abhishek, yes 10 years is a long time but you know it seems like yesterday!
YouLEAD, which I’m spearheading right now is culmination of my learning about Innovation and Leadership that started 10 years ago.
I was early to start my entrepreneurial journey after a brief stint of working with Yahoo! Working on the Personalized Search-engine Technology, getting incubated at IIT Delhi, interacting with Google’s of the world, wooing the top investors in the likes of KPCB, Sequoia etc was a wonderful experience. I was fortunate to see different sides of the battle by switching space and work in the area of Education, Health. I got to an insightful understanding that the basics of Disruptive-Innovation are THE key for entrepreneurial success in the modern era. YouLEAD is an endeavor to let curious and interested people set their basics right and help them leverage the science behind Art of Entrepreneurial Success!

What Really is Disruption?

Abhishek: IIT Delhi and Yahoo, that’s some impressive pedigree. And you were involved in several startups after that too. Let’s start with what does disruption really mean? And, how can, say an average guy with smarts but not any technical knowledge or money can go about doing disruption today?

Shekhar: You are right. We need to demystify the word “disruption” for clear understanding and action. Dr. Clayton Christensen coined the term “Disruptive Innovations”. Let us understand it with example to understand it better. To put it simply it’s about a new offering, a new value to a NEW USER which was not possible before your offering. It’s as simple as that.
In the startup​ days ​we become ecstatic with ​our​ solution to a perceived problem, and as that solution is concrete we start pushing for it​,​ be it for sales or for investment and ​mostly ​it does not fly! So instead of finding a problem, solving it, and selling the solution, what most startups end up doing is: Building a solution (to their perceived problem), finding the PROBLEM (which others also believe exists) and then trying to sell it to users or pitch it for investment. And usually they run out of gas either pre-funding or post-funding.
Now the point is Disruption ​Innovation is all about to ​“Find the RIGHT Problem to SOLVE”​ as soon as possible. Sooner the better!
Let us understand the disruption with the example of Uber. Uber did not provide cheaper or faster or better cabs to the existing set of taxi users and drivers. In a sense Uber model sounds a bit unattractive to Uber drivers. ​Luckily Uber stumbled upon ​a ​solution ​for​ a NON-consumer of taxi service in the pre-Uber era ​to start using TAXI​. As more and more non-users start using it,​ Uber drivers ​start making extra money and thus they ​embraced it and ​Uber ​demonstrated that ​how more ​Uber drivers ​will let more non-taxi users use taxis. Very soon Uber was being used by mainstream users and Uber became a verb! ​That’s some disruption. So in nutshell, Disruptive innovation is all about finding​ and catering​ to newer market segment which was earlier aspiring to​,​ but could not avail the benefits of such solutions AND your offering just made it possible.​ Can you think of some more examples like this?​

Abhishek: Sure, would you say that Magento was a disruption? It is a free open source software that is used to power some of the busiest e-commerce websites in the world, including our homegrown Flipkart. When it was released more than 10 years ago, getting into e-commerce was hard and expensive and then it suddenly became easy and cheap. I guess an important characteristic of a disruption is that even if the big enemy incumbent knows you, it cannot do anything cause you are so small and your target market is insignificant in the beginning. Eventually, your market grows and the incumbent is caught entrenched in it’s old world. Would you say I am talking sense?

Shekhar: Yeah absolutely, you got it right!

Starting up in the rich Pompom Island of the Akuba Tribe

Abhishek: Now, could you give a smaller example of disruption (not as big as Facebook or Google)? Some story which will further drive the point home?

Shekhar: Postman comes to my mind. Zoho is disrupting the CRM industry. They are doing to Salesforce what Salesforce did to Oracle. If you want to see a Chinese example that has worked in India, I can think of Xiomi, they actually have filled the place of the “Android wala Apple”.

To further understand, imagine a rich island called Pompom populated by the Akuba tribe. Only few shops do business on Pompom Island and they have set their business territory in equilibrium. It is impossible for others to get into the island and do business.
Now you want to start a business on Island Pompom. So what do you do?
Option 1: Woo people of the Akuba tribe with a cheaper or faster or better product. You face extreme competition, lower margins, waning innovation edge and sluggish business. In the best case, you find new islands that might like your innovation and sell them. Eventually your business will die.
Option 2: You realize there is a nearby unnamed island where people of the Bazooka tribe live. They are rather poor and want to migrate to the rich Pompom Island. Can you help them? So you help the Bazooka people move to Pompom Island. Now you can sell whatever you want to these new arrivals on the island. Of course, it has to be cheap because these immigrants are not rich yet.

Later on your offerings will get better and the Azuka people will take notice. Some of them may try your product and as the Bazooka people thrive in their new home, your gospel spreads. The established shops in Pompom will initially ignore the poor immigrants. By the time they realize, it will be too late. Even those who recognize the threat will not be able to compete with your cheaper product.

Business is like gravity, you might not like it but doesn’t care about your innovation. Instead of fighting this gravity try to harmonize with it and fly. And that’s how you’ll win and keep winning until …

And beware there is always someone, purposely or accidentally getting the newly discovered Chazum tribe to Pompom Island. That’s the reason it’s good to disrupt yourself else if you get disrupted by others … the island will slip away from beneath your feet!

Starting up, Search Engines and Google

Abhishek: I could not have asked for a better explanation! Moving on, tell us something interesting from your startup days.

Shekhar: Well, when we hear a story of a startup or an idea, it’s like a love story. The usual suspects will do the usual … SUSPECT! They will not take your leap of faith and even when they do, they will be following your followers. It is damn hard to get the first followers who buy into your vision.
So I had my startup, blossomed out of my love at first sight kind of thing with Search Engine tech. Fielded the right rookies to get it nailed, IIT prof, IITian co-founder, incubated in IIT, and a big name IITian investor as a Board Advisor and several world class advisors. It was like being an A-list hollywood celeb!
Then we had our usual share of problems and at one point we were lucky to choose from the two grand option, One: a term sheet to get funded (quarter a million dollar for quarter equity) and Two: Push hard to get acquired by the big daddy Google. We decided to go for Option Two.
Guess what, we were unaware of NIH syndrome. So in a sense, my would be brother-in-law thought his brother-in-law stands a better chance than me for his princess sis. And lo behold the big daddy said NO! Option Two gone, we got back to our safety net option One, oops, that’s vanished too. It was a real oops! I learnt something about leap of faith, if it’s not trained well it hurts. Cause they mostly see the value but not through their eyes but through big daddy’s eyes. So better big daddy say “Yes” or you’re fried!
A decade later when I recount this, it was like, I went to the biggest shark guy on that Pompom island and said take this zimbo and it’ll make you better. I was trying to work for Google rather than solving any real problem for people. I had a solution, looking for a problem. So there was a value, it should have been concretised in a specific domain for a better demonstration. Welcome to the real world. You learn better in hindsight.
Love is a foolish thing but you let yourself fall for it once as it teaches you a lot more that what books teach you about love. So New Endeavors, New Mistakes, New Love!

How to Tell Better Stories

Abhishek: This is a compelling story! And thanks for owning your mistakes instead of sugar coating it. I can clearly see a book here. You have always been a fascinating story teller. Today, more than ever, we live in information clutter. How would you say someone should go about telling her story and get heard?

Shekhar: Primo: Less is MORE. Secendo:: Think from the others perspective. Be in the other shoes.
Storytelling is a firstmost technology invented by humans to pass on their thoughts with less and less distortion. Imagine you hum a song and ask me to guess. Now because you know your thoughts, it becomes tougher for you to communicate with me as you’re quickly able to fill the humming (communication) gap with the lyrics in your mind whereas I’m lost! So the basic idea is to simplify things in terms of ACTION (a dance step) so that i can imagine it faster give me subtle hints (key points) so that I can weave a clear story in my head. So storytelling is about how well and fast the other guy can weave a story in his head and you stand understood! That’s it.
So what’s heard is more important than what’s said. So think through a 3 yr old kid brain, don’t dumb it down but simplify, Key benefits. Not your smart features. At the last- Less is MORE. Always!

The Mystery that the Human Brain is

Abhishek: You are a champion of understanding and applying brain science in communication. In your YouLEAD workshop, that I attended, you explained how brain science can be usefully applied to everything from designing to copy writing. Why do you think this is so important, especially for an entrepreneur?

Shekhar: See Brain Science is a lethal mix of NeuroScience, Psychology, and Behavioural Economics. In a nutshell the underlying principles make the world move and it pays a great dividend to know a few and use them well. An Entrepreneur has to wear several hats from sales to product design to recruiting and what not. A few underlying principles like, “LESS is MORE” and “The END lingers for Long” help to design better experiences, make more meaningful conversations, and let and as Paul Graham says help you “Make something people WANT”

Abhishek: Where do you see the YouLEAD program going and making a real impact?

Shekhar: YouLEAD helps you lead, helps you innovate, and helps you Grow. On organization level it’s important and the underlying principles of economy is changing. Older businesses have to learn new techniques to compete with younger businesses they find themselves disrupted in oblivion. The biggest example is Blackberry, from a complete domination to a pure 0.0% market share. And that just within a span of 10 year!
So businesses and their leaders need to learn these things which unfortunately is not in the textbooks and they read Brain Science journals. And they need YouLEAD and the likes of it to help them harness the brain science to create new growth opportunities and create more meaningfulness, more mindfulness!

Can Shekhar SolveitNOW?

SolveitNOW App connects you to Problem Solvers

Abhishek: You are working on a new education app! So, what’s the story on this one? Tell us all about it.

Shekhar: The Education App that we’re working on is called SolveitNOW. I met a 12th student kid who couldn’t make it through the IIT JEE exam. So I suggested him to buck up and go for one more round. He responded, “Well I’m up, but what for the doubts that’ll come to me and how will I sustain for one more year”. Join a coaching, I quipped. Then he said “I have done that and not very useful”. To keep the kid’s enthusiasm I agreed to help him on weekends. The guy was indeed gritty and use to come with a stack of doubts on weekends and it started bothering me. So instead of live doubt clearing sessions I opted to try out an asynchronous one through whatsapp, that he will send me his doubts and I’ll resolve them as and when I get time.
Now this whatsapp approach really worked out well, so I thought why not make a dedicated app for the same. In this app, for easy doubts, kids can send challenges to each other and discuss solutions. And for complex doubts a network of solvers like me and my friends and their friends can give some of their time to solve problems asynchronously. And I tell you it’s fun!

Abhishek: What is your take on a startup taking external funding vs not ?
Shekhar: External funding has its own merits. The demerit is only of Time not Money. A lot of money ahead of time may force you go wrong way. Less money will have constraints and thus force you to be creative. Just see to it that constraint should not become strangulation.
Normally one should not give or you’ll not get money prior to a product-people fit. If you’re lucky you get it earlier, use it wisely!

My Interview with a Master Storyteller: Shekhar Chandra, Founder, YouLead.net was originally published in Blogacious on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

The comments section has been the dark underbelly of the internet. It is not for the faint of heart. Several publishers, social media and even video gaming platform have unsuccessfully tried to fight against trolls and haters. Moderating by humans is no joy, removing comments was accepting defeat, using Facebook plugin backfired. Humanity had almost given up. Today, Vuukle announces partnership with Google to provide online publishers with World’s first Perspective API Comments Plugin. This is the most critical feature update this year in Vuukle audience engagement system.

The Jokers, the Trolls, the Spammers and the Haters

You know who they are. You have seen them. Perhaps, you have had your fingers burnt trying to reason with them. Earlier, they used to lurk in the Internet’s darkest alleys behind a veil of anonymity but now you have them shaking their tail right in your face. From the social media to publishers’ news websites, they spew venom and disrupt discussion. Psychologists have tried to explain the trolls by alluding to what they call the “disinhibition effect”. Basically, a combination of anonymity, invisibility, lack of authority, asynchronicity and isolation available online results in abandoning inhibition that we have evolved socially over millions of years. And then, you elected Donald Trump to be US President and trolling gained new heights.

Google: Helping you Fight Evil

For a company whose corporate mantra has been “Do No Evil”, Google has always had their hands filled fighting bad guys. If you are old enough to have seen the internet in the mid and late 90s, you do remember the unwanted pop-ups, porn sites and low quality websites ruling the roost. It was Google with it’s search engine ranking policies that cleaned most of the internet scum. There has been criticism of Google as it acquired more power as the default gatekeeper of the internet. But few people will disagree that Google has largely been the Dark Night of the online Gotham city. We continue to expect Google to “Do The Right Thing” and, so far, we are not disappointed.

Perspective API: What is it?

Jigsaw, an offshoot of Google, have been working on methods to fight troll and hate speech for more than an year. The team’s broader agenda, called Conversations AI, is to employ machine intelligence to develop tools that will improve conversations technology. By feeding a user comment into a deep learning network, the Perspective API is able to detect insults and hate speech and provide a toxicity rating on a scale of 1 to 100. This outperforms any blacklist of keywords or human moderators for both speed and accuracy.

Vuukle and Google join Hands

Google and Vuukle are old partners. Vuukle uses Google’s advertisement network to show relevant ads and share revenue with publishers. Google is a good choice as an advertising partner because it’s ads are not disguised as “recommended stories”. Conversation AI is Google’s open source project but Jigsaw went a step ahead. By opening an API and partnering with Vuukle, the Perspective API can be adopted by online publishers without writing a single line of code or any integration hassles. The entire number crunching is done on Google’s server and Vuukle provides the integration into its hugely popular comments widget.

Artificial Intelligence and Deep Learning to the Rescue

The Jigsaw project collected millions of annotated comments in editorial discussions from Wikipedia. If you peek into the “talk” pages on Wikipedia, they are teeming with insults and racial slurs. More often than not, editors are constantly bickering over what stays and what gets deleted. Add to this millions of user comments on New York Times and other online publishers’ stories. This, along with human annotations, resulted in enough data to train deep learning neural networks.

For example, if you type “you are not polite”, the toxic rating will be 8%, while “you are an idiot of the first order” will fetch a toxic rating of 90%. All this happens in real-time in the Vuukle comments widget. So commenters can see how “toxic” their comment is even before they press the submit button. The publisher can set the threshold for toxic rating at, say, 75% above which all comments are queued to a human moderator or dropped.

Early Adopters of Vuukle Perspective API Comments Plugin

Vuukle integrated Google’s Perspective API into it’s comments plugin and provided direct access to thousands of online publishers. The user comments from these sites will be used back into the training algorithms of Perspective API to produce more accurate “toxicity” ratings. Some of the top early adopters of Perspective API Comments Plugin are NBC-2, KEYC, Daily Sun, Ozee, BGR, Asian Age and Deccan Chronicle. So head over to any of these, click on your favorite story and try being a hater. Only this time, your words will be carefully monitored and may not pass the firewall.

Vuukle Partners with Google to Allow Publishers to Fight Back Trolls and Haters: Perspective API… was originally published in Blogacious on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

In the movie “The Life of Pi”, the shipwrecked, hungry and tired duo of Pi and Richard Parker, the tiger, land on the shores of a mysterious little island. It is inhabited only by meerkats and seaweed, and lovely trees and freshwater ponds. Beautiful and peaceful. During the day, Pi and Richard Parker both are able to eat their fill. At night, Pi sleeps on the trees and Richard in the boat. The meerkats look happy. It is a utopia. Much has been written on the symbolism of this island. From specific allusions to Christianity and the Bible, to more general pondering on human faith. Here are some lessons on how to manage your Facebook page, inspired by this apparently utopian little island.

Don’t Leave the Boat

This island has been compared to the Garden of Eden. In fact, Pi later discovers a human tooth trapped inside a flower. Luckily, Pi did not let go off the boat, which Richard Parker returned to sleep at night. Just like Pi didn’t forget that his eventual goal was to return to land and not some island, you would do well to remember that Facebook is not your property. Your business is your website or blog. Do not get lost in the utopia of unlimited traffic and funny memes. Don’t miss out on seemingly small information about your business like contact details, addresses and promotional offers. They need the boat to row back to where you are.

Don’t let the happiness of the meerkats fool you

The meerkats ate plentiful during day. At night, the island ate them back. Do not get lost in the apparent utopia of Facebook. Like the bountiful island, it is an illusion. On your Facebook page, do not give irrelevant and excess information. Post one interesting piece instead of two half-filled ones. Engage with your fans, respond to their queries and feedback, tag them by name but do not get sucked into the social network. Facebook doesn’t pay you. Your business does. Drive the traffic to your website.

Do not sleep on the island

Remember that the island turns carnivorous at night. Make sure you have trees to climb to or a boat for your tiger. Facebook does give more organic reach to videos and pictures you upload on it. Use these only when impressions serve your purpose better than driving traffic. It may be alright to upload a video or two on Facebook natively but do remember that you want traffic to land up on your shores. Several media like Facebook Polls, are often overlooked. Use them to engage the smarter among your fans and the rest will follow. Don’t let them sleep on the island either.

Play with your tiger, Richard Parker

Richard Parker, the tiger is Pi’s companion. For the first time on the island, Pi makes real peace with him. He even makes Richard jump through hoops. You have to create effective communication with your fans. Listen to them, care for them. They are your companion on this journey. Long after you have left the island, you want them to be in your boat.

Conclusion: Manage your Facebook Page so You can Eventually Leave it

Today, you need your Facebook page just like Pi and Richard Parker needed to eat the seaweed at the island to get back their strength. You will get traffic and reach if you manage your Facebook page smartly. However, for God’s sake, do not send your hard-earned web traffic to Facebook, ever. Close all leakages. Do not use Facebook comments plugin. Do not show Facebook feed on your website.

Eventually, Pi realizes the island is carnivorous. The plants and the pond eat the animals. Whatever the island gives during day, it takes back at night. The sooner you realize this, the faster you will reach the real land shores.

A version of this post was first published on Vuukle Blog.

How to Manage your Facebook Page: Lessons from the Carnivorous Island in The Life of Pi was originally published in Blogacious on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

Unlike those tens of looser publishers who are mistakenly convinced that user comments are best handled on social media, you don’t buy into Facebook’s bullshit. You are convinced that having users engaged on your site is best for your business. You use Disqus, the popular, though imperfect, comments plugin. And one fine morning, you wake up to see your readers being shown “discovered content” you never discovered! Everything from Viagra to fat-loss scams to flights by Richard Branson. Disqus ads arrived overnight. Hello, nightmare!

Disqus Ads: Always Crashing the Party Without Invitation

Disqus has a long history of pissing off its users. Unsuspecting bloggers and publishers have earlier been subjected to their bait and switch tactics.

Unpleasant Disqus ads disguised as “discovery” would appear on your website and then expect you to opt-out. And, when several irate bloggers questioned their unethical stunts, the founder Daniel Ha repeatedly refused to call a cat a cat. He would rather use euphemisms like “discovery” for advertising and never explained why Disqus ads are not opt-in.

Disqus Ads Trespass yet Again on your Property

In February 2017, they outdid the Joker. Not only did they trespass, they refused to go away unless you give them money (blackmail, anyone?). Disqus switched on shitty adverts in their comments box on your pages, without the slightest communication. And when website owners wanted to switch off the ads, Disqus gave their balls a gentle squeeze and wanted them to cough up $10. Every month. A decent price for a decent software? But, now comes the most surreal part of the nightmare, you had to email them and then receive a link to pay! Are we really in 2017?

Phillip Smith on Twitter

So much for @disqus: once committed to free commenting for all, now deploys ads to all sites then offers opt-out #comments cc @coralproject

Amit Bhawani on Twitter

Woah, @disqus now forcing ads on the Commenting System. When tried to remove got this screen. :/ These ads pay nothing & they force them.

Apparently, Disqus wants to charge only “big” publishers for switching off advertising. They claim that their basic plan will remain free for 95% websites. And they expect you to trust them yet again. That you will continue to be categorized as “small” and your readers will be spared watching shady ads. Good luck remaining in the bottom 95%!

WordPress Publishers Hate Disqus Ads

I have used Disqus on my websites before and the user experience is far from okay. They have been found to be bad for public discourse. Disqus makes it super easy for stalkers and trolls to silence commenters they disagree with. User sign-in sucks so bad that some commenters don’t even bother leaving a comment on Disqus anywhere. Some website owners have sworn off Disqus forever. And now, with Livefyre shutting down shop, are scrambling to find a viable alternative. Something which doesn’t suck so much.

As long as Disqus is getting paid for comment and ad spam, they are fine with it

Matt Mullenweg, WordPress Creator

You have seen plenty of evidence of Disqus’ notoriety among WordPress users and publishers. Here is what Matt Mullenweg, creator of WordPress, has to say about Disqus spam ads.

Alternative to Disqus Ads: Clean Opt-in Ads from Vuukle or still Free Forever

Just removing Disqus, seems to increase user comments. In case studies, where we have replaced Disqus by Vuukle, user comments have invariably increased. Sometimes by more than 50% immediately and by more than 300% over time. User engagement gets compounded very fast and if you are not tapping into this exponential user engagement growth, things could turn bleak for you.

More importantly, we speak English. Ads are not “discovered content”. Ads are ads. Period. We hate “evil” as much as you do. That said, we need to make a living and, yes, we have a revenue sharing advertisement program for publishers. But your readers will know a Vuukle ad when they see one. Please drop a mail to hello@getvuukle.com with subject “Bye Disqus” and we will help you migrate to Vuukle for free.

A version of this post was first published on Vuukle blog.

Originally published at Blogacious — World Class Bloggers for Startups and Businesses.

The Curious Case of Disqus Ads on your Website (Again) was originally published in Blogacious on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

No matter how horrible this sounds, things can only get better from here. We got two words for you.

Vuukle is a complete end-to-end user engagement SaaS and is a way smarter choice. But Why?

Firstly, Vuukle does not patronize its users by calling them “community”. Our product is free to use and we share revenue with you by showing relevant unobtrusive ads along with comments. Yes, you read that right! You get paid by using Vuukle. Of course, we know that you are already monetizing traffic on your site but a little extra never hurt nobody. Don’t want to enable ads? Vuukle WordPress plugin is still free.

Not only comments, Vuukle packs quite a powerful punch by providing you with the complete suite of features needed to amplify your news site or blog.

Need to add a little drama on every post and capture the emotional reactions of your readers? We got you covered with Emote.

Hate adding another plugin for sharing to social networks? Check. We got PowerBar, world’s fastest loading sharing bar widget, that will make your next post go viral.

Too lazy to log into Google Analytics every day? Double check. We give you the most powerful real-time analytics dashboard that captures every measurable data of interest.

The hyper sticky recommendation section (aka Talk of the Town), best-of-breed moderation panel, zero friction login, mobile-friendly, … we can go on and on about the product that has evolved over 5 years of development and powered 46 billion recommendations, 7.7 billion ad impressions for more than 3000 publishers worldwide. But we would rather let you do the talking.

How to migrate from Livefyre to Vuukle

If you are an existing Livefyre user, please export your comments. You will get a JSON and XML file, please send them as attachments to [email protected] with subject “Goodbye Livefyre” and we will import all your existing comments into Vuukle.

We are here to stay.

Livefyre Extinguishes itself. Get Vuukle now!

Originally published at blog.vuukle.com on January 28, 2017.

Livefyre Extinguishes itself. Get Vuukle now! was originally published in Blogacious on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

We are not even settled in 2017 and more than 92% people in the world have already dropped their new year resolutions (most not for the first time). Is it not all about making resolutions and motivation and self-helping ourselves to our lofty goals? Unless you have been living in a cave, you have doubtlessly heard that greatness is achieved by forming and sticking to habits. It is not genius but habits. Habits is what made Benjamin Franklin, Mahatma Gandhi, and others so awesome at what they did. Stephen Covey wrote on the 7 habits of highly effective people.

If you think carefully most of these exhortations like “get up early”, “stay focused”, “never take your eyes off your competition” are useless because they are stuff you already know and yet don’t know how exactly to go about mastering. There is no algorithm, no flowchart, no methodology. Just large behaviors and empty promises. No wonder you are struggling to take a daily bath, not being able to brush your teeth or finish drinking 4 liter of water daily! So much for forming habits to achieve greatness!

It was at this juncture of my life that I joined the Tiny Habits system. Dr Fogg says that there are only 3 ways to form a new habit

1. Have an epiphany
2. Change your environment
3. Take baby steps

Originally published at blogacious.com on February 3, 2017.

What makes the Tiny Habits System by a Stanford PhD so revolutionary? was originally published in Blogacious on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.