BRAToSPHERE

Category: thought

  • Trust is the New SEO

    When I first started writing this blog, about 2 decades back, the mantra was “content is king.” You had to be everywhere. You had to publish constantly, stuff in keywords, and chase the latest SEO hack. (google was in its nascent stage but making its presence felt!). It felt like a race to flood the internet with as many words as possible. It was exhausting to keep up with all the click baity stuff and honestly, a lot of the content felt… disposable.

    But here’s something I’ve been thinking about a lot lately: with AI now dominating our digital landscape, the rules of the game are changing. The very machines that are supposed to make content creation easier might be pushing us back to the fundamentals of quality. It’s a quiet irony, isn’t it?

    Think about it this way: AI, at its core, is a super-sophisticated pattern-matcher. It doesn’t just read; it evaluates. It’s designed to spot inconsistencies, outdated facts, and statistical outliers in data. Over time, it learns which sources consistently deliver accuracy and depth. While a person might be fooled by a slick-looking website, AI is building an algorithmic trust profile for every source it encounters.

    This shifts the credibility game completely. The old days of low-effort, high-volume content farms are fading. Now, your goal shouldn’t be to win the daily clickbait race. It should be to build what I’m calling “algorithmic trust capital.” Of course, AI helps but what gets noticed is originality. By fellow Humans.

    This means getting your work into authentic, authoritative outlets. The old school way of publishing—pitching to a reputable journal, going through a rigorous editor, or getting a piece peer-reviewed—is no longer just for human audiences. It’s a critical investment in your digital credibility footprint. I know, it’s slower. It’s harder. But that hard work pays off in the long run. it is not the same – getting published in the new yorker versus your local online magazine.

    The algorithms behind tools like ChatGPT and Google’s AI overviews are increasingly relying on a core network of verified, high-quality sources. If your message is repeatedly cited in these spaces, it becomes part of the “trusted corpus” that AI leans on. If not, you risk being lost in the digital ocean of noise.

    So, while it’s tempting to think AI makes traditional publishing obsolete, I believe the opposite is true. The shortcuts are losing relevance. The long, hard path of quality, expertise, and consistency is becoming the only way to build a voice that will carry weight tomorrow. The machines are watching, and they know the difference.

  • Relativity – on a Sunday Morning

    More than a quarter of the year has passed and things seem to still stand where they are. The passing, or shall i say flying, of time makes one feel how insignificant we are. In the big huge universe, we are mere speck of dust leasing sometime to spend here.

    In entertainment parlance, what relevance does a hit movie play in context of a decade? How does it matter if about a sporting great in the context of a century. Who cares about the veracity of a town in the context of multiple centuries. From this perspective, everything becomes relative.

    To make someone understand the importance of a milli second, we refer to a person who met with an accident which could have been averted by a split second. Similarly, to make one realise the futility of a particular incident, refer to a century.

    How relevant is that Monday morning presentation in the context of a decade. Do you remember what were you presenting in 2006? No one does!

    Think, this is the best possible living example of Einstein’s theory of relativity. The importance, or lack of it, is purely determined by the frame of reference.

    lets say, Completing the task in hand is of utmost priority right now. Right then, you get a call from a friend who has just met with an accident and needs your help. Will the task still be of the same importance?

    Of course, for some, even a ping on Facebook would disrupt the priority order.

    Enough said. I am sure by now you have decided the importance to place on reading such write-ups.

    It is already 12:30 on the clock! Now with this context that i am made aware of, sorry but this write up takes a lower priority. I have a presentation to work on!

    Until next time!

  • Watch – Whatever, Wherever, Whenever – The WWW of TV

    Diwali of 1992. We had got a new colour television at home. With one channel, and limited hours, TV was a true socializer. During the 1996 Cricket World cup, our home was the action place as all neighbors would group in to SEE Brian Lara hit the brown ball out of the green stadium. Truly, TV was the great socializer, and a 14” TV for that.

    Cut to 2015. TV is no longer relevant to the GenX. Want to see Virat Kohli hit the Brown Bal out of the green stadium? Flip open your Smartphone, and voila! You have all the content in your small (or not so small) screen in your hands. From the social experience, to the totally personalized experience, we have come a long way in the way we consume media.

    But still! I need to sit in front of the so called idiot box to catch up with the latest season of HomeLand on Star World Premiere! Well, yes, I could be downloading the same through some illegal torrent and store it on my iPad. But why? When I have paid my DTH guy for it. Why can I not carry my TV along with me?

    “I want to watch HomeLand wherever I want, whenever I want. As simple as that”, I cribbed to a Vipin, my consultant friend.

    “What do you think? My clients take into consideration the timings of Suze Orman Show on CNBC, while setting up the calls?” vipin whined.

    “I started recording the series with the TatsSky HD, and watch them at my leisure. I now have 300 hours of episodes all recorded. I just managed to complete August content. August’14. I still have a year long content to consume.”, he sighed.

    “And think about it, all these countless hours at the airport and the plane, I end up watching rubbish stored content or the airplane entertainment system, with documentaries which nobody in the world watches”.

    “I want to watch whatever I want, wherever I want, whenever I want!!”

    TV should be WWW, like the internet starts at www and like my Dadi’s favourite show WWE.

    And now I can! With the new #TataSkyTransfer

    All the recorded content on TataSky is now transferred to my Samsung phone and my iPad and I can now view programs at any place and time without any internet via the Tata Sky app.

    My plane rides are no longer boring!

    Also, with my two TV’s at home – one in the living room and one in the bedroom, I constantly had this dilemma what to record on which TV. Shifting the Set Top boxes from one place to another would be a nightmare, and thus most of the times I would end up sleeping on the living room couch itself, watching some recorded movie on my living room TV.

    Not Anymore. I no transfer all my recorded stuff to my iPad. And then using apple TV I can stream it back to my bedroom TV. See whatever, wherever, whenever. No Chic Chik!

                         

    It no longer feels like 2015. #TataSkyTransfer has truly transformed the way I watch TV and taken a leap of years forward.

  • Sunday Evenings

    Sitting in my 10th floor balcony, sipping on hot green tulsi tea. This is the perfect way to spend a Sunday evening. Add some interesting company to this, and there is nothing in this world that could beat this experience. (Working on this bit, to solve the imbroglio forever!)

    View from the balcony

    Even alone, the Sunday evening has much to offer. It is the solitude rather that is therapeutic. The perfect time to reflect on the week gone, and to plan the week ahead.

    I know of many people who loathe at Sunday evenings. The very mention of the Sunday evening gives a very depressing feel to many. I was one if them not very long ago. I used to hate the advent of the Sunday evening. Probably it had something to do with he inevitable Monday morning, or maybe it was due to the fact that it marks the end of a perfect weekend.

    I have now come to appreciate and like Sunday evening, it gives me the perfect relaxed time that I look forward to all week. No, before you ask,Saturday evenings do not compare as more often than not there are obligations and chores to attend to. Saturday is used to fix the functional part of the week to come. Sunday evenings on the other hand, fix the inner mind pepping it for the week ahead.

    There was a time, not so long ago again, when Saturday night implies party night. No matter what, and where, Saturday night would immediately conjure the internal mood to get ready for night full of fun, frolic and a lot of liquids.

    With a heavy head, and a tired body, I would wake up to a packet of maggi for my starved tummy. Wrapping up the weekend, I would attend to chores for the week to come. I guess this is the reason for the hatred to the Sunday evening – fun over, back to work feeling.

    That now seems like a bygone era.

    Now a days, my weekends have been in hibernation mode, spending time in solitude with myself.

    Sunday evenings especially.

    So, how do you spend your Sunday evenings?

  • Delhi World Book Fair

    From when I can remember I have always loved books. More than that, I love collecting books, and being in their company. The smell of the paper in a new book still makes me go gaga and nothing in the world can match it.

    My two visits to the Jaipur Literature festival, in 2012 and 2013, have been quite enriching and totally worth every minute spent there. Being amidst books gives me an unparalleled high.

    Continuing the love, I was eagerly waiting for the bi-annual show – The New Delhi Book Fair, held at Pragati Maidan in Delhi. It is India’s oldest book fair, with the first one being held in 1972!

    I was very surprised to know, and am sure many of you would be too, that “India is the third biggest market for English publications with almost 12,000 publishers that publish around 90,000 titles a year in more than 18 languages”. In a country like India, that still has substantial illiteracy rates, this comes as a welcome surprise. With the up surging middle class and increased literacy and awareness we sure are on the way to be no. 1 very soon.
    The theme for the book fair was “Books in Indian Cinema”. This sure seemed like a step towards commercialization of the property to attract the youth of today. The only linkage to the theme was a small exhibition setup with posters of various movies, which have been inspired from books. No mention of the theme in the stalls, or a shelf stacking such books! Nothing!

    The book fair in itself was huge spread across 6 large halls of the overflowing Pragati Maidan, and there was substantial crowd. Stalls by every major bookseller were available and coupling it with cafeteria options from the likes of Costa Coffee made it a perfect hangout place.

    Sadly that is what it turned out to be.

    Admit that this is a book fair and not a literature festival, but the focus on commercializing the event super ceded the intellectual stimulation expected out of it. it more seemed like a garage sale of books than a exhibition of the complete range of books by each of the book publishers. I think this is what happens when you invite booksellers to setup a stall.

    For me, a book fair is a place for the publishers, distributors to showcase their wares and collection to the end consumer and a wonderful place to network among the entire stakeholder chain of this business called books. The latest change – ebooks, should also have been invited in a big way and the end consumer could have been witness to the pros and cons of this medium and given a glimpse to the future.

    What it turned out was a garage sale. All the booksellers were out there to empty their stockpiles of books that have been collecting dust in their outlets. Rs. 100 for 2 books one claimed, 3 said another, leading to a mad rush for people ready to deck up their bookshelves.

    Alas! That is all it turned out to be.

    Would I visit it next time? Of course I would. But this time the mindset would be to strike a bargain to fill up my bookshelf, and nothing else!