Manchester United Signs Partnership Deal with Zong: ProPakistani

Manchester United Signs Partnership Deal with Zong
Ali Raza Mehdi Joins Warid
Future of Adsense in Pakistan
Naukrify.com: Next Gen Skill Set Based Job Portal
Online Tools to Increase Productivity

Manchester United Signs Partnership Deal with Zong

Posted: 25 Oct 2011 04:36 AM PDT

Like we gave you a hint before, Zong has entered into a three-year partnership agreement with Manchester United, said a statement issued by Zong today.

With this agreement, Zong is planning to launch dedicated value added services and products specifically for MANU fans that will enable Club's estimated 10 million fans in Pakistan a chance to see all the goals scored, as well as exclusive interviews, news and behind-the-scenes access – bringing them closer to Old Trafford than ever before.

Announcing the deal, Commercial Director Richard Arnold said,

"Zong is a great partner for United in Pakistan. It is a relatively young company, but has ambitions to be one of the major players in the country and partnering with United will give them high visibility, as well as helping the Club to communicate directly with millions of our supporters there.

Using our digital assets to engage our global fanbase is an increasingly-important part of our commercial strategy and we are very excited about the possibilities presented by this partnership."

Sir Alex Ferguson said,

"The way the Club uses modern technology to reach our millions of fans around the world is outstanding. Zong will be a key player in allowing us to bring the passion and excitement of Manchester United to our fans in Pakistan."

Rizwan Akhter, The Director Advertising and Promotions of Zong said

"This partnership is one of a kind coming from Pakistan and the initiative that Zong has taken to team up with a giant like Manchester United will only lead to prosperity, growth and triumph! For all the glory that is to come, we stand united, to take on all opportunities and victories together as one.

Today, we play for the same team!"

The Chief Financial Officer of Zong, China Mobile Pakistan, Mr. Feng Tuixian said

"We see ourselves as an integral part of peoples' lives, providing support to over 12 million subscribers. We help them in their business or at work, bringing friends and families closer together, providing quality moments of leisure and recreation while remaining at the cutting edge of technology.

We share Manchester United's commitment to be the best among competitors. I am sure this is the start of something very big indeed."

Ali Raza Mehdi Joins Warid

Posted: 25 Oct 2011 04:26 AM PDT

Ali Raza Mehdi, former VP HR and Admin of Mobilink, has joined Warid Telecom to head human resource department and administration there, we have confirmed with the sources.

Warid PR department has officially confirmed us the appointment of Mr. Mehdi as GM HR and Administration, however, an official announcement will be issued by the company sometime later this week.

According to the information we have got, Human Resources Division and Employee Support Division at Warid are being merged to get a unified HR & Admin Division to be headed by Ali Raza Mehdi.

Prior to his commitment with Warid, Mr. Mehdi had a brief stay at Zong earlier this year to head it's HR but resigned with-in a month due to reported differences with top Chinese management.

Before Zong, Mr. Mehdi worked at Mobilink as VP HR, Admin & Security for more than six years, where he was core member of Zohair Khaliq's team.

Ali Raza Mehdi joins Warid to team up with old colleagues from Mobilink, most of which are inducted by Mr. Zohair Khaliq himself.

To read more, click: Ali Raza Mehdi Joins Warid
ProPakistani.PK

Future of Adsense in Pakistan

Posted: 24 Oct 2011 09:20 PM PDT

Read this post in Urdu

It's dark, and you know it well – just in case if you aren't aware of recent massacre by Google then the information for you is that Google has banned hundreds of Pakistani adsense accounts by giving odd reasons to each of them, majority of which didn't make sense to a common man.

Like all businesses – at times Google plays unfair, and it's fair on their part to save themselves and their stakeholders. Let me give you examples,

I know of this Pakistani website which is displaying adsense ads and it should get banned by all definitions and terms of services, but it's not banned. Reason: This website serves more than 100 million impressions a month.

I am sure this website in question would have a dedicated support engineer deputed to take care of the matters concerning to it.

On other hands, I know of this another website which recently got banned by adsense, just because the website was displaying ads below navigation bar. Which is weird because Google itself preaches publishers to place ads below navigation bar for high CTR.

Another ban reason for thousands of publishers, over the years, is fraud click. They ban the publisher for life, meaning that a publisher banned for fraud click can never participate in adsense for whole life.

I am just wondering, isn't it possible for Google (a company that spends billions of dollars for research and development) to not to allow second click on adsense ads whenever it is done by same IP and/or same cookie?

Or can't they cap clicks done in certain duration? For instance if I am given an option to not to allow more than one click from one IP in one week (even if it has multiple users on one network) – I would definitely go for it. I am sure many would opt for it – to avoid permanent ban.

I understand that there would be people asking their FnF including aunts and little cousins to click on their ads, sure go ahead and ban them. But what about those publishers who have been religiously following your TOS and one day someone from their competition comes in and starts click bombing their ads, assumingly from same IP?

Will you ban him/her? You sure will. I have seen such cases myself.

This is how exposed Google adsense is to exploiters.

So like any other business, adsense has loopholes, which can't be filled. Google has purposefully kept these loopholes to keep itself secured.

Talking specifically about the recent mass-ban of Pakistani publishers – it was our fault too. Like we mentioned in our past post, we Pakistanis vigorously copied international blogs to setup websites. Then did hefty amount of SEO to bring in traffic and monetized it through adsense. Which isn't legit in many ways.

So all those content lifters sank, not alone but drowned many legit publishers along with them.

Why Pakistan was Targeted?

Have you read my this article: Why Does a Pakistani Website Earn 32 Times Lesser than any American Counterpart?

If not – then please go ahead and read it to understand that Pakistani traffic is of not much value to advertisers.

To put it in simple words: Pakistanis can't buy products online (due to lack of ecommerce infrastructure), the ads we see are for the free services or (product) information only. This equation translates into a situation where reader/website visitor won't make money for advertiser.

For many this is fine, for others – this is just the loss of advertising budget, i.e. no return on investment at all.

Coupled with this if content is replicated over hundreds of websites, then why a network like adsense won't target Pakistanis in particular? I hope you have the answer.

What's next?

I know it's ugly, but if Google was your primary source of revenue then you are done. You need to get over with it. You can't convince Google that you are a legit blogger (even if you are) who puts plenty of effort for generating content. Google won't listen to you – you need to believe this hard fact, they are least concerned.

I have spoken with some senior people at Google and they are not bothered with whatever perceptions we have got for Google.

There are chances that Google won't even reply you, or if they do – it will be a pre-drafted email with meaningless and negative message.

So it's better to re-plan your monetization policy, by either switching to other networks (just like Hamad explained here) or by giving up with it.

For many they deserved this – for others it's bitter reality and hard luck, the unfortunate end that's attached with online business models.

Can we Expect a Better Internet After This?

Considering that easy money is gone, all those content lifters will be go away with only legit bloggers left for quality content. This is somewhat better than it was before. Not that we are happy with the situation – but everything happens for good, that how I believe in Allah.

A Local CPM network

is what we need. We saw many local ad networks coming in with big claims, but no one could survive. I will discuss the reasons in a separate post – but to understand that survival of local digital industry, we must get a good CPM network up running in next 6-12 months. Or the local content that brag about will go down the drain.

To read more, click: Future of Adsense in Pakistan
ProPakistani.PK

Naukrify.com: Next Gen Skill Set Based Job Portal

Posted: 24 Oct 2011 09:15 PM PDT

Read this post in Urdu

Naukrify.com, claimed as to be the next gen Jobs Portal for the Pakistan market that aims to replace job search by intelligent job matching by enabling employers to find the best candidates out of thousands in just seconds, is going to see a launch Today.

Competing with well established job portals, Naukrify.com is putting efforts to bring in the quality than quantity for job seekers and employers alike.

They are claiming to offer quality candidates to employers – keep reading to know how they gonna achieve this.

Usual procedure for hiring candidate(s) is done by posting a job vacancy and waiting for candidates to apply or search the database of CVs. That is a tedious process which may involve further filtering of CVs by going through each of them.

Naukrify.com is actually claiming to have re-engineered the process, making it much easier and less time consuming for both recruiters and job seekers.

Naukrify.com enables candidates to create what Naukrify.com calls Talent Profiles (TPs) with the option of importing data from their Linkedin Profile. TPs are more structured and visual than CVs making them easier to read and easier to use for matching with jobs.

Intelligent matching algorithms then match TPs with jobs from employers, producing real time job recommendations for job seekers and candidate recommendations for employers. Hence, both job seekers and employers no longer need to search for each other.

Matching is based on 30 dimensions from both sides and they have different weights based on skillset.

In Naukrify.com instead of buying CVs to view, recruiters can post a job for free, view profiles that match the job, but only have pay to get the contacts of those candidates they want to interview.

The Naukrify.com portal has other useful features for recruiters to help them choose the right candidates, as each profile has a tag cloud, which are collections of keywords from users profile that help recruiters to get a better idea about the person.

Employers can, if needed tag each profile as short listed or rejected, rate applicants, comment on their profiles for internal use and job applicants can see their application status, and the probability to get the job.

So go on – build your talent profile, or post a job to experience the naukrify.com; also let us know of your results.

Online Tools to Increase Productivity

Posted: 24 Oct 2011 09:10 PM PDT

Most of us use the internet to kill time but it can also provide a range of tools which can help you increase your or your company's productivity. All these tools are free or have free options available.

Evernote:

URL: http://www.evernote.com

Evernote is a massively useful tool for saving everything you do on the web. With so much content available it can be hard to keep track of the important stuff and that's exactly what Evernote is for.

On the mobile, you can snap pictures and they uploaded on the Evernote servers. So it's useful for keeping a record of documents, maps, and stuff on whiteboards etc. While you’re browsing on your PC, you can save entire web pages as well so even if the site goes down you still have a record.

Evernote syncs all your data so no matter where you are or which device you are on, it's available.

Tungle:

URL: http://www.tungle.me/Home/

Tungle is a very helpful tool for scheduling meetings. Others can see which times you are available at and if multiple people are involved – each selects times that work for them and Tungle chooses the most appropriate time. It can also sync with any calendar clients/apps you are using so you can take full advantage from the word go.

BB Flashback express:

URL: http://www.bbsoftware.co.uk/BBFlashBack_FreePlayer.aspx

Ever felt the need for making a tutorial or a demo or just something you need to share with the web? BB Flashback is the answer. It's an easy to use tool that can record sound, your screen and webcam.

One of the reasons one might choose it over similar tools is that it can record at a high frame rate as well as the level of control it provides when exporting the file. It also features the ability to share all of your created movies on sites like YouTube etc.

Rapportive:

URL: http://rapportive.com/

Rapportive is a very useful plugin for Gmail. It shows all information about your contacts inside the email inbox. It lets you see all contact details and social network profiles for the people you are talking to. Wherever possible, it displays information form the contacts Twitter, LinkedIn and other social networking profiles. You can mention shared interests and leave notes for later too.

Remember the Milk:

URL: http://www.rememberthemilk.com

Remember the milk is a free task manager. The best thing about it is its simplicity. It simply does what it says and doesn't overload the users with features. It can be accessed from anywhere and it sends SMS alerts as well when a task is due.

Quick thumbnail:

URL: http://quickthumbnail.com/
URL: http://www.fotosizer.com/

Ever wanted to resize your images and pictures without any hassle? Quick thumbnail is the perfect tool for that.

Simply upload your images or pictures, select a few options for resizing and the resized images appear in a single convenient view. For an offline tool that does the same thing, check out Fotosizer.

Mindomo:

URL: http://www.mindmeister.com/

Mindomo is a mind mapping application enables you to easily visualize projects through mind maps, embedded sounds and videos, links, and attachments, and begin planning projects by assigning things like priorities, resources and status of completion. Features include real time collaboration and export in different formats among others.

Gliffy:

URL: http://www.gliffy.com/

Gliffy is an online application which to make designing floor plans, technical as well as general diagrams, and flowcharts as easy as possible.

Possible users range from people in the industry to small business owners. Advantages over other diagramming tools like Visio are that it's free and since its web based it doesn't matter what OS you're using.

world on your screen

Tuesday, October 25, 2011