Last night, I was "detained" at immigration in Chicago, again. After 2 hours of waiting around I was let go with profuse apologies from what appeared to be a well-meaning homeland security guard. I missed my last flight home and got to spend the night in a hotel paid for by me. I was looking forward to seeing my family after two weeks away, but that hope got dashed. And the reason, "we confused your name with someone else". 

How many times does that have to happen? Having a name like Hussain is no blessing in this day and age. But what am I supposed to do about it? Should anyone with the name Hussain be pulled aside like that. You can't call anyone, even a lawyer. I am one of the lucky ones because I am generally just inconvenienced or insulted. But I dread to think what might happen behind closed doors with men that have the ultimate get-out-of-jail card: "we were doing it to protect our country". Does this stink of the witch hunt of the 1950s? Why does an otherwise rational nation not learn from past mistakes? How can 300M people just turn a blind eye?

When I was studying history at school, America stood out as that fabled nation that is above all based on common sense and principles that protect human rights. People work hard to pursue their dreams and have the freedoms that so many other countries lack. The country I moved to in 2001 still had a vision of itself living that dream, even if the historical context was not quite as accurate as I had been taught. But the tone of the nation has started to change for the worse. Americans I talk to about the erosion of fundamental rights just shrug as if to say "as long as it's not me". Maybe if you are white, of Northern European stock and never left the country. But freedom once lost is hard to get back, it's a slippery slope that many seem to miss. Who is going to vote for more freedom when airports announce every 5 minutes "the national security level has been increased to orange"? This may be the beginning of the end of the American dream.

That is a shame. This is my home now and I want to feel proud. I just wish common sense would prevail again.

OK, to be clear, MySpace is by far and away the largest social networking player in the USA. But check out the latest NNR numbers showing a decline in users from August to September. MySpace may have more than 100M profiles, but "only" 47M users actually visit the site every month. In contrast, that ratio is the other way round for Spaces. The ratio tells us whether it's just a place to have told people you went to or if it was actually useful going there.  

If the trend flattens or continues downwards, it could suggest that MySpace is saturating the social networking "nightclub" target audience and needs to look at ways to grow their audience to the next 40M users. But the trouble with having a brand that strong is that people may be hesitant to believe them. Their best bet is to keep innovating for the current audience.

That leads to the second problem, audience overlap. By virtue of it's size, a lot of people using MySpace also use one of the competing services, over 45% in most cases (see NNR chart with % overlap data below for September 2006). This makes their audience particularly susceptible to switching. Facebook and Windows Live Spaces, both with a pretty focused value proposition, may be smaller but have a lot of exclusive users with less than 10% overlaps.

We really appreciate the loyalty of our users. With some planned fixes to performance, the team has some great new features planned that simply build on the experience users have so far. Can't wait.

After a visit to the Indian team, Pooja and I headed shopping. The first photo is a view through our car window. See if you can guess if we are on the road or pavement by the number of pedestrians in front!

This next photo is on a popular shopping street. Apparently this was the quiet day because everyone was off for Diwali. Could have fooled me.

India is a phenomenal place. I love the contrast with China where top down planning dominates. Indians joke that their economy grows despite their government, not because of it. It's easy to see how on the streets of Bangalore.

Forget manufacturing prowess or research and development, the next frontier of China and Japan competition will be in the design of toilets.

I was impressed by the toilets in New Otani in Tokyo and it's sounds for hiding those private bath room moments. But I was blown away by the toilets in Regal in Shanghai and it's sensor seats that rise as you approach and go down as you leave; men need no longer worry about leaving the seat up. Heated seats are of course now standard, but washing jets for front and rear as well as drying is now common. There are functions I dare not try on the console next to the toilets, so who knows what else was in store.

How else could one innovate a toilet?

We went to an awesome Japanese restaurant last night. It was actually inside a building but had waterfalls, bridges, a small stream and verandah such that standing outside the restaurant, you felt like you were outside. I wonder if this is the way of the world as outdoor space becomes harder to find in crowded cities.

The flashiness didn't stop there. We continued to a 7+ course meal, each sophistically served and sparing no ingredient in the true Japanese style. Many thanks to our Japanese hosts for treating us to this experience. We should visit more often :-)

Sitting in a  Tokyo and came to this site through my friends list. Got hooked on the song ... it's corny and I have no idea what she is saying. Much like the rest of my experience in Tokyo :-)

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http://catrina21.spaces.live.com/

There has been some buzz recently about  numbers from comScore that show MySpace has adults using it. As usual, there are the skeptics that believe the numbers are skewed by measurement techniques. Are kids lying about their age. Absolutely. But that affects MySpace internal numbers, not those of comScore. Are kids logging in under their parents computer? Probably. But if the panels that comScore uses give ID's to individuals that should not matter either. NNR does that, but I believe comScore doesn't. So there may be some bias there. But not to the order of magnitude that comScore is talking about.

The reality may well be that older users really ARE using MySpace, or at least checking it out. I would love to compare the percentage of profiles established by over 25's versus the number of visitors over 25. That tells you a lot about the voyeuristic tendencies of adults. MySpace may well have become the best place to check out millions of hot girls these days.

But another explanation is in understanding what types of customers find a particular service appealing. Very often, people get caught up in "demographic segments" - i.e. the 16-24 year olds, the 25-34 year olds etc. While there is a lot of merit in these groupings because similar age groups tend to share similar lifestage based needs, it misses a more important point. It's not how old you are, it's how old you feel. My friend in the UK is a 34 year old Frenchman and is dating a 23 year old Belgian girl. He loves the youthfulness of her friends and I honestly think in his head, he is still 23. He acts it. That's a "psychographic segment", based more on peoples attitiudes and aspirations not on hard demographic data.

MySpace seems to have discovered that there are adults want to feel young, show off and flirt. Surprise surprise.

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Social-network site drawing older users

"Half of the site's users are 35 or older, according to comScore Media Metrix's analysis of its U.S. Internet traffic measurements. Only 30 percent are under 25 despite a common belief that the site is mostly populated with kids and young adults."