Happy Valentine’s Day ♥️
I am late but I am still getting emails and messages from brands to spend a good time with partner while buying their services at a 10% discount. Deleting them all has been a stressful job.
Love is in the air and on sale too 🙂
2022 made me experience love in different ways.
April 2022, I moved to Tiruvannamalai. After a while, a sweet couple moved onto the ground floor of the same building where I was living.
I met a tall beautiful lady with shining eyes and a soothing smile. During the first few weeks, it was the occasional hello when she would be drying her clothes in the mornings or watering her plants.
I was drawn to her lovely smile which melted my heart. She would often enquire about my work and especially about my lunch and dinner.
“I can cook but I am not keen to set up a kitchen. Also in Tiruvanamalai, there is no shortage of food. No one goes hungry.” She was not happy.
Her husband was a shy and soft-spoken gentleman. He would admire my running madness and I would admire his love for cycling. Almost every week he would take her for checkups as she has diabetes.
Holding her hand, and walking slowly to the rikshaw was poetry in motion. The care for each other was evident in their eyes.
After getting retired in Chennai both husband and wife decided to spend the rest of their life in Tiruvanamali.
I took a break and visited my mother in October and by the end of the year, I was again back in Tiruvanamalai.
I was excited to see her smile but when I didn’t see her for 2 days I knocked on the door. The daughter came out and told me that they have lost their father. She was in tears. I was numb and left the place without any more conversation. The cycle was no more there.
I felt her pain.
This year in January I moved back to Bangalore. Before leaving I gathered the courage to meet her. The warmth from her face had vanished and grief was written all over. However, when she greeted me by my name the love was still there. She had the smile while we were talking and requested me to visit her whenever I am back in town.
Life is unpredictable but the love and warmth for her will always be there.
Love happens. It is the most beautiful emotion. Also, you can’t love your girlfriend or wife more than your brother or mother. We, humans, have created all these demarcations. You just love someone, there is nothing more or less and it can be for anyone and when you do so you feel it in your heart.
In the book Old Paths and White Clouds by Thich Nhat Hanh, Buddha describes love as understanding.
“If you cannot understand, you cannot love. Husbands and wives who do not understand each other cannot love each other.
Brothers and sisters who do not understand each other cannot love each other. Parents and children who do not understand each other cannot love each other. If you want your loved ones to be happy, you must learn to understand their sufferings and their aspirations. When you understand, you will know how to relieve their suffering and how to help them fulfill their aspirations. That is true love. If you only want your loved ones to follow your own ideas and you remain ignorant of their needs, it is not truly love. It is only a desire to possess another and attempt to fulfill your own needs, which cannot be fulfilled in that way.”
Meta is going back to its original love - Ads
After another fresh round of layoffs, it has killed live shopping. A feature that has been a massive hit in South East Asia by its competitors, failed to find any belief in the US market. This a clear example of how culture and digital habits play a different roles in various parts of the world.
Meta now will be focussing on advertising as one of the main ways people to discover businesses and shop on Instagram.
“This includes the use of its automated tools like Shop ads and Advantage+ shopping campaigns aimed at helping improve ad performance. The company will also continue to invest in the checkout, where people can buy a product in just a few taps from Instagram and Facebook Stories, Feed, or Reels.”
Why is no one loving Metaverse?
During last quarter's earnings call CEO, Mark Zuckerberg didn’t mention much about the metaverse. Something the company was very vocal about it after the rebranding exercise.
The CEO was recently forced to say that the metaverse is “not the majority of what we’re doing”.
Reality Labs, the division that makes the Meta Quest headsets, made an operating loss of $13.7bn last year.
FT tries to find out where the metaverse went all wrong. And one of the biggest problems is that no one knows what it is and how to define it. We are struggling in the real world but we want to build our new home in the virtual world.
2023 love is for search and AI
The success and growing use cases of ChatGpt have forced every browser in the world to have its own AI abilities that will empower the search. So much has been the mad rush that Microsoft is once again dreaming of growing its browser market share. It has gone one step ahead and planned for AI ads. Anyone who understands the power of search with AI capabilities would be foolish not to think alike.
Google which apparently owns the search and browser is building and testing alternate versions of its home page, with one version replacing the “I’m feeling lucky” button with prompts for potential questions. And sooner or later Google will also have AI ads to enhance or ruin your experience on the Internet.
With Google, Microsoft, and Apple already building capabilities similar to ChatGpt; what about Meta? Something to wait for.
That’s all for this week.
Enjoy your weekend.