I am a big fan of innovative marketing but some times marketeers play with raw human emotions to reach out to you.

For instance, insurance companies. I've noticed a trend where many reputed insurance companies, after obtaining your child's name from the school, call parents' under the guise of "rewarding your child with a certificate for outstanding performance at school..."
Most parents are overjoyed when they hear something like this. These smart insurance agents then visit you at home and try to pitch a "child-friendly" policy. Oh heavens, stop playing with my child's emotions.

This is unacceptable to me. I avoid cell-phones as much as possible, but when this lady mentioned that she wanted to talk about my son Kashif's elocution performance, I continued the conversation and did not hang up on her. She wants to meet me. Is she gonna sell me some product? She claimed she was from my child's school. I grilled her and then she revealed she was from Aviva Life.

What do ya'll think?

--Faisal

MouthShut.com is your voice. In the form of reviews, opinions and ratings, YOU, the gentle reader and reviewers of MouthShut are helping others make an informed choice.

The other day, The Hindu newspaper published an extensive story on how your reviews- especially restaurant reviews, are helping others decide. Check it out for yourself.
The Hindu Newspaper's
bit.ly/HQpjw Good Guide to Bad Food

Love,

--Faisal

We all love MouthShut.com and for those who are not in love with me ooops with MouthShut, they send me suggestions on what we should do, upon which they'll start to love us. Such feedback helps us improve a lot.

We want more people to fall in love with MouthShut.com so watch out this space for some big announcement in few days!

Yes, if you've been following my status updates, you'll be able to guess...

Until then,

I LOVE YOU.

--Faisal

Nobody loves heavy traffic as much as I do ... especially when the traffic is on our web servers. It simply thrills me. Last weekend was an intense one for all of us at MouthShut.com and we worked overnight to manage the traffic.

Past Sunday morning, our engineers noticed a huge spike in the traffic on our websites. They tried to resolve the issue, but the CPU load would just not come down. We added more servers overnight and decided to restart the core firewalls. Believe it or not, the firewall crashed just when the servers were load balanced.

I'm not going to tax you with the details of the ‘hows’ and ‘whats’, but there's one thing that I want to re-affirm - our promise to keep working harder for all of you. Our entire team loves the fact that you love MouthShut.com and trust me there is nothing more addictive, nothing more motivating to keep us on our toes all day and at times (as in this case) all night also.

We've faced outage only three times in our nearly nine years of being on board. I promise you that we will set new benchmarks for higher-uptimes. So no worries and only smiles.

Long live MouthShut.com and long live your love for MouthShut.com. Continue loving us and continue providing us your support and feedback.

--Faisal

PS- As of now, all our systems are running smoothly. FEW users may experience slow loading of WRITE REVIEW pages. We're working on it!

If you don't vote, you can only keep your MouthShut for next five years!

I want to talk and therefore I voted at 10:02 AM at St. Theresa's High School Polling Booth No. 150 in Bandra West, part of Mumbai North Central Lok Sabha Constituency.

If you are yet to vote in your upcoming elections, be ready and go out and vote on that day!

--Faisal

We've received hundreds of requests from members asking us to change their MS ID. In principle, we were opposed to that idea. Barring few exceptions, we rejected such requests (it's fairly complicated request anyway).

This past few weeks, after much deliberation with the tech team, support team and senior managers in MouthShut.com,we've decided to accept change of MS ID requests, subject to certain guidelines.

Sometimes in the first week of April 2009, you will see a special link to Request for MS ID Change in the Account Settings tab in your profile. It will lead to a simple form, which you can complete and then press submit. Once we receive your MS ID change request, and if approved, your MS ID will be changed to the new one after 48 hours.

Additionally, a list of OLD MS ID and the corresponding NEW MS ID will be published for the benefit of the entire MouthShut community.

I am sure many of you will come closer to your true self with your NEW MS ID.

Your love for MouthShut.com is what keeps us motivated.

Love you all,

--Faisal

Can there be music in any heart when my city has been ripped apart? My heart sank the moment I returned from the gym around 10:15 PM on Wednesday evening. No sooner had I settled myself in my bedroom, I received an SMS from another MouthShut employee informing me of "...some blast at the Taj".

Our company was preparing to host a delegation of twenty-five American educationists and they were to stay at the Taj from Saturday, November 29. To finalize all arrangements for the delegation one of my staff and I were to meet a Sr. Manager at Taj over dinner at 9:30 PM. Due to a personal issue (read below) the meeting was postponed for the next morning.

Then reports started pouring in about gun-fires and blasts from across the city. The brazen attack at CST (Formerly VT station) convinced me that what was unfolding is a systematic and barbaric terror attack on my beloved city.

I then called up my wife (who was recuperating in a hospital in Bandra) and asked her to follow the news.

I will post more thoughts and personal opinions in separate posts, but one immediate thought that has been hounding me was the need for our government to equip our police and other forces with modern weapons, sophisticated life-protection gear and better training to deal with challenges that are destroying our cities.

I hope and pray that we all join the efforts in defeating these terrorists in our own little ways.

With prayers and deep sorrow,

--Faisal

It seems like just yesterday. Like I clearly remember when I held him for the first time in the hospital ward when he was born. My little baby boy Shiraz sent me an email. His first email. The moment I read his email, I knew he has become a big boy.

Checkout his email to me. It reflects the innocence of his mind. And the spirit of sharing with his baby brothers.

Give me your thoughts? How did you first react when you discovered your baby has grown...and how would you react if you found that a baby is now a big boy?

Click here to view a snapshot of the original email which Shiraz sent me.

Verbatim, it said:
" Salaams daddy. daddy bring me any game u want. And for kashif,basit. "

(notice the absent space after the comma for kashif)

I'm sure you've all noticed the huge amount of coverage MouthShut.com receives from the media. Almost every week, some newspaper, magazine or TV channel features your favorite--MouthShut.com

While I get to take all the credit, I know in reality, the credit belongs to you- my dear members who love MouthShut.com and who refer it to friends and family.

Two such coverages I thought were noteworthy.
1. I wrote a column for Moneylife magazine. You can read the article here:
mouthshut.com/help/pres-11sept-08.php

2. Yours truly was featured on the cover page of the June 2008 issue of Winning Edge Magazine.
This article can be found here

The reason, I'm personally asking you to check our media coverage is simple. I want all of you to take pride in the fact that MouthShut.com has YOU reflected in some form or other.

You are mouthshut.com

Love,
--Faisal

PS- I would love to hear from you- send me an M2M

If you're a regular on MouthShut.com I'm sure you caught the surprise festive discount that we introduced for two days, from Sept.2 thru Sept 4, 2008. During this period, prices for many gift items that you were always dreaming to buy but could not afford, were reduced. Infact many items were being sold at more than 70% discount
(check https://mouthshut.com/diary/jhcgnspu/Ganesh-Chaturthi-Discount)

Some of you have voiced your concerns at the recent increase in the prices of few items. Yes, we're aware of that and we're trying our best to control it. Remember, inflation is also a product of demand greater than available supply. If too many people want the same gift, prices may go up. We need to diversify our purchases. You too can help control inflation by purchasing items that are not bought by many.

In the meanwhile, MouthShut.com's Gift team and I are working hard to reduce some of the prices.

The response to our 2 day festive discount was exciting. Many airplanes and beach villas were bought. We're thrilled that you are enjoying them. Keep your eyes and ears open for more discounts in the future. You never know when the next discount scheme starts again.

As always, it pays to be alert on mouthshut.com

Love you all,

--Faisal