Today is Guru Pournima. Yesterday only I had a brilliant webinar along with my fellow IIMI batchmates with one of our extremely favourite Marketing Gurus, Prof. Rajesh Srivastava. Unfortunately I was not aware of Guru Pournima yesterday. But I take this opportunity to thank all the Gurus in my both the lives, Real life as well as Digital life!
The real life gurus are extremely personal and their contributions in my life has been tremendous. Many times I feel awkward to thank them, simply because it looks too formal. I believe, the real thanks to them will be in my deeds.
But the digital life gurus are quite common between you and me. In fact, we all have same Gurus in this CLASS of internet.
Guru Google is definitely the first one. He controls our entry into the digital life. We can ask him anything, anytime. He is prompt to revert and throws at us so much advice that many times we get lost and decide to ignore some of it. But whatever we do or NOT do, he is always watching!
There is another guru in the form of WhatsApp. Our day starts and ends with him. He makes us laugh and also informs us about important events such as birthdays, anniversaries and some important celebrated days, just like today. Except for my wife’s birthday, most of the birthdays I know because of WhatsApp! He gives us tremendous General knowledge. A lot of free analysis on different topics is available here and that is the reason he is also called as WhatsApp University. This is the only University where there is no exam and no graduation. Everyone is a life long student as new stuff comes every day, every minute. Two unique things it has given to us : 1) our very own CLOSED GROUPS and 2) DIGITAL SMILES (emoticons)
The third in the list is Facebook. The father of WhatsApp in a true sense. The beauty about this guru is he is a great listener. He lets everyone talks about themselves. So much so that people just meet him to express. I did this, I did that. Few times they recognize someone else sharing something and show a courtesy to LIKE it. In fact, to be honest, this is the first guru who has taught us to LIKE others.
The fourth in the line is YouTube. The child of Guru Google, he is a world in itself. Many times, Guru Google, directs us to him like a true father. YouTube has made our life easier. Instead of reading, now we can sit back, relax and WATCH. My kid watches him so much that when he grows up, he will first salute Youtube and then his father, I mean Google, and then to me, if at all he gets time to log out 🙂
The fifth one in the line is the Twitter. As the names suggests it is all about TALKING. Everyone talks here, all the time. One important thing it has done is it has given an official voice to celebrities. This is taken so seriously by few that, at times, I feel that whole world (read America), is only run through twitter. Another important thing it gave us is # (aka HASHTAGS)
In fact many DIGITAL WARS are already run on twitter using # through ‘trending’. I hope the WARS remain digital only.
There are many other Digital Life Gurus. Not all can be mentioned here to thank but few I must mention are Linkedin, Telegram, Instagram, Netflix and the good old TV. Out of these, Linkedin is dearer to my heart as all my sales and marketing efforts for my startup are dependent on him. A big THANK YOU to Linkedin!
Real Life has become interesting because of Digital Life. With all the Digital Gurus well positioned to guide us, the journey has just begun. While these Gurus are themselves Artificially Intelligent, we the humans need to use our Human Intelligence to take their help. If handled properly, each one of these Gurus can play Krishna for us and become our CHARIOTEER. We have to play Arjuna and choose WISELY.
Good one