About
RAKESH AGRAWAL
I am Senior Director of Product at Audible.
I have been designing and marketing Internet services since 1993. I have worked at Tellme, AOL Search, uReach Technologies, washingtonpost.com and startribune.com.
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Recent Posts
- Rakesh’s travel secrets for the holidays, 2024 edition
- Airbnb’s changes don’t go far enough
- Rakesh’s travel secrets for the holidays, 2023 edition
- Thoughts on living and dying
- A finance guide for millionaires and billionaires
- Rakesh’s travel secrets for your holiday travel
- Lobsterclass – free classes on product management
- Getting down to numbers: quantitative research
- Pricing the COVID-19 vaccine
- Favorite things, day 1: podcasts
Top Posts
March 2026 M T W T F S S 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 Meta
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Author Archives: Rakesh Agrawal
The ad is a lie
While watching the Olympics, I was struck by a gorgeous animated ad. A lobster conducts an orchestra of other sea creatures playing Gershwin. As soon as I recognized Rhapsody in Blue, I knew it had to be a United Airlines … Continue reading
Posted in advertising, airlines, travel
2 Comments
The Russians are coming! The Russians are coming!
I’ve long advocated that news organizations geotag the news. But I’ve been skeptical of automated systems for doing this. Google News recently provided a terrific example of what can happen when you use entity extraction for such a task: In … Continue reading
Posted in geotagging, google, journalism, local search, maps, media, newspapers, web 2.0
4 Comments
All the news that’s fit to tweet
Local, local, local. It’s the new mantra for news. I was reminded of this last week after the train I was riding in struck a pedestrian. The event was insignificant to all but a few hundred, maybe a couple of … Continue reading
Posted in journalism, media, newspapers, social networking, twitter, web 2, web 2.0
3 Comments
How’s the weather out there?
One of the things that takes getting used to living in the Bay Area is the many microclimates. Temperatures and conditions can vary dramatically within a few miles. I was deciding whether to head out to the Beach Chalet, a … Continue reading
Posted in geotagging, google, maps, social networking, twitter, web 2.0
1 Comment
NYT pays tribute to the best fake political team in television
The New York Times ran a great profile of fake news purveyor Jon Stewart this weekend. According to a 2007 Pew poll, Stewart was tied with real newsmen Brian Williams, Tom Brokaw, Andersen Cooper and Dan Rather for #4 as … Continue reading
Posted in journalism, media, video, YouTube
Comments Off on NYT pays tribute to the best fake political team in television
Congratulations to Twitter and Summize
A big congratulations to former AOL Search colleagues Abdur, Greg and Jay on the acquisition of Summize by Twitter. They’ve done a terrific job capturing the pulse of Twitter. Summize is a great tool for marketers and others looking to … Continue reading
Posted in twitter
Comments Off on Congratulations to Twitter and Summize
Technology moves on, language doesn’t
One of my favorite iPhone apps is Rotary Dialer. There’s just something fun about making the latest and greatest device act like something from the 60s. Rotary Dialer isn’t like the “classic” phones from Pottery Barn, where the buttons are … Continue reading
Posted in apple, fun, iphone
4 Comments
Unlocking the creativity of the masses
With the launch of the iPhone last year (and the millions of dollars in ad spend around it), Apple did more for wireless data adoption than wireless carriers had in the last 10 years. With Thursday’s launch of the App … Continue reading
Posted in apple, apple tv, facebook, flickr, geotagging, gps, iphone, ipod, lbs, local search, mobile, mobile search, photography, social networking, twitter, where, wireless, wireless data, yelp
3 Comments
Colgate squeezes out a product for a niche market
Kudos to Colgate-Palmolive for responding to a market need: three ounce tubes of toothpaste that fit into baggies that you can get take through airport security. I was pleasantly surprised to find this at Target before a recent trip. (I … Continue reading
Copy editors going the way of the dodo
Washington Post columnist Gene Weingarten has a hilarious piece making the case for copy editors, who are rapidly becoming an endangered species in newsrooms across the country. Here’s how newsrooms have typically worked: A reporter writes a story. Presumably, they … Continue reading
Posted in journalism, media, newspapers
4 Comments
Rakesh Agrawal's blog 