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
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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
NBC’s Horny Manatee (SFW)
Conan O’Brien stumbled into another great example of viewers interacting with and reshaping what appears on broadcast TV. This one happened when Conan ad-libbed the URL hornymanatee.com after a segment in which an FSU manatee appears in front of a … Continue reading
Posted in advertising, video
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Geotagging the precise location
I upped my nerd rating this weekend by hiking the Billy Goat Trail with a GPS attached to my wrist. It’s a trail just a few miles from DC, so I wasn’t worried about getting lost. I just wanted the … Continue reading
Posted in consumer electronics, flickr, geotagging, gps
1 Comment
Spams, scams and search
During the last two weeks, I spent much of my time in focus groups on search. While I can’t talk about the concepts we were testing, one thing that struck me was the degree to which people viewed all of … Continue reading
Lawyers, sponsored links and Taco Bell
This was quick: The first Sponsored Link when you do a search for “taco bell” is an ad for New Jersey lawyers looking to take advantage of the E. coli scare. It will be interesting to see how quickly the … Continue reading
Posted in advertising
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Rooftops and Google Maps
I was flying into Atlanta yesterday and as the plane descended to the runway, I noticed that one of the buildings on the ground with a giant bullseye on it – Target. Next to it, there was a building with … Continue reading
Posted in aol, google, local search, maps, yellow pages
1 Comment
Focus groups – the view from the other side of the glass
I’m spending most of this week watching focus groups. It’s one of my favorite parts of my job. It’s a chance to see how real people react to the products that we create. I get to hear from people who … Continue reading
Don’t text me
I’ve had more and more friends texting me lately and I’ve had to explain to them how much I hate text messaging. It’s inconvenient, unreliable and costly. Here’s a typical exchange: “R u there already” “Y, u” “Omw” This exchange … Continue reading
Posted in mobile, wireless, wireless data
2 Comments
Happy Cyber Monday
If you believe the incessant media hype, today is the biggest online shopping day of the year. Not true. Cyber Monday is a fiction created by a flack for the retail industry perpetuated by much of the mainstream media. But … Continue reading
A cheap chic MP3 player
My favorite MP3 player this year is small, lightweight, doesn’t hold a lot of songs and doesn’t come from Apple. You can only get it Target. A testament to Target’s marketing savvy, it also doubles as a $50 gift card. … Continue reading
Posted in consumer electronics, ipod, mp3
4 Comments
Mint tries, tries again with dollar coin
The U.S. Mint will be issuing new dollar coins starting around President’s Day. With the failures of the Susan B. Anthony and Sacagawea dollars it’s unlikely that the new presidential coins will do any better. The presidential series has the … Continue reading
Posted in random
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Rakesh Agrawal's blog 