The Write Share Win Contest has been so successful, that we had not imagined such a phenomenon in our wildest dream. Thousands of good, genuine, honest reviews are coming in every day. Thank you.

We want to make MouthShut more user-friendly and bring you services that are useful in helping all of us make better buying decisions. My dear friends, all of us here at the MouthShut office are working 16 hours a day past 6 months to bring you a modern user-friendly and highly clean design.

This design and the brand new Mouthshut will be rolled-out soon. Watch this space.

-Faisal

My Dear Friends:

The ALL new MouthShut App is here. The power of user-written reviews, now on your phone. Don't buy anything unless you've read user-written reviews on MouthShut.com.

Download the app for your Android and Apple devices:

Read, write reviews on more than 8,00,000 products and services - make an informed buying decision.

Check out trending products; add products that are not listed.

Discover great restaurants, theaters, fitness centres and just about everything around you.

Participate in the Write. Share. Win Contest. Win cash prizes.

Download it for free from the Android Play store and Apple Appstore, today.

If you have any feedback or suggestion, email me directly.

Sincerely,

Faisal Farooqui

CEO, Mouthshut.com

To put a cliché on its head: He Whitewashed us! And the latest Amul ad puts its marketing strategy on its head. Gone is the impish smile of the Amul Girl. For the first time since its inception, the she is shedding tears for him.

Dr. V. Kurien, who started as a humble government researcher in a remote district of Gujarat state, identified the potential of collective-co-operatives along with his mentor, Mr. Patel. He introduced modern concepts in dairy farming, milk-collection, pasteurization and distribution. The result of his efforts lead to the establishment of what is today one of India’s biggest brands- Amul.

It is no wonder Dr Kurien came from India. India is a land of vast natural resource and human talent. Combine the two and you can achieve a revolution of sorts. It’s too easy to blame and abandon any new way of thinking by blaming our “large population” and diverse cultures. One man showed the way. One man showed us how we can transform our vast country from a milk-starved land to the world’s largest milk producing country.

There are hundreds of Dr. Kuriens in India. We need to identify them and empower them to fix one small problem. Piece by piece. Slowly but surely, the human talent can surpass all forces that are hindrances in our path to becoming the greatest nation on earth.

Do you know of a potential Dr. Kurien? What are your thoughts on how to discover more such Kuriens? Please share

--Faisal

photo copyright: Amul India

Someone just mentioned on Twitter: “Is anybody else noticing the Twitter war between @Flipkart and @MouthShut_Official?”

War? Sorry but there is no war between MouthShut_Official.com and whosoever. MouthShut_Official.com is just doing its bit of routine cleaning up and if that’s considered as war, then… no ceasefire from our side.

The other day, our Compliance Unit sent out an internal alert – “140 POSITIVE REVIEWS PROMOTING Flipkart.com.!

140 REVIEWS!!!

Occasionally we do see fake reviews from the odd brand, but those “reviews” do not add up to more than five. 140 is a staggering figure – all promoting Flipkart.com. In no way are we accusing flipkart of writing these reviews; we're simply saying these reviews were promotional in nature and could have been written by anybody.

MouthShut_Official.com DOES delete fake reviews and profiles on a regular basis in a bid to keep its site clean of imposters pretending to write “positive reviews” of a brand.

The alarm bells went on ceaselessly and our team got into action, deleting those “reviews”.

Fake reviews and profiles had to be deleted, just as they were in the past. The cry becomes searing because the number of reviews were extremely high.

We do have a Corporate Blog program through which we encourage companies to talk to consumers and resolve issues.

However, in the past we have deleted fake reviews and profiles suspected of promoting brands who are our Corporate Blog members. Just as buying a corporate blog does not give brands immunity from fake reviews, not buying does not mean MouthShut_Official.com plans a vendetta against them. We are simply working hard to provide a neutral platform for consumers to make their decision.

V wid u!

Sincerely

--Faisal

PS- As I write this post, there are still 112 reviews of Flipkart.com.(post cleanup). These reviews will stay. MouthShut_Official.com/product-reviews/Flipkart.com.925076148

On Thursday, June 9, 2011 around 9:30AM IST, ONE of the many servers on which MouthShut.com is hosted started to show signs of failure.

Around the same time we noticed a huge amount of traffic on all other servers hosting mouthshut.com
Our engineers quickly identified that an attempt is being made to de-stabilize mouthshut.com by some unknown, unidentified group of IP addresses. Thankfully we have a strong and robust firewall-driven security layer and this attempt was unsuccessful.

However, so strong was the attempt to bring down mouthshut.com, that we decided to shut-down servers and replace all our core firewall with brand-new state of the art firewalls. In this attempt, most of the engineers worked non-stop for 16 hours.

In the history of mouthshut.com (since 2000), this is only the second incident where your favorite website has been inaccessible for more than five minutes.

Happy to inform you that at around 9:30PM IST, mouthshut.com was up-and running once again, with
more robust servers and firewalls.

I want to personally thank you for all of you who wrote to me, called us and wrote to our support line inquiring when we would be up.

Our commitment to you and mouthshut.com is 100% and we will work hard to continue to earn your love and respect. Your love and support is what drives us to work everyday, 24X7. As I write this, the website is flying and speed is perfect.


--Faisal

Do email me on faisal at mouthshut.com if you have any feedback or suggestion or if you simply want to say hi to me!

Few hours ago we received an email along with a Mumbai Police order, from our SMS gateway provider requesting us and other corporate customers to desist from sending any "Bulk SMS" until midnight April 2, 2011.

Now what's "Bulk SMS" has not been defined but our SMS gateway provider clarified that "transactional sms" will still be allowed. Ahh, thank you!

At mouthshut.com we've NEVER sent out promotional sms or bulk sms. We have an SMS Review service that lets people post their opinions by sending their content to +919769 696967 This review gets posted on our website. It's a great service especially if you'd like to review a restaurant or a retail store, etc.

Our provider clarified that such transactional SMS are not banned they will " be making required changes at our end to ensure no promotional message is terminated to Mumbai numbers."

I have no idea what Mumbai Police will achieve from this ban...hopefully these are attempts to curb rumors and maintain peace.

Amen

--Faisal

Since when did AIRTEL start Russian dating venture. Check this 'service' SMS I recd frm them lol plixi.com/p/77828838

One of my earliest memories is of this cold morning at a large railway station (VT?) from where long-distance trains would depart for up-country. My mom and dad were about to board the train for our ancestral village near Varanasi.

I distinctly remember (I was a little over 5 years old)...I was crying as I was not accompanying them. Like a bratty child, I told them I'd stop crying if they buy me some chocolate. Dad quickly handed me a twenty rupee note...kissed me on my forehead and promised that they'll be back within few days. Little did I know that it'd be the last kiss...my dad had a heart-attack the moment he arrived at Varanasi station, and passed away few hours later upon reaching the house.

Don't remember much as to what happened to that precious twenty rupee note, but even today, when I see an old orange-red twenty rupee note, my memories take me back to everything that I can remember of that morning and my dad.

I avoid looking at twenty rupee notes, but I found a scan copy on a currency history website (see pic). I'm going to be brave enough to stare at these pictures for a long time today. I hope your memories are brighter than mine.

Love

--Faisal

Over the years, your favorite website- MouthShut_Official.com has evolved in to what everybody is now terming as a 'pioneering social media platform.'

Ab aap isey Web 2.0 kaho, ya social media platform ya review site (trans1) for us it is MouthShut_Official.com

Our platform design and appearance has changed over the years. But one thing that has remained steady and I promise you will remain steady is our commitment to you, members and visitors, to provide you a free website for voicing your opinions with a dedicated and loving Support Team that will never falter.

Jasmine our long-time Head of Support and Member Relations has bid us good bye. But we have a winner in the form of @caretaker
Aprajita or "Aps" as I call her has been a long-time MouthShut_Official member. I remember the time when she would M2M me from Australia in 2003. And she tells me that she fell in love with MouthShut_Official the day she registered on here. I am convinced that @caretaker who's now heading the Member Relations team here will work closely with all of you to make MouthShut_Official more relevant and useful for everybody.

Please join me in welcoming her. (No please don't trouble her with too many mails and M2M;-)

Love you all,

--Faisal

(trans1) whether you call it web2.0 or social media or a review site...

Spent the evening listening, talking, chatting and laughing with Shahrukh Khan at his study- in his "Mannat" at Bandra, Mumbai.

He talked about a lot of things. I asked him stuff like 'if his kids love his movies.' He was like they all enjoyed "Chak De."

Shahrukh - SRK- is an amazing person. I like his go-getter attitude, his simple ways and his sense of humor. Oh BTW, he's more witty than you can imagine:-)

Sorry, my iPhone does not have flash, hence the photos were not that great...anyway.

Love,
--Faisal