Dilemma for Senior Executives: Should you accept that LinkedIn request?

This is one question I’ve been asked multiple times by trainees whenever I’ve conducted my LinkedIn training sessions for various senior executives across the globe. The typical query is that, “I just don’t know that person, so why should I connect with him/her?” Well, for starters, LinkedIn is not Facebook. The one goal to keep in mind when interacting on LinkedIn is that we’re here to network. Yes, network is the key word here. But that also doesn’t mean you should connect with just about anyone and everyone—there’s some method to this madness!

LinkedIn is by far the world’s largest professional network, and it is a tool that helps you build your network for whatever professional purpose you desire. So, the fact that you need to actively build your network to extend your outreach is a no-brainer. But you need to be judicious in your approach to avoid being a spam target and your LinkedIn feed becoming a complete mess. Read on if you’re really serious about networking on LinkedIn.

Should you accept a request from a complete stranger?

There’s no straight answer to that! This will depend on a number of factors and will differ from person to person. To make things easy, there are a few criteria you can apply to filter out the crappy ones.

When is it best to ignore?

Ignore the request when,

  • The person is not from your company, function, or industry, OR
  • The invitation text is not explanatory/customized, OR
  • The person is from a competing company, OR
  • The person is a recruiter, and you’re currently not looking for a change.

When is it safe to accept an invitation?

Accept the request when,

  • The person is from your company, function, or industry, OR
  • The invitation text explains why it is relevant to connect to that person, OR
  • The person seems to be a competent recruiter AND you’re looking for a change, OR
  • The person is a senior executive from a relevant company you’d like to network with.

Should you be wary of accepting requests from competitors?

You might want to think twice before accepting that request if you’re in a sales function and the person is from a competing company. How does that make a difference? Well, if you don’t have the right settings in place, your competitor might be able to view all your connections and figure out your existing clients or prospects. However, there might not be much harm in connecting with a direct competitor too if you have the right settings in place.

What does a connection get to know about you?

This is a big fear that a lot of people have. A connection would get to know pretty much nothing apart from your public profile and activity if you have the right settings in place! Head straight to “Settings & Privacy” on your LinkedIn and click on “Visibility” on the right-hand side panel. Among the various options available, you have “Who can see or download your email address.” You can choose to even not let your connections view your email address—they’ll only be able to contact you through LinkedIn’s messaging feature!

It’s only if someone is outside your third-degree network would they not be able to view your public LinkedIn activity. Remember, if someone within your third-degree network needs to track your activity on LinkedIn, they can do that anyway by visiting your profile and without even connecting with you. So, fear not—if and when required, you can remove anyone from your connections without even letting that person get any notification.

Interested in getting personalized LinkedIn training? Want to get 10X impact on LinkedIn?

If you’re looking for a personalized online LinkedIn training session for yourself or your team, a training session can help you understand LinkedIn well and get 10X impact. Drop in an email to minhaj dot rais at outlook.com along with your LinkedIn profile URL(s) to know more.

How to tag your colleagues on LinkedIn without irritating them!

Has your colleague tagged you one of their LinkedIn posts? And do you keep getting irritating alerts from LinkedIn every time someone likes or comments on that post? Well, there’s a hack for that too! 😊

Tagging on LinkedIn

If you’re tagging someone because you’re mentioning them for their contribution or wanting to highlight them as a speaker for a conference or so, then yes, go ahead and tag them in your post. This will help people click on the tagged names to view their profiles an interact with them directly if needed. But if you’re tagging someone just to get their attention so that they can like, share, or comment on your post, it’s better not to tag them in your post. The best way out is to post your content and then post a comment immediately to tag your colleagues, friends, or acquaintances to attract their attention to your post.

It also helps if you also mention how would you like them to interact with the post. For example, you could say, “XYZ, please like and share my post,” or “ABC, check this out. This might be useful for you.” When you post a comment tagging someone, they get an alert about the comment but would be spared the irritation of getting repeated alerts whenever someone likes or comments on the original post. 😊

For those uninitiated, you just need to type “@” followed by the name of the person to tag them. Sometimes you might need to type the name of their company too if they’re several people with similar names.

So, there you go: Tag, but tag with care!

Power Tip 1: Posting a comment immediately after going live with your post is read as positive engagement by LinkedIn’s algorithms and helps in our post getting many more views than you would normally get.

Power Tip 2: Tagging a company page allows the page admin to engage with your post as the “Company page.” So, your company page can then like, share, and comment on your posts.

Tapping into the power of new scicomm formats to control the spread of coronavirus

As the world struggles to cope with the coronavirus pandemic, simple and appropriate science communication can be a very powerful in helping governments, local authorities, businesses, institutions, and the common public in controlling the spread and minimizing the damage caused by this pandemic.

I must admit that I just stopped short of writing the title as “Using science communication to flatten the curve.” But then, I figured that a lot of people might not relate to jargon like “flattening the curve.” Let me explain.

As the world struggles to cope with the coronavirus pandemic, simple and appropriate science communication can be a very powerful in helping governments, local authorities, businesses, institutions, and the common public in controlling the spread and minimizing the damage caused by this pandemic. Check out this GIF below showcased on the SpinOff website. In one simple graph, the reader can get an overview of how flattening the curve is a very effective and important strategy to help the entire world manage the coronavirus pandemic. The graph has now been translated into several languages for wider dissemination across geographies.

Flatten the curve

In simple terms, the healthcare system in any country of the world has a certain capacity, and if the spread of the coronavirus is not controlled, it might lead to unmanageable stress on the healthcare infrastructure and result in much higher number of casualties. Patients affected by the virus need isolation and utmost care, with some acute cases even needing ventilators to survive. Now, imagine what happens if our hospitals get a sudden influx of patients 10X their handling capacity? Many lives are bound to be lost, and healthcare staff will have to take the difficult call of deciding who gets the ICU bed or the ventilator! Do we want to be in such a situation?

Now, Dr Siouxsie Wiles, Head of the Bioluminescent Superbugs Lab at the University of Auckland, has gone a step ahead to explain what experts are now exhorting – we must aim to stop the spread rather than just aim to flatten the curve. This new GIF by Toby Morris on stopping the spread presents a brilliant illustration of the importance and benefits of moving quickly to stop the spread of the coronavirus.

Stop the spread!

The full article by Dr Siouxsie Wiles on what can be done to stop the spread can be read here on the SpinOff website. Governments, businesses, and various authorities need to act quickly to stop the spread.

The impact of newer, easy to consume formats

Now, allow me to elaborate on the original point I wish to make about the importance of science communication, more so of new formats in science communication, in stemming the spread of this global pandemic.

We need to understand that the public at large will always relate to something that can be consumed and understood easily and quickly as compared to complex research papers suited for a scientific audience. Just think of what has more potential to go viral on WhatsApp, TikTok, or Facebook groups worldwide? It’s always something that’s not too technical and what most people can relate to quickly.

There are several rumors doing the rounds on social media, ranging from coronavirus being an act of biological welfare to China orchestrating the entire pandemic to regain control of high-value technology companies from American and European investors at throw-away prices (phew!). And what’s common with all such rumor mills? Easy-to-consume formats that even the common man can understand and add thus to the virality of the unauthenticated information.

An unprecedented crisis requires concerted global effort

Hence, if global authorities are looking to educate the public and encourage quick and effective action, verified scientific information needs to be disseminated in easily understandable formats such as infographics, GIFs, and videos. I’d like to refer to one of my earlier posts on how The coronavirus has sparked a mini revolution of sorts in the need for Science Communication. But this is probably not enough. We need more such powerful infographics, GIFs, and videos to ensure quick action and compliance to minimize the damage caused by this devastating virus. Such formats of science communication can be a very powerful tool in driving home the point very quickly and effectively and enable quick decision-making.

Now is the time when the scientific community should embrace newer formats of communication, especially for issues that relate to direct action by the common public. The coronavirus pandemic is a crisis of unprecedented proportions and needs a concerted global effort to limit the unimaginable damage it can cause. It’s time that we take drastic steps to not just flatten the curve but also stop the spread globally. Act now!

Three reliable sources to get all the information you need on the novel coronavirus

Three important and trusted sources that might suffice the needs of most researchers, doctors, government authorities, and the general public for information on the novel coronavirus.

With the World Health Organization declaring the coronavirus outbreak a pandemic, the actual impact on economies, travel, businesses, education, and almost every sphere of life has begun to sink in globally. In such a situation, it is very important to seek reliable sources of information and avoid rumor mongering and sharing half-baked information.

Thankfully, there are a few sources that are doing a stellar job at this. In this post, I’d like to point out three important and trusted sources that might suffice the needs of most researchers, doctors, government authorities, and the general public.

The World Health Organization

Special section on the Coronavirus disease (COVID-19) outbreak

The World Health Organization is an obvious source for some of the most reliable and definitive information from across the globe. WHO now has a special section on the Coronavirus disease (COVID-19) outbreak. The page has a host of sources that provide information on the current situation worldwide, online training resources, videos, travel advice, and the latest updates from across the globe.

Interactive infographic by John Hopkins CSSE

Second, I’d like to point out to the Coronavirus COVID-19 Global Cases dashboard hosted by Johns Hopkins CSSE. At one glance, this dashboard gives a holistic picture of how the pandemic is spreading its wings globally. The mobile version of this dashboard is available here.

Global aggregator for research and news feed

Novel Coronavirus Outbreak Special Edition feed by Atypon.

Third, Atypon has done a brilliant job at aggregating information from across the globe on the coronavirus. Atypon has launched the Novel Coronavirus Outbreak Special Edition feed that aggregates information from over 30,000 authoritative sources across the Internet. The real-time feed includes latest peer-reviewed research, preprints, and the latest news on the novel coronavirus outbreak.

I’m hoping this should help a lot of authorities and people get verified information on the global coronavirus pandemic. In case you know of any other verified sources that can be useful for specific audiences, do share details through the comments section.

The coronavirus has sparked a mini revolution of sorts in the need for Science Communication

Science communication is ripe for a paradigm change, and newer content formats might have a role to play. This probably hasn’t been more evident than now given the situation around the novel coronavirus (COVID-19).

As I type this sentence, there are a total of 119,134 confirmed coronavirus cases* worldwide. Mainland China has detected 80,958 cases, half of whom have already recovered. South Korea (7,755), Italy (10,149), and Iran (8,042) are the new epicentres with the maximum number of cases outside China. And how, you may ask, do I know about these exact figures at a glance? This is courtesy of the Coronavirus COVID-19 Global Cases dashboard hosted by Johns Hopkins CSSE.

*Coronavirus COVID-19 Global Cases Dashboard

This amazing interactive infographic gives a bird’s eye view of the global situation around the coronavirus epidemic (the World Health Organization just stopped short of terming it a pandemic). There are several other such dashboards, but this one caught my eye immediately because of its non-technical nature and the fact that a layman can immediately start relating to the situation.

How does Coronavirus spread? (PDF)

The above PDF handout on coronavirus I’d found is a very good example of how research converted into plain and easy-to-understand formats can be very helpful to the common man on the ground.

Then, this simple graphic by Sara Chodosh posted on Popular Science shows how measles, smallpox, rubella, mumps, and SARS are much more contagious than coronavirus (COVID-19)! Now that’s the power of an infographic! (It should be noted that this doesn’t imply that measles is more fatal; it’s just that the world has dealt with diseases that are far more contagious, and the real challenge with the coronavirus is finding the right treatment and cure.)

Graphic by Sara Chodosh, Popular Science

Necessity of Reliable Data Flow

What needs to be noted here is that dashboards such as the one hosted by John Hopkins are possible only if reliable data flows in unhindered. Authorities across the world have been providing access to local data on the epidemic on a regular basis. In addition, the world’s top scholarly publishers such as Elsevier, Springer Nature, Wiley, Taylor & Francis, and SAGE Publishing have all announced immediate open access publishing of data and findings on the novel coronavirus (COVID-19). Nature has gone ahead and launched Outbreak Science Rapid PREreview—an open-source platform for rapid review of preprints related to emerging outbreaks—with support from the London-based charity Wellcome. All these efforts will go a long way in the effective treatment of patients and in helping the entire world emerge out of this crisis.

On a related note, several leading preprint servers such as bioRxiv, medRxiv, and ChemRxiv too have seen a surge in the number of preprint submissions related to the novel coronavirus. But given that preprints are not peer-reviewed, some of the material lacks scientific rigour, and some has already been exposed as flawed, or plain wrong, and has been withdrawn, writes Kate Kelland from Reuters as she discusses the risks of swiftly spreading coronavirus research.

However, Kristen Sadler, former research director at the Nanyang Technological University, Singapore, is of the opinion that if right quality controls are in place, preprints have the potential to speed up the dissemination of research.

Furthermore, several language editing companies have gone ahead to offer free editing services to all manuscripts related to the novel coronavirus.

The free availability of reliable research data has helped various authorities and doctors battling the situation to present the public with easy-to-understand handouts for dispelling notions and preventing the outbreak from further deteriorating.

The Real-life Impact of Science Communication

Hundreds of thousands of people have been able to make swift decisions around their travel plans and decision-makers at all levels have been able to respond with urgency AND clarity. Conferences have been cancelled at the last minute, and the entire conference circuit has taken a beating. Imagine the disaster if reliable data wasn’t presented in easily consumable formats, and these huge conferences had continued on schedule.

What can be the real-life impact if science communication available in the right format is actioned on in the appropriate manner? Check out this Op-ed on Why Vietnam has been the world’s number one country in dealing with coronavirus. Which is why I feel that science communication is ripe for a paradigm change, and newer content formats will have a role to play. More power to science communication!

Note: This post was first published on the Impact Science blog.

Newer content formats for research have the potential to redefine both discoverability and impact

This post is the second in a series of posts on research discoverability. The first was on how research discoverability could potentially be a bigger problem than paywalls. Here, I discuss examples of how newer content formats for communicating research can influence discoverability and impact.

Scholarly publishing, meant for driving discovery and innovation, has ironically lacked innovation in terms of publishing and dissemination. The consumption of even cutting-edge research has been largely limited to the traditional long-form journal article with the odd article in the newspaper, as opposed to impacting society in the ways it was perhaps meant to.

While it is important that research published in journals doesn’t stray from what we know and are familiar with, the fact is that the format in which it is presented has largely remained the same for a while now. And, this does call for some thinking. For example, the need for limiting the number of articles in each issue seems at odds with how the consumption of published research largely happens online. But, that discussion is for another time. The focus here is research discoverability.

Although newer formats such as infographics and videos can supplement, as opposed to replacing the “research manuscript,” they could also potentially help researchers to zero in on the specific aspects of their work. A good infographic, for example, can summarize an entire research paper and be consumed much faster than a 6000-word manuscript.

In other words, a researcher could browse through, say, 20 infographics much faster than the same number of manuscripts to decide on which study is more allied with their research interests.

The tweet below shows how a well-done infographic can visually summarize a study effectively. The key is to use the right keywords and graphical design elements and keep the target audience in mind when designing the infographic.

The use of newer effective formats in research communication might aid in enhancing the discoverability of more relevant studies for researchers, especially those working in multidisciplinary fields. Infographics can help highlight the relevance of a finding, which is a lever of discoverability. There could be various other tools that could potentially be employed to influence various other levers of discoverability.

Think of why posters are used in conferences instead of a snapshot of an abstract? It’s because visual and animated formats go a long way in not only communicating research and engaging the general public and audiences from associated fields but also help with the consumption of research output.

On a separate but related note, abstracts have seen some level of innovation with the emergence of graphical abstracts, video abstracts, and tweetable abstracts, to name a few. Importantly, abstracts are central to the discoverability of a study. These newer formats might have enhanced discoverability, but there is scope for improvement.

Video abstracts, for example, serve as “audio-visual summaries” of not just the abstract but the entire research paper along with practical applications. Examples of such video summaries are already out there in the public domain. This video on habitual toe-walking in children is a personal favorite.

I found this video to be particularly interesting because my nephew had this nagging habit of toe-walking and wouldn’t give it up! We were all concerned about how this habit would affect the development of his ankles. This video was quite reassuring, and as it turns out, my nephew did spontaneously cease toe-walking by the time he was 10! In short, this video is just one example of how more visual representations of research output can touch lives around the globe.

Video summaries of high-impact research papers or projects could even include the proposed impact on society and show how a study has achieved its goals in terms of making a difference to the world we live in.

This, in turn, would help enhance the “real-world impact” of research. Moreover, easy-to-understand research summaries encourage dissemination beyond the realms of traditional stakeholders within the scientific community. Dr. Pavlo Basilinskyy’s research on helping cars talk better to humans is a very good example of how video summaries can be employed to help funders effectively publicize the impact of the research they sponsor.

In one of my conversations with David Wojick, a veteran consultant in the scholarly publishing industry, he mentioned that for these newer formats to gain more popularity and acceptance, they would have to be highly standardized—just as journal articles are—so people can quickly find the information they are looking for. Standardization could indeed be an indication of the maturity of new formats.

That said, it’ll be a while for these newer formats to gain a foothold in science communication. But given how these newer formats make a considerable difference when it comes to communicating real-life impact, it might be safe to say that science communication is ripe for a paradigm change. Exciting times ahead!

Discoverability is probably a bigger problem than paywalls

This is the first in a series of articles that discuss the various issues plaguing the discoverability of #research worldwide.

In the past year, “Open Access” has been one of the most hotly debated topics in the scholarly publishing industry. The announcement of guidelines for Plan S, responses from various stakeholders, and the resulting amendments have dominated the discourse for several months. In essence, the proponents of Open Access have been toiling hard to free scholarly publishing from the clutches of paywalls in the interest of democratizing access to science. But even the elimination of all paywalls might not solve the problem of discoverability of research completely.

There is a school of thought that contests the fact that there might be more factors than just mere paywalls that limit the reach and discovery of scientific content. Toby Green, ex-COO at OECD Publishing, while commenting on Open Access on the OSI listserv, offers the opinion that “One part of the Open Access debate has always made me uncomfortable: the assumption that the biggest barrier to being read is a paywall.”

This tweet by Roger Schonfeld, Director – Libraries, Scholarly Publishing, and Museums at Ithaka S+R, points to a study on the time spent by researchers for searching articles. The study in question was conducted by Elsevier and Sense about Science and has revealed surprising statistics that researchers now spend almost as much time searching for articles as actually reading them!

On average, researchers spend just over four hours searching for research articles a week and more than five hours reading them. More intriguingly, between 2011 and 2019, researchers have been reading 10% fewer articles but are spending 11% more time finding articles. The full article by Adrian Mulligan elaborating on this study can be read here on Research Information.

Further, with the exponentially increasing global research output and an increasing amount of research going Open Access, this problem is sure to exacerbate. The sheer number of results each search would deliver would be proportionately higher, and sifting through them would take longer than ever before. For example, recently, the American Chemical Society, the Gesellschaft Deutscher Chemiker (German Chemical Society), and the Royal Society of Chemistry announced their partnership with the Chinese Chemical Society and the Chemical Society of Japan as co-owners to support the strategic and financial development of ChemRxiv, the premier preprint server for the global chemistry community.

Massive preprint servers, such as these, should make things easier for researchers, in that they wouldn’t have to search through dozens of different preprint servers. But would that really make things easier in terms of the time spent to zero in onto the right literature and reading it thoroughly to gauge relevance and impact remains to be seen. Imagine how much time authors would spend searching and shortlisting the right literature in such a massive database. In addition, if this leads to search and citation behavior that John Warner points out in this tweet, then these preprint consortiums of sorts might have to deal with a new problem.

The important point to be noted here is that publishing formats within scholarly publishing haven’t kept pace with the exponential increase in the number of papers being published worldwide. In the past few decades, scholarly publishing has witnessed the emergence of newer distribution platforms and channels through the Internet. But the basic output format—a text-heavy research article—has remained largely unchanged.

Hence, the Open Access movement might solve the issue of restricted access, but that alone might not enable scientists to make the most of access to research from around the globe. The need of the hour is for stakeholders in the scholarly publishing industry to complement Open Access with a focus on newer formats of research communication to enhance the discoverability of research. Better discoverability might help in driving more collaborations globally and give researchers more time to do what actually matters — more cutting-edge research!

Please share your views in the comments section below.

This article was originally published on the Impact Science blog.

12 reasons to create a company page on LinkedIn

If you’re in two minds about creating a company page on LinkedIn, check out these benefits that you can avail of by creating a company page to represent your brand on LinkedIn.

If you’re in two minds about creating a company page on LinkedIn, check out these benefits that you can take advantage of by creating a company page to represent your brand on LinkedIn. This blog post will also be very useful to understand if you’re making full use of your company page on LinkedIn.

Check out these twelve advantages that creating a company page offers.

  1. Creating a company page on LinkedIn presents you with an opportunity to create a distinct identity for your organization on LinkedIn.
  2. You get to add a smart cover image representing your logo, products, services, or any other aspect you wish to highlight. You can also add a short tagline up to 120 characters to add some punch to the pitch on your company page.
  3. You can add a short summary about your company, locations of your global offices, your company logo, website URL, featured groups, and relevant hashtags.
  4. You can post and interact with select content as an organization, your employees can tag your company page as their employer (this shows up as the employee number on your company page), you can post jobs, and showcase your products and services.
  5. Having a company page allows you to run sponsored campaigns on LinkedIn to target your audience based on various criteria. You can also run targeted paid campaigns to increase followers for you company page.
  6. Potential clients, employees, and practically any user on LinkedIn can “Follow” your company page to remain abreast of all updates being posted on the page. The more the number of followers, greater the reach and impact.
  7. Admins for the company page can view the number of impressions, clicks, and shares for each of their updates. You can add other members to become admins of your company page, but you need to be connected to them to be able to do this.
  8. You get alerts for all activity related to content on your company page. In short, you get to know who all have liked, shared, or commented on the updates posted on your company page.
  9. You get detailed analytics on your visitors, updates, and followers, including details on their geographies and job functions, apart from engagement statistics for your content for up to a year.
  10. You can also compare your follower, updates, and engagement rates with those of your competitors under the analytics section. Note that these competitors/similar companies are auto-selected by LinkedIn, and you might miss out on some obvious ones.
  11. Once you’ve added hashtags to your company page, you can click on those hashtags to interact with content posted under that hashtag as a company.
  12. Once you’ve created a company page, you can create multiple showcase pages to represent your different brands on LinkedIn.

I’ll be covering the difference between a company page, an affiliate page, and a showcase page in a separate blog post. Till then, remember that growing the number of followers on your company page, at least in the initial stages, is not an easy task. But do not lose hope. Keep posting relevant and engaging content to grow your follower count. I’ll also be covering tips for attracting relevant followers to your company page in a separate post.

Did you find this post useful? Do not forget to like, share, and comment! Feel free to post a comment if you’d like me to cover specific aspects related to LinkedIn in subsequent blog posts.

Should start-ups opt for a LinkedIn profile or a company page?

Does it make more sense to stick to a LinkedIn profile or create a company page for your start-up?

With more than 645 million members in 200+ countries and territories, LinkedIn is by far the world’s largest social media platform for professionals across the globe. So, if your organization’s goal is to reach out to high-potential employees or to showcase your brand and reach out to potential clients, LinkedIn is the place to be. Especially, if you’re looking for B2B opportunities, LinkedIn is probably the best bet around.

The type of engagement and results you can get through connecting and engaging with other like-minded professionals through your personal LinkedIn profile will be quite different from the engagement you can get through a company page. I’ve covered the various advantages of creating a company page in a separate blog post. Do check it out. But first, let’s get done with whether it makes more sense to make do with a LinkedIn profile or to create a company page, especially for start-ups.

A lot of start-ups/small-sized organizations create a LinkedIn profile instead of a company page to represent their brand on LinkedIn. It must be remembered that LinkedIn profiles are for individual members, and company pages are for organizations, institutions, or brands. In fact, it is against LinkedIn’s terms and conditions to create a LinkedIn profile to represent a company or an institution. In other words, a LinkedIn profile should always represent a person and NOT a company or institution. But do also note that you can create a company page only if you have a personal LinkedIn profile.

Start off with networking using a personal profile

If you’re just starting off on LinkedIn, it is always advisable to create a personal profile and begin networking with like-minded professionals or your target audience. An easy way to begin is to connect with your family, friends, colleagues, and classmates. Always remember to include an introductory note if you’re sending a connection request to someone who might not know you. That said, building your network of connections on LinkedIn is much easier than creating a base of followers for your company page on LinkedIn.

Once you have a good number of connections and understand LinkedIn well, you can explore creating a company page, especially if you’re looking to do paid promotions to enhance the reach of your brand on LinkedIn.

Creating a company page on LinkedIn

So, how do you create a company page on LinkedIn? It’s simple! Click on the “Work” icon on the top right corner of your LinkedIn homepage and then click on “Create a company page” to create your company page. More guidelines on creating a company page on LinkedIn can be found here on LinkedIn’s Help Center.

Do read this blog post to understand the benefits of creating a company page on LinkedIn that cannot be availed using a personal profile.

Try the Brave New Browser!

I really like the name and for a reason – you really need to be brave to take on the likes of Chrome and Microsoft Edge. Just the other day, I’d read an article by Gavin Phillips discussing about how Chrome was a RAM guzzler. Moreover, have you noticed that Chrome has been getting slower and slower? Does it now take longer for your browser to launch? Do you frequently encounter frozen tabs? Time for a change.

Enter Brave. While browsing through my Twitter feed, I happened to stumble upon a promotional tweet for Brave. It promised to be much more faster, block ads, provide more privacy, and have lesser control of your life. I did a quick check on CNET to ensure I wasn’t downloading some spyware masquerading as a browser. When all seemed fine, I proceeded to download and install Brave.

Source & Copyright: https://brave.com/

And boy! Was I delighted! Within minutes, I was done with importing my bookmarks from Chrome and was all set to go! I decided that Brave deserved that my first blog post on the new browser would be about Brave itself.

Let’s get a sneak preview on some features.

1. Personal Data: First things first – they make it pretty clear that they’re not in the personal data business. Your browsing data is neither seen nor stored by their servers. All your data is is stored on your devices for you to delete when you want to.

2. Customized settings: One really cool feature is that you can choose to customize your settings for your browser or just for specific sites that you visit using this browser. The browser keeps track of how many ads and trackers it has blocked, and you get to see the count each time you launch the browser.

3. Mobile browser: While their desktop browser is only 2x faster, their mobile browser is 8x faster and that means a lot of money saved on data because none of the ads on various websites are allowed to auto-download.

4. Security: One feature I really loved is that Brave automatically upgrades to HTTPS for secure, encrypted communications, where other browsers use insecure connections.

5. Block ads by default: The best part is that all the annoying ads, malwares, and phishing software are blocked by default. Just open one of your favorite websites, and you’ll be surprised with the amazing way in which it blocks all ads. I tell you these guys have brought back some pleasure into browsing the Internet without highly irritating distractions.

Any flip side? Brave rewards. Brave is free to use, but you can opt in to display ads. They say, “Brave Rewards locally picks which private ads to show you based on your browsing activity. Then, Brave uses an anonymous accounting process to confirm ad event activity, keep personal details private, and ensure people earn rewards for their attention.” As a first-time user, I was and am still pretty confused about how this works. With ads being blocked, it remains to be seen if this opt-in approach can be sustainable for Brave. It’s a brave move after all!

Till then, download Brave and enjoy free browsing. Nothing stops you from using the browser for free without opting in for any ads whatsoever. 🙂

Share your views through the comments section below.