Minding Languages

A few days back, Ajit Balakrishnan, CEO of Rediff.com, stated that there is no evidence from the last ten years of the internet business that users want online content in Indian languages. He cited the example of Rediffmail, which is available in 11 languages, but apparently, users prefer English 99% of the time. He further said that most young people were using internet to send messages, download music, view pictures or videos, none of which is particularly language related, and that virtually 90 per cent of the content is not text based. It sparked off an interesting set of comments, and a response post from BG Mahesh, CEO of OneIndia.

While I perhaps agree that extrapolating language mail use to the entire language content need of a population may not be very accurate, I’d still have to say it is a kind of dipstick. I remember using Rediffmail in malayalam, having some fun with it, much like Google News in Malayalam, and then promptly forgetting about in a few days, and going back to the English content that i regularly use. (No, I’m not saying that I represent the language content need of the average Indian net user. 🙂 )

Meanwhile Mahesh’s post raises at least a couple of great points – “users wanted to ‘read’ our content and very few wanted to write in the language”, and whether UGC should be the yardstick for measuring the need of language content. I would relate to that, to an extent.

I’ll just try to recount a few experiences on the consumption of language content. I subscribe to Malayala Manorama at home, but don’t read it online. I used to follow a couple of Malayalam blogs, until a few months back. I am quite a heavy net user, and my content needs are more than satisfied by the English stuff available on the net. At this point, I cannot think of a kind of content that’d enthuse me to consistently consume it in a language  other than English. Another interesting thing I’ve come across in bangalore, is the amount of people who speak fluent Kannada, but can’t read or write it. It is in two digits, but I can’t be sure its a representative sample.

Judging from the JuxtConsult 2008 India Online report, India has 40 million urban users and 9 million rural users, and the top 5 activities are Email, Job Search, Chat, News and Sports. It also states that

Users of ‘vernacular language’ websites are up to 34% from last year’s 12%, (although 28% prefer English as the language of reading online, only 34% users are visiting vernacular websites regularly, indicating the lack of content online)

I think that the average urban user would be keen on using English (he’s either comfortable with it, or aspires to be) Even with increased penetration into rural areas, the mindset that ‘English is the path to advancement’, which I have seen around me a lot, might make English a preferred language, more than the regularly spoken one. Also, unlike print, and television, which are more passive media (read/ remote click), the net is a more active medium, because it requires some navigation for the user to make full use of it. (links/downloads etc) I think its fair to assume that the width and depth of content available in English will always be more than that of other languages. It might have helped if India had one language, but it does not. Does that mean that there is no market for language? There is a market, which is why Google (including search and Orkut), MSN etc as well as Rediff, OneIndia etc are in the space, and a banking entity like Barclays offers its website in Hindi, but I doubt that it will ever explode or be the driver for growth or be the major beneficiary of the internet’s rural penetration (when that happens). I have a feeling that the catch 22 situation will last – not enough users to warrant content and not enough content to warrant usage.

until next time, I could also end up eating my words…. in malayalam 😀

PS. Interesting Update (via Medianama) – Rediff to communicate in 22 Indic languages. Ahem!!