Category: Digital

  • Rediffined

    Just noticed the rediff homepage has had a small makeover. The Get Ahead section which used to be at the bottom of the top set of tabs, has now been promoted to one of the tabs. And the entire bottom space has been taken over by  iShare. And if I’m not mistaken , Q & A, Rediff’s version of Answers, has also been promoted.

    The other thing i noticed is a ‘Compare Mobiles’ at the very top. But that did not impress me much because while it wasn’t just limited to mobiles, and included DVD players, microwaves and a host of other things including gaming consoles and automobiles, the interface is not as good as say, Compare India.

    Meanwhile, had written earlier about how I thought Rediff was getting increasingly active in the video sharing segment. The change above also points to the same pattern, and the overall attention to user generated content. This assumes greater significance if you consider this story, which predicts a You Tube-India launch a couple of days from now. With rediff’s equity and reach in the Indian market, and You Tube’s cutting edge tech, this will be an interesting locking of horns, especially since YouTube is quite popular in India already.

    And talk about coincidence, the banner that was playing at rediff when i was checking it out happen to be from an entity called MyPopkorn. According to their ‘About Us’ section, thay have professional content from television, movies etc and in genres like news, romance, comedy etc. Where do they fit in this new ecosystem of video sharing?

    until next time,  web killed the video star? 😉

  • Going Glocal

    Heard here that Yahoo had launched its local search. I had been quite impressed by Yahoo Cities earlier, and had started referring to it more and more for events in the city. My only grumble was that i couldn’t get a feed for it. In addition to events, they also have news, answers, maps, travel, blogs, videos and podcasts, a forum among other things.

    There were a lot of the usual suspects missing from the list above, so when i read the news, i assumed that this would be complementary, and to a certain extent, it is. I was kinda disappointed because i had thought that Cities would be scaled up to include the missing parts too.

    Yahoo Local has listings of restaurants, pubs, fitness centres, and a host of other services that are a part of the regular city life. Some of the data is provided by Indiacom and users can also add businesses. The site also asks for reviews, which means Burrp, Needgrub etc will face heavy competition, especially if Yahoo promotes this through city targeted (say) email bursts. Don’t know about Burrp, but Needgrub has carrots for reviewers.

    On other fronts, it also means competition for Ask Laila, Guruji, Sulekha, mycitybuddy, buzzintown, just dial, Yulop, KyaKare, and Onyomo, who at one point of time was way ahead. Also, the other name that springs immediately to mind is a certain company called Google, who had gone local sometime back. I also saw another step from them recently. But i think Yahoo has upstaged them in this case. Meanwhile, I don’t use Yahoo Maps and cannot therefore comment authoritatively on the same, but given the crowd above and the kind of services some of them offer, Yahoo’s integration of Yahoo Maps may not be a quantum leap. Also, I was quite disappointed with the directions within the city that Yahoo gave (although vernacular is a good start). At least in Bangalore, this one is much better, the only snag is that nobody updates one ways!!! And that, in Bangalore, is about as dynamic as the average Indian politician’s loyalties.

    But like i said earlier, I wonder why they have developed Cities and Local as two separate entities. Wouldn’t a one-stop-shop be much more useful to the average user in this case? For example, given that most events happen at public spaces like auditoriums, malls, hotels etc, and these find a listing in Local, what additional value can Cities bring to the table? News can also be easily integrated into Local, especially if it can be made sub local.

    If a combo happens, what I’d be really be happy to see would be a customised search toolbar and say, a widget, that gives me local news updates as well as updates on events happening around town. With messenger, Yahoo Groups etc the possibilities, as the cliche goes, are endless.

    In fact, a local website could be the perfect platform to get into social networking with a twist. The site would already have the skeleton ready – think about it – you are interested in buying a book, there are listings of bookshops, the community gives you reviews and the shop that gives you the best discount, they can even recommend similar books…. similarly with plays, music, food, and all the other things that you entertain yourself with. Instead of a global scene like Facebook, you can actually start realising the virtual life… no, i didnt mean poke!! Hold Scrabulous tournaments, go trekking, organise Flixster quizzes, find people who enjoy similar movies and actually watch it with them…. Real Social Networks, get the drift?

    until next time, no more locally challenged?

  • Desi Onion

    Quite a while back, after several months of ‘The Onion’ fandom, I wanted to start a similar site for India. Well, if not a site, at least a blog. In fact i even squatted on the blogspot url – ‘pyaaz’. Well, I’m happy to announce that the site has been launched…..by someone else.

    A tweet from Sanjukta alerted me on the site – Career Pigeon, which seems to be a part of TechTribe, a career networking portal, make that techie career. The site is definitely inspired by the Onion, but it makes quite a decent effort to adapt the content to the Indian workplace scenario.  The site also has the latest Amul creative (wonder if they took permissions for that), Amul being a good example of how good creatives can still rule.

    What is funny (no pun intended) though is that the TT homepage has no links to this. In fact, considering the fact that job portals – old and new are grasping at any straws for differentiation, and this seems to be a good engagement device, I’d have thought that TT would’ve at least communicated this, if not hyped it much. And its not as though this is the first edition, it is the second. I agree with WOMM in general, but a little bit of seeding does help. To be fair, maybe they did send a mailer to the TT database, which I’m not part of.

    until next time, hope it has a safe flight

  • Reach out

    Last week, I read an article that gave the ‘share of the pie’ picture of different media in India. As expected, print is still king, though TV is fast catching up. Internet is still fighting to touch 2%. Meanwhile, something else i read quite sometime back says how an online video ad gives an 84% recall as against a 54% for the same ad on TV. So, why wouldn’t brands be more digital than TV?

    I might be over simplifying it by putting it that way, but the power of the medium seems to be only measured by its reach. And that’s when the marketing gurus (including self proclaimed ones) are crying themselves hoarse saying that engagement is the key (at least until we get the new term). So, then, is everyone trying for a balance? Similar to Nikhil‘s comment on a post a while back, are marketers using offline for reach and online for stickiness? You wish. Thats generalisation, but there are too few examples for me to not generalise.

    While it is claimed that it is the lack of broadband penetration that is preventing the web from manifesting its true potential, I think, from a marketing standpoint, its also the mindset. If engagement was the mindset, don’t television and radio also offer some opportunities, at least some, if not the multitude that the internet provides? Interactivity still means SMS contest, without context.

    So, its all pointing to the fact that different media are used with a simple logic – x numbers of my TG can be reached through that medium. And what do we do after reaching them – Why, show them our ad, what else? And until that midset changes, would it really matter if our broadband penetration suddenly zoomed?

    until next time, reach out, engagement in?

  • Social Panchvi Pass

    A few days back, Dhanashree pointed me towards a new app on Facebook. This is based on the about-to-start show on Star Plus ‘Kya Aap Paanchvi Pass se tez hain’ ( which is the desi version of ‘Are you smarter than a 5th grader?‘) The show has been promoted heavily on TV, and the application has been conceptualised and created by RMG Connect.

    I’m not sure if I’ve seen any online ads for the show, and a google search took me to the homepage for the show. Before we get into the application, my first take is that the site as well as the application could do with a bit of cross promo help, not just with each other, maybe even with the TV ads, and on mobile. I didn’t hear about it until i got the link. Of course, all that depends on how much stickiness they want for the site/application. Some of the winners get a chance to go on the shoe, but if the only idea is to push viewership, then maybe not.

    As Dhanashree mentioned, the very idea of an app based on an SRK hosted show has the potential of a viral. So, the concept in itself would get some takers. For instance, i added the app, and sidestepped the ‘invite friends’ part, but noticed that by the next day, 3 of my friends had added it too. But, IMHO the finish could’ve been slightly better, not just in terms of looks, but also the jerkiness of showing the next question, and the spelling mistakes, for instance. The ‘contest rules’ is almost hidden, i didn’t see a quick 3-5 step up guide on how to play, and in general, the navigation is a tad unfriendly. I did like the box design though, on the profile page, though I’m still a toddler 🙂 (thats even less than first standard pass).

    I wonder if they’ll use the kind of stuff that say, Text Twist does, which pushes itself at you saying ‘XYZ has beaten your highest score’. But the very fact that they built a facebook app itself is a good thing that has to be commended

    until next time, passing standards