Tag: Indian startup

  • Mark diya jayein?

    Like any normal working blog, this one too is affected by the general laziness that appears around this time of the week. So, this will post will be a potpourri of sorts.

    First up, this site that i got to know about from here. (!)Yureekah, still in alpha stage, tells you where exactly brands are placing their ads online.  First request, if I have already given you my details once, please allow me to login and not repeat the process everytime i decide to visit. And no, I don’t want the computer to remember me. While it is most definitely not comprehensive, basis a couple of searches I did for Indiatimes Mail and a few other brands, I think the thought needs to be appreciated. It definitely has the potential to become a great tool, not just for knowing where brands place ads, but going a step further and analysing why they’ve done it, and perhaps in the process figuring out better places and ways to reach your own target audiences. Forget the media part, it even showed me a couple of creatives that I hadn’t seen earlier. Read more about them here.

    Meanwhile, a quick query, am I the only moron to not figure out the feed for agencyfaqs digital (not the general site feed, the digital section feed)? I’ve been spoilt by feed readers and am regularly missing out good reads!!

    The other site which i came across today is this. PracharThis, an Indian social bookmarking widget. Hmm, but first, ‘Roshini’, through ‘her’ (same) comment on almost all the sites i frequent, managed to get my attention. Whether zis (Nice Post !You should use an Indian social bookmarking widget like PrachaarThis to let your users easily bookmark your blog posts.) is a nice way of promoting the site is quite debatable. (What do ya mean I’m just peeved at being ignored by even spam? 😉 )

    Meanwhile, what does it do? Like any other widget which you can add to your blog, it allows you to add the particular site to  humsurfer, Indianpad, Tagza, all desi versions of Digg and that is definitely not something I’ve seen any other widget do. This is in addition to the regular digg, facebook, stumbleupon, del.icio.us etc that one regularly sees in such widgets. So its definitely a value add for the regular users of the digg clones, and adds a desi touch to social bookmarking widgets, but how much really is that value? I think a better understanding of the unique extra sites is required to answer that question. Any volunteers?

    Meanwhile, you can get the code for the widget (for blogger, typepad, wordpress and general websites) on the homepage itself. Good. Also, what i did find there were quite a few good links to some Indian blogs, so perhaps a nice add on would be to prompt me (when i use this widget to save a url) to visit similar urls (similar to a ‘people who added this also added..)?

    until next time, well fed?

  • 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?

  • Yeh Moqqa

    haath se nahi jaana chahiye is what a lot of guys seem to be thinking about social networking. During a movie interval, I happened to see an ad which asked me to go to Bangalore’s very own social networking site – moqqa.com. While the communication still lost out to Bipasha Basu (i didn’t leave the movie halfway to have a look) it did make me curious to figure out if they actually made a site only for Bangalore. Nah, it was only a communication gimmick designed perhaps to elicit exactly that kind of reaction.

    I haven’t actually registered because it seems to concentrate on areas in which my interest is minimal. From the cover it looks to me like an ‘activity based’ SNS, because immediately after the (yes we all know that by now) make friends, its ‘what you can do’ covers MotorBiking, Trekking, River Rafting, Jeep Safari, Beach Volleyball, Weekend Football, Skiing, Snowboarding, Shopping, Partying etc. It also plugs sharing of creative ideas eg. Ad Ideas for Products like Colas, Jeans, Mobile Phones etc, 2D-3D-Flash Animation, Bike & Car Designs, Biz Ideas, Fashion Design, Movie Scripts, Song Lyrics etc. While a Facebook or an Orkut does have groups which do all or at least most of the above, an entire SN platform based on adventure sports/creative designing etc is definitely intriguing. Before we go further, other features include a chat platform (Talky), info emails (which would let you know about fashion, cool gadgets, Discounts & Sales etc), a public chat platform called Zap, music, blogs, videos, photo sharing, and a displaying of people who visited your profile. Overall, it seems more like a niche version of Orkut.

    While focusing on specific interests is an intriguing proposition, I am not sure if the mix of adventure sports+ shopping+ creative designing makes sense. Maybe the idea is to broaden the base. In any case, I feel, to make it work will require a lot of activity from the makers of the portal outside the web. These will have to be local efforts which can then be later scaled up. For example, tie ups with holiday service providers who give adventure sports packages, efforts to make this a one stop shop for knowing about discounts (there are enough niche players in this already), corporate tournaments in say, weekend football and so on…

    The creative designing itself spans a lot of territories, each of which require customised efforts – design contests in association with local ad clubs, bike car, fashion designs to be integrated with auto/fashion expos, and bollywood (since they’ve anyway started an SN site, they could adopt the other cliche too – reality shows for movie scripts and movie song lyrics).

    So while I’m still wondering about its physical geographical location, it’ll be interesting to see whether they manage to brand themselves as a unique SNS or will fall by the wayside as yet another wannabe.

    until next time, is there some numerology in the name (qq being a succesful chinese SNS) 😉

  • Idiotbox 2.0

    Saw this , apparently the first sitcom (in India), thats been made specially for alternate viewing platforms like internet, mobile etc. Haven’t seen all the episodes, but from the first two, it ain’t too bad. At least its not like Ekkta KKapoor stuff, and the characters are all very urban. But i digress, this is not a review blog!! 🙂
    I’ve always been interested more in content coming onto the net, as say, opposed to internet on TV. While there might not be too many differences at a later stage as far as end products go, i feel that the television can never be a personal medium, not as much as the net.
    Meanwhile, doesnt a sitcom for the net offer tremendous possibilities as far as brands go? For one, you can clearly measure audiences, and their reaction to what you do with your brand online . In addition, there is all the stuff that are mantras currently – offline and online media partnerships, product placements etc. And of course, the costs of production and definitely distribution would be really less, which also means the scope for experimentation is huge -brands making more films and UGC ones at that with the product being weaved into the storyline (HLL, oops, HUL could do wonders with that, i’m sure)
    How is this different from say, a YouTube? For one, it’ll not be completely user generated, and the brand could build a site/microsite to ensure stickiness. And second, and most importantly, its the content, silly, its almost like the brand having its own channel. Would you watch an ad, or would you rather watch a sitcom with brands featured?
    But like many other web related things in India, i guess all this will take some time, hopefully, only time.
    and i bid adieu, while you start making the popcorn 🙂

  • Magnetic Messaging

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    So, HT buys DesiMartini for a cool $10 million. Cheers to that, because the exit strategy seems to have worked for them, although i saw many sites warning about the impending bubble 2.0 in the Indian context.
    I have always wondered about the business model of the ‘main bhi’ social networking sites, and this makes me all the more suspicious about the intentions. I really wonder how many of thes

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    e guys are actually in for the long haul, although the other wondering is what exactly do they tell the VCs about revenue models when they go in for the initial funding. Maybe they give conspiratorial winks to each other when they reach that slide 🙂

    But to pull back, how do you think an offline major player like HT can leverage social networking? While DesiMartini was one of those sites which had a fairly good burst in the television media (which would’ve driven up their user base), I’m sure they would be minnows if compared to the videsi orkut or even facebook these days. Do they see some potential for bundling print and web in terms of ad sales? Or is it a strategic buy to gain a footspace in the still nascent Indian internet space?
    Or hey, do you think HT’s trying to increase their valuation? 😉
    and i bid adieu, while you should start work on that start up of yours 😀