Say you bootstrap your Internet startup and are on the verge of either making a public announcement or pitch media-bloggers about the impending launch of your startup.
My question is - how do you anticipate the traffic load and how do you plan accordingly for any contingency? Assuming that the pitch was successful and you get a moderate to sizeable amount of traffic, if you are on a shared hosting plan, chances are that the site may cripple under the load.That would be a nightmare for any Internet entrepreneur - getting all the coveted user traffic, but hardware resources fail to keep up.
On the flip side, you might be faced with the scenario that you opted for a dedicated hosting plan and the traffic just never came. And now the 100-300$ + monthly costs for the dedicated server are a strain on your pocket - at least till the traffic to the site builds up.
Probably, this isnt as big an issue –and more so, I’m just curious to find out what others think about the same. If you’ve already been through such a scenario, what decision did you finally opt for ? Did it work out to be the better decision ?
Bennet, Coleman & Co., owners of IndiaTimes portal and Times Of India, are planning an IPO listing. The listing is likely to happen within the next year as per insider sources.
The IPO plan is being linked to retention plans for some of the leading editors in the group who are being wooed by rival newspapers with offers of stock options.
A lot will depend on how the global and Indian economy shape up.
via BS
Yes - MingleBox powers two Orkut apps - iPoke and Teen Patti.
As screwed up as that sounds - MingleBox, which, is supposed to be a social networking site for Indian colleges and universities (they changed focus from being a generic SocNet site) makes apps for Orkut, another social networking site.
Strategically, it makes a lot of sense for Minglebox from a marketing perspective. Hope that the apps spread virally within the huge Indian demographic on Orkut and lure them over to MingleBox. But this sounds as whacked as MySpace building apps for Facebook.
If anyone can figure how Orkut benefits from this (other than getting two additional apps into their fledgling app repository), can you kindly enlighten me ?
Dhingana has just launched a games section with games like Cricket, Holi Tamasha etc and have refreshed their landing page to a great new design.
As popularity of Dhingana soars, I thought this would be a good opportunity to interview the Dhingana founders on their entrepreneurial experience thus far. As per Compete, US traffic to the site is down ~5% from January 2008, but is up by about 700% over the last year.
Interview follows:
1) How old is Dhingana today ?
More then 1.5 years old.
2) Can you share any interesting insights into your audience - like which are the top 5 countries you are seeing the traffic from ?
Sure. Our user base is spread over the world in more then 185 countries. Top countries are India, US, UK, Canada, UAE, Australia, Pakistan, Singapore, Germany & Japan
3) Any interesting info related to how many monthly hits / pageviews ?
4) How many MB/GB’s are you currently streaming a month ?
This is a very exciting time for us. We are experiencing phenomenal growth rate and we have grown by more then 880% in terms page views over the last year.
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Yahoo India has launched a new concept called ‘Glue Pages‘ for users of Yahoo India search. ‘Glue pages’ aggregates text, images, video from across the web in various verticals like health, sports, entertainment, travel etc. and presents a ‘visual’ search results page. The goal is to provide a broad coverage of search results across a variety of information sources.
For example, a search for ‘diabetes’ gives you results from WebMD, HowStuffWorks, Yahoo Groups, Google Blog search, Yahoo Answers etc. Regular search results, of course, are also included.
As the beta evolves, the goal is to create topical pages built and maintained by subject matter experts. This concept is currently live only on the Yahoo India page and probably will be rolled out elsewhere, depending on the results observed for Yahoo India.
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MetaASO has launched their P2P based suite of applications, labelled Mermaid, into public beta. Currently available products include solutions for realtime multimedia broadcast, radio, news broadcast, web conferencing, games and online collaboration.
Unlike traditional P2P, Mermaid products are completely serverless and require no centralized repositories like the ones needed for BitTorrent. One of the only product constraints is that they are IPv6 compatible only. Since the applications are built on a P2P based architecture, you do not need to invest heavily into server infrastructure and hardware. Using the ‘MultiSource’ product, for example, you can create your own secure,private network and broadcast any audio / video source connected to your computer to everyone connected on your P2P network.
Currently, Mermaid is used for corporate trainings, meetings, broadcasting surgical procedures, reporters from remote locations. Amongst early enterprise adopters are telecom and media companies, who want to extend their network reach online and use the IPTV/News/Radio Broadcast features from Mermaid.
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There are many startups hoping to tame the local search market in India. At first glance, Loconomy seems no different.However, on closer inspection, it becomes apparent that Loconomy offers some subtle, interesting features, which may very well set it apart from some of the other players.
Some of the generic local search related features offered by Loconomy:
- Search and find information related to local businesses
- Rate and review businesses
- View local business locations on a map
- Access and share information online or via mobile
Beyond these vanilla features is where Loconomy actually gets interesting. Instead of providing just a one way interaction from consumer to business, the site also offers businesses the opportunity to reach out to customers. Businesses can claim their entry and add product catalogs, menus, deals-coupons, audio-video brochures etc. to their profile. Besides ads, the company makes money by offering premium packages to businesses, which include premium features like featured placement, microsite development, very own dashboard, analytics, review alerts etc.
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TiE-ISB Connect is back with its highly successful business plan presentation opportunity. Entrepreneurs are invited to submit a maximum of 5 page abstract of their business idea to TiE-ISB Connect Committee to get the opportunity to meet and interact with leading Capitalist’s of the world on November 5-7 as they seek to fund bright ideas and cool start ups. Participants for the 2008 Business Plan Presentations can register at http://www.tie-isbconnect.com. The last date for submission of Business Plans closes on 15th June 2008.
Over the last 3 years the event attracted over 1000 business plans and over 50 Venture Capitalists.
The second edition of the TiE-Canaan Entrepreneurial Challenge is planned for this year. The contest invites applications from entrepreneurs (startups and early stage companies). Interested participants need to download and submit their applications from the contest website. The deadline for submission of applications is May 12, 2008. Eight teams will be shortlisted and invited to present in front of a jury.
Benefits to the participants include mentoring sessions, access to investors, profiling in media and invitation to an exclusive ISB program.
As per a release, Vodafone will be launching the iPhone in ten countries later this year, including India. Unlocked iPhones have been available in Indian gray market for some time now.
It’ll be interesting to see if these unlocked phones will get blocked now that Vodafone is officially bringing the iPhone to India.
Is Facebook India launching sometime soon ?
It appears that Facebook founder, Mark Zuckerberg is in India currently, as evident from contents of an internal letter published by TechCrunch today. So, what is he doing in India ? Could it be related to an impending India launch ?
After all, MySpace India officially launched a few weeks back. And even though Facebook grew at a much higher rate in India, it considerably lags Orkut - the social networking leader in the Indian market. Probably, Facebook wants to counter these attempts and enter the market before its too late to the party.
If you have any tips, feel free to leave them in the comments or drop me an email.
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