1.5 crores incentive by iBibo.com
Ibibo, the MIH owned blog portal in India, announced the first list of top bloggers vying for the 1.5 crore payout as part of their ‘Great Indian Blogger Hunt’. Amit Ranjan (www.webyantra.net) and Rashmi Bansal (www.youthcurry.blogspot.com) openly criticize this marketing move and deride the quality of top rated blogs on ibibio.
In some respects, I whole-heartedly agree with what they say. In some respects, I beg to differ.
First and foremost — I’m surprised that the promotion has been running for at least a month now and nothing was said earlier until the first list of top bloggers was published.
Anyways, here’s my two cents on the ‘Great Indian blogger Hunt’.
User generated content is the prime driver for Web 2.0 sites. Attracting and building a user community is no easy task - unless your product is viral in itself. It is a universal phenomena that techies/geeks are the earliest adopters of a site / product. Several times, a site fails to attract a broad base of users outside the elitist, early adopter crowd. This has been my biggest gripe against some of the companies featured on TechCrunch. TechCrunch can be viewed as a platform for showcasing products — however, keep in mind that the TechCrunch audience is technically savvy and a mere fraction of the actual intended audience. The feedback, User experience and perception can vary drastically between these two user groups.
Attracting and driving the user community to a site like iBibo is similar to the classic chicken and egg problem. Until you have some good content, it will be hard to attract users and until you attract users and have a vibrant community, content creation is going to be a problem. Read more
Why is Airtel.com a Vodafone site ?
Ok..This may be old news. But considering that I’m not an Airtel customer, this is news to me. The couple of times I’ve visited Airtel’s website is by clicking on the first search result in Google for Airtel (come to think of it, thats what I seem to do all the time..Enter the search query in Google and click on the first result — even though I know which site I intend to visit..Google has become like my shortcut ).
So, yesterday, for a change I tried typing in www.airtel.com in Firefox and I land up on a Vodafone site ?
Anyone have any input - take on this ?
Guruji making inroads by tieups with Indian portals
The Sequoia backed Indian search engine - Guruji seems to be inking new deals with Indian portals to power their search queries. First there was the tie-up with OneIndia announced in 2006. Recently I noticed ‘Guruji’ powering the search on SantaBanta as well. Over the weekend, there was another site I came across but cant seem to recollect which one it was.
On SantaBanta.com
On OneIndia.in
Checkout the interview of Guruji CEO Anurag Dod and their first foray into advertising (apparently a slide in a movie screening) on the Guruji blog.
Om Malik on an India writeup spree
Thanks to his recent trip to India, Om Malik seems to be fascinated by the mobile-tech buzz in India. With 4 posts already and counting (he’s promised a couple of additional follow up posts), its great to read insights and perspective from a respected blogger as Om.
Indian girls and online gaming - ZapakGirls.com beta
Online gaming portal Zapak has set up zapakgirls.com which is already live in the beta phase. The market launch is expected in the next 10 days. This offering can also be reached through the women’s section at zapak.com.
via Economic Times.
Online flower shopping on the surge in India
Online flower shopping is on the rise in Tier II and Tier III cities in India as per ET:
“There are shops like www.1800flowers.com and www.ftd.com in America which extend services to about 1500 towns. The same trend is emerging in India, but is at a very nascent stage so far,†said Saiket Ghosh, marketing manager of another online flower shop, www.phoolwala.com. He claims that about 40% of his business comes from tier II and III cities now. Most of these online shops deliver orders in about 120-150 cities.
Mumbai Police - Policing User Generated Content on Orkut and YouTube
User Generated Content (UGC) is what drives sites like Orkut, YouTube and Myspace to stardom. However, this very UGC can lead to legal headaches — as an example - the recent cases of Orkut (I Hate India community) and YouTube (offensive video of Mahatma Gandhi).
As per this article in Economic Times,
Earlier, the government could regulate content by pulling up publishers like portals, ISPs and other service providers. These large corporations would bend to the government’s will as they did not want to get on the wrong side of a government. But now, lawmakers are in deep see, wondering how to control copyright infringement of an hindi movie hosted for free downloads. How to prevent a defamatory posting on a blog. How to prevent downloads of a video clip that violates somebody’s privacy.
Recently the Mumbai Police started a dialogue with portals such as YouTube.com and orkut.com on how to handle these situations. Portals own little responsibility for any user generated content on their websites. Due to the lack of legislation, the case history is being built through courts.
Smart phones sales in India are picking up, according to The Hindu.
Students and entry-level executives are now buying smart phones and PDA (personal digital assistant) phones that will be their `E-mail machines’.According to one distributor, last year smart phones comprised 0.3 per cent of the market in units and 1 per cent in value. (Value will be three times that of the unit as the average pricing of each smart phone is high).
Sales will be 0.7 per cent of the total sales of phones in the country this year, and 2.1 per cent in market value, said Mr Rajiv Babbar, Director, 4G Mobiles Retailing and Broadband Services.
Good news for everyone interested in mobile VAS.
Entrepreneurs dont heed to advice
Mike Arrington highlights some of traits of entrepreneurs (this was a synopsis of his speech during the Internet conference in DC captured by Jason Goldberg - CEO of Jobster):
I know enough about business to know it’s very dangerous to speculate about the future and to give anyone advice over whether to start a company. So, this is my honest opinion but also somewhat tongue in cheek as some of the best etrepreneurs don’t listen to anyone’s advice except their heart early on.
Mike elaborates on this topic in a post on Crunchnotes:
The best entrepreneurs don’t ask for my advice, and tend to ignore it when I give it anyway. If they listened to everyone with an opinion, they would have stayed at their old job and never left the security of a steady salary, health benefits and stock options. Entrepreneurs are crazy, almost by definition. They attach utility to risk, which doesn’t make any sense.
Amazing, just amazing pearls of wisdom. Personally for me, I liked this part the best:
If they listened to everyone with an opinion, they would have stayed at their old job and never left the security of a steady salary, health benefits and stock options.
Couldnt have put it any better.
E-biz - Single interface website to speed up procedures for setting up a business in India
Entrepreneurship is on a great upswing in India. To keep this positive surge going, the ministry for IT and Nasscom have sponsored a single interface website for entrepreneurs - a project named E-biz. The website will act as a single gateway to all the resources that an entrepreneur would need - registering a company, where to get clearances, customs clearance, getting a PAN number, filing tax returns etc.
The project is initially expected to kick start in four states - UP, Maharashtra, Haryana and AP.
(via Economic Times)
In my opinion, this is a huge step towards nurturing entrepreneurship. Often, getting the necessary clearances, completing the legal procedures etc. can be a huge burden on the entrepreneurs — and can actually distract their focus from the actual execution of the biz.