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Recipe for an Indian Digg - missing ingredients

March 16, 2007 · Posted in Tech tidbit

While there’s a pleothra of Digg inspired, Meneame - Pligg based, social bookmarking sites for Indian news, why is that none have gained significant traction ? After all, 33% of the Indian Internet population was searching for information / reading news. These sites havent made headway into the early adopter Indian crowd as well.

Why ?

The answer - lack of execution.

Before you go judgemental on me, here’s why I say lack of execution.

1) Every time I visit ibnlive to catch up on the latest news, I keep wondering - why do they have the flares for Digg, Reddit, Newsvine and Fark on their news stories ?

Unless IBNLive posts a super controversial post, it is highly unlikely that any of the stories are going to get a lot of diggs/make it to the front page.

This, in my opinion, is an opportunity lost for the Indian social bookmarking sites.

Why havent any of the Indian social bookmarking sites stepped up and put forward a proposition to IBNLive ? “Hey, here’s a win-win situation. You put our flare on each story. Unlike Digg (where you’ll hardly get a handful of Diggs), you will get great exposure on our India-only themed site”. In return, the social bookmarking site gets instant exposure and the viral flare gets deployed in place.

2) Create a FeedBurner - FeedBlitz flare. I’ve seen several Indian bloggers have a ‘Digg this’ flare at the bottom of each post. Again, make a similar proposition as above. Create the FeedBurner flare and educate and encourage Indian bloggers to start using it.

3) Create a widget that Indian bloggers can put up on their blog sidebars.

4) Finally, try to stay away from x rated stuff on your site

While the success of Digg can be attributed to its tech-biased, tech-hungry, early-adopter crowd, the viral features of Digg (the flares and the widgets) also contributed significantly to its meteoric rise.

So, if the Indian social bookmarking sites are listening - go get the viral features in place and get the early adopter crowd really excited about your site. Then all you do is hope that things work out favorably.