BigAdda - Hype or Happening ?
Reliance has gone on an advertising blitzkrieg for BigAdda. And if the below Alexa graph is anything to go by, the massive campaign is definitely getting BigAdda the eyeballs.
Yes, I know - Alexa is unreliable and the usual yada yada. But for want of a better, free resource I’ll stick to Alexa.
So, the site is definitely hitting huge numbers in terms of traffic and eyeballs. But how many of the visitors are actually getting converted into registered users ?
In an interview with ContentSutra, Rajesh Sawhney, President of Reliance Entertainment discussed about BigAdda and the various projections and plans for BigAdda. As part of the interview, he claims that BigAdda has a registered user base of 100,000.
I did some digging and actually found that the site has about 1000 users and not 100,000 users as Rajesh claims in the interview above. Here’s a screenshot (I didnt want to resize the image to retain the clarity):
If you view the full size image by clicking the thumbnail above, you’ll notice two things of interest towards the bottom of the image:
1) 
which indicates that there are 1000 member profiles.
2) 
Now, there are 42 pages with 24 member profiles on each page ~ which comes out to 1008 user profiles.
Either I’m missing something or some programmer screwed up his maths or Reliance is just hyping the numbers.
As part of the interview, Rajesh also says that BigAdda has about 12,000 videos. Well, if you follow the same kind of calculation above, there are 63 pages of videos with 16 videos per page.
63 * 16 = 1008 total videos (What is it with the site and the number 1008 ? )
Again a case of bad coding or over the top numbers ?
With that said, I leave it upto you to judge but would love to hear what you have to say - Is BigAdda a hype or really happening ?
Update: Several folks pinged me about this mentioning that BigAdda does have more than 1000 users..Not sure about 100,000..But definitely more than 1000. If so, the ‘View all’ or ‘Search All’ labels on the site are a big misnomer (including the videos section). If I search for users and provide all ranges, the search results should show me all the users..Not a subset (1000) of the users. I guess I should have included ‘bad usability’ into the probable suspects above.
StreetAnchor.com - an Indian citizen journalism effort
Yet to be launched site StreetAnchor (www.streetanchor.com) hopes to give a boost to citizen journalism in India. Users can upload photos, videos, MMS about everyday issues they come across. Bad roads, corrupt policeman, bribing - anything and everything that you feel needs be brought to the limelight can be provided to the site. Their goal seems to be to empower the responsible citizen.
IBNLive is one of the Indian portals who has successfully executed and popularized citizen journalism in India. Although one of the biggest differences is that StreetAnchor aims to share the revenue with the users. Monetization is planned through advertising and selling the content to other news channels.
The site has been bootstrapped by Arnab Chatterjee, the founder, and his friends. Arnab was inspired by YouTube and says
“The Jessica lall case was a murder but internet played a major role in turning it into a campaign. Similarly we want other issues to come to light with an aim that it might solve the problem”.
via NDTV
They hope to go live by August 15th, our Independence Day.
Online CAT preparation with MBAKarma
Public entrance exam tutorials are a huge business in India. Be it the JEE or the CAT, there’s a thriving industry riding on the backs of aspirants hoping to ‘crack the exams’ and getting admitted into the reputed IITs - IIMs.
MBAKarma is a service that hopes to get a share of this pie by offering online SimCAT’s for CAT aspirants. If you are like me, the first thing you’d be wondering is what a SimCAT is. Well, SimCAT is brief for Simulated CAT’s - the term seems to have originated from IMS Learning Resources and the idea is to simulate a true CAT environment.
So, here’s how the service works. Once you sign up for the service, you can register for any of their upcoming, scheduled tests. All the registered users give the same test on the scheduled date-time. The participants are then given their percentile scores, which gives them an idea of how they fared at the test.
So, how is MBAKarma different ? After all, IMS (one of the biggest CAT coaching centers) already conducts 8 SimCATs nationwide, with thousands of aspirants taking their SimCATs. Well, MBAKarma’s USP is that they are the first service to provide an online channel for taking the SimCATs. So, anyone who’s interested can take their SimCAT right from the comfort of their home. Moreover, existing providers of online mock CAT tests seem to provide a GMAT like interface, where you can only see one question at a time. MBAKarma aims to make this interface more intuitive, more user friendly. The couple of other features that Sudhanshu, the founder, pointed me to were
Incredible India taps into YouTube
Wow..Someone at the Indian Ministry of Tourism definitely seems to be keeping up with technology and Web 2.0. As part of a new deal, 18 promotional videos for the ‘Incredible India’ campaign will be available on an exclusive YouTube channel - www.youtube.com/india .
Tapping into the power of Web 2.0 and leveraging the tremendous reach and popularity of YouTube is definitely a great marketing tactic. There have been several instances already where YouTube has been leveraged as a branding - marketing medium.
via DNA
Band of Angels India renamed as IndianangelNetwork
What was previously known as Band of Angels India, has been renamed as Indian Angel Network (www.indianangelnetwork.com). As per a press release, the reason behind the name change was to opt for a name that better addressed the concept of a network and also emphasized the pan Indian presence.
Yatra ads on TechCrunch
Probably not one of the best examples of targeted advertising. But none the less, I was quite surprised to find Yatra banner ads on TechCrunch. The ad seemed to appear as part of the TribalFusion ad network. Wonder if this was intented or just a fluke.
Some design overhaul
Ok..As part of my scheduled upgrade to the latest Wordpress version, I decided to give the blog design an uplift too.
Let me know what you think.
Worldspace launches five online radio stations on MSN India
Working in tandem with MSN India, Worldspace has released five online radio stations on MSN India. The stations include Hindi classics, Kannada, Telugu, Carnatic and classical music. The subscription for the five channel package is $9.99 /- month. Future plans include bringing all 43 Worldspace channels online on MSN India.
via Hindu and ContentSutra
I tried out the service and following are my observations:
The site doesnt work on FireFox. I hardly use IE, but for the sake of trying out the service, I decided to fire up IE. After struggling for a bit, the darn media player finally opened up and I was able to hear the music. I gotta admit though, the streaming quality is top notch.
There are two things that I really dont understand though:
1) Why is the service being labeled as MSN Radio ? Other than a small MSN butterfly logo in the top right corner, I hardly see any MSN branding. I think this is a better deal for Worldspace in terms of branding (and of course a new revenue stream) than MSN. New user registration is required for the site. If the service were ‘MSN Radio’ in the true sense, I would have expected my MSN credentials to work for logging in. Besides, I wasnt even able to find a link to the site from the MSN India home page.
2) The subscription rate is $9.99/- for the five channels. These channels are more or less disjointed from each other - how many users are going to understand and like hindi, carnatic, telugu and kannada equally ? For someone like me, I’m going to be able to understand only the Hindi oldies and the classical channel. Assuming that Hindustani classical may not appeal to the majority, they will be able to enjoy only the Hindi oldies channel. So, effectively, potential subscribers from North India are getting access to only a Hindi oldies channel for $9.99/- month ? Just plain dumb…if you were to ask me.
Aah..But the NRI’s will suck up to such a service. I have my own doubts about that too. See, the Hindi oldies and the Hindustani classical channels - they arent going to be of much interest to the young and young adult NRI population.And this is the tech savvy NRI population we are talking about. The demographic that these channels will appeal to — they are relatively a bit less tech savvy and probably may not warm up to such a service.
What say ?
Rediff Blog Showcase screenshots
A couple of months back, Rediff announced the beta launch of Rediff Blog Showcase. I just happened to drop by their site today and got a first hand glimpse at the service. The site still seems to be in private beta and has very little content.
If you have been a regular here, you would know that when it comes to Rediff, I’m not their fanboy. I guess that speaks for my impression of Rediff Blog Showcase site too.
Here are a few screenshots of the site:
Naukri launches professional networking site Brijj.com
As per WATBlog, Naukri.com has launched a professional networking site Brijj.com. The goal of the site is to network professionally and of course to uncover job opportunities and get referrals and recommendations from colleagues and peers. The site would plug in perfectly into the existing job portal, Naukri.com, creating a synergy between the two. However, if that is the ultimate goal, I’d have liked to see a single sign-on across both the sites. Why require existing Naukri.com members to register again ? Merge the two identities to derive true value from the synergy.
Also, LinkedIn already has a fair presence in the Indian professional market. TechTribe is gaining grounds too. That definitely ups the ante for Brijj.com.
-
Ads
-
Polls
What do you think about Morpheus Venture Partners ?
-
Subscribe
Subscribe by Email -
Most Popular Posts
- Herd mentality and Indian startups
- Comparison of online travel portals in India
- Bangalore gets residential WiMAX from Reliance, enterprise WiMAX from VSNL
- Comparison of online travel portals in India - few observations
- IndyaRocks really rocks
- Web hosting reviews for India
- What is your biggest fear about becoming an entrepreneur ?
- Moser Baer stirs up the Hindi movie DVD - VCD industry
- Somebody buy MouthShut already
- Instablogs - a case of identity crisis ?