StartupDunia » India blogs

Kerala Blogcamp to be organized on a house boat

pranav — Mon, 21 Jul 2008 02:22:49 +0000

Is that awesome or what !!

Yes, Kerala’s first Unconference event - BlogCamp Kerala 2008 will be held on 16th August at Alleppey, Kerala. The event is hosted by Kerala Tourism, who has provided the event venue - a houseboat. Yes, the event has the distinction of being the first such event to be conducted on a houseboat.

More details about the event here.

Comments

July 24, 2008, Surubhi commented: That's not awesome, it is foolish. With any luck there will be a fire or the boat will sink, and the world will be ba better place after the elimination of a few pretentious "bloggers".

Draw a cartoon, winner takes $100 bounty

pranav — Wed, 14 May 2008 20:49:28 +0000

Aamir Khan blogs.

Amitabh Bachchan blogs.

Now, Shah Rukh Khan plans to blog.

Call me a skeptic, call me a pessimist, call me a critic, call me whatever.

For some reason,Â I just dont buy the idea of these celebrities blogging.Â I think all of it is bull.Â Worthless marketing gimmicks. From some of the blog posts, it already seems as if one of their goals is mud-slinging and promoting their own affiliations.

In an effort to mock this so called fad of celebrity blogging, here’s an open contest for all of you - come up with a good cartoon / caricature on this fad and the best one takes home $100. The contest may very well turn out to be a dud, but who knows, we might uncover some Hugh MacLeodians amongst us .

Comments

May 15, 2008, chandoo commented: Ofcourse this is your opinion, but somehow I think, atleast amir's blog is reasonably genuine for a celebrity like him. He has been writing it for quite sometime now, I am sure he is using it as another avenue to show off his creativity with out indulging too much in to self promotion. Some of the content is devoted to maintaining connection with fans, knowing what they want. I wouldnt go as far as calling these blogs as bull, I am surprised though, because one of the reasons most of us blog is to tell the world that we exist, we know something, we have an opinion.... when enough people start caring about it, we become "celebrities".... ironical.. isnt it...?
May 15, 2008, pranav commented: chandoo... they may very well end up blogging sincerely, who knows...i might end up eating my own words if that happens. In fact,it would be great if that happens - you'd at least get to see an alternate personality. but the skeptic in me thinks this isnt happening. not to mention that Indian media is a bitch. few talk abt jaipur & other imp things. the fact that AB blogs has become the prime focus. this irks me even more.

Random Posts

Yahoo India wants to help me blog

pranav — Tue, 26 Feb 2008 16:09:17 +0000

I’m not sure if anything is cooking over at Yahoo India, but apparently, they want to help me in my blogging efforts. Here’s a partial list of the survey questions they sent out to me via their PR agency:

What features or information would help Yahoo! make your blogging experience more compelling?

How do you think a company like Yahoo! helps you to enable you in your blogging efforts ?

Have you accessed Yahoo! Portals for any news? Or for any information?

What websites do you use as references?

Well, it seems that this PR agency just doesnt understand blogging and how to do PR with the blogging community.

By the time I read the first question:

Whatâ€™s your blog on? Is it news, general or technology related?Â

I’ve already made up my mind on whether I’ll respond or not.

Comments

February 26, 2008, Saad Mohammed commented: The questions look silly :-)
February 26, 2008, Vikas commented: Sad... they are probably wondering why they never heard back from you
February 27, 2008, Abhishek Jain commented: Really Silly! They should have checked to whome they are mailing before doing so.. :p
February 27, 2008, Rajiv Renganathan commented: Is that how a survey would begin! I do not see anything silly in that.
February 27, 2008, pranav commented: @rajiv, they should have either pre-filled that question or not included it at all. It just shows that they have taken zero effort from their end to learn what the blog is about etc.. Hey, if I'll be spending 5-10 minutes filling your survey, i expect you to have done some HW on your part too.
February 28, 2008, Nikhil commented: bang on about about homework, Pranav. I got the same copy-pasted questionnaire. Whoever made the questionnaire is being rather presumptuous with questions like "How do you think a company like Yahoo! helps you to enable you in your blogging efforts ?"
February 28, 2008, Sunil commented: A post on this was unwarranted. This goes to show nothing but an explicit exhibit of rudeness and ego massaging. Sorry to remind you of the fact that you are no celebrity for yahoo to know beforehand. Please learn to display modesty and politeness especially when you are virtually NOBODY.
February 28, 2008, pranav commented: Sunil, why waste your time commenting on my blog then ? Feel free to go troll elsewhere..
February 29, 2008, Sunil commented: Pranav, Sorry if I the message was unclear. I am a regular reader of this blog because I like your coverage on startups. The point is little modesty would add that extra bit of grace and would go long way. Please ponder....
February 29, 2008, wiborg commented: most interesting part of this post is comments made by Pranav and Sunil, by the way Pranav i agree with sunil you should not care about how yahoo wants to help you, its just a survey thts it. even i am very good fan of this blog, but i advice you to respect and admire comments and be friendly......good luck
March 1, 2008, ManGro commented: The word is NOT survey, but another word beginning with the alphabet S. Guess what ? It's SPAM!

BlogsJam, a web based blog aggregator for Indians

pranav — Mon, 25 Feb 2008 04:32:06 +0000

Citipals has launched BlogsJam, a web based blog aggregator, which aggregates some of the most popular Indian blogs across various categories and displays them in a nice, no-nonsense manner. They cover categories like technology, business, finance, cooking, bollywood, travel, fashion, metros etc.

Its a good starting point if you are unaware of what blogs are popular in a particular category. For instance, I may use Google Reader for my daily dose of technology news. But, since I have no idea on what Indian cooking related blogs are popular, I may use BlogsJam as a point of reference. Overall, I am impressed with the service - its as KISS as possible. They also provide a category wise widget, which can be embedded on any website.

However, the one thing that I wasnt very convinced about - how does BlogsJam strategically fit into Citipals, whose core value proposition is local, movie reviews, recommendations etc. So I pinged them about it. As per Ashish, the co-founder,

” in citipals, your social network consists of your friends, as well as the bloggers and web-sites you trust, these all become part of your social network.

We also bubble up blog posts on citipals, that are contextually relevant. eg. the ‘BollyWood Channel’ is contextually relevant on movie pages, and you will find posts from the ‘BollyWood Channel’ in the blogsJam widget on the r.h.s. bottom of this jodhaa akbar page, http://www.citipals.com/f_24890_jodhaa-akbar“

For some reason, I’m not quite convinced. In my opinion, they should launch BlogsJam as an independent service. Keeping the two mingled kind of confuses me as a user.

What is Citipals ? They are a local review / recommendation service..Ohh and they also have this MovieMatch service. And they also have BlogsJam - a blog aggregator. You see what I mean ?

None the less, take a dekko at it. Its pretty well executed.

Comments

June 23, 2008, telespy commented: that sounds great

Convert any blog feed into audio using BlogBard

pranav — Fri, 22 Feb 2008 03:00:22 +0000

BlogBard is a cool new startup, using which, you can convert any blog feed into audio.

Yes, thats right. Provide the url to the RSS / ATOM feed and Blogbard will convert the blog posts into audio. I tried out the service and the text-to-speech conversion if pretty darn accurate. Even the pronunciation of several proper nouns is right on the mark. For instance in this post, the service was correctly able to pronounce Rajnish, BollywoodHungama, Niraj etc.

As per Manoj, the founder,

“The problem we are trying to address is creating a new channel for consuming content that is traditionally consumed by reading, which is difficult when we are multitasking or simply not in front of our PCs. Our typical PC users include people who like to listen to online radio in the background”

They have also integrated Google Reader and Bloglines into their service. So, logon to any of these feed readers through Blogbard’s website and you can listen to audio of your feed subscriptions. They also provide support for iPhone - iTouch. Support for Treo and Blackberry are in the works. They also provide the ability to download the entire feed as audio via iTunes.

Blogbard has got me really excited. Its a great, innovative startup with some cool technology. It’d be very handy to listen to audio of some of my favorite blogs while traveling or during that nasty traffic jam.

Bloggers-websites can also embed widgets on their site. Below is the widget for StartupDunia posts.

Go ahead, give it a shot - its simply amazing.

Comments

February 22, 2008, Sunil Patro commented: It is a very cool integration of technologies i have seen recently. The most beneficial part is that it can stream the audio version of a blog on demand instantaneously as you enter the url of the blog. I have been using it for few days while commuting and the experience has been nice. One thing i would like is that if an user can control what voice he wants to hear..say a female voice or a male voice, it would be a bonus.
February 22, 2008, dheeraj singh commented: Wow that will be great
February 24, 2008, pranav commented: @sunil - I'm willing to make peace with the possibility that they offer only male voice :-)
February 26, 2008, VIshal commented: 1. wont work 2. there are much better TTS engines out there 3. people cannot listen to TEXT / word audio feeds AND browse at the same time. We cannot multi-task in this manner. Listeinign to music while you surf is *much* different than this. 4. I hate the "more..." cut off 5. people will prefer podcasts. Dont waste your time on this - its just a nifty story
February 26, 2008, Sachin Palewar commented: I have been using Odiogo (http://www.odiogo.com/) on my blog which offers similar service for free and I have been happy so far using it. I am not sure if BlogBard offers something which is different. Although I won't mind more such players providing similar services as I think there is enough room for a few good players. But I certainly don't think that BlogBard is innovative by any means. They seem to just copy a good idea already present on internet.
March 8, 2008, Deane commented: They should concentrate on the mobile market. It doesnâ€™t make sense to hear the â€˜river-of-newsâ€™ on GoogReader, but itâ€™s great if you have a tag on GReader of the feeds that you REALLY need to read every day.
May 27, 2008, Travel India commented: I never thought this was possible.
June 23, 2008, telespy commented: really I enjoyed adding it to my two blogs which is needed for most visitors please keep us informed

Rediff Blog Showcase screenshots

pranav — Thu, 09 Aug 2007 19:54:58 +0000

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:

Comments

September 12, 2007, dev commented: Is this site same as the rediff ishare? thats a good site, i haven't been able to locate rediff blogs though??? :(

Indibloggies website hacked

pranav — Sun, 05 Aug 2007 17:30:29 +0000

Indibloggies, the site that hosts the publicly chosen awards conferred to bloggers of Indian origin, seems to have been hacked. Here’s a screenshot:

Comments

August 6, 2007, Debashish commented: Yes some sites located on my hosting service's one of the servers were hacked, the index pages were defaced and thankfully other files and database were spared. Indibloggies blogs is up but it will take time to restore the home-page.
January 28, 2008, Renie commented: One of my sites was hacked a few years ago via sql injection. I learnt script security the hard way! How did they get through? Brute force? Injection?

Using blog comments as an effective marketing tool

pranav — Sun, 05 Aug 2007 04:51:52 +0000

“I am a journalist with a travel Magzine and basically covering travel portals these days recently came across ABC it is quite a user freindly website.”

“Anyone tried ABC ? My colleague told me about this site two weeks back - itâ€™s http://www.abc.com - now my favourite - simple, easy to use, and I have always found better fares and more options than on other sites”

“I find http://xyz.com a comprehensive travel booking hub”

These are a few sample comments from my blog.

Notice anything wrong with them ? These,in my opinion, are some of the perfect examples of blog marketing gone bad.

Blogs have undoubtedly emerged as a great new marketing medium. Heck, if executed properly, even blog comments can serve as a good marketing tool.

Considering that I often write about Indian startups and compare Indian verticals, my blog gets a lot of comments from other competitors, who often leave anonymous, self-promotional comments extolling their own company. And trash competitors. Some borderline into the spamming category.

After witnessing a lot of these comments, I felt that there was some room for education on how to effectively harness blog comments for marketing purposes.

So, here’s a quick and dirty list of do’s and dont’s on using blog comments as an effective marketing tool:

1) DONT SPAM !! A couple of comments on relevant posts are perfectly fine. But if you start spamming, chances are you will rub the blogger the wrong way, who may end up deleting all your comments. This also may have a negative effect towards building the blogger relationship.

2) Dont leave anonymous comments. Anonymous comments are an act of cowardice. Besides, it doesnt take more than two seconds to figure which camp you belong to.In my opinion,its better to be upfront about your affiliation (probably include a small signature) when you leave a comment.

3) Rather than leaving meaningless comments like “XYZ provides you the best service”, “I have used ABC - I think they are very good” - Provide some value, some perspective, some input as part of your comment. Believe me, this will encourage the blogger, as well as the blog audience to take a peek at your comment.

4) Dont use offensive language to trash your competitors. This is just basic etiquette and simply put - very wrong

5) Take a minute to realize what the post is about. Dont leave a comment about how great xyz is on a totally unrelated post.

6) Finally, it is essential that you understand what a blog is. A blog is not a link directory. A blog is not a classifieds site. A blog is a passionate, conversational medium. Comments are your means of conversing with the blogger and the blog audience. How you leverage these comments to the maximum benefit and at the same time, use them towards building a meaningful blogger relationship is entirely upto you.

I’d like to hear what others, including all of you marketing gurus out there, have to say about this.

Comments

August 5, 2007, trakin commented: excellent pointers Pranav... I too have recd. fare share of these kind of comments, but I publish all of them, after all one has freedom of speech- read "commenting". Although these kind of spammers do exists, comments are a great medium of interaction and clarification, either from a competitor or self. Recently, I wrote about a start-up which may not have been too flattering, however, the comments by changed my perception to large extent..
August 5, 2007, pranav commented: Trakin, I publish most of them too. Almost everything goes, but I still have an unofficial comment policy - any offensive, spamming comments -- they are out...
August 5, 2007, Gaurav commented: I still see one of those comment in the recent comments :). Well said Pranav.I think it is a very good opportunity to showcase your product/service in the comments where one of your competitors is being talked about. Doing right is the key. Entrepreneurs and people posting on their behalf need to learn to acknowledge their competitors instead of using offensive language or using no-reasoning-comments to let them down.
August 6, 2007, Ramjee commented: It's sad that people resort to such kind of cheap tactics while commenting. One thing I hate is anonymous comments. However, I was fortunate enough that some of the people who leave such comments on my blog also leave there name at the end of the message. I am fine with this kind of a behavior (logging in to leave just one comment is a hassle I can relate to). rAm
December 22, 2007, Smit commented: This is a great tutorial thanks!

The one thing about Indian blogosphere

pranav — Thu, 28 Jun 2007 18:45:52 +0000

Since I started blogging, I’ve got the opportunity to interact and acquaint myself with several Indian bloggers, including some of the elites - something, which would have never happened if I werent blogging.

While I think that Indian blogosphere is still nascent, the one thing I find missing from the Indian blogging ecosystem is the ‘conversational’ style of blogging, so prevalent in the US counterpart. For example, a topic emerges, and every top tech blogger (TechCrunch, Gigaom, ReadWriteWeb, Scoble, ValleyWag, Dave Winer, Rafat Ali, Jeff Jarvis, Jason Calacanis etc.), offers their own opinion and forms a ‘conversation’ around that topic. This not only highlights varied perspectives on the topic, but also gives you an idea of what is on the minds of some of the most influential people in the industry.

So, whats hindering this type of conversational blogging from taking shape in the Indian blogosphere ?

1) Indian blogosphere is still nascent. Debatable, I know. But thats my take.

2) Not sufficient cross linking ? Note that this form of conversational blogging involves a lot of cross linking to other blogs, something which isnt very prevalent in the Indian blogosphere - I plead guilty to this offense too.

3) Nature of blog posts ? For a conversation to ensue, the topic should be debatable, even to the smallest extent. That seems to be missing from the Indian blogosphere.

Ok, I constrain my arguments only to the realm of Indian tech bloggers. After all, thats the domain I play in.

Also, note that my goal is not to sound condescending or controversial. Its simply to facilitate blogging into a more conversational medium in the Indian context.

Comments

June 28, 2007, Information Madness commented: I agree with you on this Pranav. @ 2) -- Looks like there is a race to become "best" blog. People think that linking would drive the traffic out from their blogs. They don't understand that if there is something happening in the industry, everyone has to write their own opinion about it. Back linking would only give more information to the reader about the topic. I would love to backlink with blogs in my niche but who is willing to do the same ? Thats the question. @ 3). I think the bloging in India is not opinion based yet. Its rather information distribution.
June 29, 2007, Rajiv Dingra commented: please read WATBlog.com ;) I think we try our best to do all that you say.. Infact we have linked to all sorts of blogs Indian and International. :) And we really try and include our opinion in most of our posts.. :) But i do agree some popular technology and internet blogs are working more like a news aggregation engine.
July 2, 2007, Longrides commented: I quite agree with your post here. A similar post on my blog might be of interest to you as well. :) http://indiaontheworld.blogspot.com/2007/07/why-arent-we-communicating.html
July 3, 2007, Mahesh commented: People in india dont have taste of internet. People are lazy even they don't check emails properly as i canvassed in 5 cyber cafe in Bangalore. It will take time [much] to happen the same. Blogging is considered as a waste of time in india as i have asked some of my friends and colleagues who told the same even some of them don't know about "what is a blog" even i explained them they don't want to do so. Its very difficult to change the nature. But still we should try our level best to disseminate the internet technology to all indians.
July 3, 2007, Mahesh commented: Pranav, Though your articles are good but please place the ads in a systematic manner, i dont like the way you placed the ads in your blog as it covers 45% of the starting page which should contain the article but yours contains ads. Please don't mind, its my opinion. :)
July 3, 2007, Chandra commented: The main constraint is the cross linking. We need a technorati for India. That will solve a bunch of problems like blog search, content aggregation and so on.. But monetization will be a big issue.

Random Posts

What’s your say on ad banners on Indian blogs ?

pranav — Mon, 25 Jun 2007 01:27:12 +0000

While a storm brews in the US blogosphere on a controversial ad campaign from Microsoft, the second session at IAMAI’s Web 2.0 conference touched upon the topic of using blogs as a marketing tool in the Indian market (If you do not have the time or patience to sit through the 1 1/2 hour video, catch a brief summary at ContentSutra).

A couple of panelists, including Garima from Citibank, were of the opinion that ad banners on blogs were a bad idea. The rationale being that advertising on blogs disrupts the sanctity and integrity of blogs.

I strongly disagree. Majority of the Indian blogs already use Adsense as part of their blogs and as long as bloggers have a disclosure policy, I think ad banners on blogs are perfectly acceptable.

What do other Indian bloggers feel about this ? Also, as part of the blog audience, what do you think about this ? Should blogs have ad banners ?

Comments

June 26, 2007, Deepak Shenoy commented: I write a blog with adsense on it. While I do have ads of every variety, I also have written articles that are not flattering to the companies that seem to advertise on my site - In fact, in one instance I have specifically disclosed that such company ads may be displayed on the page. I don't get the integrity equation. Citigroup has a division that releases research reports on stocks ("buy", "sell" etc) and also have a banking or other relationship with the same company? For instance they said "BUY Indian Hotels" (The taj group of hotels) - http://www.indiaearnings.com/sub_india/compnews.php?autono=287796 - and they also have a co-branded card with Taj Hotels. You might say "but they are different divisions!" - to me, the viewer, it would pretty much sound like an integrity problem at the same lines as blogs with ads. Especially with third party ads like adsense where the advertiser can place an ad without the blogger even knowing about it.
June 26, 2007, pranav commented: Deepak, Blogs and blogging has been so popular because they give the blogger the freedom of self expression. in other words, you write whatever you're passionate about. As a result, blogs and bloggers are generally more closely scrutinized about integrity, disclosure and such. Blogs and the blog audience form a very vibrant, enthusiastic, passionate and last but not the least - very opinionated ecosystem. One of the foundations of this ecosystem is trust. Any external factor (ads and banners) introducing bias into this ecosystem generally does not fare well with the blog audience. I could go on, but you get the picture.
October 30, 2007, Sidhartha Bezbora commented: There is nothing wrong in putting ad banners in blogs. Most people start blogging as a hobby and in the process if they start putting some ads and earn some extra penny then there is no harm in it. Again a lot depends on the kind of blog where ad banners have been put. A new blogging ecosystem is getting developed there are millions of blogs out there some one is always looking to monetize his site. For example I love blogging and if my blog can financially support me I would love to leave my job and blog full time. Amit of Labnol.org is now a full time blogger earns good from his blog . He is full time into blogging and left his job. He is doing an excellent job.
October 31, 2007, pranav commented: sidhartha, you nailed it -- if only these marketers felt the same way :-)
November 1, 2007, Ebrahim Mafooz commented: We i being a web hosting provider and designer find many blogs hosted under me have google adsence associated with it. Mostly blogs are started just as a hobby and if its successfull they atleast get returns to pay up their hosting charges. And ads mostly dont become disturbing unless its a pop up or like so. and as sidhartha said its becoming a great revenue zone for all the newbies to the internet.
July 11, 2008, Praveen commented: If blogger is really interested in personal blogging, he need not add advertisements in his blog. My web company hosts blogs at very cheap cost. I don't think that blogs hosted by us need banner ads for recovering the hosting cost.

Random Posts

MIH’s acquisition strategy is to acquire technology

pranav — Wed, 20 Jun 2007 03:35:39 +0000

AgencyFaqs has an interview cum story on MIH owned portal Ibibo and the myriad services under the Ibibo umbrella. Amongst other things, they discuss about the 1.5 crore incentive by Ibibo to attract bloggers to their platform. Ashish Kashyap, MIH, defends the initiative and claims that they are attracting 1000 bloggers per month to the Ibibo platform. He also adds that they now verify the authenticity of the blogs to prevent abuse. The company is working on a ‘knowledge search’ initiative - whatever that means..

Talking about acquisitions, he mentions that their focus will be on online companies with the goal of acquiring ‘technology’.

On a side note, check out their job listing for Head, Merger and Acquisition at Alootechie.
One question I’d like to have seen answered is about the NSFW content on Pixrat. MIH was supposed to weed out the NSFW content at the time of the Pixrat acquisition. But thus far, looks like it hasnt happened.

Entire story here.

Random Posts

Rediff announces Blog Showcase

pranav — Mon, 18 Jun 2007 04:57:40 +0000

At the Pune Blogcamp event, Rediff announced the launch of Rediff Blog Showcase, a platform for bloggers to showcase their posts. Each time a blog is updated, their posts will get featured on Rediff Blog Showcase, which will then be voted by the readers using a Digg like voting system. Readers will also be able to comment on the posts.

Currently, the service is invite only and you can request an invite on their website above. The site will go live in two weeks and as of now, there isnt a business model around the site.

via AgencyFaqs

Random Posts

India Internet statistics

pranav — Mon, 18 Jun 2007 04:11:07 +0000

IAMAI claims there are 37 million ‘ever user’ Internet users and 25 million ‘active users’ in India at end of September 2006.

JuxtConsult’s recently released ‘India Online 2007′ pegs Indian Internet user base at 30.32 million. 83% (approx 25 million) are ‘active users’. Of the 25 million ‘active users’, 20 million access the Internet every day.

active user ~ a user who logs on to the Internet at least once in 30 days.

So, if someone was looking for accurate estimates on Internet usage in India, which report is to be believed ?

The ‘ever user’ metric is crap and the ‘active user’ isnt convincing enough to me.

The TRAI report seems to be much more convincing and reliable. As per the report, there are 8.582 million Internet subscribers of which, the broadband subscriber base stands at 2.054 million.

It would be safe to assume that the 2.054 million broadband subscribers in India constitute the ‘Innovators’ and the ‘Early Adopters’ segment in the Technology adoption life cycle graph below. After all, they wouldnt be spending on a broadband connection if they werent technology enthusiasts.

I — Innovators, EA — Early Adopters, C — Chasm, P — Pragmatists (early majority), P — Pragmatists (Late majority), T — Traditionalists. For an explanation on what each of the above user base means, see here.

In an earlier post, I attempted to create a taxonomy of the Indian Internet websites. If you plot this taxonomy against the technology adoption life cycle graph, we can try to roughly estimate where exactly each class of Indian websites lie on the tech adoption life cycle graph.

The portals and the News and Infotainment sites lie in the Pragmatists (P) late majority section. E-commerce, banking sites like ICICI, Ebay etc. fall into the Early Majority section. The vertical like online matrimony, jobs, travel are on the border of the Early Majority and the Late majority section (slowly treading into the late majority section). Social networking sites like Orkut, Ibibo etc. fall into the Early Adopter section while Web 2.0 startups fall into the Innovators section.

I think blogs fall into the early adopter section. They still need to cross ‘the Chasm’ to hit some acceptable majority.

{Begin Rant}

It is in this chasm lie the current problems - people need to be educated about what blogs are, what purpose they solve. That blogs are not the end service providers. As Kamla says, the traditional media should probably play a bigger role in educating people on blogs, the power of blogs etc.

{/End Rant}
This is a rough attempt on my part - feel free to provide any input you may have. It would be great to get some varied perspectives about this.

Comments

June 19, 2007, VentureWoods » Just 85 lakh internet subscribers? - India Venture Capital and Startup Blog commented: [...] Startup Dunia has an interesting post on this. (Which is where I got the links) [...]
June 19, 2007, Indus Khaitan commented: I think this a sign of good times to come for the internet in India. If we look at history, the US Internet population in 1997 was 20 million and the traffic at major backbones (MCI, UUNET, Sprint, etc.) was around 3000 TB/month. I would love to see any report around bandwidth usage, number of hosts etc. from the Indian geo. IMHO, the growth of Internet in India is sitting in the "chasm" (a la Moore) between early adopters and the early majority ("pragmatists"). The ingredients of moving this are already coming together viz. grassroots entreprenuership, startups, VC Funding, Proto.in, etc.
July 17, 2007, Rajiv commented: link to the explanation of the segments is not working
July 17, 2007, pranav commented: hey rajiv, thanks for pointing that out...I'll get an alternative link later today..
February 1, 2008, alokparna commented: What would be the number (approx) of technology start-ups in India and whats the growth graph?
June 12, 2008, vikash commented: PURCHASE USED(BRANDED) LAPTOP/DESKTOP , TFT, MONITOR IN NEW CONDITION AT BEST PRIZE ONLY AT ---- V.INFOTECH C-193 PKT-11 JASOLA VIHAR NEWDELHI-25 PH-9990955807, 9212698620

Part two of the India Online 2007 report

pranav — Thu, 14 Jun 2007 18:33:03 +0000

In an earlier post, I summarized key points from the first part of the ‘India Online 2007′ report by JuxtConsult. Some interesting points from the second installment of the series:

E-commerce in India reached Rs. 2300 crores
10.8 million or 43% of the total Internet population shopped online - an increase of 76% YoY
Online travel booking seems to be the biggest e-commerce activity. 84% of the 10.8 million shoppers have booked their travel online at least once
The 10 most popular activities include email, IM, chatting, e-greetings, dating (What ??), news, sports, music, games
Fastest growing online activites include social networking (one third of Internet users use social networking) and online matrimony
27% of Indian Internet population read blogs, 15% comment on blogs and 7% write a blog themselves

I guess I’m too nerdy to accept and realize that chatting and e-greetings are still some of the most popular activities online.

via ET

Random Posts

The Indian Income Tax department now has a blog

pranav — Fri, 08 Jun 2007 15:57:27 +0000

Yes. You read it right. In an effort to seek answers to the following questions:

How can Income Tax Dept. function more efficiently
How can Income Tax Dept. serve tax payers better
How can Income Tax Dept. maximize tax collection revisions

the IT department has started a blog. The objective being to capture and solicit feedback and views from the tax payers. The site also makes it clear that queries related to tax woes from users will not be entertained on the blog. The blog is solely for the purpose of connecting with the end users.

While this is a brilliant effort towards openness and embracing emerging technologies, it has been my observation that a lot of Indian internet users fail to understand what a blog is. And tend to misinterpret a blog as the actual service provider itself.

Take Kamla’s blog for example. Other examples include ContentSutra’s post on ringtones from K-soaps provided by Idea Cellular and finally my own post on Moser Baer video. The ITD will have a tough time keeping people from posting about their tax problems on the blog itself.

None the less, kudos to the IT department for taking such a big step forward.

via FE.

Comments

June 8, 2007, Kamla Bhatt commented: Pravav: I am speechless just as you are about the comment trend on some of my posts. I am also speechless that no one has done a story on this :-) Where are all those IT-savvy and blog-savvy journos and writers. There is a story waiting to be discovered and written about the remarks on my blog post (eps. the one on Reliance)! The comments on those posts clearly highlight people's perception in India about blogs, esp from those outside the big 5 metro cities. Clearly there is something going on here.... I have lost count of the number of comments on those posts and have also stopped monitoring them. Takes up too much of my time. Kamla
June 11, 2007, Namita commented: This comes from where it is least expected - the IT department setting up a blog! The intentions seem honourable and can assume they have their hearts in the right place. True, it would be interesting to see how they manage negative feedback and comments. Considering the primary intention behind blogs is to facilitate two way, transparent conversations, the IT department would do well to be prepared for handling the senstive issues well. A lot could be gained and lost with the initiative. Will certainly be watching out.
June 11, 2007, pranav commented: Aptly put Namita
June 18, 2007, Indian websites and technology adoption life cycle graph commented: [...] It is in this chasm lie the current problems - people need to be educated about what blogs are, what purpose they solve. That blogs are not the end service providers. As Kamla says, the traditional media should probably play a bigger role in educating people on blogs, the power of blogs etc. [...]
March 12, 2008, Dukhia commented: It is great indeed. The department can also get pretty good suggestions from their own officers by starting separate blog for their own officers where they could put across their views freely, and not "through proper channel". It is often the grievance of the officers that they are expected to put across their suggestions in very formal and exhaustive manner and that such letter should travel through the heirarchy of the department . If any perosn in the chain fails to appreciate the suggestion in right perspective, the entire effort of the officer is wasted. My congrats for such an effort. I will keep writing.
April 22, 2008, TaxSpanner commented: * E-filing is essentially another mode of filing your income tax return, in addition to the popular mode of printing and submitting your return at the income tax counters. It is a two step process: a. Prepare your return using tax preparation software: Enter your income tax data, such as, PAN, income, deductions, and TDS. Review your data for completeness and accuracy; and, generate your electronic return in XML format. b. Upload your XML format return on income tax department website. Upon successful uploading, it will generate an acknowledgement form called ITR-V. If you do not use digital signatures, then you have to submit the ITR-V at the income tax counter. * If you do not wish to e-file, then you can print your ITR1 or ITR2 and deposit it at the nearest income tax office or counter. taxspanner.com
July 21, 2008, Sanjay Saraswat commented: hi, I just wana to know that how can i get my return from Income Tax department. My comp. submitted my income tax on monthly basis. and my comp. has given me the form of submitted form of my tax. But after financial year i have submitted more income tax to income Text dept. So i need it back from there....so plaees tell me how can i get back this....... Please help me....
July 23, 2008, kalingahost commented: I think it would be good if other organisations like Indian Railways also start their own blogs.
July 23, 2008, pranav commented: @kalingahost, that's true..although I guess spam, comment management (from frustrated users) and complaints would become a nightmare. -p

Random Posts

AOL India launches cricket, news and bollywood related blogs

pranav — Mon, 04 Jun 2007 18:02:41 +0000

The recently launched AOL India portal has launched blogs in three niche categories - Cricket, News and Bollywood. No, its not a blogging platform. Instead, the blogging initiative comprises of posts submitted by a select group of authors. It isnt clear if AOL is paying the bloggers for the content generation. If you are interested, you can send in your post to blogseditor@aol.com (Not aol.in, mind you).

The site does a poor job in terms of usability and content is at best okay. For instance, why do they have a Brazilian blogger submitting news content related to Brazil on the News blog ? This is supposed to be an Indian portal, isnt it ?

Comments

June 5, 2007, Anon commented: Yes, AOL India does pay its bloggers. A few hundred rupees per post I suppose.

Random Posts

Bursts of plagiarism in India

pranav — Thu, 31 May 2007 16:59:42 +0000

A couple of days back, Dr. Arunachalam Kumar, a Sulekha blogger, reported on how his blog posts were being plagiarized word-to-word on IBibo blogs. A few weeks back, there was a similar incident where a movie review was plagiarized in a newspaper (I cant recall which paper it was..If anyone can recall this, please let me know).
Now, just a few days later, a reporter for Mid-Day Bangalore, Sunanya Suresh, seems to have lifted WATBlog’s post about Chintee.com (the news about Reliance’s Chintee.com was originally broken here on startupdunia) word-to-word and without any proper attribution.

Yes, as a blogger, I often link to stories and articles in newspapers and other magazines. But with the necessary attribution.

Not providing the due credit is like claiming the work to be your own - which is ethically, morally and legally (blog posts are copyright of the respective bloggers).

Comments

May 31, 2007, Rajiv Dingra commented: thanks for your support! Its really appreciated! :)
May 31, 2007, Raman Singh commented: My 2 cents: It would be incorrect to say call these "bursts". Plagiarism has always been there in India and in every media -- film scripts, scenes, music, advertising, academia etc. This is a function of demand being greater than supply! Demand for content being fuelled by the growth of newer platforms (most of them being business driven) -- but the supply-side being constrained by the availability of good/original/worthwhile content creators. While I do not condone plagiarism, I am also a little amused by the reactions of the offended -- whose response seems to suggest that they just discovered something that was unknown to the world up till today! Folks, you only woke up today :)
May 31, 2007, Ekalavya commented: The newspaper thing was by Mumbai Mirror, who copied an article from Passion for Cinema.. http://www.watblog.com/?content=detail&id=703
June 1, 2007, Infomadness commented: Well everybody is getting information from somewhere. What is different is the way you present it with your own point of view. I think the Chintee.com news became such a big issue. I agree that Startup Dunia wrote about chintee.com initially. What I wrote on my website was something to the next level which Pranav didn't know that time. But I agree with WATBlog as Mid-day literally copied the same exact thing without giving the attribution link or even name of the blog.
June 3, 2007, Himanshu J Sheth commented: Copying content was fine but not giving any credit to WATBlog was a bad part from their side.But this is not the first time that Mid-Day has done this,they take lot of photos and articles from Bangalore Metro Blog as well.This is really sick :( -Himanshu
June 3, 2007, Raman Singh commented: I was going through some old archives at DesiPundit and came across this link -- http://jupiterjuice.blogspot.com/2006/05/leave-me-alone.html -- Sulekha itself has been indulging in 'interesting' practices in the past to get users. One also remembers how one of their product managers was spamming every moderately popular Indian blog asking them to switch platforms!
June 4, 2007, pranav commented: Thanks Eklavya for that bit..for some reason, I couldnt recall that it was passionforcinema.. @Raman I agree. Plagiarism isnt new..However, it just seems to have become way too rampant these days. Internet has enabled easy access to great content on just any topic one can imagine. And with that, some folks are taking the easy route to content generation (and indirectly revenue generation) rather than making some effort of their own. And since they lack the correct morals / ethics, we need to at least get them to realize that they've erred.
October 11, 2007, Jayeeta commented: I am a student of Mass Communication and Journalism, and doing an assingment on Media Ethics and Plagiarism. I am quite surprised to come across so many incidents of plagirism. If you people want to find out more on this topic you can refer to www.thehoot.org,www.nytimes.com.

Some interesting tidbits from Indian online world

pranav — Thu, 17 May 2007 05:13:00 +0000

A story in Financial Express explains the online promotion of the movie Metro on Shaadi.com.

No, this post isnt about this promo. A couple of other bits in the story caught my eye:

1) Revenue through Desktop TV for MSN India has reached $40K per month, a 250% YoY increase. Number of advertisers jumped from 65 in 2005 to 260 today.

Hmm…pretty interesting…I think Rediff is a bigger portal in terms of market share and pageviews than MSN India. As per Rediff’s earnings report early today, they had 177 advertisers. While MSN India had 260 advertisers ? That’s almost 80 more advertisers !!!

2) Multiplexes account for 60 - 70% of all ticket sales. For PVR Cinemas, one of the leading multiplex players, 17 - 18% of their ticket bookings happens at the PVR website.

Full story in FE.

Comments

May 18, 2007, Raman Singh commented: The growth in MSN India's list of advertisers could be explained by Raj Nayak's aggressive NDTV Media team being responsible for selling advertising on MSN India. Raj has been one of the iconic figures in the media advertising industry and is the CEO of NDTV Media -- the media space/time selling company of NDTV. Sometimes the leader (here Rediff) may not be the most aggressive!

StartupDunia » India blogs

Kerala Blogcamp to be organized on a house boat

Comments

Related Posts

Draw a cartoon, winner takes $100 bounty

Comments

Random Posts

Yahoo India wants to help me blog

Comments

Related Posts

BlogsJam, a web based blog aggregator for Indians

Comments

Related Posts

Convert any blog feed into audio using BlogBard

Comments

Related Posts

Rediff Blog Showcase screenshots

Comments

Related Posts

Indibloggies website hacked

Comments

Related Posts

Using blog comments as an effective marketing tool

Comments

Related Posts

The one thing about Indian blogosphere

Comments

Random Posts

What’s your say on ad banners on Indian blogs ?

Comments

Random Posts

MIH’s acquisition strategy is to acquire technology

Random Posts

Rediff announces Blog Showcase

Random Posts

India Internet statistics

Comments

Related Posts

Part two of the India Online 2007 report

Random Posts

The Indian Income Tax department now has a blog

Comments

Random Posts

AOL India launches cricket, news and bollywood related blogs

Comments

Random Posts

Bursts of plagiarism in India

Comments

Related Posts

Some interesting tidbits from Indian online world

Comments

Random Posts