In my view, NW18’s call to bundle (if i am allowed to use that word, for good reason) a couple of already failed site to push up numbers for IN.com is not surprising at all… in fact, it is an admission of their failure… the only reason jobstreet is still not part of that picture is because it is a JV (with a Malaysian company)…

have you seen moneycontrol or bookmyshow being integrated with IN.com… why not, because these are clear leadership sites with a viable (even if loss-making right now) monetization model… the rest of the websites were nowhere in the game… what I am more worried about is this… I looked at IN.com a while back (not a regular user) and it looked a very clean implementation… now, it is becoming as cluttered as Yahoo… forget history, do Raghav and Haresh not care to even remain current abt biz news (read Yahoo) on their own channel… IN.com is being dragged down by the clutter of an already failed set of internet concepts… or at least not being allowed to move beyond the legacy issues…

NDTV… there is an old saying in my circles… the only people who ever made money on NDTV are employees… thanks to the solid ESOPs they get… I do not even understand why they want to get into this beyond their core news ops… ohhh maybe, bcus their news ops don’t make money… as another saying goes, HOPE FLOATS!!

Seriously, wake up and smell the rat guys… you have money… but not internet skills… so why not just tie-up with some internet companies (Info Edge, People group et al) who do by taking substantial stakes in them… you get the benefits of internet… the internet companies get capital… both of you get prime benefits… learn from rupert murdoch… the print baron didn’t build myspace (or was that facebook)… he bought it… now why is that so difficult to understand…

They are just building up names under the umbrella of convergence for greater evaluation. … Not sure if they will succeed though as they are not experts in internet biz.

NDTV Music, Cooks, Books et all are just few page sites and have no sense – either commercially nor strategically. Make my trip & Yellojobs have burnt their fingers with NDTV ‘coz they have no sense of running internet businesses. They still sell MSN, etc. like TV ads and not by internet metrics of ROI. They depend on media agencies for biz not internet consumers.

What they can make money is with Matri & Jobs and must focus on them. NDTVJOBS should be a portal of their own as its a very lucrative biz., provided they have something new to share and acquire expertise. CareerBuilder will also fain away like yellowjobs. Matrimonials – yet unexplored?

I feel Network18 is far ahead in their online strategy than NDTV.