Business Standard Launches Instant Messenger - BS Buddy

Financial daily Business Standard has launched a branded Instant Messenger called BS Buddy, which appears to be a customized version of Mundu IM from Geodesic Ltd. The Instant Messenger allows access via a single messenger, to MSN Messenger, Yahoo IM, AOL Messenger, ICQ, Google Talk and Jabber Talk. That’s nothing new - Pidgin already allow access to multiple IMs.

What’s noteworthy is the access to content that the IM allows - when you click on the yellow blob (seriously - what were they thinking?) in the IM that represents BS Buddy, it opens up a pane as shown below, called BS Dashboard.

The BS Dashboard provides current news, stock market information, stories from the days Business Standard, content from BS Motoring, and a merchandise from BSshopping (powered by IndiaPlaza). Details of the features available here. They appear to have a couple of advertisers already on board in Nokia, HP and Oracle.

As a product, I quite like the BS Buddy, but I don’t really see the point for Business Standard to launch somethng like this. Even though they have, they aren’t really communicating the key feature of the IM is the interoperability between various IMs, and they haven’t communicated that on the main page for the service - http://bsbuddy.business-standard.com/ . Without that being communicated, it appears to be a Business Standard IM, and hence there’s no incentive for a user to download it - that fact that users are also getting BS content is just an add-on.

NDTV Convergence Ties Up With TutorVista; Our Take On Their Strategy

Going through NDTV.com, we noticed a few sites and sub-sites that we haven’t come across before: Among them, is a tutoring site NDTVTutor.com, powered by Tutorvista.com, which primarily targets their US based visitors. While we don’t endorse Alexa as a measure of traffic, according to Alexa, only around 8.5% of NDTV.com’s traffic comes from the US.

The movies site - NDTVMovies.com also features a new look. We also noticed a couple of other partnerships that the company has inked, though we’re not sure of how old these are - a commodities site powered by commodityonline.com, and an astrology section powered by Astroyogi.com. Interestingly, there’s also an environment site called Green.NDTV.com, sponsored by Toyota, with Dr Rajendra K Pachauri, Director General of TERI as their expert advisor. There’s an environmental anthem for you to sing along to (you may download it here)
Quick take on NDTVs strategy
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Yang Steps Down, As Yahoo Looks For A New CEO

An uneasy year so far for Yahoo has perhaps worsened with co-founder and CEO Jerry Yang stepping down, and the search for a new CEO…maybe even a CEO who will be able to negotiate a sale for the troubled company. Yang had replaced Terry Semel as CEO in June 2007.

The real trouble for Yahoo began when Microsoft made a public, and almost boisterous $44.6 Billion, $31 per share bid for Yahoo in February this year. At that time, Yahoo was trading at around $19 per share. Billionaire investor Carl Icahn, blasted Yang for being hostile towards the Microsoft deal, as Yahoo declined the offer. After the deadline for negotiations to be concluded lapsed, Microsoft withdrew the offer in May. Icahn, who owned almost 5% of Yahoo, tried to garner support for renegotiations with Microsoft, despite the announcement of an advertising partnership between Google and Yahoo, around Yahoo Search.  Eventually, Icahn settled for three board seats at Yahoo - including one for himself. 

However, a recent threat of an anti-trust lawsuit against the Google-Yahoo deal made Google withdraw. Read their blog post on the same here. That’s when Yang again sent out feelers to Microsoft, saying Yahoo willing to re-negotiate the deal though this time, Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer declined.

BoomTown reported that Yang was stepping down - they published an internal mail sent out by Yang to Yahoo employees, here. Yang will return to his previous role as Chief Yahoo.

None of this is good for Yahoo - such an uncertain environment for a company impacts growth as potential partners may defer deals, and employees may look for more secure environs.

Vodafone Launches Kirusa’s Voice SMS; Some Thoughts On Voice SMS

Vodafone has announced the launch of its Voice SMS service in 16 circles with Kirusa. What’s interesting from a marketing point of view, is that Airtel has been promoting its Voice SMS service, powered by Bubble Motion for a few weeks now, and Vodafone will be able to take advantage of that buzz now. What we’re not sure of, is whether Vodafone is deploying the Voice SMS service in one shot, or like Airtel, has been deploying the service circle by circle. Airtel first began deploying Bubble Talk in 2006, in Goa and Maharashtra.

Both companies have priced the service at Rs. 0.75 per minute, and it is available to both Prepaid and Postpaid subscribers. Details of how Vodafones service works:

– Does not require any special handsets, or handset settings
– Vodafone subscribers have to dial* and the mobile number of the person for sending the message.
– If the recipient is a Vodafone subscriber, he will receive a text SMS notification and can dial *0* to hear the Voice SMS.
– Old Voice SMS can be retrieved by dialing *1*.
– Users can replying, forwarding, saving or deleting the Voice SMS messages.
– Subscribers not on the Vodafone network will get a text SMS notification with an embedded DirectListen number

An issue for Airtel: Twice in the last 30 minutes, I’ve been unable to send a voice SMS since “All lines are currently busy”. Looks like they don’t have enough capacity for the service.

Some thoughts on Voice SMS (more…)

STAR Picks Up Majority Stake In Asianet; Chandrasekhar Eyes News Channel, Newspaper Buys

News Corp owned STAR TV is forming a joint venture with Rajeev Chandrasekhars Jupiter Entertainment Ventures - STAR Jupiter Entertainment Television. STAR Jupiter will be a majority shareholder in Asiannet communications, reports News Corp owned Dow Jones Newswire. STAR will hold at least 51 percent in the venture, and STAR CEO Uday Shankar has told Indiantelevision.com that the news business will not be a part of the portfolio, since only 26% FDI is allowed in the News business. Murdoch wants to enter the news business - but is now interested only in businesses where News Corp will be a majority stakeholder. Asianet has been restructured into four companies - general entertainment, news, radio and media infrastructure, and it appears that STAR Jupiter will be involved only with the General Entertainment business to begin with.

The STAR-Jupiter deal had been reported by the Economic Times in August, around the time when Rupert Murdoch had visited India. One sensed that the deal had been done, when it was reported a few days ago that Asianet was looking to buy an English news channel, and a vernacular paper. During his visit to India, Murdoch had expressed an interest in the regional television space in India, saying that STAR will invest $100 million, and set up 6 channels.

IMI Mobile Acquires Music Distributor DX3 For Entering The European Market

Is the content aggregation and distribution the most vulnerable space in the Digital Content Business?

Hyderabad based Mobile VAS co IMI Mobile has bought London based digital music distibutor dx3, reports ContentSutra. Dx3 provides legal digital downloads, and in 2004-05, added a mobile content delivery component as well. The company will serve as a gateway to the European market. DX3 will be renamed IMI. A couple of months ago VR Vishwanath, Chairman and CEO of IMI Mobile had told MediaNama that the deal size is around $10 million, but we wonder if it’s been revised downwards given recent trends. Neither the report nor the press release mention the size of the deal or the percentage acquired, some reports suggest it’s a 100% acquisition. We’ll confirm and update.  

Content or Marketing?

Well, both. dx3 has a content marketing platform, which can be used to deliver promotional premium content that is free to users. IMI Mobile appears to be more keen on dx3 for marketing services.  According to Vishwanath, this gives them the opportunity for media campaigns on both Internet and Mobile, given dx3 strength in the web domain. Frankly, apart from the clients and distribution network that dx3 will bring to the table, we’re not sure of what else there is to this deal. 

DX3 distributes music for clients like EMI, MTV, Universal, Warner Music Group, Sony BMG, and has tie-ups with Virgin Mobile, Smash Hits, Sony Ericsson, among others. 

This appears to be a backwards integration for IMI Mobile - which is more of a platform service provider. As DX3 CEO Anu Shah put it - “It’s very difficult for pure digital music providers to make money in the space“. Aggregators and distributors get squeezed from both sides - by operators and music labels, and this is essentially a means of combining revenue share which was earlier divided between content aggregator and platform service provider.

This appears to be an acquisition that is similar to Motorola’s acquisition of Soundbuzz, though Soundbuzz had branded services as well, not just a white labeled solution. In the past year, we’ve seen other significant moves in this space - when Nokia entered the content services space with Ovi, and OnMobile inked content deals in South India.

So…Is the content aggregation and distribution the most vulnerable space in the Digital Content Business?

Satyam Buys Motorola’s Malaysian Software Development Center

Well, Motorola’s been in a lot of trouble, and were earlier reported to be in talks with Videocon for selling their handsets business. It appears that the company has sold its sofware development center in Cyberjaya to Satyam. The Kuala Lumpur based center has 128 employees, and will strengthen Satyam’s capabilities to cater to Network Equipment Providers and telecom operators, according to Nishith Mathur, head of Satyam’s Technology Infrastructure business unit.

The center was part of Motorola’s $2.4 billion Home and Networks Mobility business, which produces digital entertainment devices for HD/DVR and IPTV. This sale is a part of a restructuring at Motorola, wherein the business is also being split into broadband home solutions, broadband access solutions and cellular networks.

The deal should be completed by December 31st, after which, Motorola will contract Satyam for development services for its network management software. The US based handset manufacturer had reported a 15 percent decline in sales for Q3, and net loss of $397 million (pdf).