Rediff’s Minimalist India Abroad Is Live; Social Bookmarking, Facebook, Orkut, Hi5 Updates

 Rediff.com is going the minimalist way - the company is in the process of launching a frills-free site, optimised for mobile usage for its international readers at India Abroad. The design is currently being tested, and will be deployed only for the India Abroad vertical.

The front page is icon based, and everything - from the content pages to search results, are clutter free, and only focused on the segment in question. The implications of this design:

– Advertising: As of now, there are only two ad spots - one a leaderboard advertisement on top, and a 300×250 medium rectangle on the right. Take a look at this page, and compare it with this one. Also worth noting is the fact that there are no P4C ads on the page (similar to Google Adwords). 

– Content: discovery of content is now very difficult - headlines are key to content discovery, and there are cases where a headline from the sports segment might attract the attention of someone reading a business story. The cross-promotion of content, related articles, most emailed articles — all of that is not a part of this new design. This could result in a decline in pageviews, and jury is out on whether this is a reader friendly move.

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Update: Story On Rediff Launching Pakistan Site Incorrect; Our Apologies

Word just in from Rediff: apparently it was an elaborate hoax - a rather well executed one at that, and we should have suspected it when we noted the login powered by JA Highslide (Joomla Art). 

Just to be sure, we before putting up this story, we had also done a who-is lookup on the domain from http://www.pknic.net.pk/, and gleaned the following details:

Domain Name: rediff.com.pk
Registrant: Rediff, Daniyal Waseem, Address 34 Oxford Street, London  
Create Date: 2008-05-27
Expire Date: 2010-05-27
Agent Organization: Nexus Technologies
Technical Contact: Nexus Technologies, Arsalan Mahmud, Islamabad 

It appears that someone has gone to elaborate lengths to spoof the Rediff site. Our apologies to Rediff and to our readers for the inaccurate story carried. 

Original story:

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Rediff To Allow Users To “Communicate” In 22 Indic Languages

A PTI report states that Rediff will allow customers to communicate in 22 different regional languages, from January 2009. We’re not quite sure of what Rediff means by the term “communicate” - it could mean that they’re expanding the scope of their email service to 22 languages, or even Rediff Bol, their Instant Messenger. Rediff currently offers email in 11 Indic languages. The same report also states that the company is launching two new portals offering the facility to communicate in Gujarati. Looking around, I found two language portals from Rediff - in Tamil and Gujarati. Both are from the  1999-2002 era, and are no longer active. The fonts don’t render properly…doesn’t appear as if they were using unicode.

We’ve written to Rediff, asking for a clarification of their plans. This announcement is surprising, given the context of what Rediff CEO Ajit Balakrishnan had said earlier this month, that 99 percent of Rediff Mail users prefer to use English, and therefore, “Let us not assume that users want Indian languages.” Many of you had commented on that statement, and some had even asked why Rediff has invested in the Indic language space. 

We’ve linked to a few sites above, from as long back as 2001. Almost seven years since, we’re still wondering about mass adoption of the Internet, leave alone the local language Internet. A poll:

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Rediff’s Indic Language initiatives:
– Email in 11 languages
– Investment in Quillpad, an Indic Language transliteration product
– Investment in Eterno Infotech, a mobile application company with a mobile transliteration application
– Indic language search in 8 languages (more on Indic Language Search here)

Related:

– Our Indic/Regional Language segment
– @ IGF: “Let Us Not Assume That Users Want Indian Languages” 

@ IGF: “Let Us Not Assume That Users Want Indian Languages”; PC Era Ended; Multilingual Standards, Voice Based Internet

Updated Below

At the Internet Governance Forum being held in Hyderabad, Ajit Balakrishnan, CEO of Rediff.com said that there is no evidence from the last ten years of the Internet business that users want Indian languages. Rediff has email in 11 languages, and 99% of the users prefer to use email in English. One of the issues is that “practically all of the 300 million young people who aspire to something in this country aspire to learn English.” Therefore “Let us not assume that users want Indian languages.” He mentioned that Nokia has experimented with Indic language keyboards, and pointed out Eterno’s transliteration app which allows the usage of latin characters for messaging in Indic languages.

During the Q&A, Ram Mohan from the audience put forth a significant point on the requirement of multilingual standards - for the creation of a common set of semantics and terminologies, and the need for a framework and a common structure for script and language-based solutions. “We’re talking about a problem that begins at the core of the Internet, at the domain name system, and goes all the way to Internet navigation. Multilingualism is often confused with Internationalized Domain Names. One is not the same as the other.”

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Rediff CEO On Current Advertising Scenario, In.com, Paid Services, Apps & Content Deals

Much was expected from the Rediff.com this quarter - as the leading online media site in India, and with around 75% of its India Online revenues dependent on the Advertising - we logged on to Rediff’s earnings call for inputs on spread of the Advertising drought:

Data
– India Online Revenues: $4.04 million (72%) from Advertising , $1.58 million (28%) from Fee based services.
– Advertising revenue split: Financial Services - 15%, Jobs - 15% and Travel - 10%, account for a total of 40%
– 70% of revenue is from display based ads (CPM), and 25% from performance based ads.
– Registered user base of 72 million. Unique userbase grew by 8.4% (Comscore)
– 261 companies advertised with Rediff in Q2, up from 257 in Q1.

Q&A (thanks to @mixdev, @codelust, @ranjanv and Shashikant for their questions)

Online Advertising Scenario
– India Online advertising, which accounted for around 72 percent of revenues this quarter, was down from 75% last quarter, though “on a blended basis, the average yield and average price have not changed.”
– “There’s been no substantial change as compared to Yahoo or Google. We believe they’ve had a similar experience in the market.”
– Financial Services used to spend with Rediff for acquiring Credit Card and Housing Loans, and had contracted the most, but are improving - they’re looking to advertise to get people to deposit money again. Travel portals have cut back sharply, because commissions for them have been slashed. Job sites, which accounted for 15%, are down as well, because of their dependence in IT services for recruitment.

Display Ads over the next 3-6 months?

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Rediff.com To Invest In Mobile Apps Co Eterno Infotech

Update: An official press release from Rediff confirms that the company has taken a minority stake in Eterno Infotech.

Original story (Nov 7th): Perhaps inadvertently, but responding to our question in Rediff.com’s investment plans in the coming months, given that they’re sitting on $49 million cash, Rediff.com CEO Ajit Balakrishnan inadvertently let out that they’re in talks with Bangalore based Eterno Infotech for an investment. Eterno makes mobile applications, and has powered MobileRediff, a mobile application that the company announced a few days ago. Balakrishnan said that mobile companies of interest to them, and “Eterno is building applications for media companies that provide news services on the mobile.”

Eterno’s founders, Umesh Kulkarni and Chandrashekhar Sohoni are both ex-Nokia employees, and Kulkarni was previously the head of the software development team at Nokia’s Bangalore development center. The two had previously founded co-founded Curis Networks in 1999, which was acquired by Amber Networks, which in turn was acquired by Nokia in 2001.

Among Eterno’s products are local language tools for the mobile: a mobile transliteration application called IndiSMS, which is akin to Quillpad, an online transliteration tool in which Rediff has also invested; IndiServer is an Indic language bulk SMS server.

Other products include IndiMMS, an MMS application, and a “Music Companion” which allows users to browse music on the mobile, and download music, ringtones and MP3 songs. This also fits in with Rediff’s mobile ringtone search service. Their customers includes mobile operators like Airtel, Idea and Hutch, as well Nokia, Handango and CNET

Rediff.com has also invested in a Twitter like service with a mobile component, called Vakow, apart from Quillpad, mentioned earlier.

Rediff.Com Reports Net Loss Of $0.42 Million; India Online Revenues Up In Rupee Terms, Down In USD

Note: Any questions for Rediff - do let us know in the next 20 minutes either in the comments here, on email or on twitter by responding to @nixxin

Nasdaq listed Rediff.com (REDF) has reported revenues of $7.32 million for the Quarter ending September 30th 2008, down 12.02% from $8.32 million last quarter, and 6.87% for Q2 last year. An insight into the Indian market comes by way of Rediffs India Online revenues (from Rediff.com) - which were down 14.33% quarter on Quarter, and only down 1.92% year on year. Ajit Balakrishnan, Chairman and CEO of Rediff, however, said that the India revenues grew 5.5%, year on year, but this is not reflected in the numbers due to the the weakening of the Indian Rupee

It’s disappointing to note that the decline in Rediffs profitability has continued - they crossed the line, and have reported a net loss of Rs. $0.42 Million for this quarter. Last quarter, they’d reported a net profit of $0.77 million, and $0.83 million for Q2 last year. Profits have been declining for five quarters now.

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