Website For Dare, CyberMedia’s Magazine For Entrepreneurs, Goes Live

Sometime early this month, the website for CyberMedia’s Dare, the magazine for entrepreneurs, went live.

The most interesting element of the site is the lead story by Group Editor Krishna Kumar - “Who will be the next manufacturing superpower“, not because of the topic, but because Dare is offering its readers the opportunity to complete the cover story with their opinion, and win a Blackberry. So far, the story has received 40 comments - some of them very, very long. It will be interesting to see if Dare makes a habit of this - of driving readers from its highly regarded magazine (many entrepreneurs I know read it), cross-media to its website.

Content discovery is also being encouraged - the index page displays tags, the latest comments, latest blog entries, stories from different sections of the site. It appears to be a Joomla based site (correct me if I’m wrong).

Dare’s website has taken a lot time to launch - while the magazine itself was launched sometime in October last year, visitors to the site Dare.co.in were subjected to a “Coming Soon” notice over the next many months.

The content on the site is divided along four categories - Opportunities, People, Strategy and Funding, and the site also features blogs. Much of the content on the website is magazine content, and frankly, if there aren’t daily updates, repeat usage will be an issue.

Some suggestions

I’d put blogs right up there, in the proverbial “first fold”, and at least have daily updates. A magazine faces a key issue online - its content is updated weekly, fortnightly or monthly, while users online expect daily updates; in some cases, many times a day. The importance of recency cannot be understated - so either have content that is updated often, or offer users interactivity. Some suggestions:

– Adding relevant wire stories to the site: Digital Today did this for its magazines Business Today and India Today. Editorial selection is of great importance here, since irrelevant or badly written stories (many of those on the wires) will hurt the brand.
– Adding blogs that are updated frequently, and have an editorial mandate: Dare does have blogs, but they aren’t being updated frequently enough, and they don’t appear to have finalized the editorial mandate for the blogs yet. I quite like what Mint has done with its blogs, in terms of content.
– Linking out/Aggregating: I’ve said this before - content is a service. In the b2b space that we are in, you’re providing your readers with inputs that help them make better decisions. In that case, if you’re pointing them towards articles and stories that could be of use to them - why not? Would it hurt Dare to link to a site like VCCircle, which has excellent, relevant content? I don’t think any mainstream publications in India are linking out.
– A discussion forum: forums are grossly underrated, but if you get the right kind of community discussing issues, a site can take on a life of its own. Or even…imagine enabling a live chat session for selected entrepreneurs with mentors or VCs

What do you think Dare should do to increase interactivity?

First Look At Ibibo Mail And Messenger; Bixee - A Meta Search Brand? Bixee CrawlX

Naspers owned MIH India (ibibo), which had recently sold stake to China’s TenCent, is preparing to launch two of TenCents products in India - Ibibo Mail and Messenger. I tried out both products today:

ibibo Messenger
Mail integration
Firstly, the messenger is open only to Ibibo users. Having a messenger will probably help ibibo increase interactivity among existing users, and the company probably hopes it will also help drive signups. Like GTalk’s integration into GMail, Ibibo Messenger is also integrated into Ibibo email(screencap).
Security & Cybercafes
What I liked most about the messenger is that, on loading, it gives the user three options for sign-in - for a Personal Computer, Cybercafe and a “message protection mode” apparently for an additional password, local to that computer. This will go down well with people who sign in from multiple machines, and use Cybercafes. However, it will be a challenge for ibibo to get the IM installed in Cybercafes, since some don’t allow users to install software. This is where a company like ideacts (which recently received funding from Sequoia Capital) might play a role for ibibo…and I’m wondering if we’ll see the Internet equivalent of TVs infamous “Carriage Fees” come into play.
Content Integration
I found this the most interesting aspect - at least three of ibibo’s products - Blogs, Sawaal (Q&A), Photos and Opinions are integrated into the messenger sidebar. Here the IM integrates with the website, and opens relevant pages for users to post content to ibibo. I’m not sure if it allows you to post via IM, though (like in case of Twitter).
A suggestion: since ibibo is a community, it would be useful to receive friends’ updates (blog posts, opinions and questions) on the IM as well.

Note: We’ve used four different skins in the images above, just to show the skins as well as features

Monetization
Like in case of MSN and Yahoo messengers a window occasionally pops up with updates from ibibo, with a couple of advertising banners (screencap)
Other Features
Users can set their status to invisible, and the messenger has a “hide” button to make it (almost) invisible. You can also choose different theme colours for the IM, and set skins as well (see some of the screencaps above).

More on ibibo Mail, Bixee & Organizational changes : (more…)

Rediff.com’s Search For Search: Video, Buses, Local Language, SMS

The press releases, over the last two months, have mentioned the launch of two search verticals from Nasdaq listed Rediff.com: Products (comparison search) and Trains. But go beyond the releases to this page, and you’ll notice twenty different search verticals, many of which are in beta and yet to be announced - in particular, Video Search, Bus Tickets and SMS Search. Rediff also has a Local Language Search in the works.

Categorization
Travel: Bus, Flights (Domestic and International), Trains, Hotels
Businesses: News, Jobs, Classifieds, Stock
Shopping: Product, Books, Shopping, Auction
Media Types: Video, Images, Ringtones, Ring-back Tones
Social: People, Blogs, Q&A

Search Integration?
Note the sheer number of search verticals that Rediff has launched. Does Rediff intend to launch a separate search page (like Google), or link searches to the content on the page? How will they integrate all the searches? Uday Sodhi, Vice President (Subscription) who heads Ecommerce, Search and Mobile Entertainment for Rediff, told MediaNama that they haven’t yet reached the stage yet where they’ll take a decision on a separate landing page for search - they are currently building out searches, and will base their decision on customer feedback - “We don’t want to be either this or that (Google or Yahoo)”. I think Rediff will have to take a call on either format at some point in time - else their search initiatives will find it difficult to gain traction.

Mobile Search
Rediff’s SMS search is currently limited to ringback-tones and ringtones; Mobile search, says Sodhi, is the fastest growing vertical for the company. In case of CRBTs and Ringtones, SMS gives users an option cheaper than calling up operator IVR Services at Rs. 6 per minute. On GPRS, Rediff has job search, airfare search, ringtone search, as well as their news search - News Hound. Its still early days for the GPRS site, though, says Sodhi.

Local Language Search
Remember that Rediff has announced that they’re building a local language search, which is currently being tested. At present, Google, Webdunia, Guruji and Raftaar offer local language search. Sodhi believes that the next set of users are going to be from the local language space; “We’re probably in a cusp-area right now when it comes to local language content.”

Limiting Some Search Verticals To Rediff Sites?
I noticed was that some search verticals are limited to Rediff sites alone (Blogs are limited to Rediff iLand, Shopping to Rediff Shopping), while others search across the board. Sodhi says that this is just the current format and will evolve. For example, the image search goes beyond Rediff, and aggregates over a billion images. Video search also covers a large number of sites. I think Rediff will also have to take a call allowing users to go beyond the Rediff domains for all types of searches, or restrict them entirely to the site. It’s more likely to be the former, since users traditionally don’t like searches to be restricted to one domain.

Incorporating User Feedback
The company is currently refining their search products, and will gradually open them out to the general public. Some examples of changes that they’ve made based on feedback - Sodhi says that the company was flooded with feedback for tatkal information (seats made available only on the last day) once they launched their train search. In case of airfare, they were asked to give a comparison between train fares and airfares, because air fares have increased.

The Story Behind The Search Initiative
Ajit Balakrishnan, Chairman and CEO of Rediff.com wrote last year about how the company hired two students of Professor Soumen Chakravarty from IIT Bombay, for developing Rediff’s search crawlers. Chakravarty is the author of a research paper titled Accelerated Focused Crawling through Online Relevance Feedback and a textbook on Mining the Web: Discovering Knowledge from Hypertext Data. (Note: a passing mention of issues with establishing a commercial arrangement with IIT Bombay did receive some flack)

Update: Just noticed that Rediff is allowing users to embed the Train Search on their sites - see this. Would you?

So what do you think? Is there search beyond Google in India?

NDTV Convergence Launches NoGyan.com

I’m not sure of whether this is NDTV Convergence’s tongue-in-cheek take on the news, but NoGyan.com certainly is a bizarre site, aggregating some of the strangest news. Some samples:

– Todays top story: “Sarkozy’s father stages erotic art exhibition”
– One story that appears to clearly cover all three ABC (Astrology, Bollywood and Cricket) segments significant to India: “Preity invested in IPL despite astrologer’s warning”

The site lives up to its name, and doesn’t provide any useful information, focusing only on the irreverent: “NoGyan brings you the best videos from the Wild Wild Web! Lust, gluttony, greed, sloth, wrath, envy, pride - you’ll find it all here. Enjoy a sinful viewing.” Sinful viewing is certainly a money-spinner on the web, and perhaps that is what NDTV Convergence is banking upon. It does remind me of a blog I used to contribute to - Chiennes Sans Frontieres, though that more of a critique of mainstream media than a collection of bizarre news. CSF II would have a field day, thanks to NoGyan.

While this clearly doesn’t fit into the serious business ventures I usually cover, I’m very intrguided by NoGyan…is this what really works for the Indian audience? One thing is for sure - it certainly is no boingboing.

Follow Up: Why my mom 1.0 hates your web 2.0

Business Standard Launches Live Markets

Business Standard, a financial daily, has launched “Business Standard Live Markets” a market information segment that provides stock market information, information on key indices, top market performers, and interestingly - information on broker calls. The site features its fair share of news, segmented according as Market News, Commodities, IPO Information, as well as views in a segment called The Smart Investor. The site also has BSE notices. Overall, it’s just a quicker, more segmented way of providing news that is already available publicly. Google Finance follows a similar model, though it aggregates news from across publications, and doesn’t have an India specific site, unlike Yahoo, which has Yahoo Finance India.

Whether there is enough in the site to make someone switch from market heavyweights like Moneycontrol, only time will tell. Remember, BS has a content partnership with UTV, and a similar segment is also there at UTVi.com. Livemint, the website for HT Media’s financial daily also has a MarketInfo segment, though there still are issues with the charts display (a screencap). Here’s a list of publications with stock market information:

Disclosure: I own an inconsequential number of shares of Network18

Motorola Launches MOTOMUSIC In India With MOTOROKR E8

So almost six months after struggling handset manufacturer Motorola acquired online and mobile music distribution company Soundbuzz, Motorola has launched music distribution service MotoMusic in India. MotoMusic powers the MOTOROKR E8, two versions of which are priced at Rs. 15.455 and Rs. 13,999 respectively. The launch of MotoMusic is significant, since it comes before the launch of Nokia’s content service Ovi.

Value Chain: This is what the value chain looks like, with a handset manufacturer also becoming a content aggregator. This should, ideally, result in increasing efficiencies, and hence offer a greater margin to Motorola:

Pricing, Distribution and content partners: (more…)