Rediff has launched a micro-blogging site, ZaraBol(hat tip: Arjun Ram), which seems heavily inspired from Twitter, complete with the 140 character message limit except for posts from Rediff , Sab Ko Bol: similar to retweets, the concept of follows, hashtags and @replies. The site encourages users to use hashtags with the topic they're discussing and lists #buzzing(novel indeed!) topics. - A Twitter clone?: There are some additions, such as the ability to follow a buzzing topic. Also, conversations are displayed like threads together. The streams are divided into 'All' and 'Me+I Follow', displaying messages posted by everyone and messages posted by the user and the people or buzzing topics that he follows. ZaraBol also truncates links to a rediff.ly URL, when a link is posted, however, when we tried to post a link, it did not work, and resulted in a 'forbidden' landing page. We were also not able to post messages at certain times, though we did not receive any error. - Vakow Acquisition & Write-Off: Rediff had also acquired a Twitter-like SMS based social site Vakow.com in 2008, investing $125,000. However, it had written down that investment fully, and had said that the founders of Vakow had decided to move on. At that time, Rediff had said that it liked the idea, but the founders expected it to grow faster than the market would allow it to. So why the U-Turn? - Innovation Vs Formula: We know that Rediff has been struggling to get a hit social and e-commerce product, and Rediff's jumping…
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