Web2.0, is it the web’s next frontier?
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Does this question sound like an over exhaustive debate that is still to find its conclusion? May be! IAMAI in its recent Conference “The Web’s Next Frontier”, helped throw a deep insight into the world of web2.0. The conference was broken down into 4 sessions. This post will give an overview of the 1st panel Discussion: ‘Entrepreneurs Perspective challenging current wisdom’ The Panel that helped throw insights into this discussion were the following names consisted of the panel
• Ashish Kashyap : CEO. MIH Internet
• Rehan Yar Khan, Director, Yo4ya.com
• Navin Mittal, Business Head, Fropper.com
• Ravi Datanwala, Online Business Strategy Manager, Microsoft Corporation (India)
• Vivek Pahwa, Founder, Desimartini.com
The session initially began with each of the panelist views on web2.0 and needless to say their views were backed with examples from their company.
Ashish Kashyap spelled out what IBIBO.com stands for “I build I Bond.” He states “There is now a shift of power to the users. IBIBO helps empower, create, built share and bond. While Sawaal, creates depository of wisdom. IBIBO also has Blogs and photo sharing. All of these applications are integrated with IBIBO cafe networking and IBIBo Dwaar search.”
“My views of web2.0 are that it is a ‘utility pillar’ and an ‘emotional pillar’ . The flow of thousands of questions and answers are creating rich collective advertising. Making users take actions”
While Vivek Pahwa, Desimartini believes that “social networking (which is one of the most visible and know tools of web2.0) which is dominated by Orkut is a model where you can get in touch with your friends. Similarly Desimartini helps connect and build content. Our current focus is User experience.”
Microsoft: “we don’t only provide web2.0 services but also provide platforms that can be used by entrepreneurs to build web2.0 applications. The Mobile market is large ad hence we at Microsoft are very bullish about the mobile space.”
Here is some interesting learning from the 1st session.
Web2.0 can be viewed in 3 levels.
1) Consumer Level – There being two aspects to this levels a) Utilitarian aspect 2) Emotional aspect
2) Technology aspect
3) Marketing Perspective. (This is discussed more prominently in the next panel discussion)
The most know hindrance connected with web2.0 – Bandwidth and Broadband connection were discussed. The discussion brought light to how; this may not be as huge a problem as it is being perceived. Considering you tube is the 8th most popular website.
Navin Mittal believed that it was important for fropper to make the shift from a dating website to a social networking website. User generated content is what runs most web2.0 enabled websites, hence usability and user experience is a must.
On the cultural perspective, Vivek Pahwa asked a very valid question: If you tube and orkut are already popular then why do we need Indian Sites? The panel’s discussion led to the following conclusion.
Indian sites must have a differentiating factor, if one is too me-too an international already successful website, it will not help. This brings us down to consumers need. For Eg Orkut has already fulfilled consumers need, so now Entrepreneurs need to ask themselves, are they trying to fulfill a already fulfilled need, or is there a new need they are catering too.
The conclusion stated an interesting point: The differentiating factor between an Indian and International website will be usability. Ultimately Think Local Get Vocal.
Through out the 1st session, orkut, you tube and a few others tools were only discussed, most other web2.0 tools like digg (which was only later mentioned by Mr Sanjay Trehan in the 4th session), delicious, widgets etc were not really mentioned.
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I was not able to resist myself from adding lot of comments, as I started reading this post. By the time I finished it probably went pages long. So I create a separate blog post in my blog related to this once. Please have a look at it. The url is
http://go2indiaweb20.com/?p=181