In two separate interviews the co-founded Yahoo! Inc, David Filo and the Country Manager, Online Services Business, Microsoft India Mr.Jaspreet Bindra talk about Mobiles and their impact on Internet, their own take on social networking and their initiatives in this space, views on competition,  thoughts online social media advertising and finally the take on the Indian market.

Here are the point by point summary of what they said in their respective interviews..

Mobile Internet 

David Filo of Yahoo feels that two things that will contribute to the internet boom are “technically superior mobile devices with better internet connectivity” and “the social networking and community (user generated content)”

While Jaspreet Bindra of MSN feels that one way is to take the same content (available on the web) to mobile but as no one has been able to perfect this MSN won’t do that. He felt creating specialised content is a way to go though he feels that no one has yet cracked a business model for the mobile yet and hence MSN has time to figure things out.

Social Networking 

Yahoo - According to David “user generated content” is bringing a lot of people together. This momentum will gain strength in the coming days. Also yahoo is starting to experiment with new ideas of tapping into the social space and community network through Yahoo Mash which is an invite only social network currently.
MSN - Bindra states that its funny that people talk of facebook when MSN Spaces has five times more users than Facebook. Facebook has about 26-30 million users and Spaces has 130 million. He believe with MSN Spaces they have the foundation of something big but the problem would be privacy and That’s why Facebook and LinkedIn are successful. MSN would be looking at working on a social network which respects privacy unlike Orkut.

Competition 

 Yahoo - David feels that “localization of content” is what Yahoo will need to do inorder to stay ahead of the curve with regards to competition. He stated that Yahoo would work on getting connected with the audience from the non-English speaking areas.

MSN - Bindra feels that MSN falls between the local content driven portals like Rediff and Indiatimes which have been stronger from an editorial viewpoint and other technologically advanced platforms and networks like Digg.com and Facebook.com. MSN’s strength lies in providing a mixture of good content and services across devices and thats why in XBox Live today, you have Messenger.

Online Advertising

Yahoo - David states that Yahoo is looking at three segments — consumers, advertisers and publishers and working on a system that will make these three segments to come together to leverage the ecosystem which will help traditional display advertising and search advertising to become more effective in the process.

MSN - Bindra states tha both Facebook and Digg’s advertising is sold by MSN and how it is difficult to show contextual ads on such networks. He gives the example of content on how mobile phones are dangerous for health and how if you have a mobile phone ad appearing next to it, its actually detrimental to the brand.

India Strategy 

 Yahoo - David feels that India is a faily large operation centre for them and thats why right from research to evolution of products for the global market is taking place in Bangalore. Yahoo wants Bangalore to be the centre of excellence for emerging markets.

MSN - Bindra looks at more the positioning MSN wants to take interms of content in India. He states that Bollywood is big but MSN believes that over the next two-three years MSN will become the Bollywood place. And the other niche that MSN wants to conquer is education where videos of lessons, online teaching and other initiatives will continue to happen by MSN.

One can read the complete interviews here and here. I feel a lot of growth and fates of a lot of people and to some extent the online advertising industry in India will depend on how these two gants roll out their plans for India. All in all its seems mobiles and social networking are spaces that these two companies would aggressively go after.

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