Rediff.com strategy with IShare (its flickr + Napster + youtube site) has always been one of tying up with various exclusive content producers. So whether it was their tieup with a music show like Saregamapa or non commercial music promoters AnEcho or later during gandhi jayanti where they had another tie up or special microsite for Durga pooja with sound of dhakis from kolkata being available online rediff has been religiously following the tie up strategy to get exclusive content producers on their platform.
Now rediff has gone a step ahead and tied up with the lifestyle television channel Zoom Tv. So now a range of specially-created video content of the popular shows from Zoom would be available online on the Ishare platform. Commenting on the partnership Mr. MK Anand Business Head for Zoom TV said, “As we move into entertainment 2.0 world, our partnership with Rediff.com is a reflection of our commitment to embrace new media platform and explore news ways to delight our audiences. Rediff iShare is a new destination for watching entertaining content on internet and we see this as great opportunity to learn and create new form of entertainment and build a community around our content by reaching out to global audiences on internet.”
Its funny that Zoom Tv which is a Times Group company despite having its own portal indiatimes.com chose rediff.com’s ishare as a partner! The shocking bit is that indiatimes and rediff have been competing portals since ages and both potentially lure the same advertisers!
A google search shows that Zoom did try hosting content on Indiatimes at zoom.indiatimes.com but now that url jsut wrongly redirects to zoomtv.in and gives an error.. So what could be the possible reasons for this decision to go with rediff?
No iShare at Indiatimes?
The fact that indiatimes doent have a platform like Ishare! Also the cost and time to build a good one given the fact that indiatimes isn’t really the best with technology could be another reason. But does that mean it just gives exclusive rights to some exclusive video content to a competitor?
Low monetization of Video content
The other reason could be the low monetization level for video content currently which as per admission by Mr.Balakrishnan in this interview suggests that though Ishare as a platform has some real good traction (around 6 milion users in all!) but its still has only one advertiser! But its still early days for video in India! The very fact that ishare gets so many visitors (thanks to some good tieups) is proof that there is hope!
Internal turmoil?
Lastly it could very well be due to the difference within the Times group! After all Times Internet which runs indiatimes is a separate entity from BCCL with separate management as well. And in industry circles there have always been talks about how the online and offline within Indiatimes just dont gel together.
All in all indiatimes loss is Ishare’s gain. I think the tie up strategy is doing rediff ishare a world of good. Rediff is being innovative with its marketing and tieups given its limitations of not being an out and out technology company and though ishare is a technology wise decent product its these exclusive tie ups which is getting it more traction.
UPDATE: I got the following email from zoomTV clarifying certain points in the above post..
Hi Rajiv,
Pleasure speaking with you. Just a couple of things which need to be
corrected.
1: Its not an exclusive deal
2: Indiatimes doesn’t host our website. The URL redirects to
www.ZoomTV.in. Our site was down for 26 hours because a trucker rammed
into a power transformer of our hosting provider in Texas.
3: We continue to work very closely with Indiatimes and will be
launching new services with them very soon, infact, before we went in
for a redesign, we were hosted and supported by them.
We have an official channel on Youtube.com/ZoomDekho besides being on
Bigflicks, Rajshri, TinselVision amongst many others. We are platform
agnostic when it comes to content and our deals with leading aggregators
reflect that.
Cheers,
Sameer Pitalwalla
“Its funny that Zoom Tv which is a Times Group company despite having its own portal indiatimes.com chose rediff.com’s ishare as a partner!”…actually rajiv, its actually not funny unless its an exclusive partnership. When the internet god like google doesnt invite Facebook for opensocial, id say it only shows times is atleast a maturer brand to tie up with rediff!!
“And in industry circles there have always been talks about how the online and offline within Indiatimes just dont gel together.”…now comeon arent we exaggerating here? since when did watblog start publishing internet gossip without hyperlinking to facts???
Ps: i love this blog and you guys do the best job around here when it comes to web and india