In.com which is web18′s horizontal portal play which had launched as a closed beta site with invite only and a logged in portal as we had blogged before has now opened up to public beta. The site has a very nice UI but looks more like an aggregator of content when compared to its biggest competitor in the horizontal portal space i.e. rediff.com which i s known for creating editorial content.
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So What Could We Expect From In.com?
Rediff recently opened up to developers and we wrote about it as well as covered it on video at WATShow. With in.com opening up to public one can expect fireworks when it comes to the horizontal portal space. Right now its Rediff and Yahoo along with Sify together have been pretty much owning the horizontal space in India. AOL’s entry has failed to garner much market share and has pretty much left rediff’s position untouched but with the entry of in.com and the backing of a Network18′s media muscle one can surely expect some real money being pumped in to gain market share in this space.
We are trying to get in touch with Web18 guys to get some bytes on what kind of money and strategy is expected in promoting this horizontal portal.
Has the 2 crore spent on domain name helped yet?
One look at the alexa numbers and one can say that the portal has benefited from the generic “in.com” domain name which was supposedly bought at 2 crores. The generic domain has caused more than 35% of the current traffic to come in due to errors like co.in.com and nic.in.com etc.
I believe the real value of the domain name will be realized post the mass media campaign as in.com is as easy it gets to remember a domain name and I expect it to catch on unlike indya.com which had failed to do so in the late 90′s due to pathetic internet penetration and was sold to Star.
What content strategy is In.com following and how will it help?
In.com is clearly looking at scale by not creating content but aggregating the same. In all categories it seems to have tied up with partners for now or is aggregating content from other sites. So be it news which its aggregating from across the web or finding products, matrimonials etc where again its aggregating. For flights and hotels it seems to have tied up with travel search engine wego. On the video and games front also aggregation is the route where everything from metacafe to addictinggames.com is being used.
As far as songs are concerned In.com seems to have tied up with the biggest music companies to stream songs on their portal. So songs as new as jaane tu are available on In.com. Check this list to see how many music companies have been tiedup with.
All in all the strategy by In.com seems to be to aggregate and focus on user experience rather than creating proprietary content. And the proof of that is their streaming music player. Its probably one of the best Ive heard online and it hardly buffers even on my shitty cable connection at home and I had been listening to it while posting this post.
wake up dude…………in.com launched in public beta some 50 days ago………….and before that it was invite only site……..and to prove that i had booked 20 names at that time that too without any invitations and did informed harshil too at that time ………its just that they changed their interface this time……looks like you now more into international news rather than keeping a tab on indian arena……
Raghav Im not sure what you saw 50 days ago.. But till last evening the site was in closed beta. i.e. one needed a login id and password to access the site or needs to request an invitation.
Thats a different thing that in.com would provide invite to anyone who requested.
And thats what the status of the site was till yesterday. Also they going public beta was told to me by a source within Web18.
So dont worry I am very much focussed on the Indian markets and I know what Im doing but Im glad we have readers like you who keep us on our toes anyways.. thanks for commenting. Look forward to more comments from you.
If it is only aggregation they are going to do, I don’t see a great future for them. Where is the value? Being efficient is one thing – but that is not a way to carve out a niche for yourself(not any more). How do you differentiate yourself from others.
They should ask themselves – How do we bring our visitors back ? What is it which is going to keep them hooked?