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Indiatimes Launches Digg Like Hotklix.com - Ho.. Humm.. Yawn..
(2 votes, average: 3.5 out of 5)
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Indiatimes.com has a history of some pretty badly failed launches in the webspace. For starters think of Phatchicks (Sleazy chat service), o3 (The lost blogging service) and iTimes (bad social networking)! But the times group never gives up does it? So they have gone ahead and cloned Digg.com to launch HotKlix.com (What’s with times and sleazy names?)
One look and you can say that there is nothing innovative about this baby and Times is probably the last one to launch such a site after all the portals like Yahoo (which acquired delicious which became more delicious recently), Rediff (Blogshowcase), Sulekha (Newshopper) and even the recently launched in.com which has news in the digg format.
There were rumours recently of how google might acquire digg.com so Im not surprised the Indiatimes guys finally woke up to the possibility of such a site.
On the whole this site will get traction primarily because its indiatimes.com which ofcourse even after its failed product launches it still garners a sizeable traffic to its main portal site which is linked to its news site economictimes and timesofindia.com. Its been around for a while and with the Times group media muscle will stay around forever if you ask me. But do you think this clone what is successful strategy will work for long? Whats your view?
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Ahuhmm they launched it as coollinks.indiatimes.com and then transferred with a new interface to the new domain.
They could have better leveraged their existing database by allowing login with any Indiatimes id. But this requires a new registration.
The reason for their failures is probably lack of planning and vision!
Rajiv, Annkur: I find both your post and comment biased… evidently you feel Indiatimes is a good whipping boy. Don’t know what you mean by “failed launches” ’cause they never really launched any of the sites you mentioned in the true sense. They may have been trying our services like the chat show (an innovative idea), the blogs which are still hugely popular going by the blogger posts one sees (unless you feel that too is self-created) or itimes which looks like a precursor to something bigger.
Come on WATBLOG, grow up…
What’s sleazy about Hotklix as a name? Their photogallery may be bordering on sleaze but then so does NDTV’s nogyan… did you have anything to say there? Or Savitabhabhi…
Take a break please. Otherwise your site will lose credibility while Indiatimes quietly gains audiences.
The latest offering just like their previous attempts was not a wholehearted launch. It appears that Indiatimes lacks visionary managers at the helm to drive indiatimes to remain ahead of the curve.
If we think that they will survive based on their timesofindia.com, then i doubt it. Even in their media sector, there is a lack of editorial guidelines and monitoring/screening of the content. Most of the younger lot their are resorting to sensationalism and are frequently changing the headlines of same story over a period of time just to pick more eyeballs. I am of the opinion that Indiatimes days are numbered.
–sri
Delicious was around even before Digg became the hot thing, by your argument Digg could have actually just cloned del.icio.us with minor features added…isnt it? and actually orkut shouldnt have added apps at all too…coz well its aping facebook! :O
drop the rant!
…Agreed, innovation is what lacks with most Indian online players today…but come on, lets be fair here…let the market grow…things have just started to move around a bit in the internet industry here, and who can understand that more the WATbloggers themselves
also, if i may add…lets attempt at trying to tell these guys with the so called “big media muscle” what can be done with the product…rather than throwing a tantrum here!… i am sure they would be more welcome suggestion from industry experts like you…what say Mr.Dhingra?
@gd: Hi Garima.. Great to have you commenting at WATBlog.. Answering both your points id like to say this..
Aping a feature versus aping the entire product are two different things. Also we all know that orkut is fast losing its no.1 social network tag to facebook and its not surprising as innovation wasn’t happening and they were cloning facebook.
With regards to indiatimes its almost appalling that a company with the kind of money and people that indiatimes has is only able to make bad “ME TOO” products in the online space. Its as if they just need to bring out something each quarter rather than build something usefull for their audience.
On the telling these guys what to do with the product.. Well I dont give free consulting to rich companies.. And it wasn’t a tantrum it was just an observation on the Indiatimes strategy (if there is any strategy)..
Hope this answers your question Ms. Dhiman.. BTW Garz.. Wish you would blog on WATBlog as well a little and not just support your own company
what saddens me is not the aping, but the lack of finesse in doing it.. When FB added the ‘comments’ part to minifeeds, it was basically aping friendfeed, but it came out looking like a minor addition, possibly helped by the fact that FF’s base was less. the finesse here was in figuring out a trend this early, and building it in.. the digg concept, is what, 4 years old now?
what saddens me more is the fact that this is a site that belongs to a group that has the country’s top english newspaper, the top financial newspaper and a host of other products.. and there is no sync with any of them? Digg is basically a service to share content, and the group has loads of that… is anyone even seeding the toi, et articles on a regular basis? I have seen one or two, and thats when i went digging inside news!!! why isnt a hotklix widget button next to all the toi/et news in the respective sites?!! hell, its not even there in the share/bookmark options!!!
so, while this can be considered a rant, i look at the potential, then at the efforts, and i really can’t help myself!!
@ Jackie
Sorry for the late response, I am not sure why you felt my comment was biased
“They could have better leveraged their existing database by allowing login with any Indiatimes id. But this requires a new registration.”
This is a genuine concern I had. Also if you have seen Yahoo Buzz. Its on a subdomain and much better executed. Initially even Coollinks (not hotklix) was used the same way but for some reason transferred to the new domain.
And frankly I haven’t used their other products discussed in the post so I used the term “probably”.