3rd Party Apps Now Live On Rediff.. The First Step Towards building Rediff Social – Rediff’s App Driven Social Network??
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We had blogged about Rediff developer platform which was announced earlier this year at Proto.in and later about Sociali.com. After 4 months of its announcement in July Rediff.com has finally launched third party applications. These apps went live on its video and music platform Rediff iShare.
Facebook Apps on Rediff?? Really?
With this move Rediff iShare as a platform is now compatible with the Facebook Markup Language which means any application that works on facebook will work on rediff platform. An alternative platform for Indian developers to publish their apps and earn revenue. This would also open opportunities for adnetworks which would like to monetize these applications.
What apps are live?
Currently the apps that are live are Dedicate a Song - an app that lets users to share the a song in audio or video format that they find on Rediff iShare and a quiz app based on shahrukh khan called OMG! Its SRK that lets users answer questions, watch videos, listen to music, view photos of the Bollywood superstar, Shahrukh Khan .
Well thats all the press release says.. But could there be more than what meets the eye?
As mentioned earlier we had discovered Sociali.com which we felt was a full blown social network and had questioned Zaki Ansari and he had clearly denied that Sociali was a social network at play infact he stated that if they had to launch a social network they would do so on rediff.com and not build a new domain name brand in sociali.. Well well.. thats exactly what they have done..
Enter Rediff Social – social.rediff.com.
Its the same sociali platform but with the rediff brand name. Rediff Social is a full blown social network which is accessible to any rediff user with a rediff id. It also imports your details from your rediff mail.
How did I discover rediff social?
All the apps are by default hosted on rediff social so it seems Rediff is using the apps to drive signups/sign ins to rediff social so a user cannot add an app on rediff.com unless he activates his profile on rediff social. Its what I would call an apps driven social network i.e. the more apps are build the more users add apps the more the network grows!
What could be the impact of this?
Well just for one second consider that even 1% of rediff tens of millions of email users were to use the apps that rediff plans to roll out across its services in due course of time then that would mean a full blown social network without any effort at all! Also consider the fact that Rediff mail holds a lot of data about a user the same is being pulled in automatically in Rediff social which now viewable to the entire network of users who are on rediff social. Im not kidding! My data was automatically pulled in.
What does Rediff have to say about Rediff Social?
I got in touch with Head of Rediff Platforms Zaki Ansari whom we had interviewed on WATShow during the announcement of rediff app platforms and who had also denied sociali being a social network.
Here is what he had to say about Rediff Social:
What is rediff Social?
Zaki: “Rediff Social is an ecosystem for apps where apps developers can better their apps and users can use them”
It isn’t a social network?
Zaki: “We are not positioning Rediff Social as a Destination Social Network”
Will it be a social network in the future?
Zaki: “I cant comment on the future”
WATBlog Analysis: Well as far as I am concerned rediff social is an app driven social network which is at the crux of Rediff’s effort to convert Rediff into a Social Portal. Yes you read it right. I feel rediff’s announcement of app development would spread to its other content and services and the activities of the users on these services would be tracked as their social graph on rediff social (Sounds like facebooks mini feed doesnt it?). I think the big hurdle for Rediff is to have quality app developers excited about the rediff platform and have them churn out apps. Traditionally rediff has never been seen as a technology centric company and has been more of a content and media company and this shift of positioning wont be easy.
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