It all begun with introduction of translation tools for online content. The belief is that if more vernacular content is available then it would increase internet penetration. These tools make it possible especially when one talks about Hindi which is the single largest spoken and understood language in the country.
Recently in news for another hindi website was ADS Media Pvt. Ltd which launched their first Travel portal in Hindi called DuniaDekho.com. Before launching DuniaDekho.com ADS media started two more websites concerning to problems an average Indian would want to be answered instantly. One of these portals in SexSalah.com that offers tips and suggestions related to one’s sex life. The second one is called 45PlusIndia.com that discusses common problems faced by the elderly people. HelpAge India is one of such initiatives that respects and demands the rights of senior citizens in India. They also raise resources to protect the rights of India’s elderly and provide relief to them through various interventions. But being an NGO can’t be compared to 45PlusIndia as it’s a website that is written in Hindi with stories and incidents related to old people. Besides it also includes a section called ‘Meri Baat’ that old people themselves can use to share their stories with other people and eventually seek help if in a problem. But if they would like to offer help as they understand people of the same age group, they are open to do that. All in all, it has got almost everything that a national Old-people’s website should have.
We have written about vernacularization of content and I believe its very important especially in terms of monetization for digital media and penetrating the Indian audience.
भाषा फेंक, तमाशा देख! (Bhasha Fek, Tamasha Dekh!)
Here at WATBlog we covered how AstroYogi launched the Hindi Version of their site. Hence language preference is suddenly being seen as a big market advantage in the online business. Earlier YouTube was looked at from a different perspective trying to capitalize Indian audience.
But when someone like Google can get introduce something similar in terms of language preferences, how can others fall back? By launching Friend Connect in Hindi integrating Orkut friends Google clearly wanted to use their connect tools to enable publishers and gather as much social interaction data as they can from 3rd party platforms.
All in all vernacular website launches seem to be a growing trend now what remains to be seen is how they impact the penetration and actual usage of internet.
Vernacular is definitely in. We launched blogvani.com (a hindi blog portal) in 2007 mid and although there was an initial lag the growth is fast now.
In fact we are so encouraged that we are doing a total revamp of the portal and adding in more languages hopefully out by the end of September.