Maneesh has been actively blogging on various blogs since over a year. He writes about social media and entrepreneurship mostly, and adds liberal doses on online advertising once in a while. He also sings the strangest of songs and makes the weirdest of faces when left in a room full of people. You can reach him at maneesh[@]watconsult[.]com.

Indiabanao is an apolitical movement that aims to get the youth of India involved in public affairs debates and give them a platform. This is how we were introduced to IndiaBanao.org today. The initiative will go live on October 20 and in this post WATBlog takes a look at what the effort is all about.

We were at IAMAI’s 4th Digital Marketing Conference yesterday at the ITC Grand Central, and though we planned to get these posts up yesterday, the content was incredibly vast to sit and analyse at the end of the day. So seeking apologies for the delay, presenting the what and who of the first session of the conference before moving on to the four others in the pipeline later.

A considerable time after it sent out request for proposals, BCCI.TV, the Indian cricket body’s new official website is finally out. The site is neat, fresh and ordinary and hasn’t broken any path in its effort to bring Indian cricket online (officially at least). So you find a scorecard of India’s last international match, overview of domestic tourneys, news, and perhaps the most interesting part the archives (subjective).

Social entrepreneurship is fast growing popular and the opportunity in it is far beyond the buzz. Personally, I am of the opinion that growth in India will eventually move out of the big cities and happen int he rural confines of our country. I believe that the value waiting to be unlocked in our hinterlands is enoromous. Of course social entrepreneurship doesn’t just mean you have to work in villages. It is about empowering the underprivileged wherever they might be.

I hope the two buzzwords of our time social media and social entrepreneurship work together and grow to completely alter the value chain and entrepreneurial eco system for the better.

Not just following on the footsteps of HP Printers’ snapfish intative to get into photo sharing and printing market, but taking it a step ahead, Epson has launched a complete photography portal - Foto Flock. 
The website will have articles, news, interviews, forums, tips & tricks, contests, event listings, photographer profiles and other resources related to photography in [...]

The online travel segment has been one of the best performing in the e-commerce space in India and has been amongst the fastest growing as well. If a government driven portal can make money by the millions then surely there is no question about its scale and success. Recently, the sector has seen a flurry of activities including newer features, potential mergers, international deals, funding and even pink slips which strangely didn’t stuck out as a sore thumb. WATBlog decided to do a follow up of our much appreciated Bird’s eye view of the Indian online travel niche we covered in May.

Not many might have noticed, however, a couple of weeks back a 6 year old article began going about the web as breaking news about United Airlines applying for Bankruptcy, caused as much as a 75 percent drop in the airline’s stock, highlighting the impact of information processing and its effects in new media.

Zoom has created a branded channel on YouTube for its bollywood based reality TV show Idea Bollywood Club. To participate, all people need to do is film their talent and upload a maximum 10 minute video to the page for Idea Bollywood Club at http://www.youtube.com/bollywoodclub on YouTube. The idea of the show itself is to provide a platform for artistes to find exposure for their talents.

Perhaps the success of Orkut in India (compared to its performance elsewhere) or the growing Indian mobile Internet market, whatever be the reason, Yahoo has started what’s currently called SpotM - an India specific, web and mobile powered social network.

However, this week saw some interesting surveys including one by us on the topic of blogging come across our daily routine. We took them, and felt it would be a good idea to share the same with our readers, especially those who blog (we know quite a lot of you do). The idea is to just help the surveys be of value as more number of responses increases the accuracy and power of a survey.

One of the biggest publication houses in the world, US based Conde Nast will launch GQ - the urban male magazine, by the end of this month in India. If along with it, Conde Nast sets up a powerful India centric online publication like how Web18 has with Indiwo or lead the pack by bringing Style.com to India, it can perhaps vitalise the online content market space in India, which currently suffers from innovationphobia and quality in general.

The possibilities that the web provides when it comes to being entrepreneurial is limitless. Now there can be better ways to set your business up, however, using the web as a platform certainly makes it easier to get things started. And we all know so many dudes who did such stuff while in college and went on to make truckloads of truckloads of money. This may just help in you in getting your act right while you still can.

One of the simple benefits of blogging is the exchange of ideas that happen so smoothly, without even needing to talk to someone directly. So when Peter Sabbagh wrote his view on the potential that the growing SEM market holds for the folks in USA, it immediately intrigued me. According the Peter, the IAMAI report on the SEM industry in India we spoke about last week points at an opportunity for SEM companies in America to expand through outsourcing.

The way Aamir Khan has been using the web recently for kicking things up a notch, is to my mind phenomenal. And now we hear that he is planning an Internet only promotion for his latest flick Ghajini. Internet only did I say? Yep, or the better way to put it, no television promos for this one baby.

It is common knowledge that Google Analytics is the most recommended if not the most popular (it probably is, but I don’t have numbers to show) site traffic analysis program on the web. And for most basic and practical purposes it suffices enough for most webmasters and digital marketers. However, there are plenty of paid analytics systems that do rounds of the web, and they are there for a reason. It should be quite obvious for everyone that a premium service provides data that is in depth and comprehensive as compared to a free service.