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WATBlog Spots: Harman Baweja and Love Story 2050 ATTACKED on Wikipedia

Harshil Karia — Fri, 16 May 2008 11:05:50 +0000

Love Story 2050, Harman Baweja’s new movie is out for release. I just happened to be looking for details of the movie and landed on its Wikipedia Page.

What I saw was quite shocking. Wikipedia can be edited by anyone and someone seems to have tampered with Love Story’s Wikipedia page big time.

Check the Pictures below.

Someone seems to have changed the picture on the page (its now already removed probably due to Wikipedia’s Bots). The name of the actor in the movie has also been changed from Harman Baweja to Hrithik Roshan (The Director is listed as Rakesh Roshan – an obvious play on some of the media stories floating around). The name of the movie has also been changed to LoveStory 1999. The budget (60 Cr.) is now 60 Thousand.

The language has been listed as Haryanvi by the spammer.

We tried to do a check on who might have done this by looking at the history of the page. It seems like the IP originates from Delhi and the person who did this subscribes to BSNL. This seems like a calculated and strategized move because the particular IP has not edited anything else on Wikipedia.

This is not the 1^st time this has happened on Wikipedia but it just goes to show how individuals and brands need to be very careful when dealing with their images on the Internet. With the mass proliferation of social media, the control of conversations has become increasingly limited.

Interestingly, I was at a conference yesterday speaking to a couple of people and someone was telling me about how he wanted to buy a car and went to a social forum to see what others were saying. In the process, he looked at all the comments and became sceptical about the ingenuity of these comments. He was not sure if all those comments were paid placements or were actually genuine. This is something that social media needs to be increasingly concerned about or else it will eventually lead to the downfall of social media. We might soon see a situation where brands pay advertisers to defame competitors on social media.

Linkedin (a business networking network), if you notice has an answers section; and within the answers section, when someone asks a question and receives answers, you can flag the answer as many things – one of the options is ‘Connection Building Spam’. All the options in the picture below. Expect more of these ‘safeguarding’ mechanisms from other networks soon. On a similar thread, Facebook withdrew from Google’s Friend Connect citing privacy concerns.

Hear what Esther Dyson has to say about Privacy and Control on Social Networks – she spoke to us on WATShow.

Update – Just Checked out the Wikipedia Page again – seems like Wikipedia’s Bots have cleared the page out.

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Google, Facebook, and The Language Revolution

Harshil Karia — Fri, 16 May 2008 09:25:18 +0000

We blogged (2 weeks back) about Google Translate now being available in Hindi. Well you can add more languages to that list. 9 more languages are now being available courtesy Google. The newly featured languages include Bulgarian, Croatian, Czech, Danish, Finnish, Norwegian, Polish, Romanian and Swedish.

In more language updates, Facebook has also just launched its platform in 3 new languages - Norwegian, Japanese and Polish. Facebook is also working to finish up Chinese as their copycat in China, Xiaonei, recently raised $430 million.

Language is one of the key ingredients for the popularity of a service that is supposed to ‘universally accessible. Google’s services will obviously empower more users (as opposed to Facebook’s translation services) and it’s a welcome move for the dissemination of information.

There is an interesting “Detect Language” feature on Google which helps the user automatically identify the language of the text they’re trying to translate.

Read Jimmy Wales’ thoughts on the importance of translation for Wikipedia. (Jimmy Wales on WATShow)

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Users Get Banned for Creating Branded Pages on Facebook. Some Recommendations for Orkut Groups

Harshil Karia — Fri, 16 May 2008 09:22:37 +0000

When Facebook launched its advertising platform last year, there were a few issues - ordinary members could create ‘Fan Pages’. So fans started creating pages around their favourite brands.

But there was a problem – when advertisers want to advertise with Facebook, they are requested to 1^st create a fan page and then buy social ads. So what happens when an advertiser wants to advertise and the fan page is already taken?

Before we continue the story, the term ‘fan page’ in itself is a little misleading. Is it a page made by fans or for fans.

Anyway, to continue, 2 users have had their fan pages taken away recently. One of the users owned a Ralph Lauren Fan Page. Facebook notified him to give up a fan page, he didn’t – his profile was banned. The user must have been REALLY pissed off with Facebook. Ralph Lauren on the other hand capitalized by giving him a $200 gift certificate. This is going to be a continual problem. How Facebook deals with this is going to be interesting. Incidentally the power of social media is such that the scales of ‘power’ in terms of the relationships people have with brands, and indeed with each other have tilted drastically. In my opinion, brands should be happy that fans are creating fan pages and work in sync with brands rather than causing such dissonance.

Orkut recently allowed the co ownership of communities on its social networking platform. About time.

*Rupesh Adds:* We should have a feature on Orkut that allows communities to merge. As you will often see, on Orkut, for a particular community, you will have tons of communities around one topic. If somehow these communities can be merged and owners can be given co ownership of the main community, then the experience will be a lot more Social.

*Harshil Continues:* Very true, this should actually implemented across networks. Groups are far from ‘social’ on social networks with the implementation of such features. Check out the Paachvi Pass Communities below. Its quite clear that all 3 groups want to talk about the same thing – so why shouldn’t they have the option to merge?

Facebook is in the process of revamping its profile pages by the way. For those of you who haven’t seen it yet, here’s a preview.

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Amitabh Bachchan Paid 100 Crore To Blog? Bitch About Shahrukh? Create Controversy?

Rajiv Dingra — Fri, 16 May 2008 07:36:06 +0000

Well we had termed the blog by Amitabh as a marketing gimmick by BigAdda and though amitabh had refuted claims that he was being paid for the same an article today in ET states that Amitabh Bachchan is reportedly paid Rs.100 crores to blog on BigAdda! And though some may say thats an insane amount to pay a blogger! (Psst.. 100 crores makes even Mike Arrington of techcrunch who reportedly earns 1 crore a month seem like a pauper!)

We have insider information that the blog might have been ghost written albeit after instructions from Mr.Bachchan! Also one look at the content and one can surely say that 100 crores seem like a justified amount given the viral impact of all the controversy the blog has created in offline media. Check this post where he terms Paanchvi Pass as Paanchvi Fail.

Mr.Bachchan has already created more PR for big adda from television and print for free what would have been atleast worth a few crores of direct expenses.

Besides for the 100’s of comments on Mr.Bachchan’s Blog does it do anything else for Bigadda? And its supposedly ’social’ social network? I guess the next step for bigadda would be to bring Mr.Bachchan even more closer to his fans by creating his Social networking profile on Bigadda. If they have really paid him 100 crores then this shouldn’t be that tough.

Besides for Mr.Bachchan the other man taking potshots at Shahrukh Khan is Aamir who supposedly has a dog named shahrukh who licks his feet! Check this post from aamir’s blog to know the level at which these stars are taking the blogging for fame aspect to.

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Industry Movements: Interaction Appoints New National Director; Virgin Mobile Gets a New CEO Via WATJob.com

Harshil Karia — Fri, 16 May 2008 07:20:55 +0000

Madhusudan Mandyam has been appointed chief executive officer of Virgin Mobile India. Virgin hopes to capture 10% of the Indian Mobile Telecommunications Market. See what Mr. Mandyam thinks about how Virgin can do it and also see how Richard Branson sees this as a part of the overall strategy HERE.

In other news, Interaction has appointed Shekhar Sharma as the National Director of Search Marketing. (Search Marketing by the way seems to be changing with Yahoo!) . Find out who Interaction will cater to and how Shekhar will help power that HERE.

For all Industry related movements and updates on New Jobs in Web 2.0 get on to WATJob, our Job Site.

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Facebook Calls it Off With Google. It will not Participate in ‘Friend Connect’ Citing Privacy Concerns

Harshil Karia — Fri, 16 May 2008 05:53:30 +0000

A few days back we wrote about Google’s Friend Connect and how it had partnered with Facebook to create what seemed to be like a happy marriage. Everyone was raving about the Internet becoming more Social – it still is anyway with networks opening themselves up and carrying information elsewhere.

How many of you watch have watched F.R.I.E.N.D.S? And how many of you remember that episode in which Ross and Rachel get married in a drunken stupor? (If you don’t there’s a video down there – just scroll to the end!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-JW0CNL1uNw

Seems like Facebook and Google got into something like that. Facebook has now called off its participation in Google Friend Connect.

Here’s what Charlie Cheever said on the Facebook Developers Blog:

“Privacy and openness go hand-in-hand – as we open up, we have to make sure that users always have control of their information, and understand how and where it’s being used. We’ve maintained that trusted environment while opening up Facebook Platform and the social graph to external developers by requiring third-party application developers to treat user information with the same respect we do. All Facebook Platform developers agree to the Developer Terms of Service, which strictly limit the collection, use, and redistribution of user information. We have technology and a team to ensure applications abide by those policies. In the past, when we found applications passing user data to another party (for instance, to ad networks for the purpose of targeting), we suspended those applications and worked with those developers to ensure they respect user privacy. Now that Google has launched Friend Connect, we’ve had a chance to evaluate the technology. We’ve found that it redistributes user information from Facebook to other developers without users’ knowledge, which doesn’t respect the privacy standards our users have come to expect and is a violation of our Terms of Service. Just as we’ve been forced to do for other applications that redistribute data in a way users might not expect or understand, we’ve had to suspend Friend Connect’s access to Facebook user information until it comes into compliance. We’ve reached out to Google several times about this issue, and hope to work with them to enable users to share their data exactly when and where they choose.”

(I love how Facebook cares so much about our ‘privacy’ - or rather only about them having access to our private data)

To make it simple – it seems like users will not be able to control the kind of data that flows out of Facebook and it also seems like Facebook will not have any control either. So Google will have access to some of the information that Facebook already ‘owns’ (which is why it is so highly valued).

We had questioned how this move makes sense for Facebook from a strategy perspective given that they too are launching Facebook Connect. It doesn’t – or the scales aren’t tilted in their favour, which is why they have called it off. Expect something like Friend Connect from Facebook as well. With that they will get a larger share of the pie and also be able to continue their recent policy of communication flowing into the network from external sources and portability of profiles to external sources.

It’s funny – MySpace, Google, and Facebook all want to make the web more ‘social’ but they can do this only by blocking each other access into the reams of information they possess.

Digging for information is like digging into a Gold Mine.

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In.com is Web18’s Horizontal Portal (”In.com” supposedly cost them 2 crores!)

Rajiv Dingra — Fri, 16 May 2008 03:17:18 +0000

We had blogged about the impending launch of Web18’s horizontal portal yesterday and now Its already been launched (thanks to anand and dinesh our readers for commenting and letting us know)

Its a two alphabet domain and one of our readers commented that it cost them 2 crores! I wont be surprised if that was the case in reality. So is the 2 crore worth it for such a domain?

Well yes! if you look at what Web18 has done with In.com. I logged in with the test username and password (which is “test” for both) and was let impressed by what I saw.

Uncluttered Homepage

Firstly what hits you about In.com is its uncluttered design. Have a look at the screen shot below.

In.com Offers News, Music, Videos, Games, Classifieds, Travel & Mail

Now as you log in you can choose whether you want to log in to read(the news has a digg.com like interface), read mail, play games, find flights, matrimonials, products or listen to music, podcasts or just watch videos.

The beauty of it all is that its very well presented (Great UI) and its refreshingly different from the other portals. Check screenshot below.

The good or bad part about In.com is that you need to login to access any information even news. Which might be a good ploy given that registered users would show more engagement that non registered. But it will also keep the number of users low. In.com does seem like a next generation portal and can be easily classified as the next level for horizontal portals.

It will be interesting to see how the old war horses like rediff, indiatimes and sify react to this new entrant. Also it will be interesting to see in what manner and scale is in.com promoted by Web18.

PS: Incase you want to give In.com a spin just login with the username: test and password: test. Do let us know what you think! (Thanks to informationmadness.com for discovering this. Though the password isn’t working anymore.)

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Exclusive WATShow with Jaspreet Bindra, Country Manager, MSN India on Bollywood Centric Content and MSN adCenter

Harshil Karia — Thu, 15 May 2008 12:01:46 +0000

WATShow, this week caught up with Jaspreet Bidra, MSN India’s country manager and asked him about the portal’s obsession with Bollywood (some good insights with respect to Content Strategies). We also quizzed him on MSN adCenter. He speaks at great length about advertising models and the overarching philosophy of Digital Advertising as a whole.

www.youtube.com/watch?v=dYnO6QuMHOs

Thats it from us for this week. Until next week - ta!

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Yahoo! Launches New Search Marketing Platform. Special Emphasis on Small Businesses in India

Harshil Karia — Thu, 15 May 2008 11:19:00 +0000

Yahoo! India has just announced it’s new search marketing platform, which has a few augmentations with respect to search marketing when compared to Google. They also have a few innovations on the front end, which will no doubt help advertisers track their advertising better and also deliver better, more relevant messages. With certain feature additions, the Yahoo! Search marketing product is playing catch up with Google, with others it seems to be setting the standard. On the whole, I think their India strategy is impressive mostly because they seek to capitalize on the long tail. The big advertisers will come to Yahoo! anyway due to their syndicated network in display advertising and also due to the number of people using Yahoo! Search. The future of the business though largely depends upon SME’s and the mom and pop shop kinds. Yahoo! is looking to get those kind of people in the loop by allowing more experimentation features, more assistance, more transparency etc.

With respect to the platform, Yahoo!’s aim is to make it simpler. I just checked it out and the creation of a self-serve account seems pretty straightforward to me. A step up from Google’s platform, only marginally though. The Geo Targeting Options are not too great – I can only choose ‘entire market’ for India (for now). For smaller advertisers who may freak out when they hear the word ‘technology, Yahoo has an assisted set up for a certain cost (Rs. 500, one time). They also have a special unit looking after small businesses in India (headed by Sandeep Deshpande). I spoke to Prashant Mehta who is the VP & Head of the Advertiser and Partner Group for Emerging Markets at Yahoo! and he also spoke about Yahoo! helping small businesses ‘find themselves’. This would include things like brand positioning, defining the USP and finding the core for small businesses. I’m not sure about the depth of quality of this service but I think some of these things will definitely help advertisers in the small business sector to frame their ads in a better way and make them more contextual so that the consumer wins, the advertiser wins, and in the process – Yahoo! too, wins.

For those of you who have heard of Yahoo!’s codename ‘Panama’ Project – this is the India version. The platform remains the same; the servicing models are slightly different; but only just. Yahoo! seems to be stressing on its new ad ranking model. Moving away from only bidding to (bidding + relevance). Something that helps the user experience. While this is commendable, it is a trick pulled straight out of Google’s hat. But better late than never.

The search marketing tool also has what they like to call enhanced conversion tracking. The campaign management application will not only track campaigns that convert immediately, but also those that contribute over time through deferred transactions. In addition, the new application will be able to record “assists” - instances when a keyword contributes indirectly to a conversion - allowing marketers to see the full impact of their keyword mix on the success of their campaigns. That will probably be done through things like cookies in the consumer’s computer. This will give lead related insights, im just not sure about the value of this information with respect to branding. It does tell the advertiser something about consumer behaviour though. The other thing that the platform has is ad testing. Advertisers can test multiple versions of their ad to figure out what copy works best. Not sure if Google already has this – do they, anyone? Another feature that I found interesting was the one that estimates the maximum bid a person should make for a particular keyword keeping in mind his/ her advertising goals. I think Google has this too – they give cost estimates. Yahoo does more of the math for you.

Yahoo was always advertising on content sites but now they seem to be even more bullish about advertising on content sites. They may not be able to do anything in that market though because their strategy is one where they individually tie up with websites and blogs etc. as opposed to Google which has an entire syndicate – another platform that lets publishers sign up – AdSense. So while Yahoo Search Marketing is better than Google Adwords (in terms of the interface and ease of sign up and analytics atleast), it still lacks an ‘AdSense’ in its stable.

Yahoo has recently tweaked its search engine technology, they have also introduced Glue Pages. Apart from that, Yahoo’s share of search spending by selected advertisers rose to 23% up from historic levels of 18 – 19%.

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Microsoft Windows XP to be hanged till death on June 30, 2008

Rupesh Mandal — Thu, 15 May 2008 10:00:17 +0000

As per Microsoft’s posted timetable, it will show the exit door to its very popular Windows XP operating system.

This is despite Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer’s last month’s widely-reported speech where he said that the company might reconsider the decision to end retail and large computer-maker availability of XP on June 30.

Though system builders & market segment like low-cost PC manufacturers will get an extension, this means it will be available only if you happen to buy an assembled or low-end (

You might be knowing that Galen Gruman, a longtime technology journalist started a “Save XP” web petition since January gathering more than 193,827 signatures & numbers of comments from the XP fan base.

Let’s check out the buzz in the social media in this context.

Though some noise was there on Facebook but orkut is still keeping mum.

Interestingly in contrary, Microsoft Windows Vista is officially on twitter whose tag line says - “Stop Using Windows XP, I Dont Want To Hear It”

On the other hand, recently Microsoft released Windows XP Service Pack 3. Also, if you notice it’s been 17 months since release of the successor - Windows Vista. And honestly speaking, biggest rival of Windows Vista is Windows XP only & Bill Gates too somehow agrees with it.

Need proof, just watch the video above & to be precise it says:-

Q: Which software, which has come out in the last 5 years do you think you would apostle?
Bill Gates: If you had asked me this question after I had released the next version of Windows I would could be more Blunt in my answer!

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Shyam telelink Gets CDMA Spectrum For Maharshtra and Kerela Circle.

Ankit Saxena — Thu, 15 May 2008 07:56:17 +0000

According to this article in The Hindu Business Line Shyam Telelink has been allocated the spectrum to start CDMA service in Maharashtra. Shyam Telelink is partly owned by Russian conglomerate Sistema.

Shyam already has the spectrum for the following 12 circles : Tamil Nadu, West Bengal, Andhra Pradesh, Uttar Pradesh (East) Uttar Pradesh (West), Himachal Pradesh, Madhya Pradesh, Bihar and Haryana, North-East, Assam and Jammu and Kashmir.

Apart from this, several telecom players have been allocated the GSM spectrum in Kerela, reports Business Standard. Among these are Venugopal Dhoot-promoted Datacom Solutions, BPL group company promoted Loop Telecom, Swan Telecom, Aska Projects, Tata Teleservices and one again, Shyam Telelink. All of them have received a spectrum of 4.4Mhz to start operations in Kerela.

Recently, Virgin Mobile had entered the Indian market with a bang. It’s Think Hatke campaign has been making the youngsters to sit up and take notice. The fact that the Indian telecom space is a hot one, cannot be reemphasized enough. With the possibilities of Reliance launching its GSM service soon and even DLF planning to enter the telecom domain, the mobile battlefield in India is ready for some red hot action in the near future. The consumer never had it that good.

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Indian University Implements Wi – Fi Mesh to form the Country’s Largest Wi – Fi Network (Which is Still Quite Small!). More on Wireless Mesh Networking.

Harshil Karia — Thu, 15 May 2008 04:29:38 +0000

While this may not seem like great news to many of you – it did get me quite excited. I have always maintained that setting up a Wi Fi Mesh is not too difficult if the topography is not too varied and the Line of Sight is clear because equipment (with powerful dual radios) today is quite sophisticated and even antenna options (patch, sector, grid) are quite varied. We still did not have a full fledged Wi – Fi Mesh in India for quite a while!

Manipal University has implemented a Wi Fi Mesh, which spreads across 5 sq km can support 15, 000 subscribers. The university plans to implement streaming video, e-library and video on demand in a phased manner. Video Streaming can be done through wired or wireless cameras, the e – library can be made using a NAS with permissions and video on demand can be delivered through the intranet at speeds that can probably go up to 500 Mbps (depending on their equipment).

Im quite disappointed by the size of this Mesh – it seems quite tiny. A mesh convering an entire city would be an engineering marvel. To make a mesh within a campus is like a piece of cake. I wrote previously about how I think only a company like Bharati or Reliance can create a wireless mesh in city like Mumbai or Delhi. That’s because the rent for putting up a Wi – Fi/ Wi – Max Tower is ridiculously expensive. You may have to pay a building in lakhs just to host the infrastructure. Buildings are demanding such astronomical sums because the price has been ‘fixed’ by the biggies such as Bharati and Reliance who offer such amounts for putting up cell phone towers. It thus becomes unsustainable for a Medium sized company to compete and create a mesh. Mid sized companies can thus look at simply being infrastructure providers as a part of their business model or looking at getting ISP licenses in Class B and C towns and look at creating a market there before the big guys come in. But again services is another model altogether which requires a lot of micro processes; and im not sure if a company that is geared as an infrastructure provider can meet service related needs.

Have a look at the diagram below to get a good idea of how wireless mesh networking works.

The Advantages of a Mesh Network Are:

Quick scalability: Add devices to the IP network instantly without adding wiring and redoing infrastructure

Add Bandwidth and Network Throughput: Increase the speed of the wireless network by simply adding and plugging in devices.

No Single Point of Failure: Unlike wired networks where a single wire getting cut can bring down an entire network a Wireless Mesh network creates a cluster of nodes connecting to multiple other nodes offering no single passage for failure.

Fault Tolerance: By using state-of-the-art Mesh Networking Technology your network becomes failure proof as each node on the network automatically scans and connects to several other nodes creating a multi-path mesh on the network for complete redundancy.

Add Value Enhancing Features: Add features to the network by simply adding Network enabled devices anywhere you choose without wiring and redoing infrastructure. E.g. add an IP Surveillance Camera, or a videoconferencing/VoIP workstation anywhere on the premises instantly.

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Nimbuzz Launches Mobile VoIP integrated with IM

Harshil Karia — Thu, 15 May 2008 03:40:55 +0000

Nimbuzz, a relatively unknown Dutch company that claims to have got funding from Mangrove Partners, the original investors of Skype has launched an all-in-one solution for free mobile VoIP calling, conference calling, instant messaging, chat and group chat, and photo and file sending across multiple IM communities, including Skype, MSN, Google Talk, Yahoo!, AIM, Jabber and ICQ, plus 23 social networks, including Facebook and Myspace.

Once users download the Nimbuzz application for the mobile and register as a new user, contacts from their selected IM communities are aggregated into a single contact list with icons indicating real-time “presence” - which contacts are online or offline and from which communities. So it basically has an all in one IM platform – breaking the walled garden of chat – Meebo Style (Meebo founder on WATShow).

Nibuzz’s competition includes Fring and TruPhone. Fring has a similar array of services – integrated IM coupled with Mobile VoIP and has already had a few takers in India. The early adopters and geeky technologists swear by it. Fring, they say is the new Skype and more. Nimbuzz hopes to be that to a large market as well. TruPhone does not offer IM. Skype is out with a mobile version as well.

There’s a mobile application, a PC client and a Widget for Social Networks such as Orkut, MySpace and Facebook. So you can effectively make a call or SMS from within your Social Network or through your PC and also through the mobile ofcourse.

“Everyone loves Skype (on the PC). But when it comes to the mobile, we believe we offer a better solution,” said Tariq Dag Steinberg Khan, the London-based Chief Marketing Officer for Nimbuzz. “Nimbuzz works across all the major communities and on more than 500 handsets worldwide. With this news release, we now also have a genuine free mobile VoIP solution that works on more than 90 handsets including Nokia, Samsung and LG.”

The new Nimbuzz mobile VoIP application works worldwide on Nokia Symbian Series 60 devices when connected using a 3G or Wifi network (with a Windows Mobile offering for release in June). For GPRS/EDGE connections, or when using Java-enabled phones, Nimbuzz also offers its “hybrid-VoIP” solution (as used by Skype) – for making international mobile calls at local dial-in cost – in as many as 50 countries.

Nimbuzz is free to download and easy-to-use, but data usage is subject to network operator rates when used on the mobile, unless using a flat-rate data plan.

“The good news is that mobile data costs are coming down dramatically. Flat-rate data plans didn’t exist last year (in Europe), now they’re everywhere. This makes using Nimbuzz the closest thing to free communication there is,” explains Tariq. “Apps like Nimbuzz are accelerating the uptake of mobile data plans. This is a big win for consumers and network operators alike, and as such, a big focus (for them going forward). As a result, we are in the process of building some important win-win relationships with forward-thinking operators and strategic partners”

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Web18 to Launch Horizontal Portal this Month?

Harshil Karia — Thu, 15 May 2008 02:48:36 +0000

Web18 Software Solutions Pvt. Ltd, the Internet arm of Network18 Media and Investments Ltd is set to launch a horizontal portal, said two people familiar with the development (according to Livemint).

A horizontal portal refers to an Internet portal site that offers a broad range of content and services. Exampels could be Rediff, Yahoo!, MSN, AOL etc.

Web18 had launched Josh18 sometime back – that portal comes close to being a horizontal player but it lacks things like travel booking and email; 2 essentials I would say when it comes to classifying a portal as horizontal.

Web18 has 15 stand alone sites in various field of interest such as cricket, finance, shopping, travel, news, jobs, technology etc. and thus it makes perfect sense to integrate all these sites into one complete portal. Incidentally, Web 18’s top portal MoneyControl has seen traffic falling drastically over the last few days. The result is a confluence of their 3 top portals – CricketNext, IBNLive, and MoneyControl. By the way – is Alexa biased against regional sites or does Josh18 really linger below English content sites? Anyone with information on that?

Incidentally when a group is launching an array of services, I think its better if they have one mother brand which can then be used to nurture all the other brands. It becomes a logistical and marketing nightmare to harness 16 different brands with different identities. There are no spill over effect, no positive externalities, all of them need separate budgets etc. We saw in automotive how GM succumbed to Toyota because of issues related to managing multiple brands – all of which were not successful. In the Internet Space too, Google offers tons of products and applications and the ‘G’ before the brand adds that force. They follow a more or less generic branding strategy. Web18 would have benefited if it did more of that. It would be interesting to see what the portal is called.

T.R. Madan Mohan, a managing partner at Browne and Mohan had another interesting point to make – “Rediff is valued at $200 million (Rs846 crore), while a vertical like Naukri (job portal) is valued at four times that. Sify has one-tenth the value of travel portal Makemytrip.”

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Google Intends to Flip the Meaning of Social – Social Everywhere. But beware.

Harshil Karia — Wed, 14 May 2008 03:30:27 +0000

David Glazer, director of engineering at Google, described Friend Connect as plumbing for the rest of the web. Website owners will be able to use the hosted application to allow interactions with visitors from social-networking sites such as Facebook and Orkut, by copying and pasting snippets of code into their site.

“The web is getting better by getting more social. We’ve baked social features into the infrastructure of the web and it is not tied to any particular site,” Glazer said. “Users can interact with any of their friends anywhere they go on web and with any app.”

Well they can interact – but there seem to be a few problems with this kind of interaction. Problems with respect to site owner control (more on that later).

Google Friend Connect employs several more or less standard networking technologies: OpenSocial as a foundation for richer web applications; OpenID to handle login chores; and OAuth to let users approve the grafting of new branches onto their existing social networks. The move I think is geared at creating a wider platform for Open Social Applications. That part of Google’s strategy is flawless. In the beginning they wanted Open Social Applications to be across social media – now they have decided to change the definition of social media – or have they? Maybe not. Not yet atleast.

For now have a look at this video which clearly explains how Friend Connect works for site owners and site visitors and the extent of the ‘social experience’ (try and figure out where the black hole lies)

www.youtube.com/watch?v=BIEwUxMrJ4Y

How is Google’s Move Different From that of MySpace and Facebook?

While Facebook and MySpace are looking to make Social Networks the gateways to the Internet, Google Friend Connect to dig into social networks and use information from them to drive activity outside as a result of which updates get published within the network with the hope that more people will be tempted to look beyond the updates and go outside the network. The moves of MySpace, Facebook and Google however are similar in the sense that one singular social profile will be available across the Internet. It’s interesting to note that Facebook has signed up on Google Friend Connect as well. This virtually means that slowly, but surely, Facebook is looking to be that aggregator of a person’s Internet activity. That gives them access to more information than they could possibly imagine – this can then be used to micro target advertising.

What is Facebook Thinking?

What I don’t understand is how Facebook Connect is Different for Google Friend Connect from a strategy perspective. From a feature perspective, with Google Friend Connect, your Facebook Profile is not transported – the service only allows feeds to be sent back to Facebook (im not sure that this is very good for Facebook but only time will tell; Facebook tried to do this with Beacon). So its more ‘get’ and less ‘give’ while in Facebook Connect, your profile is transported to partner sites (with you being able to control restrictions).

I think Facebook is banking on the fact that people will sign on to websites which have Google Friend Connect embedded only BECAUSE they feel that it complements their personality as a result of which they’d like their friends to know and they won’t go and sign up on every website loaded with friend connect because then this might not showcase a singular ‘rich’ personality so they probably think activity ‘outside’ will not overtake activity ‘inside’ and also give a more inclusive experience till they can figure how to make the ‘outside’ the ‘inside’.

What’s Wrong with IFrame?

Im a little sceptical about Google’s friend connect mostly because all the data will be showcased using an IFrame – which is basically an embedded document. These embedded documents can be made interactive using JavaScript and the like. They still however remain beyond the reach of the site owner who cannot control what goes on to the applications. For example, if it is a photo application where people can upload photos, I doubt site owners can control the kind of photos that go up on to the website. So what happens if someone put spam? Do you remove the IFrame and reinsert the application? Recently, Mozilla Firefox, Opera and Microsoft Internet Explorer introduced contentEditable and designMode, which enables users to edit the contents of the HTML contained in an IFrame – I don’t know if that can be used for the applications embedded on sites using Friend Connect – I doubt. Also – all the data on Friend Connect across all individual websites is owned by Google stored on Google servers. That seems a little scary to me.

To get a comprehensive difference between the MySpace Data Portability, Facebook Connect, and Google Friend Connect – have a look at the box below (source GigaOM).

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Vivek Pahwa (Of Desimartini Fame) Launches Gaadi.com - A Car Research Portal

Rajiv Dingra — Wed, 14 May 2008 11:04:13 +0000

Vivek Pahwa known for his less than 10 million sale of Desimartini to HTMedia has come up with another startup this time in the car space with Gaadi.com. This should be the 4th web startup that vivek seems to be involved with given that he has angel funded antya.com a search engine and had also launched secondshaadi.com.

The car classifieds space has one angel funded player in carwale.com and many other players like indimoto,.com carazoo.com and indiaautomobile.com (which is a part of consim info - the bharatmatrimony guys.). Gaadi.com seems to be taking the approach of ugc reviews and car ratings as a way to engage the car searching audiences.

According to Pahwa, “Gaadi.com pays strong emphasis on user generated content”. He emphasized on the following, “To become a comprehensive research platform for users to help decide which the right car is for them, you have to bring in the community aspect. You need to know what others who own the car think about it, you want to get recommendations from the community before purchasing a vehicle. The whole car purchase exercise is a long and a well thought out one we want everyone considering a new or used car purchase to visit our site and read about the cars available in the market.”

Pahwa seems to be hedging his risks when it comes to launching portals. One has to admit though he hasn’t gone the cliched way of launching me to products. Besides for desimartini which a complete rip off of facebook even in terms of design his other initiatives like secondshaadi and antya.com which he funded had something different to offer. Even with gaadi.com (which by the way mean car in hindi and is a very generic and cathy term) he has focussed on user reviews and recommendations rather than focussing on classified space which already has players. It will be interesting to see whether he can again strike a less than ten million deal on any of his newer startups!

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