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There are 6 new posts in "WATBlog.com - Web, Advertising and Technology Blog in India" The Questions Abuzz About Yahoo Buzz (or Does Yahoo Buzz Make Any Difference to Us)We have had a lot of stories doing rounds about Yahoo Buzz since its launch in early 2008. And now with buzz opening its gate to all sets of publishers, it has started creating some buzz of its own. The traffic that it sends to those who crack it to the Yahoo homepage is dizzying and well documented by now. So we have a Salon.com and its press release celebrating over a million visitors in a single day, TechCrunch having its highest traffic day, Huffington Post gathering close to a million visits in a day (800,000 uniques) among others. Muhammed Saleem, a popular social media enthusiast and marketer wrote a perhaps the first analysis of the Buzz Effect and the impact Buzz can have on social bookmarking and social media marketing in general. The post carried views which I certainly agree with, especially in terms of the crowd that Buzz brings to the table. Yahoo Buzz has definitely increased the size of the pie but for now it certainly tastes different. How does it Taste Different?Keeping the pie metaphor aside, as a regular publisher and Indian at that, I have some doubts about the benefit Yahoo Buzz can provide me. Yahoo Buzz is currently US centricYahoo! Buzz is currently focused on the U.S. audience. When will its focus shift? And how will the shift take place? Will Yahoo leverage on it’s individual regional home pages while keeping buzz a common platform for all? Or will we have a strong regional bookmarking biggie, say buzz.yahoo.co.in.? Yahoo is rolling out the red carpet for bloggersBut do the users care about blogs and bloggers? If the engaging nature that most blogs have witnessed then perhaps they do. However, the important effect is in terms of the longevity of the traffic. How much regular readers did 1 shot on Yahoo’s main page bring? Yahoo Search has Big ImpactThe first step in determining buzz popularity is the most popular topics that people are searching for on Yahoo! Then, they showcase the most popular stories within those topics, through the buzz activity. So it actually boils down quite a lot to what people are searching for, so more than your content’s quality it is its relevance that holds the key. At least that’s what I get out of this when Yahoo says this. It is still editor controlledNow I am all for good quality content being taken to the main page, however, if there is an inherent benefit that a lot of publishers acknowledge, then they should also know what they need to do to stand a fair chance. They need to know what the editors are looking at? They need to know the parameters that are being used to define the Yahoo standard? It might be my partial eyes, but I felt I saw an overbearing exposure for large publishers compared to smaller ones. How will the equity distribute itself? Does Yahoo really give a fair chance? The Publishers ThemselvesAfter nearly half a year in closed beta Yahoo finally did open buzz for all publishers. And from what I have seen, it has its share of expected dirt of cheap deals and thrills. Will the fact that it is unmoderated in terms of submission make it just another digg clone? Will Yahoo do something that tightens the submission process to improve user experience? If they do, how will it affect regular legitimate publishers? Now since most of my blog posts, especially those on WATBlog wouldn’t quite be US centric, I doubt if I will use Buzz prominently in my social media endeavors. However, I do see a lot of potential in it to bring a lot of mainstream users into the practice of sharing content which is the premise of social web. And that can open up big opportunities in terms of having a keen yet naive audience who have suddenly bit the social bait. This regardless of the fact that technically there is nothing social about Yahoo Buzz. Related PostsAlso check out Our Jobsite: WATJob Our Video Show: WATShow Our Gaming Blog: WATGame Our Consulting: WATConsult Mobile Services on WIMAX - Internet Telephony to lift off in a big way!Get ready to dial a new set of numbers in near future. WiMAX industry in the country received a major boost as the DoT has reportedly modified its policy on wireless broadband technologies including WiMAX services. For long, this medium stayed in the wings as mobile danced its way to glory in India. The earlier announced guidelines had specified that spectrum for broadband wireless can be used only for data services. However, the Telecom Commission, in its meeting on August 21 has taken a decision to remove the restriction.
It seems that such a decision did not go well with the existing GSM operators. A GSM industry representative echoed, “The WiMax lobby had argued that reserve price should be lower to enable them to make broadband services affordable. If they are allowed to offer voice services also they should be treated at par with existing mobile operators bidding for 3G spectrum.” Internet telephony will mean convergence of broadband for voice (calls), data (web surfing) and video (cable TV) for the masses. It will not only be a low cost option, but also a medium that can do much more than just web. At present, telephony predominantly remains the main source of inter-business consultations and is widely considered a fundamental component in the on-going growth of effective customer service. The Internet today is changing every industry, with telephony being no exception. Traditional telephony is now being accompanied by IP based telephony in order to primarily reduce the cost of telecommunications and effectively provide more communication options. Benefits of voice services over the internet :
Well, it’s not all hunky dory for voice enabled WIMAX services. Here’s Why :
Nonetheless, the decision of allowing voice telephony over the WIMAX networks is a very important step taken by the Department of Telecom in the direction of increased internet penetration and cheaper call rates which are already the cheapest in the world. Related PostsAlso check out Our Jobsite: WATJob Our Video Show: WATShow Our Gaming Blog: WATGame Our Consulting: WATConsult Google Apps To Power Sify Mail and ChatSify Technologies Ltd., one of India’s largest companies providing enterprise data services, which also provides consumer internet services and has an online presence in the form of a Portal Sify.com, has today announced a tie-up with internet search giant Google to power the company’s Email and Chat services. According to the announcement, the Sify’s offerings such as Email and Chat will be powered by Google Apps Suite of services along with the other collaborative services offered by Google. We’d previously covered the launch of Google Apps platform from Google back in 2006, co-incidentally on this same day. Sify already offers these services through the portal, though using their own platform. With the rising popularity of enhanced features in email and messaging, mainly due to companies such as Google and Zenbe stuffing their services a bunch of features, Sify’s offerings had become stale in comparison. A lot of users like me had moved away from their services, to those offered by Yahoo and Gmail. After their move to the Google Apps platform, Sify can start offering services under their own brand name, but leave all the hard work of management to Google. This is quite a tie up, given Sify’s reach, which is among the top 500 sites in the world and ranks among the top 30 in India (as per alexa). What this means is that you can use most of the services currently offered by Gmail, but integrated with Sify. Email, chat, online documents storage and editing and web-pages would be offered to all Sify users. Sify has been currently providing Internet access in India through the ePort cyber café chain and also provides home broadband access services. This reach was of great importance in providing exposure to sify’s bouquet of websites. Apart from the Sify.com portal, Sify also runs video content on Sifymax.com for broadband users and Samachar.com for global Indians to stay in touch with everything Indian. They also have the SifyMall shopping catalogue. Business Wire quotes Raju Vegesna, Chairman & CEO, Sify Technologies Limited as saying
Airtel Broadband is another major Indian company that makes use of the Google Apps platform to offer email and homepage services. However, other services have been explicitly kept away from the user. Related PostsAlso check out Our Jobsite: WATJob Our Video Show: WATShow Our Gaming Blog: WATGame Our Consulting: WATConsult TATA NEN Launch HottestStartups.in - Vote For The Hottest Startup!NEN (National Entrereneurship Network) and TATA have launched hotteststartups.in a platform where one can nominate and vote for the hottest startups of India. WATBlog is happy to be a associate partner of this initiative and would recommend all the startups to list themselves and also participate in voting for the other startups. Besides for TATA and NEN other major partners include Helion Ventures, Seedfund, Mint and Wadhwani Foundation. One may ask.. What do the TATA NEN Hottest Startup Winners get? Each of the 5 Winners receives tailored business development support, access to funding and incubation, and publicity through profiles in a special supplement of Mint. Business support will be provided by Knowledge Partners - IIM Ahmedabad, IIM Bangalore and the Startup Accelerator at Microsoft. Not a startup? What’s the incentive to vote you may ask? Well there is a lucky draw for voters as well. As soon as you vote, you are automatically entered into the TATA NEN Hottest Startups Voter Contests. Every week, 100 voters are randomly selected to get their fun prizes. And even otherwise its a nice thing to vote for startups they need all the encouragement you can give them. On the whole such initiatives are very important in bringing the startup community together and encouraging more startups in India. Being a startup ourselves we whole heartedly support this initiative from NEN.
Related PostsAlso check out Our Jobsite: WATJob Our Video Show: WATShow Our Gaming Blog: WATGame Our Consulting: WATConsult Google Launches MapMaker In India.. Will Crowdsourcing Strategy Work?Google has launched its Map Maker services in india which allows users to add or edit geographical features such as roads, businesses, parks, schools, apartment buildings and localities among others in the existing maps. There has always been WikiMapia which follows the crowdsourcing model of street level mapping and there have been quite a few Indian startups as well like routeguru, sadakmap and mapmyindia all trying to do different things around maps and directions. There is also news that Reliance ADAG group will be launching Big Maps another mapping product sooner rather than later. Reliance has also invested in a social network in the US which specializes in Location based aggregation services.
Google Mapmaker as a product was developed completely in India and the creator of the same Lalitesh Katragadda, Software Engineer at Google India had this to say, "Google Map Maker solves an inherent need especially for countries such as ours where maps data is sparse. This product embodies our passion to empower people everywhere, to share knowledge of the places they know best by creating maps." According to Wikipedia Crowdsourcing is taking a task traditionally performed by an employee or contractor, and outsourcing it to an undefined, generally large group of people, in the form of an open call. The Google MapMaker is such a product that would rely on the wisdom of the crowds for information on roads, landmarks, locations etc. Question to be asked is that will this work in India? MapmyIndia does a great job of sending surveyors and collecting data which it then uses on the MapmyIndia site though an expensive but its surely an accurate path to creating information. Much like the wikipedia which has accuracy issues every now and then its possible that something like local information submitted by users on a map would have its set of errors. Well knowing this fully well Lalitesh Katragadda had this to say "We are looking at creating a balance between accuracy and depth of data,” Well accuracy will be a tough thing to maintain in such a crowdsourcing model also what will be interesting to see if they integrate this with services like gmail as many mails which go to and fro would have local addresses in them and there could be a way to prompt the user to mark these places on the map at that very instant. Related PostsAlso check out Our Jobsite: WATJob Our Video Show: WATShow Our Gaming Blog: WATGame Our Consulting: WATConsult Open2Save & Zook Tie Up To Power Best Deals On Mobilesopen2save.in a retail aggregator of deals and discounts which we have covered earlier here has announced a tie up with Zook a mobile answer engine of Ziva Software which is funded by Ojas Ventures whose Managing Partner Mr.Rajesh Srivastha was interviewed by WATShow recently. open2save which started in January 2007 and based out of Bangalore now aggregates deals and discounts available in the retail market with over 1,500 retailers across Bangalore, Mumbai, Delhi, Pune, Chennai, Mysore and Lucknow. This tie up with Zook will allow open2save to take these deals on mobile via zook’s mobile answer engine. On the occassion of the partnership, Vaibhav Tewari, CEO, AeNwis (The company which owns open2save), said, “We want our consumers to get the best deals anytime, anywhere on anything So how does this work on a mobile? A user needs to log on to zook.in from his/her mobile browser and search for what he is looking for. Once the user finds a deal of interest, they can just click on “Call Me” and get connected automatically from their mobile to open2save Deal Experts. This service is available on any internet enabled phone, and works on any browser on the mobile phone. Users may also subscribe to similar deals by signing up for deals alerts. Both companies expect this partnership to launch mobile coupons, deal alert services and other extensions from this foundation in the next 12-18 months. Web going mobile? Even earlier we had contemplated whether going mobile is the way for web players to scale infact we had even suggested that the future could be mobile. Related PostsAlso check out Our Jobsite: WATJob Our Video Show: WATShow Our Gaming Blog: WATGame Our Consulting: WATConsult More Recent Articles
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Unfortunately, the new boost comes at a cost of increased reserve price for WiMAX spectrum in the auctioning process. The Commission now wants the base price to be 50 percent of the 3G base price as compared to earlier 25 percent. A pan-India WiMAX licence may now come at an estimated price of Rs 1010 crore.
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1 comment:
Thanks for all these links. Love to read these blogs.
dave katragadda
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