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There are 3 new posts in "WATBlog.com - Web, Advertising and Technology Blog in India" Interview With MSN LIVE Search Product ManagerLIVE Search is gaining importance in Microsoft’s online strategy. Microsoft announced new features, last month. WATBlog interviewd Ravi Datanwala, Group Manager- Live Search and questioned him about the new features in LIVE Search. Here are the excerpts. Q- Google failed to monetize the MySpace search earlier. Now, Microsoft is putting LIVE search on Facebook? What’s your take on this, given Google’s explanation was that it’s difficult, in general, to monetize social networks? Monetization is something all online players are constantly experimenting and working on, whether for social networks or any online property. Microsoft has extended its U.S. relationship with Facebook to encompass search. We will be working with Facebook to bring its users Live Search-powered web search and search ads by the end of the calendar year. We are currently working with Facebook to design the best search experience for Facebook’s users and advertisers. We are focussed on three areas - delivering great results, simplifying key tasks and changing the rules of the game. Q - Tell us something about the MS Live Search Cash-back offer and the Back-to-School offer. The Live Search Cashback and Back-to-School are currently offered only in the US market. Live Search cash back is built on technology and partnerships acquired through Microsoft’s October 2007 purchase of the comparison shopping site, Jellyfish. With Live Search Cashback, Live Search users can easily find some of the best deals on the Web either at the Cashback gallery — where they can compare prices and get ad-funded rebates on more than 10 million products — or by discovering Cashback ads in Live Search sponsored listings and natural search results. Customers sign up for a Live Search Cashback account at the time of their first purchase, accrue ad-funded rebates into their account each time they purchase from a Live Search Cashback merchant, and can receive their rebates directly from Microsoft sixty days after completing purchases Participating merchants choose to pay Microsoft a CPA fee each time a customer completes a sale through Live Search Cashback. The fee is a percentage of the retail price, and when that transaction is complete, Microsoft returns that fee to the consumer in the form of a cash rebate. After the holiday season in the US, back-to-school is the most important shopping season of the year. However, a recent survey from Deloitte found that during this back-to-school shopping season, 71 percent of households plan on spending less on back-to-school items than they have in previous years. With consumers feeling financial strain from higher gas and food prices, Live Search Cashback is offering back-to-school shoppers extra savings to stretch their dollars further. Consumers’ cash can be claimed when their Live Search Cashback balance hits at least $5, 60 days after the purchase. Microsoft will provide the rebate one of three ways: via PayPal, check or direct deposit into a bank account. Q - Why these promotions? Isn’t the quality of search algorithms enough to attract users? The potential of search and search related services are immense and will continue to evolve. We believe there are numerous applications for search that could be explored besides what is perceived to be the conventional application for search. For instance, initially search or generic search was limited to text; then came desktop, image, video, local, mapping or mobile search applications…etc. Therefore, consumers needs for search will evolve and we need to accordingly evolve features for search engines. Having said that, Live Search algorithms are constantly being improved and we will continue to ensure greater generic search experiences for the user. Search is also a way for advertisers to reach consumers through the cost-per-click (CPC) model. The cost-per-action (CPA) model, where advertisers pay only when a customer makes a purchase, or completes a specific transaction, gives advertisers a more precise return on their advertising investment, and is currently being deployed on a relatively limited basis. With Live Search Cashback, Microsoft provides consumers with an added incentive (cash rebate) to buy online and help merchants maximize their advertising investments. Q - Tell us about Image Hotspots on Live homepage? Why do them at all ? What value do they add to a user ? When will it be launched in India ? Hotspots are interactive areas that highlight parts of the image and help you explore search results related to the highlighted area. Hotspots gleam to the user when the page first loads then fade into the image. Users can discover them again by moving their mouse over them, revealing details about the image and a link to a related search result. To ensure that users can start a search immediately, our base page loads first with the images and hotspots loading quickly afterward. Users on a broadband connection may not notice the two steps. Currently this is available in the U.S and other markets could expect this in the future. Extensive user research and exploration of many concepts with our customers pointed us in the direction for this design. We want the page to be a great place to start a search and also to intrigue and inform as well. We think hotspots will help users discover parts of Live Search they might not know while not distracting from the core purpose of the page - search.
Q. What went wrong with Live Search Books ? Given the evolution of the Web and our strategy, we believe the next generation of search is about the development of underlying sustainable business model for the search engine, consumer, and content partner. With Live Search Books and Live Search Academic, we digitized 750,000 books and indexed 80 million journal articles. Based on our experience, we foresee that the best way for a search engine to make book content available will be by crawling content repositories created by book publishers and libraries. With our investments, the technology to create these repositories is now available at lower costs for those with the commercial interest or public mandate to digitize book content. We will continue to track the evolution of the industry and evaluate future opportunities. Q. What is Live Search Products ? Live Search Products is the Product Search experience for users to research and find the best deals on within Live Search. Users can search and refine products by user opinions, brand, category, and price ranges. In addition, users can sort results by best user, expert rating, and price. This is currently available in the U.S. only. Q.What is Live Search Club? Looks like a casual gaming site to me. Don’t you think its quite odd to have a gaming section on a search engine? Live Search Club offers members a fun way to experience Live Search’s rich, useful search results, while also rewarding members with games, prizes, and donations to charities. It’s free, it’s fun, and it’s a unique way for people to experience Live Search. Q.How does Microsoft plans to educate the users about Live Search? What are the marketing plans ? Microsoft has started rolling out its marketing campaign through a combination of online advertising; cybercafé outreach as well as targeted bus shelter and out of home advertising in key cities. We will continue to invest in marketing to generate awareness in key internet markets across the country. Q.What are the new features introduced with Live Search. Live Search delivers results with a simple, unique design and advanced tools for helping users quickly find, view, organize and preview search results. Live Search now delivers improved results across product, travel, news, entertainment and video search categories. The following are some of the improvements and enhancements released over the past three months toward delivering a better search experience and value for both consumers and advertisers in India.
Related PostsAlso check out Our Jobsite: WATJob Our Video Show: WATShow Our Gaming Blog: WATGame Our Consulting: WATConsult UTStarcom and Aksh Join Hands to Launch IPTV on BSNL’s ADSL Network
Convergence of technologies has become the order of the day! It wasn’t too long ago that your local television cable operator started offering internet connections off the same cable, in their efforts to fight back competition due to the emergence of CAS and service providers like TATA SKY and Dish TV. Similarly, it’s been a while that televisions could be doubled up as a monitor to surf the internet and the computer to view television channels using TV Tuner cards. Now, it’s the turn of IPTV to power your computing machine with television networks. No more grainy YouTube videos to catch a glimpse of Sambhavna Seth on Bigg Boss 2, no more shelling out extra bucks for TV Tuner Cards!
Including BSNL as a partner in the deal should not come as a surprise because the public sector company has recently been trying very hard to shed its traditional image and get uber cool with the techy crowd in the country. Moreover, BSNL has the widest and longest range of wired connectivity in the country and this should help in reaching far and wide into the most rural sections. Aksh Optifiber has already launched the very first IPTV in rural India (Kukus, Jaipur district) and plans to make the service available in the rest of the state’s cities in the next 6-8 weeks. The highlight of iControl is the interactivity that’s rolled in with it. The viewers can watch programs at their own suitable time, order 120 Hollywood and Bollywood titles at no extra cost! Moreover, since the medium of data transfer is an already existing infrastructure from BSNL, the subscription costs should also be significantly less than the leading wireless content providers. According to Dr. K.S. Choudhari, MD, Aksh Optifibre Ltd,
Related PostsAlso check out Our Jobsite: WATJob Our Video Show: WATShow Our Gaming Blog: WATGame Our Consulting: WATConsult Featured Startup: Blink Media Presents an Innovative Shopping ExperienceAt Proto we met with an exciting bunch of youngsters with what seemed to be a very intriguing product. Hemang, Devang and Sawan from the Mumbai based Blink Media showcased their ‘Intelligent Shopping Cart‘ prototype at Proto4 in Delhi a couple of months back. And if the demo of the product was anything to go by, we were definitely left impressed with what they had to show. In fact, we got them to give us a complete demonstration of their shopping cart for you guys to see and also had a small talk on how they think their product will make lives easier for shoppers, retailers as well as advertisers. Blink’s product is based on the simple premise that, shopping decisions are made on the shop floor and not at home in front of the TV. Therefore, even advertising and product pitches should be made at the same time. Their shopping cart offers a lot of intuitive features to make shopping easy for shoppers while giving ample opportunities to promote sales offers for advertisers. Happy customers, better advertising mean happy retailers and happy blink media. The idea certainly seems great, but will the larger mass lap it up just as well? Anyway, it was certainly great to see some pure play product innovation from an Indian company. Here is the video of the demo of what we think is an iPhone meets contextual advertising meets shopping case. Blink was one of the shortlisted startups at Proto Delhi. For more videos from Proto and the digital media industry in general make sure you catch WATshow every week. Related PostsAlso check out Our Jobsite: WATJob Our Video Show: WATShow Our Gaming Blog: WATGame Our Consulting: WATConsult More Recent Articles |
UTStarcom, 
The IPTV solution, which will be made with Aksh’s iControl service, is aimed at offering interactive entertainment such as time-shifting, video-on-demand (VOD), interactive gaming, live television voting and distance learning programs. Aksh is an optical fiber cable manufacturer in India and one of the first companies to set up its own fiber manufacturing units in the country.
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