 |
There are 3 new posts in "WATBlog.com - Web, Advertising and Technology Blog in India" Startup Review : Uhooroo.com( The following Startup Review is being done with help from Harshal ) What is it about? Well, Uhooroo describe itself as :
I remember reading the lesson that an entrepreneur had learnt from one of his failed startup and it was - “If you pitch starts with it’s a platform for…, make sure you have billions of dollars in your bank, for that’s how much it takes to build a platform” Uhooroo team seems to have included too many platforms in its About Us page. The page further explains that “Uhooroo is designed to encourage musicians to completely free themselves & lose themselves into their art - show case their talent, promote their music, network with other musicians, offer their services for hire and take up music as a serious career & business. Uhooroo is designed to allow musicians to reach out to and get noticed by a growing music community.” So, in a nut-shell, artistes can upload their work to Uhooroo.com. People can sample their work there and even rate it. Based on ratings, new visitors can decide which music to download. Artists also have a chance to network with each other. For the artists, there are real-time analytics about what the people say about you. Further, there is also a contest, where in the artistes can showcase their works and get rated by the audience. Based on certain algorithm, the Uhooroo system decides the winner. Uhooroo claims that it has in-built fraud detection system to check the various malpractices that might make a particular artiste win. An interesting feature is the interestingness of a song. Based on certain parameters, Uhooroo rates the interestingness of a song. The Experience The UI is quite pleasant and very easy to use. The homepage is very compelling and makes the user sign up without giving a second thought. The iPhone like slide music surfing interface is sleek and takes your breath away, but needs to be more browser friendly. It crashed a lot on Firefox (in our test). Also, there is no captcha to kep the spam bots away. In the long run, this can be a problem for the webmasters. Neither was there any email verification. It also does not tell you when you are ready to use your account, after the sign-up. It’s up to the user to figure it out. For example, even when I had registered, I was being shown the box asking me to “sign up”. For some unexplained reason I was unable to upload my music. For artists it’s a great platform. You get comments on your work, you get real time analytics on how your work is liked by the audience and what do they think about you, etc. WAT Suggests : 1) Playlists - It’s a music site right? It would be interesting if I could add the songs to a playlist and then listen to it the next time I visit Uhooroo. 2) I would love it if I could keep the current songs/playlist running and surf the other songs like Phulki offers me to do 3) Why video why not get the music section working better and good 4) No albums. Why do I have to get a dif album art for each track? Can’t I use the same one for one artiste or album? Overall the site is a very good attempt in its category and if some of the bugs mentioned here are taken care of, has the potential to be the eBay of music, for India. (If it’s not the intended model, I would request the founders to consider it) Conclusion Overall with the potential of this site and the way it could have been if it had a better navigation, it would have been a great place to find new music and artists. I would still love to go to this site if they have the playlist feature so that I don’t have to go searching again for the songs I like. It’s a 6/10 for this one. -2 marks for small bugs like the uploading bug and the signup bug and -2 marks for not having the playlist feature. (Thank you Bharath Madhusudan, Founder, Uhooroo.com for providing the lead.) Most Commented PostsAlso check out Our Jobsite: WATJob Our Video Show: WATShow Our Gaming Blog: WATGame Our Consulting: WATConsult Why Are Publishers Creating Their Own Ad Networks? And Which Publishers In India Can Join The AdNetwork Game?LinkedIn is soon to launch its own adnetwork ofcourse in collaboration with ad network Collective Media (which targets high-end media sites) reports Techcrunch. This isn’t the first time a large publisher in the US has gone into launching its own ad network. Recently even technorati had launched its own ad network for blogs in the US.
Whats interesting is that as soon as a publisher sees good traction and becomes considerably large they prefer to launch their own ad networks rather than rely on standalone networks to monetize their inventory. Given this trend a huge number of ad networks have come up. This trend was started by Google via adwords and extended to Yahoo acquiring overture and MSN announcing adcentre. Then the stanalone popular sites in the US like Technorati, Glam which have a focussed audience and a network of sites. There was also facebook and myspace that announced an adnetwork like model late last year but beacon got a lot of flak and myspace platform is still to see the light of the day. But nonetheless the intentions to start a network are still there. And its no surprise why because the ad network market is set to boom if the stats given below are to be believed:
Question is why are popular sites choosing to launch their own ad networks? 1) Older models like CPC, CPM dont work - Most of these newer sites are built more around user engagement than impressions and therefore impressions isn’t a great metric to just ad roi by and hence these sites are better creating their own ad networks to highlight the best models for advertisers. 2) Niche/Premium Audience/Targetting - Many of these standalone sites have either niche or premium segment which cannot be price by clicks or impressions because is not how many clicks but who is the person who is clicking. They provide a focussed TG and can also target better as they know their audience. 3) Control on Ad Technology/Advertisers & Revenue - Recently rediff got some flak for a indecent ad on one of its pages and thats what happens when you choose an adnetwork and forget to monitor it. Having your own ad network means better control on technology, advertisers and revenue. 4) Better Understanding of Advertisers - Given your own ad network on can analyse not only self traffic but also other similar site traffic for understanding what may work best for an advertiser. 5) Better/Customized ad models for other Publishers - Being a publisher yourself you can provide better ad models for other publishers as you know your space well and have understood what works.
India has also been part of this trend. Just recently Games2win launched an adnetwork for gamers called inviziads.com. But otherwise most adnetworks are coming from the media buyers stable i.e. the online advertising agencies like Webchutney (which launched 2 ad networks), Interactive avenues Admagnet, Ishir Digital’s TonicTag, PerceptKnorigin’s Adchakra, Quasar’s Tyroo. There are also only ad network companies like Komli (which owns a property in loanraja.com) and Ozone (which was funded by IDG). There are also international players like AOL’s advertising.com which plan to enter the Indian Market.
So though quite a few publishers are still to launch their own ad networks.
Which are the Indian Publishers that can launch their own adnetworks? The Big Three in Classified Space and the seem to be in an Ideal position: 1) The Naukri group with sites like naukri.com, 99acres.com, jeevansaathi.com, brijj.com, studyplaces.com and shiksha.com is well placed to either acquire or build its own ad network which can further extend to other publishers as well. 2) The Shaadi group with Shaadi.com, makaan.com, fropper.com and astrolife.com looks in a good position as well. 3) The BharatMatrimony group (Consim Info) which has sites like bharatmatrimony.com, indiapropety.com, loanwala.com, indialist.com, indiautomobile.com. 4) Rediff.com - Which had P4C but which did not extend itself to other publishers beyond the rediff platform. It will be interesting to see if the same is relaunched. 5) Web18 Group - Web18 with its huge network of sites and now also with a horizontal portal in in.com is very well placed to launch a generic ad network. What do readers think? Would we see publisher driven ad networks in India? Related PostsAlso check out Our Jobsite: WATJob Our Video Show: WATShow Our Gaming Blog: WATGame Our Consulting: WATConsult Get Online Visibility Easily And Manage Your Online Reputation With LookupPageIn a previous post, we have blogged how to manage your online presence with the help of Google Docs and Yahoo Pipes. But, it requires:- 1. You already have an online presence 2. You are familiar with RSS, how to use Google docs and how to mash up and filter Yahoo Pipes.
But, considering a novice user who has no/less online visibility, who just begun their online life; upon Googling their name shows irrelevant entries. So, for them some options available are:- 1. Create a blog, put up site tracking software and submit it to Various Search Engines and WAIT… 2. Sign up for social networking sites where profiles are listed in Google.
While 1 is lengthy process and it require some knowledge about Analytics tools and takes time to build credibility, 2 has a shortcoming that though your profile gets listed on Search engines, you can’t keep a track of how a visitor landed onto your profile page, demographics details and what was he looking for.
As an alternate, there is a free service available called “LookupPage” which gets you a trackable online visibility easily which you can tweak so that people find accurate information when they search your name on the web,
Here are three simple steps for getting your name on Google with LookupPage: 1.The first step is to simply signup to LookupPage for free. 2.After sign-up you'll get to your personalized homepage, where you can:
3.Press the "Save" button and your page is ready. You can Google your name to see the results. Also, a visitor can contact you upon landing onto your profile page.
One you have created your online profile page you can monitor your visibility from the LookupPage homepage as shown under:-
The LookupPage service is an ego-booster not only designated for web oriented users, but can also benefit professionals, such as doctors, lawyers, realtors, consultants, web developers, and more who wish to easily manage their ego (online presence). Related PostsAlso check out Our Jobsite: WATJob Our Video Show: WATShow Our Gaming Blog: WATGame Our Consulting: WATConsult More Recent Articles
|
  |
Click here to safely unsubscribe now from "WATBlog.com - Web, Advertising and Technology Blog in India" or change subscription settings
| Your requested content delivery powered by FeedBlitz, LLC, 9 Thoreau Way, Sudbury, MA 01776, USA. +1.978.776.9498 |
No comments:
Post a Comment