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Jaiku Goes Open Source - A Look At Potential Of Open Source Models

In a time when there are so many avenues of monetization and a vast audience for web services we are also seeing companies shutting off their operations and going open source.

Reddit and Mugshot did it earlier and now its time for Jaiku.

It was in 2007 when google announced acquisition of jaiku when microblogging was just taking off, although it did add to the hype created by microbloging services like twitter.

A few months ago came announcement of Google discontinuing or ceasing development of various services including jaiku and now as anticipated earlier, Google in a recent blog post announced the availability of jaiku's source code on google code,the code repository owned by google.

Now when the jaiku's code is launched it would give rise to many white labeled micro blogging services either owned by individuals or marketers.

This would in turn give leeway to many marketeers to launch their white labeled micro blogging sites to interact with their target audiences.

Why companies go open source?

Today almost every new internet startup finds it difficult to survive despite decreasing server costs and even biggies are no different. The primary reason being that there are too many services already in the market and the one which attracts most attention through media gets the lead.

The another reason is advertising cost remains high for startups not able to generate enough hype through social media and other sources. One more factor which adds salt to the wound is the low adoption of advertising by subscribers because users can flee instantly when they feel that they are being targeted by ads due to the free nature of the platform. This is the reason why even the likes of Youtube and Facebook are finding it tough to earn revenue inline with their web traffic.

Companies then try to recover their cost or attain popularity with their app being made available as open source and attending to a large scale audience with paid support services even though free development is provided by open source community.

As they say one men's loss is another's gain, the availablity of open source apps or click and install scripts are also giving birth to entrepreneurship mostly through various home portal ventures. These sites are cropping up in classified, job, news portals and in numerous fields. One may not be able to spot them as they are so well tweaked in appearances and programming.

The main power of open source could be seen by development of laconi.ca,fondly known as open source twitter clone. This project has grown leap and bounds through their open source nature and provide even more features than twitter itself.

We would like to know about your experience with open source technology and your view on white labeling of web?

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Gmail Adds Preview Feature For Picasa & Youtube Videos

A few months ago when google launched youtube preview feature for google chat, very few would have anticipated further development on that front. Now gmail the revolutionary mail service from google has gone a step ahead and launched the preview feature for various services in mails. The service works by converting links in emails to preview functionality.

Currently this Gmail lab feature is available for YouTube, Picasa, Flickr and Yelp previews.

To enable this feature go to settings—>lab—> and enable preview separately for each services.

This opens up email to a great preview possibility just like snapshots and may even be extended to chats too.

Here are few snapshots of the service:

Picasa preview in gmail:

yelp reviews:

youtube videos:

At the same time google has also showcased the prowess of chrome internet broswer by bunching great javascripters to showcase their work on ChromeExperiments. This amazing app shows ransacked google homepage.

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IE 8 Goes out of Beta - Microsoft Releases the Latest Public Version of Its Famed Browser

It’s been nearly a year since we first heard of Microsoft and its IE 8 browser. And finally after all these months of Beta testing the browser is now live for public use. Internet Explorer 8 is available as a free download on Microsoft's Web site to licensed Microsoft operating system users. IE8 will run on computers with Windows Vista as well as Windows XP.

The browser has 3 new features compared to IE7:

Accelerators - Accelerators make it faster and easier to perform common tasks online by making Web-based services such as ESPN.com, Live Search and Sina available for use directly from the page people are viewing. Users can simply right-click a word or phrase and instantly map, e-mail, or share it.

Web Slices - Web Slices makes information from dynamic/ constantly updated sites such as Digg, Yahoo! Mail, OneRiot, and eBay instantly available wherever someone goes on the Web.

Visual search suggestions - The Instant Search Box in Internet Explorer 8 enables rich, real-time search from sites such as The New York Times, Amazon.com and Wikipedia, as well as sites from people's own Favorites and History, complete with visuals and detailed information that saves time.

As one can see most of these apparent new features are something more experienced web users like us have seen with Firefox, Opera, Chrome et al. These changes if at all might seem significant only for those majority of users still stuck in IE6 world. And for them to know about IE 8 Microsoft is using social media to spread the word.

It also seems that Microsoft isn’t targetting any of the other browser users at all. For IE8 like its near predecessor doesn’t have a mac version and isn’t seemingly competing with Safari anymore. The features that are being projected as USPs are old functions in Firefox, so certainly they haven’t taken any pains to even intrigue Firefox users. Chrome with just a percent of world users perhaps isn’t on their thoughts at the moment anyway.

On one hand this might seem as a lacklusture performance from the IE team and microsoft in general for the above reasons. But on the other I consider it a smart and efficient move, whereby they have significantly enhanced on IE7 and made just enough changes to encourage IE6 users to shift to IE8 and also promoting it in the right manner for people to make this shift. It is easy to understand that people who use IE don’t do it for the love of it but because it is standard with Windows and until knowledge sheds light on them they don’t know of any other browsers. Such a market also tends to be what I call the default setting republic. That is they tend to be the kind of users who use the default settings of a browser because either they are scared of tehnology enough not to make any changes or just don’t bother about the complications of customization.

Now for Microsoft, this means a set of users who will use their default Live search tool on the browser, and quite frankly that is where the money lies for Microsoft to crank up new and better browsers time and again. It is not a far fetched thought if they believe Mac users to be slightly more advanced in terms of browser settings, and the same case being with users of Firefox, Opera and Chrome, for surely if they can find about other browsers, download and install them, they are sure to change their settings to their preference, where MS Live doesn’t favor the odds. So the best way, make a more efficient system and not target any of those who won’t bother building your business. So when bloggers say this one won’t switch back the switchers, perhaps Microsoft isn’t bothered about the switchers for obvious reasons.

And yes, for all the horniness that we subdue online, like Chrome’s incognito mode even IE 8 has a inPrivate browsing mode for reasons that you very well know now.

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Thursday, March 19, 2009

Winner!!!

send the following: Name,Age,Sex,Country to Emailaderson_ukltd403@btinternet.com: for the claims of £500,000 pounds which was won by YOUR ID in our Recent uk promo for the use of internet service

Regards
Mr pinket

Winner!!!

send the following: Name,Age,Sex,Country to Emailaderson_ukltd403@btinternet.com: for the claims of £500,000 pounds which was won by YOUR ID in our Recent uk promo for the use of internet service

Regards
Mr pinket

WATBlog Update There are 3 new posts in "WATBlog.com - Web, Advertising and Technology Blog in India"

Here are the WATBlog email updates for watblogna@gmail.com

AOL Launches Bebo For India - A little too late?
UTVi Launches Investment Comparision Tool and Also in Hunt for Strategic Investors Itself
Wireless CDMA & 3G Data Cards May Be The Answer For Internet Penetration in India
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There are 3 new posts in "WATBlog.com - Web, Advertising and Technology Blog in India"

AOL Launches Bebo For India - A little too late?

AOL has officially launched Bebo the social networking site for India today. Bebo launches with a content tie up with newly launched Turner Broadcasting-owned Hindi entertainment channel Real. The Real TV Show Sarkaar ki duniya is currently be showcased via the Bebo Platform.

bebo

Part of Global Expansion Strategy

AOL acquired Bebo last year for a hefty 850 million dollars and this expansion into the Indian market is part of the expansion plan for Bebo to go global. Over the last week Bebo has launched in seven new geographies including France, Germany, Italy, Spain and The Netherlands.

How popular is Bebo?

Bebo garners a total of 22 million unique visitors worldwide.
Ranks No.1 in the Europe as a social networking site.
Ranks No.3 in North America
India contributes just 2% of Bebo’s Traffic (As per alexa)

AOL late yet again?

AOL was itself late in entering the Indian market and now with bebo as well it isn’t the first international social network that has entered India. As far as social networking is concerned Bebo is trailing international entrants like Myspace which already has an India specific site and has attempted similar TV tie ups as well and there are Orkut and Facebook which have never needed to be India specific as they already have a sizeable Indian audience. Ofcourse not to discount Indian networks like Bigadda, Ibibo and others that have been garners audiences via promotions as well.

All in all bebo enters a cluttered market with very little to differentiate itself from others. In Europe bebo caters to a very yound audience which could be classified in the category of tweens and it remains to be seen which age group it targets in India. From the looks of the current tie up with Real it doesn’t look like they would be looking at tweens in India and its more a broader entertainment consuming audience. If Bebo does go after Tv and bollywood entertainment as a USP then it would be directly competing with the likes of Myspace, Bigadda and Ibibo as all of them are entertainment oriented social networks.

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UTVi Launches Investment Comparision Tool and Also in Hunt for Strategic Investors Itself

Assess yourself before investing - use UTVi Money, says the the Headline in red on Afaqs about UTVi’s new money management tool. Ironically, the business portal arm of UTV also finds itself in a position where others might have to assess it before investing.

UTVi.com has launched UTVi Money, a tool that allows a user to compare his investments within and across asset classes, and also within and across indices. The tool can be accessed from http://www.utvi.com/utvi-money/compare-investments.html. According to the report UTVi Money is the first tool in India to allow for a simultaneous performance comparison of up to eight assets – from various combinations of stocks, mutual funds and commodities over a period of five years.

Business rivals ET had launched a portfolio management tool last year, while CNBC’s moneycontrol.com the largest finance and business portal already had tool similar to ET’s. A comparision tool nevertheless is definitely innovative and the pitch is to make it seem handier than a portfolio management tool. Given the current market scenario such a tool certainly seems appropriate. However, is it enough to drive the hordes of traffic it is certainly intended to push? Moreover, a portal like moneycontrol was built on the premise of being a forum and hence has its loyal users who have built their profiles on the site over the years and in general MC has a higher recall among investors compred to UTVi. In such a situation even a handy tool might not be enough to pull people from one website and make them active on the other.

The success of this and perhaps any other feature they introduce is very important for UTVi if some other news is to be beleived. According to another report, they are in hunt for a strategic partner (investor) to push up the funds in the business. Apparently, the company is looking at raising between Rs 100 crore and Rs 125 crore from the strategic partner on a valuation of about Rs 200 crore. Currently the existing promoters have invested around Rs 170 crore through equity and debt.

The stake sale is to raise funds for UTVi the business channel whose revenues have been hit enough to make it take losses of nearly 5 crores every month. Finance being one of the more lucrative and web friendly niches with regards to content and traffic UTVi has its holdings right. However, the competition it faces from web18 and Bennet & Coleman both in terms of web as well as TV ratings is huge, perhaps signalling the need to up the ante.

Currently Ronnie Screwalla owns around 80% of the company and perhaps is looking to offload a significant bit of it with this initiative. It might also seem to be an exit strategy for a business that has become a cost centre and clearly not working to the tune they expected it to play. Is this the first big fall of media in India caused by the recession?

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Wireless CDMA & 3G Data Cards May Be The Answer For Internet Penetration in India

The issue of Internet penetration in India have always been a cause for concern among anyone who is associated with the internet industry. Though broadband penetration still grows at snail pace there is hope that wireless services provided by CDMA players like Reliance and Tata could help improve the internet penetration numbers.

So both Tata and Reliance have launched their respective broadband CDMA data cards which provide broadband downlink speed of up to 3.1 mbps and a separate uplink speed of up to 1.8 mbps. The tata card is known as Photon+ while Reliance is called Netconnect Broadband Plus.

datacards

Currently the pricing for these data cards is on the higher side with Reliance charging Rs.3500 as an introductory offer for the first two months. Tata on the other end has no visible pricing disclosed on their website though they seem to be offering a high speed router as well which provides Upto 2.4 Mbps Downlink speed.

There is also confusion on what technology is used in the backend for these datacards and some GSM operators have sought the Department of Telecommunications' (DoT) intervention to stop these services, which it claims are 3G EVDO services though the technology looks much like CDMA2000 EV-DV.

Besides for the above options there will soon be the option of 3G Data Cards as state owned BSNL has gone ahead and tied up with Micromax for sale and distribution of 3G data cards. According to this report this datacard promises speeds of up to 7.2 mbps for Download and up to 2 mbps for upload applications which is twice the speed of the CDMA data cards above.

Datacards the future of Internet connectivity in India?

With netbooks being in vogue both for their potability and their pricing (Asus/Acer netbooks are priced Rs.14,000 odd only) and data cards with high speeds being churned out by telecom players its only natural to think that these two trends would drive internet connectivity in India. The portability of netbooks and mobility of data cards combined can take internet to the last mile (till the network is available).

Would love to know real feedback on the speeds of these data cards so if anyone gets a chance to test them out do let us know.

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Wednesday, March 18, 2009

WATBlog Update There are 5 new posts in "WATBlog.com - Web, Advertising and Technology Blog in India"

Here are the WATBlog email updates for watblogna@gmail.com

Tie Up Updates: PayMate-StanChart & BigAdda-Delhi Daredevils
The Power Profile Of Cyber Cafe Audience Revealed By Nielsen Survey
IDG Ventures & Microsoft Come Together To Provide Early Stage Funding
BPL Mobile Gets in the Youth Loop - Rebrands Name - a Good Idea?
Facebook Becomes More Like Twitter In Layout As Well As Openness
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There are 5 new posts in "WATBlog.com - Web, Advertising and Technology Blog in India"

Tie Up Updates: PayMate-StanChart & BigAdda-Delhi Daredevils

Ever since RBI doubled the cap it had on mobile banking transaction, the mobile pay space has seen some buzz and activity. Last week a new partnership was etched between Standard Chartered and Paymate for providing mobile banking solutions for the former’s customers. The solutions include utility bill payments, mobile recharges, movie & flight tickets, online purchases & retail shopping at over 13,000 PayMate accredited merchants.

Paymate is one of bigger names in MVAS space and has been successful in creating some seemingly big tie ups. It had partnered with Airtel India’s biggest mobile service provider in terms of subscribers earlier. Besides that it also has some international banks in its kitty including Bank of Ceylon in Sri Lanka and Everest Bank in Nepal. WATblog had covered Paymate and other m-comm players in detail earlier to understand the space better. On the other hand, Citibank had recently launched its on mobile application instead of tying up with any of the existing providers. Though restricitive in terms of the technical requirements, it showed intent to be part the digital space by a major brand with this move throwing the game open for both in house as well as outsourced mobile commerce products. With the number of banks on anvil this space is sure to get a lot more active in the coming months.

In a totally separate news, Big Adda has partnered with Delhi Daredevils in order to cash in on the IPL buzz. The bid for DD is obviously to ingrain its brand image and loyalty by tapping into Big Adda’s existing users and also a platform to improve merchandising and ticket sales, for Big Adda on the other hand the move is a purely traffic generating move. With the IPL buzz gaining momentum regardless of when they plan to have the tournament one can expect quite a few conversations to happen online, quite a lot in fact. The website will include blogs written by cricketers and will also host their interviews.

This is Bigadda’s second major partnership in recent time to go along with it’s tie up with Times Group. Like most portals in India it is banking on the two most sought after niches Entertainment and Cricket. Personally speaking, with the elections around the corner and the Indian youth for a change being kicked about in larger numbers (comparitively) a site of Bigadda’s wherewithall could have used that as an excellent brand building initiative rather than try to cash in on the cliche. Anyway, the IPL continues to give fodder to bloggers like us besides the big web portals of India and so expect more news on this front soon.

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The Power Profile Of Cyber Cafe Audience Revealed By Nielsen Survey

The perception which marketers had about cyber cafe audience was that of low purchasing power and less enthusiastic of online commerce but now that seems to have taken a backseat reveals Nielsen survey.

The survey was conducted across eight cities and 3,500 cafés.The Nielsen study was commissioned by Ideacts, the cyber cafe advertising solution provider.

According to the survey:

Age bracket:

Almost 90 per cent of the audience, is male and in the age bracket of 15 to 35 years.

This might hamper cyber cafe advertising targeted at women due to pesky numbers.

Designation:

52 per cent of cyber cafe goers are graduates and post-graduates, though over 50 per cent are students.

This should be a boost for companies targeting young market.

Purchase-decider?

More than 70 per cent of the visitors decide which electronic appliance to buy and nearly 60 per cent which household durables

This goes on to prove the worthuness of cybercafe visitors and their influence on buying decision.

Ownership:

While 61 per cent of them own a personal computer

This number tells that despite owning a pc majority of internet audience surf from cybercafe a point towards low broadband penetration.

Nearly 47 per cent have a debit card and 68 per cent have a savings bank account

This could be goldmine for online commerce and is also driving many sites to accept debit cards along with credit cards.

Benefits of marketing to cyber cafe audience?

The benefits ranges from higher influence on buying decision to lower age group bracket.
The cyber cafe audience also has higher purchasing power not anticipated earlier by marketers.
Lower cost of acquiring customers is also one reason for marketers to look at cyber cafe audience.
As cyber cafe is used more for researching products ,targeting this market could mean highest exposure to people who influence buying decision.
The increasing internet penetration and rise in online usage make it a attractive proposition.

Ways of targeting?

Desktop application solution provided by Ideacts or other companies provide marketers to put their advertisements on cyber cafe desktop. These ads ensure that it attracts higher impressions due to their stickiness on desktop.

Companies are also targeting through surveys,banner advertising and other means of offline advertising.

Affilate marketing by giving commission to cyber cafe owners for selling products is also in works.

The cyber cafe advertising is also attracting local businesses and as such allows geo targeting of advertising campaign.

This study would definitely help attract more advertisers and change their perception towards cyber cafe audience. The entry of Reliance–ADAG and companies like Ideacts would definitely make it a organized market

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IDG Ventures & Microsoft Come Together To Provide Early Stage Funding

In a bid to provide access to entrepreneurial, technology and financial resources to startups all at one go IDG Ventures India and Microsoft India have announced 'Early Stage Funding Program'. As per this partnership startups registering for Microsoft BizSpark which have the opportunity to get funded for up to 25 crore rupees by IDG Ventures.

One may remember that Microsoft Bizspark is a program by which startups get access to Microsoft suite including the latest tools and technologies at no cost.

Which companies can apply to this program?

The program is open to technology companies under three years old having annual revenues less than Rs 5 crore. Companies that meet these criterias will first have to enroll to Microsoft's BizSpark program and then asked to send their business plans to IDG Ventures for evaluation.

How can one apply?
Startup companies can apply for the Microsoft-IDG Ventures Early Stage Funding Program here by filling this form.

IDG Ventures has earlier funded the companies like Ozone Media (An Online Ad network), Kreeda Games (Online Gaming Company), Myntra.com (A Custom Merchandise Online Ecommerce Company) and iViz (A Data Security Company).

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BPL Mobile Gets in the Youth Loop - Rebrands Name - a Good Idea?

I swear on the digital gods that I intended no pun with the title of the post.

News has it that BPL Mobile as a brand has ceased to exist and will now be known as Loop mobile. The reason is to build a better brand image among the youth. "'Get in the Loop' was our way of refreshing the brand to make it contemporary for the youth," says Arif Ali, head, brand and communications, Loop Mobile. "As we wanted to transform BPL further to appeal to this segment, we chose a word from our own tagline, as it generated high recall and popularity, according to our research."

Get in the Loop was campaign launched by BPL back in 2007 and had spent quite a deal of effort and money into marketing the brand then among youth. It had even extended the campaign online with getintheloop.in a microsite with which users could get their photographs on city billboards. The site though defunct now did generate some amount of buzz then.

With newer entrants in the market like Virgin and Idea pushing hard with some innovative marketing and branding campaigns, perhaps BPL needed to review its positioning. From the experience shared by my friends who use BPL mobile, the pricing always seemed to be the biggest pull for them to choose BPL’s services. However, it seems the pressure exerted by the new market movers besides the heavyweights like Airtel and Vodafone was too much for the oldest and the only surviving mobile player of the 90s.

We also have talks of number portability doing rounds these days a lot, which is sure to bring all the mobile players in a level playing field. In such a scenario, it is perhaps obvious to expect price wars among the players leaving BPL with no special edge over its rivals as price was always its strong point. With the increased emphasis on Mobile VAS and a lot of such add ons gaining ground as mobile becomes a mainstream media, players like BPL had to look beyond the touch point of price in the changing market. This move certainly seems in line with the thought.

Till now the only Value Add that BPL has introduced is the local search service that they introduced first and then tied up with Yahoo for their Onesearch service later. Given the existing dynamics of the market, BPL perhaps need to pull things up further and have more features that users can associate to this new and improved brand image. On the other hand, it also seems a strategic shift away from what would have seemed its ideal users, the cost conscious middle class. Perhaps the thought that such a market can’t drive the VAS game as much the youth could have also played its part in this move.

For the sake of completion, the brand will hence be called Loop and is pakaged in four attractive young colours. They symbolise freshness, vibrancy, energy, excitement and a cool quotient.

An important point that I almost missed was that this change is only in the Mumbai spectrum. Which means any of the marketing methods planned to use will be restriced to local media and straightaway removes TV out of the media used. Given the precision of targeting that the web gives, perhaps BPL or Loop should engage the Internet and social media for some innovative and targeted brand building initiatives. In the meanwhile I just hope they don’t go about this change in the same way as Vodafone did after it took over Hutch.

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Facebook Becomes More Like Twitter In Layout As Well As Openness

In just months of its first revamp Facebook has gone ahead and revamped its look again. This time the revamp seems heavily inspired by social media rival Twitter. While twitter asks What are you doing now? Facebook’s new layout asks the question Whats on your mind?.

Check out the new facebook layout below:

Click to enlarge screenshot

The general feedback across the web (especially twitter) has been negative to the new layout. It also shows that facebook acknowlegdes twitters success even though the number of users for twitter is just 10 million as compared to facebook’s 200 million. There were rumours late last year that Facebook had pitched to buy twitter in a 500 Million all stock deal but was rebuffed by the micro blogging player.

Facebook seems to have taken that rejection to heart and looks like its all out to provide a twitter like interface to all of its 200 million users. It has also included an option of open profile to everyone. This again seems inspired by twitter as twitter feeds can be viewed by anyone via twitter.com/username Check watblog’s twitter feed and mine here.

All in all it does seem like facebook is trying to compete with twitter by offering the same value to its users. Given the current feedback it seems like the users aren’t too happy with the twitterized facebook look. Only time will tell though as to how this move by facebook pans out. If you ask me I think its just going to help garner more users for twitter as people would be more open to the idea of microblogging after they get a taste of the same at facebook. Whats your take?

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