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Saturday, April 4, 2009

WATBlog Update "Google In Talks To Acquire Twitter?" from "WATBlog.com - Web, Advertising and Technology Blog in India"

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"Google In Talks To Acquire Twitter?" from "WATBlog.com - Web, Advertising and Technology Blog in India"

Google In Talks To Acquire Twitter?

If the sources at Techcrunch are to be believed then Google is definitely in race to buy out Twitter.

The negotiations are said to be in advanced stage and the price being quoted is in upwards of $250milion.

Even though this price is less than the earlier offer of $500miilion in shares by Facebook the cash component could see google winning the game.

Why this deal looks imminent?

  • The founders of Twitter-Van Williams and Biz Stone, earlier sold their blogger platform to google so their past association could come into play.
  • Despite rapid growth in its subscribers twitter fails to find perfect monetization strategy for their microblog platform. Google ads could solve that!
  • The future might even be bleak with rapid increase in spamming on twitter. One should not forget that rapid increase in spamming could even mar the service and its current features are inadequate to stop it.
  • The only asset which twitter has unlike other social networks collection of videos and pics is the status updates by its users which could be valuable to a company like google but not to them.

The acquisition if it succeeds would even provide a boost to the service as it would be coming under Google’s umbrella and could attend mainstream use by integration with other google services.

This could even give a boost to Google’s social networking play and integration of previously discontinued jaiku which it made open source and twitter could help google to revive its fortune in microblog scenario.

Although many players may enter the fray taking it as the next big opportunity to attend the size of facebook google’s part will be important as they already have a plan and resources in place.

Rishabh Kaul Adds - Unlike Facebook or Myspace, twitter is so much more than a social network. It's a search engine. A medium to track conversations, brand presence what not. And all this in real time.  I suppose that's why it makes great business sense for Google to acquire Twitter considering that Google makes a sizeable portion of money through search. Twitter on the other hand doesn't have a concrete business model right now and just like youtube it might make sense to bite the acquisition bullet from the Giant google.

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Friday, April 3, 2009

WATBlog Update There are 2 new posts in "WATBlog.com - Web, Advertising and Technology Blog in India"

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Chipzilla Intel To Beat Rivals With Westmere

Worldwide microprocessor shipments fell significantly in the fourth quarter and are likely to decline further in the first half of this year says research firm IDC, In a bid to tackle recession and it’s rivals Intel is racing fast ahead with Nehalem and Westmere.

Nehalem code name for Intel’s new Core i7 is the tock of Intel’s tick-tock development cycle, if you don’t know intel follows tick-tock development cycle where in tick it moves on to a new process and in tock to a newer improved architecture and Core i7 is the latest microarchitecture from the company.

Some of the significant features of Core i7 are:

- Two, four, or eight cores, 731 million transistors for the quad core variant

- Integrated memory controller supporting two or three memory channels of DDR3 SDRAM or four FB-DIMM channels which offers three times the memory bandwidth of the previous dual channel controller at DDR3 1066 memory speeds

- Intel QuickPath Interconnect which replaces Intel’s frontside bus that exists on previous generation intel processors

- Simultaneous multithreading (SMT) by multiple cores and hyperthreading, which enables two threads per core. Simultaneous multithreading has not been present on a consumer desktop Intel processor since 2006 with the Pentium 4 and Pentium XE.

- 1.1x to 1.25x the single-threaded performance or 1.2x to 2x the multithreaded performance at the same power level

- 30 % lower power usage for the same performance

Core i7 is a major advance in processor making it more of a system on chip it is made in 45nm process. Core i7, released on November 15, 2008 in Tokyo and November 17, 2008 in the USA. The first computer to use Nehalem-based Xeon processors was the Mac Pro workstation announced on March 3, 2009. Nehalem-based Xeon EX processors for larger servers are expected in Q4 2009. Mobile Nehalem-based processors will follow in 2010.

Also Intel reportedly announced in february that it plans to accelerate its production of 32-nanometer processors and cancel some of its 45-nm integrated graphic chips in a bid to increase its lead over rival AMD and is now moving to westmere which is basically 32nm processor with Nehalem architecture. The first 32-nm chips will be in production later this year, including the dual-core chips codenamed Clarkdale and Arrandale and Intel is investing $7 Billion in manufacturing facilities in US for the same.

This move of Intel is a big punch in the face for AMD, though AMD released Phenom II to compete with Intel core i7, Phenom II is reportedly much inferior to Core i7 and AMD won’t have a desktop chip comparable to the 45-nm Core i7 until next year, and its 32-nm chips are not expected until 2011.

“By transitioning to 32 nm aggressively Intel is pressing its advantage competitively,” says IDC’s Rau. “Now instead of competing against AMD or others, Intel is effectively competing against itself and the market forces.” as quoted in Wired.

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Yahoo Unveils Its Elections Portal

Yahoo! India has come up with a portal to keep its users up to date with the on goings of the 2009  General Elections. The website can be viewed at elections.yahoo.in. The ultimate aim of the portal as they say is to create an involved and informed voter.

Updates on election schedules, expert analysis, online polls, discussion forums, opinions and photos would be some of the key features on the site. Users can also create their "own" manifestos by choosing which topic they would like to address. As the site evolves, Yahoo! India will also include interesting features like Manifesto Comparisons (a user can compare manifestos of various political parties) as well as comic strips on various news and updates during the tenure of the elections.

Apart from this the website aims to educate the youth on elections since many of them will be voting for the first time.

According to Pearl Uppal, Director – Sales, Yahoo! India, "Political parties and advertisers have come of age and are now actively looking at the digital medium to reach the youth audience, a key demographic for them. We have been approached by leading political parties and their agencies that have shown keen interest in advertising on Yahoo! to communicate with a highly engaged audience on the Yahoo! network. This is indeed an encouraging trend in the new age media"

It would be interesting to note whether political party's ads would be showcased on the elections portal.

While the site is new and one should give it time to grow especially for the part where the content is user generated, one feels in general there isn't much in depth coverage. Personally I prefer IBNPolitics.com in this regard which seems to have a much more comprehensive coverage of the whole event.

This past year has seen the emergence of many web portals to inform the voters of their rights as well as of the election scenario in India. The long list includes Jaagore, Lead India, Vote India amongst others.

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WATBlog Update There are 2 new posts in "WATBlog.com - Web, Advertising and Technology Blog in India"

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IT Spending in 2009 - Let’s Know More..

Don’t you think any moron can conclude that IT spending in 2009 will reduce due to the current economic recession ? The answer is yes, he can conclude; but over here we will look into the details of how and why will IT Spending in 2009 go down.

There have been research reports all over the web indicating that the biggest cause of this slowdown would be the catastrophe caused due to the breakdown of the financial system. Severe shortage in liquidity is the main reason why companies are cutting costs in investing into products and services on the internet. Gartner came out with a report suggesting some key insights -

1. Global IT spending will decline by 3.8 percent in the current fiscal year. Worldwide IT spending to total $3.2 trillion in 2009, as compared to 2008’s revenue of nearly $3.4 trillion.

2. The software market being more mature will fare better as compared to the times in 2001.

3. Lower budgets, slack in hardware implementations and hardware maintenance spending would largely be reserved.

This year would also be the perfect time for S-a-a-S and Open Source users to position their strategies so as to get a number of opportunities and grow in leaps and bounds. It is also good news for IT outsourcing as it is expected to out perform other sectors and grow at a moderate rate this year. Forrester reports, “While consultancy and systems integration will slip, IT outsourcing growth will be small, but positive at 2.1 percent. It could improve to 6.8% on 2010.” The genuine assumption here is that the cost cutting opportunities would make the Indian companies command a competitive advantage.

NDTV Profit’s report further said that India’s IT spending is expected to slacken this year, growing at an annual 14.1 per cent, down from 18.1 per cent recorded in 2008. Springboard Research’s report titled ‘India IT Market Predictions 2009′ said, IT spending in retail and real estate will be the hardest hit, but the advent of 3G and a protected financial system will help sustain growth in the telecom and banking sectors respectively. Dell’s restrucuring of its business operations into four segments viz. consumer, large enterprise, public sector and small and medium businesses is an indicator of a change in strategy after the analysis of current trends.

Times are such when all IT companies across borders are cutting down their costs and reducing budgets while consumers are keeping a check on their discretionary spending. The stimulus packages that governments have offered will have a positive impact in the long run, but situations presently will not turn hunky dory instantly. New Market penetration and replacement activities will suffer in different markets and have a different impact on businesses worldwide. A ray of hope lies when 2010 comes and the spendings will be expected to grow.

So, let us live through 2009 by making the best use of what we have.

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Burrp! Acquired By Infomedia18 - Strategy Or Distress?

Burrp! the local lifestyle listings company has been reportedly been acquired by Infomedia18 which is a part of the Network18 group. If one may recollect burrp! was funded by Haresh Chawla the CEO of Network18 group for an undisclosed sum. So this acquisition isn’t surprising. What is surprising though is the timing of the acquisition. Just a few days before the financial year end makes one think whether this was actually a hurriedly wrapped up decision rather than a planned one.

Bear in mind that these are tough times and given that burrp! was still building out its traction rather than earning big bucks from advertisers it would have been needing rounds of funding. It could be very possible that this acquisition was the fall out of a lack of funding from Haresh Chawla or the inability to raise funds from other sources rather than a planned move. We have sent our questions to deap ubhi founder of burrp! and are awaiting responses from his end.

In the meanwhile have a look at the WATShow below with Deap late last year where he talks about Burrp! no longer being an only online company.

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Thursday, April 2, 2009

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

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TieUps Update: BigFlix - MChek / Cricinfo - Snaptu

Mobile tie ups seems to be the flavour of the day! Two web companies have tied up with two mobile companies for two very different reasons. Here is is a low down on their respective tie ups.

BigFlix ties up with MChek for mobile payments

BIGFlix.com the online- offline movie rental company has tied up with with mChek to enable mobile payments for dvd rentals.

In order to avail the service, BIGFlix.com customers need to first send "RENEW" to 55454 and register oneself for MChek if they already haven’t done so. Its an IVR led service and hence would work on all telecom operators and all customers availing this service can use any Visa / Mastercard issued by any bank in India.

Not sure on the adoption of such a payment mechanism for something like dvd rentals. Its a sign though that alternative payment options are taking off especially when it comes to mobile payments post the RBI guidelines.

Cricinfo Ties up with Snaptu

ESPN’s Cricinfo the worlds leading cricket site announced a strategic tie up with Snaptu to create a mobile app which delivers international cricket scores and news.

Snaptu’s mobile app provides services like twitter and facebook on your phone. The competitor for snaptu is someone like fring which also provides similar services.

By having a cricinfo app snaptu has done well to integrate a publisher with a fairly large audience in India. Snaptu is owned by Moblica an isreal based company into mobile applications.

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RIM Launches Mobile App World For Blackberry - Other Phone Makers To Follow?

Research In Motion, the makers of blackberry mobile phone has launched Mobile App World, a new mobile app storefront for BlackBerry. The app store expects 1000 applications in the first week which would give it a leeway against apple’s app success.

Many emulated versions of iphone apps would find their way to Mobile app world and thus provide an additional platform for app developers to expand in a big way.

To browse Mobile App World, BlackBerry users first need to download the App World app.

This move follows the recent announcement of Microsoft entering the app market for its mobile flagship product-windows mobile. They would even have a return back policy for any paid app within a day.

There are many other phone makers in the waiting to launch their own app store either fully owned by them or in partnership with others as Nokia would be launching its OVI store soon and Android is already in the market with some 2300 apps.

What really makes apps -an attractive proposition?

The Volume game - Apple’s iPhone App Store has registered more than 800 million downloads and boasts just 25,000 apps. They even get 30% commission on paid offerings which in turn is significant amount looking at no effort being put by them.

More sales: App offering attracts more attention of users and in turn positively affects the sales of mobile phone.

Media gimmicks - App store also helps companies to get continuous media attention through the app launches and successes.

No development cost - The companies saves money and time which they otherwise might have to spend on developing inhouse application for mobile phone users.

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Internet Report Pegs India at No.115 For Internet Speed

Akamai has released its 4th State of the internet report in which is states the following findings:

  • India ranked #20 globally for number of unique IP addresses seen by Akamai, with 2.63 million IP's

o Up 42.91% year-over-year, and 1.69% from Q3 2008
o In comparison, United States was ranked #1 with 114.1 million unique IPs

  • India's average connection speed was at 772 Kbps and ranked #115 in terms of average connection speed

o Globally, the average connection speed was approximately 1.5 Mbps
o The United States ranked #17 globally, with an average connection speed of 3.9 Mbps while South Korea ranked #1 with an average connection speed of 15 Mbps

  • India ranked #17 globally in terms of attack traffic, with 1.16% of observed attack traffic. In comparison, United States was ranked #1 with 22.85% of observed attack traffic
  • India ranked #148 globally for number of unique IP addresses per capita, with 0.0023
  • India ranked #62 globally for high broadband adoption, with 0.56% of connections to Akamai at speeds over 5 Mbps
  • India ranked #81 globally for high broadband penetration, with fewer than 0.0001 high broadband IPs per capita in Q4 2008
  • India ranked #93 globally for broadband adoption, with 3.74% of connections to Akamai at speeds over 2 Mbps
  • India ranked #118 globally for broadband penetration, with 0.0001broadband IPs per capita in Q4 2008
  • India ranked #55 globally for narrowband adoption, with 25.8% of connections to Akamai at speeds below 256 Kbps

The most interesting of the above was the internet speeds in which India ranks 115 over the world.

Internet speeds is key to the following:

1) Great browsing experience i.e. load times and script execution times.

2) Video, audio and gaming which all involve high bandwidth and speed usage.

The above two aspects directly affect revenues as well as online advertising remain nascent due to lack of usage of rich media ads and their delivery being a question mark due to slow speeds.

While India is making progress with the speeds with high speed data cards penetrating the market the fair usage policies of companies are making internet surfing more costly by placing a cap on the monthly bandwidth usage. I believe TRAI and the authorities need to work with the ISPs and data service providers to make sure that India’s ranking can improve in the years to come.

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Admagnet To Handle Ad Sales For People Interactive

People Interactive  the company behind internet brands such as Shaadi.com, Makaan.com, Fropper.com, Astrolife.com and Shaaditimes.com has decided to outsource its ad sales management to DGTL Media the parent company of the ad network admagnet.

Shaadi.com is one of the top 1000 sites in the world as per alexa and it also gets a good amount of US centric visitors as per quantcast. Even though the numbers of page views and visitors are quite high classified models like shaadi.com and makaan.com haven’t really been able to scale up their ad revenues. Most of their revenues come from subscription sales. This move clearly indicates a need to outsource non core functions to a specialist which in this case is Admagnet.

So all ad sales for People Interactive will now be handled by DGTL Media. This also means that Admagnet the ad network would have inventory of over 200 million impressions a month at its disposal. This also includes up market NRI’s.

The question that remains is the value of ads on a matrimony or property site vis a vis a content site like rediff.com. I mean is there a way to pit one against the other? Common sense would suggest that people looking for brides or grooms are less likely to click on ads unless its an ad about a wedding ring! Whats your take?

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Google’s New Strategy For India

Back in 2006, Google's chief Eric Schmidt told in an interview to TOI that India will emerge as the world’s largest internet market in the world. This statement was based on a few facts and figures that Google had analysed and it has come out to be true.

It does make business sense to change your strategy for a specific market that has the capability to offer you the maximum profits. So, Google has changed its offerings for India and will now come up with a mix of online, offline and mobile offerings. If we study about the tweak in strategy in detail, we would understand that this is a very well thought move.

With strict adherence to its mission statement, which is “to organise the world's information and make it universally accessible and useful”; Google has divided the target market it caters to in three broad classifications viz. individual users, advertisers and enterprises. Search remains their USP in India and they obviously are the numero uno in India for the same too.

Social Media has emerged and Google’s 95 percent revenues come from advertising and thus the ads on Orkut deserves a special mention. Google India Managing Director Shailesh Rao says, “Google is now strengthening its focus on Tier II and III cities as part of its mission to target emerging usersThis underscores its online strategy“. But, the scope of a mobile strategy is well advocated when Google India Country Head (products) Vinay Goel says, “There are around 55.5 million Internet users (2008 figures), as compared to 376 million mobile subscribers. It's a no-brainer that this disparity will only widen in the days to come“.

Google has thus enabled search on mobile phones with an IVR facility and focused on advertising for the regional players to become national by offering services such as search engine marketing, brand advertising and offering offline help to ad agencies. This will be done by the usage of two main services Google Adwords and Adsense. Google has also ventured into the entertainment business with absolute supremacy and has struck up lucrative deals with UTV, Rajshri Productions etc. for its very own Youtube. Making Google Apps available via resellers and it’s success with Android is bound to be successful in India.

For sure, the online advertising revenue have grown slowly (refer my two last posts), but its hunger to throw up innovative strategies like The Mouse Over Rate and others, will surely help the company achieve what they want. The launches of 3G, Wimax, rural internet users, wider reach of broadband services etc. will only help Google achieve the profits that it has targeted with its new strategy.

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