@ Digital Summit: Ibibo Reaches 1 Million Users; Internet As A PR Medium; Privacy Issues
“The problem of our times, for the Advertising Community, is how to reach consumers with personalized advertisement and still maintain an affordable cost per lead” - a member of the audience
Ravi Kiran, CEO of Star Com Media Vest Group introduced Ibibo CEO Ashish Kashyap, informing the audience that ibibo reach a million subscribers yesterday. Earlier in the day, Ramamurthy Sivakumar, MD South Asia for Intel (NSDQ: INTC) disclosed that Indians now form the largest population on Orkut.
In a session that focused on user empowerment and the humanization of the web, Kashyap spoke about creating an ecosystem that has incremental advantage for its constituents; the issue is how companies commercialize the information that consumers put up on the web? And the user should be further empowered to choose if he wants to be more involved with the ecosystem (hinting at Ibibo’s scheme of paying bloggers to post…which I don’t agree with). Esther Dyson, Chairperson of EDventure Holdings, disagreed - there have been cashback services in the past, but they never worked, and eventually morphed into spyware companies. Consumers aren’t impressed with payment systems for usage, and she doesn’t think they will. Responding to Kashyap’s suggesting of putting users in buckets in order to deal with privacy, she said that opting in needs to be individualized - as a user, I should be free choose when I want to opt in, and when I don’t. Users don’t choose to share info. The challenge in advertising: users want to be identified by some vendors (sites like dopplr.com which she uses), and others like want no relationships with others. Kashyap put the responsibility of protecting user data on the Industry: users don’t read terms and conditions, and protecting them will help create credibility for the Internet business. Dyson added that the Internet is more of a PR medium than an advertising medium; vendors might sponsor communities, instead of choosing in-your-face advertising.
Ravi Kiran also slammed Microsoft’s (NSDQ: MSFT) Desktop TV, which streams 30 second commercials online, as being intrusive. The user goes online to avoid those 30 second commercials; I concur - they start automatically, and leech the bandwidth. Ironic, that it’s a service from Microsoft, which created this ad.
Posted In: Events, India Digital Summit, Companies, MIH
Newsletter
Comments (9)
Jan 11, 2008 2:19 AM
Ibibo is doing well, they are the first indian company who has given the platform of free speech and personalised space with social touch.
Jan 11, 2008 6:27 AM
they are not the first for sure . even the figures are being clearly construed. Chk alexa compare them with minglebox, zapak and bigadda one clearly sees that they are on a downward trend .
one cannot make it happen by paying bloggers and campuses to use the site .
Jan 11, 2008 7:49 AM
Ibibo’s strategy of paying to blog sucks big time. Ibibo was responsible for creating trash in the name of blogging. Why can’t you grow organically? I don’t know why are these companies running after the million user mark. Now Ibibo makes million user. looks like they’ve managed to make all the buckets speak. BALTI BOLNEY LAGI HAI!
Jan 11, 2008 9:27 AM
I’m not sure if paying bloggers to post quality content is such a bad idea. At least, I feel like it deserves a fair share of existence under the ibibo sun.
I took a look at both the Ibibo and the BigAdda blogs:
This was the first time I visited ibibo’s blog, and I think I might actually return a second time because it’s got some decent content.
Now BigA, on the other hand, I looked at their blog 3 months ago, and just now. You know…I feel like even that mouse click on the BigA “blogs” link is a total waste of my time.
Offering incentives for quality content creation is a necessary part of a growing (non-authoritative)social network. Once(if) it gets to Wikipedia status(or to MySpace, or Facebook status for that matter), then the distinction of being a contributor to that authoritative status/visibility is reward enough.
By the way, all this talk of traffic and social networks reminds me that while people are making a big song and dance about 1 million users, here’s a scary tale of a 54 million user company: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Friendster
Jan 12, 2008 5:00 AM
I am not sure if I get it right ! “Indians form the largest group on Orkut” .. Does it imply that among indians orkut is most popular or On orkut, Indians are the largest community.
Jan 14, 2008 10:45 AM
Abhishek,
It implies that Indians form the largest community on Orkut.
I believe this is a good list of what Indians(in India) find popular:
http://www.alexa.com/site/ds/top_sites?cc=IN&ts_mode=country&lang=none
Jan 15, 2008 2:57 AM
Congratulations to Ibibo on reaching the 1 million mark! I wish them best of luck and would love to see innovations from them to attract users than dishing out cash!
Ok, coming back to the topic,i.e. user empowerment and the humanization of the web.I think of all the Indian Social Networking sites, only Fropper.com has an effective CRM system in place to engage users for feedback, suggestions and improvements. The big grand daddy has learnt from their initial experiments/mistakes and we can see lot of improvement in their features and branding recently.
Other SN sites have gone the typical way. Buy a SN software, get a good graphic designer, advertise on various media, offer freebies , get loads of numbers and wait for a VC!
The most laughable case is of Desimartini which showcases ads of Bigadda on their homepage. So we very well know , where their focus is!
What we would love to see is customization of services and products keeping in mind the demographics, NEEDS and the mindset of Indian users.
Jan 31, 2008 11:52 AM
Congrats to ibibo on achieving the one million mark. Its a good site with a lot of oppurtunity.I do feel however that they have miles to go.As of now Ibibo appears very cluttered.Strange as it may seem, Indians prefer the more ordered featureless Orkut in comparison to the seemingly disorganized Facebook..it is this very problem i see with Ibibo currently..Make the interface sharp, crisp and user friendly
Feb 2, 2008 10:41 AM
i am like a sahid.