Any idea on how Sify’s city specific portals - chennailive.in, hyderabadlive.in, bangalorelive.in and delhilive.in - have done? Now the TImes of India has launched a city specific site for its city specific paper - Kolkata Mirror. Amitava Bhattacharya, General Manager, The Times of India Group, has told exchange4media that the portal “will be like a banyan tree providing information on everything happening in the city.”

I noticed a section called ‘Citizen Reporter’, which intends to aggregate city specific inputs from readers; there’s a discussion board and a writers corner. What caught my attention, however, is a classifieds section called Bazaar Online; generic classifieds sites haven’t really worked in India so far, but could for niche city specific portals. The Times Group already has a site for the Mumbai Mirror, and they’ve registered DelhiMirror.com and BangaloreMirror.com. Apparently not ChennaiMirror.com. Interesting to note that the content and the design of Kolkata Mirror and Mumbai Mirror are significantly different.