MIH Launches Great Indian Blogger Hunt; Acquisition Soon; Plans Q&A, Local Language & SMS Blogging
Naspers owned MIH India’s has launched its “Great Indian Blogger Hunt”, offering bloggers a total of Rs.1.5 crore in prize money. I’d questioned this initiative (and others) earlier, and spoke to Arunava Sinha, Head of Content on the ‘Great Indian Blogger Hunt’, and MIH’s plans:
How does the ‘Great Indian Blogger Hunt’ fit into your plans for ibibo?
Our products are aimed at getting people to share, and we think its important to get people to be paid for the work that they put into creating content. No effort should go uncompensated. Look at the larger picture. There are three players here – the publisher, the consumer and the advertiser. Ibibo provides the consumer with a platform to monetize his content. For us, the consumer is valuable as both a consumer and a creator, and will receive a share of the revenue. The advertiser becomes a seller and can connect with the consumer at the point where the consumer indicates intent. (Ed: the payouts dates for the contest are still ‘to be announced’ )
So are you looking at contextual advertising?
Something like it. Contextual advertising has a content context. We’re looking at creating intent context.
You seem to be saying that this isn’t a one-off thing…
No, it’s not a one-off thing. This is not a promotional activity. We’re providing an opportunity for thousands of people to make money with their content. There are two key elements – the quantum of content, which is in the users control, and the popularity of the content, which is not.
How will you be marketing this?
So far the news has spread by word of mouth. We should be rolling out a marketing plan shortly, but that will be mostly online marketing. What people need to realize is that it will be important for every user to do his own marketing.
One of the things that I noticed is that there is a lack of customization. There’s an ibibo banner on top, and I can’t really call it “my space”...
Blogging in India is an evolved phenomenon, and many those who have taken it up and want to customize their blog template are serious about blogging. Blogging is specialized. They’re a very small percentage of those online. But there are also those who haven’t taken it up, or are not as serious about it yet. We plan to take it to another level – spontaneous self expression. About customization- we will evolve with our users. The idea is to give them an easy to use platform to begin with.
What about the rest of the content? How do Bixee, Pixrat, Motafish and Chotafish fit into the scheme of things?
There are plans for Bixee but I can’t talk about those yet. Motafish and Chotafish will be rebranded as ibibo Games and ibibo Kids. We launched them as Motafish and Chotafish to test them.
The games at Motafish and Chotafish seems to be primarily international games. Any plans for local content?
We have plans for games, for localized content, but not like what has currently been done. Something strategically similar to what we’re doing with other content that we have, but I can’t talk about it yet.
Are you monitoring any of your content? What about Pixrat’s not-safe-for-work content?
We’re watching it. We allow content to be flagged as inappropriate, and monitoring it for anti-national content. Pixrat will be cleaned up.
Any acquisitions or new product launches in the works?
We’re launching a localized Q&A product. We also have plans for local language blogging, and SMS blogging. There’s also a big ticket acquisition taking place very soon.
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Apparently, MIH is trying to create a self contained ecosystem of content: they will provide multiple services to users, and at the same time keep users within the fold by sharing some of the advertising revenue with them. I wonder if they intend to let people to create their own games, or their own levels for games? Traction has picked up since I last checked, and with marketing activities, it will increase. The Indian net user is still more of a consumer than a contributor; money might just make a contributor of him. At the same time, one has to be wary of the fact that consumers evolve; once they get used to the platform and find that there are better products online, they’ll switch.
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Comments (6)
Jan 4, 2007 5:31 AM
Ibibo should learn something from the PayPerPost fiasco and the uproar over Microsoft “bribing” bloggers.
The easiest way for Internet companies in India to drive usage is to
throw monetary or material enticements which is a really bad way as it becomes a self-defeating cycle of sops defeating the very purpose of building a community.
Jan 4, 2007 8:38 AM
I covered the ibibo story sometime back and well, throwing money might work in the short run, but you need more substance for a long stay..More here: http://ashish-sinha.blogspot.com/2006/12/love-blogging-make-some-money-too-15.html
While the 1.5 crore offer is a great way to increase adoption, the major challenge for ibibo team would be to solve the classic chicken-and-egg problem:
* Corrupted individuals will do all sorts of cheap tricks (create 1000s of fake profiles etc..) and in any given time (if not for smart algorithm) - 50/100 blogs will be corrupted ones.
* Eventually the genuine bloggers will ditch the system - After seeing the corrupted blogs making it to the top 100, genuine bloggers obviosly will get pissed off and look for some other tool/platform.
Remember, money can take you to some point - but you need a lot more substance to be successful. Case in point - Four game shows started after the success of KBC and joined the deadpool within few weeks. And the reason? They lacked the basic substance.
While the 1.5 crore offer is a great way to increase adoption, the major challenge for ibibo team would be to solve the classic chicken-and-egg problem:
* Corrupted individuals will do all sorts of cheap tricks (create 1000s of fake profiles etc..) and in any given time (if not for smart algorithm) - 50/100 blogs will be corrupted ones.
* Eventually the genuine bloggers will ditch the system - After seeing the corrupted blogs making it to the top 100, genuine bloggers obviosly will get pissed off and look for some other tool/platform.
Remember, money can take you to some point - but you need a lot more substance to be successful. Case in point - Four game shows started after the success of KBC and joined the deadpool within few weeks. And the reason? They lacked the basic substance.
Jan 4, 2007 9:03 AM
Dont agree with Javed! Also never compare local environments with what global companies have done. India is a different ball game. Internet companies in India need to evangelize and educate the internet communities. After all internet is all about making lives of indians better! And as a part of education, performance based pay outs are great ideas. If you go to ibibo.com, you will realize that the pay outs are clearly performance oriented. Also, ibibo plans to sustain the same - Which clearly is a huge plus and not just a one off activity…..
Full marks for ibibo.com for coming up with such innovations….
Jan 4, 2007 2:49 PM
cheap tricks .hmm————- internet guru -:-)
Jan 6, 2007 4:19 AM
ashish, interesting points. I think the art of ‘bribing’ consumers has been studied for some time from a game theory perspective and the points you have outlined reflect this. there will be always ways to game the system.
internetguru - this is not rocket science after all…there is no innovation here. community sites dime a dozen are throwing iPod giveaways. the only difference here is that this takes one step further by paying cash.
I dont understand what education you are talking about ?
About blogging ? About community sites ? (orkut has 5M users from India and there are a large no. of Indian users on Blogspot, MSN Spaces)
I have checked out Ibibo and one of the most popular blogs is about a lady enticing men ? Is this education ?
what is differentiated through this contest ? what happens if a competitor does the same ? or is it just a question of someone with the deepest pockets ?
1.5crores = $400K, hope they get a lot of users.
Hotmail managed to get plenty with $50K in total spend.
Jan 29, 2007 4:52 PM
i m a ibibo user myself , and i have been blogging for the past 3 years now, it s a total shock to me m that people are just using the basic trick of cut -copy-paste , formula ,jus to reach the top, some guys went to an extend of suggesting a RSS2BLOG software. , its not the right way to blog.. blogging is something you share abt ur own personal knowledge and thought, not pasting some copywrighted articles and facts.,.
ibibo is good platform ,but should have been a fair competetion for bloggers like me, .. i dont stand a chance .. now the level of scores have shooted upto more than 6cr.. wow , i really don know how people manage to spend so much time on the comp.. jus COPY PASTING..
WELL lets face the fact, people.. in india,, can be taken for granted..