While its search rivals Google (NSDQ: GOOG) and Microsoft (NSDQ: MSFT) have gone full-force into extending R&D efforts into mobile—and becoming dominant players in the process in areas like mobile operating systems, extending their online products into smartphone controllers—Yahoo has started and stopped (mostly stopped) a number of initiatives that has if anything undermined its credibility in the sector.
Livestand, the company’s digital newsstand for tablets, was due to launch sometime in the first half of this year, but appears still to be a work in progress. Even AOL (NYSE: AOL), more beleaguered than Yahoo, managed to launch its iPad Editions. (Yes, that was current former Yahoo Brad Garlinghouse of pre-Bartz Peanut Butter Manifesto fame, now AOL president of consumer applications, who tweeted: “ding dong the witch is dead” when the Bartz news broke.)
Meanwhile, in mobile advertising, where the company should have been singing, it’s been way out of tune. Stats from IDC show that Yahoo has been losing market share in mobile advertising, even as the market has been booming. Efforts to launch new display ad formats and more localized content may have given a boost to its ad business but the benefits would have only been seen on its own properties, rather than the long tail of wider internet content.
It didn’t help, either, that of the many executives that have left Yahoo under Bartz, several were in mobile—one notable example was Michael Shim, the mobile VP who left for Groupon at the beginning of the year. And David Ko, appointed by Bartz to head mobile in her first major reorg, left for Zynga and a potentially big payoff last year despite an expanded role that made him one of the top execs at Yahoo.
The Yahoo board announced tonight that a new leadership council made up of interim CEO Tim Morse and other top execs will start a strategic review. Chairman Roy Bostock promised a commitment “to exploring and evaluating possibilities and opportunities that will put Yahoo! on a trajectory for growth and innovation and deliver value to shareholders.” The board also started a new CEO search. Unless each has a strong emphasis on mobile, Yahoo will only slip further behind.
Update: Macquarie’s Ben Schachter ended his client note about the ouster with this:
The bottom line is that while Carol Bartz’s removal is a positive for Yahoo, this remains a company with significant structural problems —not least among them, the ability to find its place in a world that is increasingly accessing the Internet through mobile devices. The fact that Bartz’s final sentence in her final email to Yahoo employees reads, “Sent from my iPad” should not be lost on anyone.
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]]>Although Lycos has been around since the early days of the dot-com era, its brand has become lesser known in the west, especially as it sliced and sold off parts of its European business over the past few years.
For Ybrant, which was on an acquisition binge last year, the brand, and its diminished presence outside of India, still means something. Daum said that by unloading Lycos, it will be better able to concentrate on its own search, mobile and map services. Release
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]]>The easiest way to clear a room of internet-savvy media executives is to suggest that maybe they should close their sites to crawling and prevent Google (NSDQ: GOOG) from carrying excerpts of their content. “Look, our ability to sell bundled content is dead, ”they argue, “and we have no choice but to allow Google to use our content – and get links back.”
But the data doesn’t fully support that argument. First off, the experience of the mobile web (both the iPhone and now the iPad) shows that the business model in electronic information is actually more about delivering a bundle (an app) and strengthening one’s brand than in trying to get links from search. And even on the PC-based web, despite all the talk about legacy media losing its readership, many of these sites have been quite successful at building a core group of regulars. Their brands are stronger and Google less important than most realize.
]]>The easiest way to clear a room of internet-savvy media executives is to suggest that maybe they should close their sites to crawling and prevent Google (NSDQ: GOOG) from carrying excerpts of their content. “Look, our ability to sell bundled content is dead, ”they argue, “and we have no choice but to allow Google to use our content – and get links back.”
But the data doesn’t fully support that argument. First off, the experience of the mobile web (both the iPhone and now the iPad) shows that the business model in electronic information is actually more about delivering a bundle (an app) and strengthening one’s brand than in trying to get links from search. And even on the PC-based web, despite all the talk about legacy media losing its readership, many of these sites have been quite successful at building a core group of regulars. Their brands are stronger and Google less important than most realize.
Recent studies reported by the American Press Institute and ITZBelden showed that, at least in the newspaper industry, the predominant share of site traffic comes from a fairly small group of readers. In fact, for most newspapers, some 80%-95% of the traffic comes from a group that is typically smaller than the number of print subscribers to the paper.
If that analysis is correct – and I believe it is – then the question is not, “Is Google essential for driving traffic to one’s site?” Rather, it is: “How much of an audience can one build and sustain without Google?” Indeed, if the web audience a content business needs to create is akin to the size of a newspaper subscription list, then building that readership base is a smaller hurdle than most people think.
Google delivers less value – in terms of search-based visitors – than most people, including the managers of many websites, believe. Why? Thanks to all the users who, for whatever reason, tend to type website addresses into the search box instead of into the browser’s address bar.
For national media companies, the most valuable users they get from search engines (i.e. the people who spend the most time on those sites), are looking to go to those specific sites, either by spelling (or misspelling) the site name or by searching for a specific feature of that site. For smaller local media companies, the numbers are even higher—at 65% or more.
And the traffic—the traffic that comes from people searching for the brand of the site—would come regardless of how much of the site’s content (beyond the brand name) was available to the search engine. Only searches based on content itself depend on the sharing of content, or the “Google bargain.”
In other words, these companies, both national and local, do get some benefit from ensuring that their content appears on the search engine – but substantially less than they probably think. The data here is from Compete.com, and as with all “long tail” data, it tends to be noisy and subject to interpretation. One could argue that for national media companies the number is more like a quarter or a third, but either way, it is clearly substantial.
There are sites, of course, particularly web-only sites that do get a large proportion of their traffic from people looking for specific topics. For example, over 90% of the Christian Science Monitor’s search-linked audience starts with users seeking a specific story/topic. For Gawker, it’s roughly 80%. By contrast, for competitor TMZ, the vast majority of its search traffic and heavy users are people looking specifically for the TMZ domain.
Now, you could use this data to argue that many media companies could close their sites to search and still remain fairly strong. I’m not going that far, but I do think there’s more to that often-ridiculed recommendation than many think. What’s more, if companies want the economics of web sites to more closely resemble the promise of the economics of tablets and smart phones, they ultimately need to figure out how to increase the power of their brand – that is, they need to identify the regular users of their sites and then monetize them either through subscription or an improved advertising proposition.
To do that, they need to consider the following:
1. Are the visitors who come solely from a topic-based search really as hard to monetize as it appears? The answer appears to be yes, based on time they end up sending on the sites once they arrive. And if you factor in the advertising value of the more directed users, that “drive-by” traffic may be even less useful to publishers.
2. What are the opportunities to rethink one’s web strategy to better preserve the power of the original media bundle? Anecdotal data suggests that readers feel more informed and spend more time with e-readers than they do with traditional web sites. That is a function of both design and technology, but should be replicable.
3. How can smaller media companies – particularly the television stations, newspapers and standalone local web-information companies—build their brand and traffic, given the challenges of getting search traffic based on topics alone? These brands may actually retain relatively more power in their niches than the larger, national media companies.
4. How will companies fare that are skilled at SEO but appear to have a less powerful brand than they may want? They will need to determine how best to translate their power to attract topic-searches into a sustainable brand.
5. Are there opportunities to move the content-based search from the independent search engines to the site itself or potentially to some set of multi company consortiums? Prior to seeing this data, I would have said that was an impossible fantasy, but seeing the remaining power of content company brands, it represents something to consider.
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]]>Matt Kelly, who first began his public crusade this summer on paidContent:UK, said: “In our great frantic headlong rush to accumulate users at any cost, many of us were all too quick to sacrifice anything that stood in the way of search engine optimisation” (SEO).
“... The game is up. The days of leading the newspaper industry by the hand, down the path of mythic riches, are coming to a rapid close.”
]]>Matt Kelly, who first began his public crusade this summer on paidContent:UK, said: “In our great frantic headlong rush to accumulate users at any cost, many of us were all too quick to sacrifice anything that stood in the way of search engine optimisation” (SEO).
“... The game is up. The days of leading the newspaper industry by the hand, down the path of mythic riches, are coming to a rapid close.”
Kelly is on-message with Trinity Mirror (LSE: TNI) CEO Sly Bailey, who has both advocated building loyal audiences before paywalls and is a noted Google (NSDQ: GOOG) critic. “Unique users don’t pay wages,” she has said.
Bailey and Kelly are two parts in an emerging industry effort to regain the initiative from search engines, the web or generally the media transformation that newspapers have endured. Kelly, in Hyderabad, said “traffic from search engines is ridiculously low ... the vast majority of traffic has either come from bookmarks, or a referral from an informed source”.
He said knocking SEO consultants down a peg or two to “build sites that perform well for humans, not search engines” is one change necessary to “reverse the damage we’ve done to ourselves in the last fifteen years of the internet”.
Kelly’s full speech…
A couple of years ago, at this very conference, I sat among you and listened as Google’s number one global ad salesman gave the World Editors Forum a very slick presentation about where the newspaper industry was going wrong.
He told us what kind of stories we should publish if we wanted to attract a larger online audience. He told us what kind of headlines we should write and what kind of websites we should build. And how, if we got these things right, Google News would deliver us an audience beyond anything we could hope to achieve in print.
If we still hadn’t get the message, there were separate seminars, two a day, laid on free of charge by Google, complete with glossy brochures, on how to do well in Google News. The seminars were full. We all wanted to know the secret. The brochure made it seem so easy.
Of course, as we’re all aware now, it was too easy. In our great frantic headlong rush to accumulate users at any cost, many of us were all too quick to sacrifice anything that stood in the way of search engine optimisation.
We followed the brochure word for word, and we employed the same merry-go-round of SEO consultants to help us build sites that would ping to the top of search engines for a world hungry for our content.
If little things like character, brand…the ingrained values that made the print product a success, got in the way, well ... the ends justified the means. Content wasn’t king. Traffic was. Whoever, from wherever, reading whatever. It didn’t matter as long as the audience grew.
And boy, did it grow. In the UK alone, we soon had several newspaper websites attracting in the region of thirty million users a month. Impressive. Think of all the advertising they could sell!
Ah .. well, actually, there was a slight problem there. As any first-year economics student will tell you, massively oversupplying a finite market generally leads to a collapse in value. Great swathes of newspaper website inventory - sometimes as much as 90 percent of page views - went unsold.
Now the very CPM model we’d prostituted our brands for online, began to punish us. The massive oversupply of ad inventory led to a rapid erosion of value and opened a whole new business of network agencies undermining the traditional link between buyer and media owner, and making it cheaper and cheaper to buy our space.But it gets worse. Much worse, in fact, for our long-term future. In treating SEO as the be-all and end-all of online publishing, we devalued our content in the mind of the users…
What a word! “Users.” Not readers, or viewers. Certainly not customers - not unless we are being deeply ironic. For the fact is the word “user” is, for the vast majority of people consuming our products online, entirely accurate.
We’d never choose such a sterile word to describe the people who buy our newspapers. But online, “users” is about right. They find our content in a search engine, they devour it, then they move back to Google, or wherever, and go looking for more. Often, they have no idea which website it was they found the content on. This was the audience we’ve been chasing all that time. A swarm of locusts.
So, can the process be reversed? Can we begin to rebuild the connection between investment and reward online? I’m here to tell you, yes, absolutely…
We’ve listened to our fair share of SEO experts at Mirror Group, but when we relaunched Mirror.co.uk about eighteen months ago, we fought very hard to put SEO to one side and focus instead on trying to reinject some of the brand values that had served the newspaper so well for more than one hundred years. Some of that bold tabloid panache, the dynamism, the straight-talking, entertaining view of the world so familiar to readers of the Daily Mirror newspaper. And the relaunch was a great success.
Quickly, the new-look Mirror.co.uk was the fastest growing newspaper website in the country; year-on-year growth of 100 percent or more - and importantly, the highest proportion of UK users of any newspaper website in the country.
A good effort indeed. But not, in our eyes, good enough. We wanted to go push further.
So three months ago, we launched two new websites - and actually stripped out from Mirror.co.uk two of our core drivers of traffic; showbiz and football. Creating two new niche websites, built on very different platforms designed especially to show each off in their best light. And the hell with SEO. We we’re chasing passion, here, not page impressions.
In the case of MirrorFootball, it is the ideal platform to combine our brilliant coverage of the British football with a unique collection of photographs and pages stretching back to 1903 - definitively the greatest British football archive in the world. With 3am, it is taking a unique brand and attitude of showbiz gossip and giving it the best possible platform online.
With these two new websites, I believe we have taken a very important first step - a very difficult first step - to put that sense of brand and value and character back.
How? By putting SEO in its rightful place as a tool to be used when appropriate, but focusing our main attention on what is unique and brilliant about each of these properties respresents.Both sites have their critics - 3am in particular has been the subject of quite intense argument concerning it’s navigation. You’ll notice we ignored the SEO brigade here.
Instead of a navigation that would perform well in Google - something like “music news”, “celebrity news”, “film news”, “TV news” etc etc… - we decided to follow a more emotional methodology… “Gasp!”, “Tee-hee”, “Phwoar”... I hope the translators are able to cope with making sense of this - but phrases that better reflect the experience we hope our users will enjoy when they come to 3am. To be shocked, amused, titillated…
Yes, it’s different. And it means the audience may grow more slowly. But it will grow meaningfully. Because its audience will care.
The SEO fraternity have been outraged by our blind stupidity. Dumbstruck by how much we don’t get the web. Interestingly, I sense a touch of foreboding in their mockery. As though they realise the game is up. The days of leading the newspaper industry by the hand, down the path of mythic riches, are coming to a rapid close.
Certainly both sites have rewarded our belief by reconnecting us to both readers and advertisers. In terms of audience, MirrorFootball has achieved two million monthly unique users. 3am.co.uk 800,000. Both sites are growing steadily month by month.
Crucially, traffic from search engines is ridiculously low for a newspaper website. Around 15 percent for MirrorFootball and less than 10 for 3am.
That means the vast majority of traffic has either come from bookmarks, or a referral from an informed source. We get a lot of traffic to both sites from social networks like Twitter and Facebook.Not recommendations from a search engine, but from a friend. That’s how to grow a meaningful audience. Counter to our expectation, audience on Mirror.co.uk has also continued to grow, meaning that across our portfolio of websites in the last three months our audience has increased by three million.
We’re very proud of the new-found connection with both users and advertisers. I’ll give you a couple of examples in each case…
With MirrorFootball, we possess a unique asset, our archive, which we are, for the first time in one hundred years, actively putting to work. Last month, we began retailing in earnest, using both print and web to market a collection of books and merchandise based on our unique photographs. I’m not able to tell you how much we’ve merchandise we’ve sold, but suffice to say it has exceeded expectations and we are confident we have the beginnings of a thriving retail business with MirrorFootball.
We’ve also used our content and our engaged audience to re-cement links with key advertisers. Vauxhall Commercial Vehicles joined us as launch sponsors and we’ve created a number of unique pieces of content for them that entertain our users, exploit of history and provide the client with a tailored solution; in this case reinforcing Vauxhall’s positioning as a vanmaker with decades of history behind them.
In the case of 3am.co.uk, we’ve been able to leverage the sense of community and brand engagement by building a bespoke bingo game for our fans to play. It’s twice as popular, head for head, than our game on Mirror.co.uk.
And Samsung are big fans of brand 3am. Together we ran a “be a 3am girl for the day” competition to launch a new mobile phone. The competition winner - a bloke! - gathered an army of nearly 2,000 supporters on Facebook to promote his entry. The power of social networking in action.
So we have to work harder. Explore new revenue streams. Ten years ago, Mirror Group had four or five revenue streams. At last count, we had 28.
Not all of them will turn out to be the big businesses we hope, but we’re working them all, hard, in the knowledge that our future depends on it.These three sites, with their disparate approaches to SEO, and their varied revenue streams, are a big step in the right direction. But they’re a drop in the ocean of change we need to make as an industry if we’re going to reverse the damage we’ve done to ourselves in the last fifteen years of the internet.
There will always be free stuff out there on the internet. But if we want any hope of moving to a position where people will happily hand over their cold, hard, cash for our content online, the very first step we need to take is to re-establish in our online businesses that sense of value, brand, and uniqueness that we take so much trouble to do in print.
If that means It means putting journalism first, and SEO second, then, as a journalist, I welcome that.
Not because we have some romantic view of what good journalism means. But because we have a very pragmatic view of what good business means. But I welcome it as a journalist who believes the true value of our content is, ultimately, measured in commercial terms.
It means not letting SEO wag the dog, but instead focusing on creating the most engaging, entertaining, informative content possible. It means building sites that perform well for humans, not search engines. It means we have to stop thinking about users, but start thinking of readers, listeners, viewers. One day, even customers.
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The Google Mobile App is designed to understand Indian accents, the company said in a statement. The application processes the voice query and triggers a Google search and returns location-sensitive results. This means a voice search from south Delhi for ‘restaurants’ will return relevant results that are closest to where you initiated the search from.
“Speech is one of our key innovations in the mobile space out of the India engineering center. With millions of new mobile users being added every month Google Mobile Apps will provide them with a quick and easy way to get the required information whenever and wherever they need it,” Google India’s head of products, Vinay Goel, said in a statement.
Tata Docomo, the GSM brand of Tata Teleservices Ltd, today launched a value-added service—CoMix On The Go—that will allow users to download and view full comic books on the mobile phone. At Rs20 per comic book, some 2,000 titles such as Suppandi, Mickey Mouse, Winnie The Pooh, Popeye and Princess Diaries will be made available for a year. The content comes with special effects such as character vibration, sounds and zooming text bubbles, the company said in a release.
Zero Sum Wireless Solutions India Pvt. Ltd is the technology partner for the service. The Bangalore-based company is a subsidiary of Japanese VAS firm Zero Sum Ltd. Tata Docomo was born out of a strategic partnership between Tata Teleservices and Japan’s NTT Docomo Inc.
MTNL has launched its prepaid 3G services in Mumbai. For Rs109, subscribers get lifetime validity and tariff that is lower than 2G rates, the company said. Voice and video calls to other MTNL users will cost 20 paise per minute, while those to other networks will be charged at 50 paise per minute.
Free data usage of 25MB, 25 free video calls and free talktime worth Rs25 come with the pack.
]]>Deal Talk With Yahoo’s Schneider, Microsoft’s Mehdi: ‘Adding Display Is Boiling The Ocean’
Why Microsoft Appears To Have Gotten The Better End Of The Search Deal
If Microsoft Wants Yahoo’s Mobile Search, They’ll Have To Earn It
MicroHoo Euro View: Still Miles Behind Google
Microsoft Will Also Power Yahoo Mobile Search, But Deal Is Not Exclusive
Bartz On Microsoft Deal: ‘Boatload Of Cash Is Us Preserving Our Revenue Line’
It’s Official: Yahoo-Microsoft Announce 10-Year Search/Ad Pact
]]>Deal Talk With Yahoo’s Schneider, Microsoft’s Mehdi: ‘Adding Display Is Boiling The Ocean’
Why Microsoft Appears To Have Gotten The Better End Of The Search Deal
If Microsoft Wants Yahoo’s Mobile Search, They’ll Have To Earn It
MicroHoo Euro View: Still Miles Behind Google
Microsoft Will Also Power Yahoo Mobile Search, But Deal Is Not Exclusive
Bartz On Microsoft Deal: ‘Boatload Of Cash Is Us Preserving Our Revenue Line’
It’s Official: Yahoo-Microsoft Announce 10-Year Search/Ad Pact
Yahoo To Keep Almost All Revenues For First Three Years With Microsoft Deal
Microsoft-Yahoo—Some Key Numbers
Likely Regulatory Questions On Microsoft-Yahoo
My Quick Take On The Microsoft-Yahoo Search Deal
Microsoft-Yahoo Deal Talks History In Links
Reports: Microsoft, Yahoo Reach Search Partnership; No Upfront Payment
]]>]]>
Full details in the release; Yahoo CEO Carol Bartz and Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer talked about the deal during a conference call with analysts and press. In a message for Yahoo “fans” on the corporate blog, Bartz wrote: “With Microsoft powering Yahoo! Search, we’ll be able to focus on the things we do best -– being the center of people’s lives online with properties like our homepage, mail, finance, news, sports, entertainment, mobile, etc.” And, without identifying Google (NSDQ: GOOG) by name, mentioned “lopsided” competition in search, adding, “This transaction will create a healthy competitor that’ll keep everyone on their toes.”
The deal includes:
—An exclusive 10-year license to Yahoo’s core search technologies; Microsoft can integrate them into its existing web search platforms.
—Microsoft’s Bing will be the exclusive algorithmic search and paid search platform for Yahoo sites but Yahoo will continue to use its technology and data in other areas (such as enhancing display advertising technology)
—Yahoo will be the exclusive worldwide sales force for both companies’ premium search advertisers but self-serve advertising for both will be fulfilled by Microsoft’s AdCenter platform with pricing for all search ads set by AdCenter’s automated auction process.
—Display advertising business and sales remain separate.
—Yahoo stays in charge of its own user experience—including search powered by Microsoft (NSDQ: MSFT).
The money:
—Microsoft will pay Yahoo with revenue sharing on traffic generated on Yahoo network of both owned and operated (O&O) and affiliate sites.
—Microsoft will pay Yahoo traffic acquisition costs (TAC) at an initial rate of 88 percent of search revenue generated on Yahoo’s O&O sites during the first five years of the agreement with Yahoo continuing to syndicate its existing search affiliate partnerships.
—Microsoft will guarantee Yahoo’s O&O revenue per search (RPS) in each country for the first 18 months following initial implementation in that country.
—The companies say that within two years of regulatory approval, Yahoo will be able to save about $200 million in annual capital expenditures and improve the company’s annual operating cash flow by $275 million. Yahoo’s annual operating income will increase by roughly $500 million.
Earlier, the Malaysian media conglomerate picked up a 20% stake in Sun TV Network’s DTH arm - Sun Direct - for a consideration of close to $150 million. It also picked up 7 percent stake in Sun TV Network’s FM Radio arm - South Asia FM Ltd (SAFL) for an undisclosed amount.
Astro, a multi-billion dollar diversified group, is owned by T Ananda Krishnan, a business tycoon in Malaysia. Krishnan’s businesses include Maxis, a leading telecom company in Malaysia, which acquired majority stake in Chennai-based private mobile operator Aircel two years ago for over $1.2 billion. Astro along with Hyderabad based Value Labs and Prannoy promoted NDTV acquired Red FM operated by Radio Today, a division of Aroon Purie controlled Living Media Group.
This story has been provided by our content partner VCCircle
]]>Earlier, the Malaysian media conglomerate picked up a 20% stake in Sun TV Network’s DTH arm - Sun Direct - for a consideration of close to $150 million. It also picked up 7 percent stake in Sun TV Network’s FM Radio arm - South Asia FM Ltd (SAFL) for an undisclosed amount.
Astro, a multi-billion dollar diversified group, is owned by T Ananda Krishnan, a business tycoon in Malaysia. Krishnan’s businesses include Maxis, a leading telecom company in Malaysia, which acquired majority stake in Chennai-based private mobile operator Aircel two years ago for over $1.2 billion. Astro along with Hyderabad based Value Labs and Prannoy promoted NDTV acquired Red FM operated by Radio Today, a division of Aroon Purie controlled Living Media Group.
This story has been provided by our content partner VCCircle
]]>]]>
Related
]]>T-Series states that Guruji.com is offering meta-data (listing and song tags) instead of merely displaying links related to the search term. Guruji, as expected, is stating it’s doing nothing outside the purview of what a search engine is supposed to do and, specifically, isn’t hosting the copyrighted content.
The Indian movie industry reportedly posted a loss for the first six months of 2008, with only four films managing to pull their weight at the box office amongst a total of 116 films. T-series, which supposedly controls 60% market share, relies on these movies for their music library. It seems it’s offline business is feeling the strain from the shift in consumption patterns, hence the attempt to monetize through content deals with UGC platforms like iShare. The fact remains that even if T-Series were to win an injuction against all the platform providers, users, some of whom may not know the Indian Copyright Act of 1957, will still pirate content.
]]>T-Series states that Guruji.com is offering meta-data (listing and song tags) instead of merely displaying links related to the search term. Guruji, as expected, is stating it’s doing nothing outside the purview of what a search engine is supposed to do and, specifically, isn’t hosting the copyrighted content.
The Indian movie industry reportedly posted a loss for the first six months of 2008, with only four films managing to pull their weight at the box office amongst a total of 116 films. T-series, which supposedly controls 60% market share, relies on these movies for their music library. It seems it’s offline business is feeling the strain from the shift in consumption patterns, hence the attempt to monetize through content deals with UGC platforms like iShare. The fact remains that even if T-Series were to win an injuction against all the platform providers, users, some of whom may not know the Indian Copyright Act of 1957, will still pirate content.
Related
]]>The service seems to be already posturing for a ‘safe harbour’ by merely indexing and redirecting to files but not hosting them. Regular CS readers will remember In.com’s music service, except where Web18’s horizontal had signed up for indexing content from pre-dominantly international labels, this fills the gap for indigenous music. While the benefits to the user are obvious, I can’t help but wonder how invaluable a service this can be for a T-Series (or Hungama) to detect unlicensed hosts. What matters is if the service manages to gain enough traction to become a blip on the radar of the current industry licensing regime. This does fall under a grey area since Guruji is merely mining content already available elsewhere. A content owner could start by popping out the hosts themselves, provided they are hosted in India. Going by the way the RIAA deals with such disruption, one would expect them to strike hard to make an example (and possibly risk more media attention to the service.) Will they sue? Will they partner? Will they ignore it completely? Days Without Incident (1).
]]>
The service seems to be already posturing for a ‘safe harbour’ by merely indexing and redirecting to files but not hosting them. Regular CS readers will remember In.com’s music service, except where Web18’s horizontal had signed up for indexing content from pre-dominantly international labels, this fills the gap for indigenous music. While the benefits to the user are obvious, I can’t help but wonder how invaluable a service this can be for a T-Series (or Hungama) to detect unlicensed hosts. What matters is if the service manages to gain enough traction to become a blip on the radar of the current industry licensing regime. This does fall under a grey area since Guruji is merely mining content already available elsewhere. A content owner could start by popping out the hosts themselves, provided they are hosted in India. Going by the way the RIAA deals with such disruption, one would expect them to strike hard to make an example (and possibly risk more media attention to the service.) Will they sue? Will they partner? Will they ignore it completely? Days Without Incident (1).
Related
]]>—Microsoft MD Neelam Dhawan has resigned to join as MD HP India. Dhawan will return to HP, where she was earlier VP Customer solutions. There is some serious blood being split over the apparently dishelved state of MS Indian development center and the resignation of Neelam Dhawan (via Pluggd.in and detailed post here)
]]>—Microsoft MD Neelam Dhawan has resigned to join as MD HP India. Dhawan will return to HP, where she was earlier VP Customer solutions. There is some serious blood being split over the apparently dishelved state of MS Indian development center and the resignation of Neelam Dhawan (via Pluggd.in and detailed post here)
]]>Google does have a similar service in the US - 1800-GOOG-411 (there’s an introductory video here), but it apparently isn’t very successful. In the US, they’ve got an automated service, but have apparently settled for a call center in India.
I tried dialling the number from Delhi, and it didn’t work. We’ve also contacted Google India for a confirmation of the launch of the service, so wait for updates if they do respond. If you’re in Hyderabad, do give it a go (apparently, Vodafone (NYSE: VOD) customers are not able to connect to the 1800 numbers) and tell us about it in the comments. We know how JustDial monetizes their service - by advertisements and lead generation for vendors without the users consent; I wonder how Google intends to monetize its local information service.
Update: It’s a pilot project, all right. An official Google spokesperson has sent the following response by mail:
“Google has introduced a pilot for Voice Search in Hyderabad. This is in line with our mission of making information universally useful and accessible, be it at home or on the go. Voice enables us to reach non-web users in local languages, while still leveraging our core strength in search. We are focusing on our users and innovating for the needs of the local market. For now users in Hyderabad can get information on local business and movie showtimes through a Toll-Free 800 number. This means that a user calling this number for information will not be charged -infact he will also get an the option to be connected directly to the local business he is looking for- again for free. It will also be possible for users to request this information through SMS.
This pilot will enable us to get real user feedback to improve the service before a full launch.”
Google does have a similar service in the US - 1800-GOOG-411 (there’s an introductory video here), but it apparently isn’t very successful. In the US, they’ve got an automated service, but have apparently settled for a call center in India.
I tried dialling the number from Delhi, and it didn’t work. We’ve also contacted Google India for a confirmation of the launch of the service, so wait for updates if they do respond. If you’re in Hyderabad, do give it a go (apparently, Vodafone (NYSE: VOD) customers are not able to connect to the 1800 numbers) and tell us about it in the comments. We know how JustDial monetizes their service - by advertisements and lead generation for vendors without the users consent; I wonder how Google intends to monetize its local information service.
Update: It’s a pilot project, all right. An official Google spokesperson has sent the following response by mail:
“Google has introduced a pilot for Voice Search in Hyderabad. This is in line with our mission of making information universally useful and accessible, be it at home or on the go. Voice enables us to reach non-web users in local languages, while still leveraging our core strength in search. We are focusing on our users and innovating for the needs of the local market. For now users in Hyderabad can get information on local business and movie showtimes through a Toll-Free 800 number. This means that a user calling this number for information will not be charged -infact he will also get an the option to be connected directly to the local business he is looking for- again for free. It will also be possible for users to request this information through SMS.
This pilot will enable us to get real user feedback to improve the service before a full launch.”
Nikhil adds: Kamla Bhatt has an audio interview with the Guruji founders here.
]]>Nikhil adds: Kamla Bhatt has an audio interview with the Guruji founders here.
]]>But why is Web2 Corp selling what it claims to be “India’s leading social networking site and search engine”? According to the site: “Web2 Corp’s $5M funding for ByIndia.com didn’t materialize due to its lenders fallout with real estate markets, and the company can not afford to properly market or support the growth of the web site.” William Mobley, CEO of Web2 Corp says that the company is “moving away from developing large branded portals with ad supported revenue models to direct sales of its commercial applications, and holding on to ByIndia.com doesn’t make sense for us.” [via release and StartupDunia]
So is the bloom off the Social Networking Boom? It also appears that social networking site SaffronConnect has shut down. Here’s a video of the SaffronConnect presentation (thanks alertman) at the first Proto.in. A fairly large number of social networking sites were launched last year, and I’m wondering if any others have shut down since. Do let us know in the comments, and we’ll add to the list.
Update: Jhoom.in, which we’d written about here, has also shut down. The founder, Saurav Chopra, has joined Amobee, reports Pluggd.in.
]]>But why is Web2 Corp selling what it claims to be “India’s leading social networking site and search engine”? According to the site: “Web2 Corp’s $5M funding for ByIndia.com didn’t materialize due to its lenders fallout with real estate markets, and the company can not afford to properly market or support the growth of the web site.” William Mobley, CEO of Web2 Corp says that the company is “moving away from developing large branded portals with ad supported revenue models to direct sales of its commercial applications, and holding on to ByIndia.com doesn’t make sense for us.” [via release and StartupDunia]
So is the bloom off the Social Networking Boom? It also appears that social networking site SaffronConnect has shut down. Here’s a video of the SaffronConnect presentation (thanks alertman) at the first Proto.in. A fairly large number of social networking sites were launched last year, and I’m wondering if any others have shut down since. Do let us know in the comments, and we’ll add to the list.
Update: Jhoom.in, which we’d written about here, has also shut down. The founder, Saurav Chopra, has joined Amobee, reports Pluggd.in.
Related
]]>Looks to be more of an operator parking move, but considering CDMA providers are actively bundling low cost GPRS enabled handsets, Yahoo seems to have made a wise decision. How many of you use search on mobile phone (Client based software as well as SMS based)?
Looks to be more of an operator parking move, but considering CDMA providers are actively bundling low cost GPRS enabled handsets, Yahoo seems to have made a wise decision. How many of you use search on mobile phone (Client based software as well as SMS based)?
I just tried it out ‘ISB Hyderabad’ (since I’m there tomorrow for TiE-ISB Connect) and received two results - ISB Bookstore, and Indian School of Business, alongwith their phone numbers. The service apparently covers 42 cities and costs Rs. 3 for Voda, Airtel, BPL, Idea, Aircel and Reliance, and Re 1 for MTNL Mumbai, Rs. 0.80 for BSNL. JustDial had launched their WAP site in August.
]]>I just tried it out ‘ISB Hyderabad’ (since I’m there tomorrow for TiE-ISB Connect) and received two results - ISB Bookstore, and Indian School of Business, alongwith their phone numbers. The service apparently covers 42 cities and costs Rs. 3 for Voda, Airtel, BPL, Idea, Aircel and Reliance, and Re 1 for MTNL Mumbai, Rs. 0.80 for BSNL. JustDial had launched their WAP site in August.
]]>Others in this space include Infomedia (funding from ICICI Ventures), JustDial (SAIF Partners, Tiger Fund), AskLaila (funding from Matrix Partners, Lightspeed Venture Partners, Silicon Valley Bank), Zook from Ziva Software (funding from Nadathur), Burrp, OnYoMo and MIH’s Dwaar. And then there’s Google Local...
]]>Others in this space include Infomedia (funding from ICICI Ventures), JustDial (SAIF Partners, Tiger Fund), AskLaila (funding from Matrix Partners, Lightspeed Venture Partners, Silicon Valley Bank), Zook from Ziva Software (funding from Nadathur), Burrp, OnYoMo and MIH’s Dwaar. And then there’s Google Local...
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