Photo
Picsquare, SnapGalaxy,
Business
Doctor-fixit, dimdim, TechMirchi, CarWale, Compare India
Gadgets
Tech2
Travel
ezeego1
Education
tutorvista
Gaming
Zapak, IndiaGames, Jump Games
Thursday, December 28, 2006
Directory of Indian Web2.0 Portals
Local Search Engines
Guruji
Local Classifieds
We-Exchange, Indyapage,
Vertical Search
Bixee
Music
sangeetix, dhingana
Social Networking
techTribe, humsubka, apundesi, yo4ya.com, yaari, hooeey
Travel
meratrip.com, TravelOTravel, Ok Tata Bye Bye, merasnap, Make my trip, ClearTrip, Holiday IQ
Social Bookmarks
pixrat
Very Niche
Sanskrit Voice
Reviews
Burrp, Mouthshut
Videos
KonkanTV
Jobs
CampusChai, Jobs4freshers
Guruji
Local Classifieds
We-Exchange, Indyapage,
Vertical Search
Bixee
Music
sangeetix, dhingana
Social Networking
techTribe, humsubka, apundesi, yo4ya.com, yaari, hooeey
Travel
meratrip.com, TravelOTravel, Ok Tata Bye Bye, merasnap, Make my trip, ClearTrip, Holiday IQ
Social Bookmarks
pixrat
Very Niche
Sanskrit Voice
Reviews
Burrp, Mouthshut
Videos
KonkanTV
Jobs
CampusChai, Jobs4freshers
Sunday, December 17, 2006
Web2.0: Two line reviews
My two-line review of Web2.0 kind of sites. Of those web2.0 sites that appear in the first 100 sites as ranked by Alexa.
MySpace: I am surprised that it has come so far up. I have used it a bit, and found it quite clumsy, non sticky. Would be interesting to find out the number of page views per active registerd member, and compare with other such sites, say Orkut.
YouTube: Truly transformational! An aside: we all have become active producers. More production less consumption. How would this effect advertising? For a later post.
Orkut: Very clean and fresh. Quite unassuming, but fairly sticky. Would be interesting to know how else the traffic can be monetised. Apart from adsense, I mean.
Wikipedia: Lots of neat information. My wife actually uses this quite a bit, preparing for her basic electrical engineering lectures! And now the results pop up with fair regularity in the first few of Google search.
Blogger: Its no newcomer. Wonder if blogger was the first of its kind. It could do with some more templates. Changes in templates should not lose the link information, etc.
Amazon: Should I call it web2.0? Ah well let me grudge this big daddy a little cool-ness. Has defined and adopted much of web2.0. Is redefining web2.0 for the enterprise.
Megaupload: Dont know where this cropped from. Seen once, used never. Offers more space than is available on my system at any time. Guess it is a matter of perception - can the message move from amount of space (which will get commoditized) to something more valuable - ease of retrieval? adding value to data - BI? What else?
Fotolog: Dont understand this - is this a mistake? Google page rank seems to completely ignore this site. How can this feature higher than flickr?
RapidShare: Looks like we need to forget about this. It has become a paid service. They did not have the deep pockets to support the server, bandwidth costs? Shakeout in the web2.0 world?
Craiglist: It is vast! The interface can be very deceptive, but there is a lot happening under the folds. In Bangalore specifically there is not so much happening, but I think it could have a great future. For me it really is a case study of how a pure text interface can be so useful.
Flickr: Deceptively easy to use. A big leap of faith, where you can share anything with anyone.
Hi5: Frankly, I dont know how far any of these networking sites will go. Somebody has to do the next level of thinking... So much production, so little consumption.
Facebook: Ditto as above.
Xanga: Frankly, I need to get a bit deeper into this. Do stay tuned.
Friendster: Not another!
Photobucket: Looks OK. Hah, you thought you would get more, eh?
MySpace: I am surprised that it has come so far up. I have used it a bit, and found it quite clumsy, non sticky. Would be interesting to find out the number of page views per active registerd member, and compare with other such sites, say Orkut.
YouTube: Truly transformational! An aside: we all have become active producers. More production less consumption. How would this effect advertising? For a later post.
Orkut: Very clean and fresh. Quite unassuming, but fairly sticky. Would be interesting to know how else the traffic can be monetised. Apart from adsense, I mean.
Wikipedia: Lots of neat information. My wife actually uses this quite a bit, preparing for her basic electrical engineering lectures! And now the results pop up with fair regularity in the first few of Google search.
Blogger: Its no newcomer. Wonder if blogger was the first of its kind. It could do with some more templates. Changes in templates should not lose the link information, etc.
Amazon: Should I call it web2.0? Ah well let me grudge this big daddy a little cool-ness. Has defined and adopted much of web2.0. Is redefining web2.0 for the enterprise.
Megaupload: Dont know where this cropped from. Seen once, used never. Offers more space than is available on my system at any time. Guess it is a matter of perception - can the message move from amount of space (which will get commoditized) to something more valuable - ease of retrieval? adding value to data - BI? What else?
Fotolog: Dont understand this - is this a mistake? Google page rank seems to completely ignore this site. How can this feature higher than flickr?
RapidShare: Looks like we need to forget about this. It has become a paid service. They did not have the deep pockets to support the server, bandwidth costs? Shakeout in the web2.0 world?
Craiglist: It is vast! The interface can be very deceptive, but there is a lot happening under the folds. In Bangalore specifically there is not so much happening, but I think it could have a great future. For me it really is a case study of how a pure text interface can be so useful.
Flickr: Deceptively easy to use. A big leap of faith, where you can share anything with anyone.
Hi5: Frankly, I dont know how far any of these networking sites will go. Somebody has to do the next level of thinking... So much production, so little consumption.
Facebook: Ditto as above.
Xanga: Frankly, I need to get a bit deeper into this. Do stay tuned.
Friendster: Not another!
Photobucket: Looks OK. Hah, you thought you would get more, eh?
Wednesday, December 13, 2006
Google Answers Bids Adieu
If Google Answers has gone, can Yahoo and other be far behind?
Market Research Service Focus?
Compared to the Q&A services reviewed so far on this blog (myLot and Yahoo Answers) Google Answers was really the serious kind. Could see a lot of market research kind of questions being asked on the site, and some being answered.
Here is a sampling that got answered, for $200 apiece:
"List of Professional Wine Storage Faciliites in the US for Private Collectors"
"Radio and TV stations reaching out to "hyper-connected kids" - this one needed case studies.
And here are some that did not get any formal response (again $200 apiece):
"Formula and techniques for Electro-Polishing liquid of Chrome Cobalt alloys"
"Costa Rica online gambling" - need names of the 2000 odd online gambling companies, annual revenues, employees, public traded, etc...
Not Enough Participation
Over the last four and half years, Google got the following number of posts
Category (no of posts)
Arts and entertainment (2749)
Business and money (8639)
Computer (4372)
Family and home (1172)
Health (2399)
Reference, education and news (3120)
Relationships and society (851)
Science (1624)
Sports and recreation (1096)
Miscellaneous (944)
So over four and half years they got about 27,000 posts, or less than two posts each day, for each of the catogories.
And a quick math on the turnover on the site:
The revenue figures on four random pages on the site were $185. 95, 225 and 81, which works out to be $146.5 for 25 questions. Which works out to $158k for 27k posts through the life of this site. Not much really (and Google gets only 25% of the turnover)! I dont think it is significant even if you add the adsense revenue, which must have picked up in the last couple of years.
Observations on this Model
- People are quite generous with tips! $100 on a $200 job!
- But to be fair, some of the $200 questions need a lot of work, and might have cost more in the 'outside' (or should I say 'inside') world.
- The answers are public! Private market research is not.
- Lot of info is based on online search itself. Some do pick up the phone and confirm, before posting answers. On monetizing online search, I guess this is how Google might have started this service - move to move up higher the service value chain, but could not gather enough momentum.
- Some even showcase their search practice (Googlers popularizing Google's search capabilities?)
What could have been different?
Ratings are good, but what if you dont like the answer? Can you withhold payment? Reducue payment? If a person who has a previous consistent lower payment, could that be a factor in the actual payment made? E.g., the payment amount could be value*avg rating.
Market Research Service Focus?
Compared to the Q&A services reviewed so far on this blog (myLot and Yahoo Answers) Google Answers was really the serious kind. Could see a lot of market research kind of questions being asked on the site, and some being answered.
Here is a sampling that got answered, for $200 apiece:
"List of Professional Wine Storage Faciliites in the US for Private Collectors"
"Radio and TV stations reaching out to "hyper-connected kids" - this one needed case studies.
And here are some that did not get any formal response (again $200 apiece):
"Formula and techniques for Electro-Polishing liquid of Chrome Cobalt alloys"
"Costa Rica online gambling" - need names of the 2000 odd online gambling companies, annual revenues, employees, public traded, etc...
Not Enough Participation
Over the last four and half years, Google got the following number of posts
Category (no of posts)
Arts and entertainment (2749)
Business and money (8639)
Computer (4372)
Family and home (1172)
Health (2399)
Reference, education and news (3120)
Relationships and society (851)
Science (1624)
Sports and recreation (1096)
Miscellaneous (944)
So over four and half years they got about 27,000 posts, or less than two posts each day, for each of the catogories.
And a quick math on the turnover on the site:
The revenue figures on four random pages on the site were $185. 95, 225 and 81, which works out to be $146.5 for 25 questions. Which works out to $158k for 27k posts through the life of this site. Not much really (and Google gets only 25% of the turnover)! I dont think it is significant even if you add the adsense revenue, which must have picked up in the last couple of years.
Observations on this Model
- People are quite generous with tips! $100 on a $200 job!
- But to be fair, some of the $200 questions need a lot of work, and might have cost more in the 'outside' (or should I say 'inside') world.
- The answers are public! Private market research is not.
- Lot of info is based on online search itself. Some do pick up the phone and confirm, before posting answers. On monetizing online search, I guess this is how Google might have started this service - move to move up higher the service value chain, but could not gather enough momentum.
- Some even showcase their search practice (Googlers popularizing Google's search capabilities?)
What could have been different?
Ratings are good, but what if you dont like the answer? Can you withhold payment? Reducue payment? If a person who has a previous consistent lower payment, could that be a factor in the actual payment made? E.g., the payment amount could be value*avg rating.
Saturday, December 02, 2006
Is Yahoo Answers too like myLot?
Pardon me if I am a bit cynical about this answers community thing. It sure does build community, but how relevent? And is it really a serious community? With portals adding features to try and make users come back again and again, and actively participate, they seem to foster a lot of junk.
Here is an example from Yahoo Answers:
Somebody asked a question: "How much money exists in the world?"
I would imagine it to get some serious responses. But just in the first six minutes it got seven answers, and some of them are below:
"It's an infinite number"
"just a little more than i have"
"Ask Bill Gates and Ruppert Murdoch. They've got most of it."
"no, but i need more of it"
etc...
It seems people are out there just to generate activity!
Here is an example from Yahoo Answers:
Somebody asked a question: "How much money exists in the world?"
I would imagine it to get some serious responses. But just in the first six minutes it got seven answers, and some of them are below:
"It's an infinite number"
"just a little more than i have"
"Ask Bill Gates and Ruppert Murdoch. They've got most of it."
"no, but i need more of it"
etc...
It seems people are out there just to generate activity!
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