TekChakra.com

Now, why in the world would anyone launch an online Web gaming portal with added photo sharing and videos? Just when I thought we had had enough of these clones… another one is born.

To top it off - this is probably a knock-off me2 of a $50 arcade script, with an added on video and photo section. I absolutely dont see the point in this, specially when they’re trying to do what Zapak anda ton of others are already doing. Oh, and i love their “About Us” page. Says a lot about them (sarcasm implied). Plus they’re giving away the almighty “Beenz” points - which could get them in trouble as its a trademarked word in the Web1.0 days of yonder.

All I can say is Goodluck at getting 100 page views with your recent press release… and let me know how many people stick on your site. I’d love to get figures.

This one is deadpool, even before it even starts.

— Vishal Lamba    Filed under: Uncategorized | No Comments »

Just read about Indiagames famed Vishal Gondal investing 2.0 cr to 3.5cr in a third party hosted blog platform instablogs. Just a couple of points to be made in regards to this…

Firstly, the technolgoy is basic, freely available and easy to setup a clone in under 30 minutes. (hint MU Wordpress). So, the reason to put in the said amounts better be to draw in in a much larger number of desi bloggers via online and offline advertising. Which actually should not be the case - as any Web2.0 successful model should be able to grow in terms of traffic with the inbuilt viral network-driven model.

Further - with current traffic of 25 2.5 million page views per month - that they are (debate-ably) claiming, would generate at the most $2500 per month as an upper limit (at a $1 CPM). I really dont see the wisdom in putting in $500k+ for these kind of returns - unless they have something else up their sleeves (note: subscription/paid model wont work here, and admoney-4-eyeballs is the only way out).

Plus, there is fierce competition from plenty of similar desi models like blogadda.com, as well as every desi Social Network - because they ALL have blogging built in.

Finally, there the international third party hosted blogs that are way better in terms of technology, features and yes - the all important bonus Search Engine traffic for blogging on their platform! (ie. blogspot-google). So, its wiser, even as an Indian blogger for me to setup on blogspot. Why? because its got a lot of google love and you get traffic almost overnight by blogging on blogspot. So, why would i blog on instablog?

Mr Gondal - there’s tons of better web two point ooh models out there that would’ve been a better bet. Just look around carefully. The gems are not easily visible.

— Vishal Lamba    Filed under: Uncategorized | 4 Comments »

I just read about the so called new “viral video website” - computerchacha.com, that Makaan.com / People Group has created and hopes will generate a large amount of traffic via viral forwarding.

Folks over at the People Group are claiming that their videos are highly viral and give them a lot of free publicity. I beg to differ… specifically with this new so called “viral video” (I havent seen any of their their past videos, so cannot comment on them)

Why do I strongly feel this will be a failing viral campaign?

OK, firstly - WATCH the video…  here - http://computerchacha.com/

Then read on…

These guys have absolutely NO clue as to what constitutes into making a viral (video) campaign or a any online viral media unit. They probably spent Rs 15 lakhs to make this downright awfully non-viral animated clip - that completely lacks all incentives that are present in viral videos.

Its so bad and its such a hardsell, that it makes me laugh! The name Makaan appearing every 30 seconds… and more than 5 times in the video. Sheesh.

Frankly, its a downright flop - if the aim is to have viewers forward it to their friends. But, i’m guessing they will use it for their TV campaign. And, they can probably also bombard all their current users / members on their own chain of websites.(perhaps outside sites too… as their actual “Send To Friend form” - only asks one to enter their friends’ email addresses… no names anywhere… so there is a potential loophole here for them to write a script that loops and use this form (note: captca is absent). Not that they will use it - but who knows?

Also, this “Send-To-Friend” form lacks the ability for anyone to send it to all their Gmail Contacts, YahooMail Contacts, RediffMail Contacts, Facebook Friends, Myspace Friends etc… in one click - which is what all new age Web2.0 viral forwarding systems do. So, why is this option absent? beats me. Their site, design and forms are so smelling of the “20 minute site flipping”.

Finally, theirs no way to embed the video on Youtube, blogs, Facebook, Orkut etc. So, no real excitement and Social Media Marketing happening here. Big mistake.

The people who created this (as an online viral video) and approved it, really need to check out the creativity and uniqueness that goes into creating REAL VIRAL VIDEOS.

For starters, just look at the mentos pepsi video… or any other ad video that your friends like so much - that they post it on your facebook and orkut walls and scrap books. The real question is… do you really think you would post this video on your friends’ pages or forward it?

Naahh..  not me. I wont. And I doubt that others will too - thereby holding the Viral Video to cross the so called “magic number“- that is an essential ingredient for anything to go viral.

— Vishal Lamba    Filed under: Uncategorized | 1 Comment »

A recent post on Alootechie shows that Sanjiv Bikhchandani, CEO of Brijj (Info Edge/Naukri guys) has claimed that they have 8 Lakh registered users. Of these 800 are CEOs and 3000 are Directors of companies in India. For those unfamiliar, Brijj is trying hard to be the Linkedin of India.They also claim to get around 5000 new registrants per day.

I’d like to openly challenge both these claims made by Info Edge. I agree they could probably be promoting Brijj to Naukri subscribers, and hence do a fair amount of cross-selling … but being an active person who hires regularly from Naukri - I have yet to receive any sales pitch by email or phone.

I took a quick look at their Alexa data and my estimate shows that they probably get around 10,000 to 15,000 page views per day. Nothing more than that. Assuming that each visitor sees around 3 pages - thats around 3000 to 5000 unique visits per day.

Note: these are unique visits only. A good Social Networking model gets highly sticky users who come back very often and spend time on the site, and as a result the Social Networking site traffic GROWS exponentially. That is the key. The whole success of Social Networking model (and most businesses) is in the returning visitor / repeat sale. If you cant get that - then you need to move on to something else. The pot of gold is in the repeat visitors and new people who get hooked. This leads to the highly exponential viral growth in traffic. Now, go take a look at their Alexa traffic growth (marked by nothing but short spurts and low traffic curve) - and you will see the truth for yourself.

Anyway, I dont see how Sanjiv has claimed these stats. If Info Edge has an independant project unit that manages this project and is sending Sanjiv these numbers - then he definitely needs to go in and do some serious checks in server logs etc., so that he can  back these figures. If they turn out to be false (which I am 99.99% sure), then he needs to hand in the pink slips to the people who have misinformed him. Plus, the next time around his company goes out in the open and does press releases like this, someone needs to be doubly sure. Else, things like this will end up up giving them a lot of negative publicity… which I’m sure will happen in the coming days - as the bigger media players pick this story and the blogosphere starts to post their 2 cents.

Lesson #1: Don’t rely on stats given to you by Mr X, Y or Z - unless you see it yourself, specially for making a release.

Lesson #2: Don’t make far fetched claims, even though you are publicly listed… you may get a short blip, but in the long run it will hurt your credibility in the market.

— Vishal Lamba    Filed under: Uncategorized | 4 Comments »

I’ve been thinking about this question a lot lately. Something tells me that the answer is NO.

We’re still mostly stuck in the Web1.0 world and even what were are doing in the Web2.0 space, is just not unique enough - but plain simple rip offs of the “main” global models.

I mean - look at the travel area. Everyone is just focusing on the standard model. Same with Matrimonial and Matchmaking. Same with Social Networking. Again with Property sites. More with Job Sites (apart from a couple of new ones like Reffster).

There is so much more one could do with clever spin-off models… that are happening overseas in each vertical niche, and they are making money.

Clever Web2.0 spin offs like Jobster, Mixx, Ning, Redfin, Metacafe, Flixster, Mahalo, etc etc. Just read Techcrunch daily and you know what I mean.

I do see a handful of these new spin off models … but most of the ones being promoted in the media and that netizens are aware of, are the standard non-innovative, by-the-book models.

The initial reasons that come to mind, are that maybe Indian Net users are not ready for these niche models… and are still just discovering the basic Web1.0 and Web2.0 models. They’re still trying to understand and grasp what User Generated Content is, what social bookmarking is, what Tags are, what Backlinking is, what a Blog is, etc etc.

Are we ready yet for these models? Is it time the tech entrepreneur community took the plunge and started spinning off, better models - rather than the same old Classifieds, Matrimonials, Property sites and Job sites ?

— Vishal Lamba    Filed under: Social Media, Portals | 2 Comments »

This is so basic - and makes me wonder. This is a web design and consultancy company. Head over to their homepage, and you will see that they make you “wait” for about 2 minutes until their homepage site content loads. How ridiculous.

To top that - they have inserted a pong game for you to play while you wait!

How ridiculous x 2.

Firstly, making anyone wait for more than 10 to 20 seconds (specially for your first page to load) - is a HUGE put off. To then make them play a game of pong while they wait, makes absolutely no sense. Why the heck would I indulge to play the (first) video game ever made ? While the rules and learning curve for the game are a no-brainer (and probably why they chose to display it) - its damn outright BORING. If you want me to play something and waste my time, at least pick a half decently good game. Solitaire, Tetris, Bejeweled … etc.

This company claims to be doing Web Design, Development and Consultancy etc etc - but, if they can’t get such a basic thing done right, I would strongly advise everyone to stay away from them.

I’m hoping my email to them, makes them remove this landing page tactic, and if you don’t see it on their site anymore - then, they did listen to me I’ve inserted a screen shot below, for those who missed it.

— Vishal Lamba    Filed under: Uncategorized | No Comments »

OK. So its now hitting the blogosphere, and will be on front page of the print media soon. Hasbro and Mattel are going after the Aggarwal brothers of Calcutta and Facebook for trademark and patent violations. ( If you missed it, read this and come back )

Initial thoughts? Well, firstly they’re making about $25,000 per month running adsense ads. The game is a top 10 app on Facebook. Hasbro and Mattel undoubtedly knew this scrabulous game was becoming big and waited for the right time. Now they’re doing all they can to go after Facebook and get all the free publicity. Will they approach the Aggarwal brothers and ask them to help make a legal version of Scrabble? Most probably not. Whats your take on that?

As of now the game is still live and is played by over 500,000 people - most of them addicted. So, a immediate withdrawl by Facebook - will leave a lot of people with twitching fingers. Already protesting groups have sprung up in support of Scrabulous.

Aggarwal brothers refuse to comment.

My take - they should have been a bit wiser…

1. Make a slight variation of Scrabble… don’t deviate too much in the game play - and keep it similar since you are targeting people who have played Scrabble. Keep the changed game play small enough so they can adapt and significant enough so you can argue in court.

2. Don’t link to Wikipedia entry for Scrabble in your game info area !! I thought this should’ve been obvious.

3. While I like the name variant - “Scrabulous” … i thought it could have been a bit more different.

Course of action … quickly build a twist, and launch a couple more games - fast!! Preferably a word game that is in public domain. This will allow some of your current users to satisfy their soon-to-be missing addiction - once Scrabulous is removed… which it probably will be, soon. What do readers think?

— Vishal Lamba    Filed under: Uncategorized | 1 Comment »

The news is in.

I nearly fell off my chair.

Then, I ROFL (rolled-over-the-floor-laughing).

Firstly, a big congratulations to the Pahwa guys for striking this deal. Secondly, HT - if you want to get into the dot com / online media space - try to be a little more wise.

1. You should never have paid $10 million for DesiMartini.com. Its probably worth one-hundredth this price. Yes, you heard that right.

2. Do some “independent” research on traffic figures you’ve been fed.

3. A member base of 250,000 is nowhere close to what you should have got for the price you have paid.

4. Study your other options more. Do more R&D. Hire outside consultants to do this R&D for you. Honest people who know what is happening. Do your homework (the right way).

5. You may have a lot of cash as a group to burn -but sincerely try not throwing away hard earned money of other people in your group.

6. This investment is probably going to be a waste - and you’re not going to be able to cash in or recover it for at least 10 years - although i predict a closure of the site, not very far away.

7. The site does not even have a revenue model in place (other than the obvious advertising model). They claim to get 2.5 million page views per month (highly debatable… as after I used my stealth techniques to check, I get a figure of around 750,000 page views at tops). So, given that they do 2.5 mill page views per month - thats about $5000 revenue at max coming in with a $2 CPM rate (taken on the higher side).

8. Finally, lets do a little bit of basic math here. $10 million for 250,000 members is $40 per member. (assuming that these are active users / members and also not bogus entries). Now, if I were to build a similar site from ground up - it would cost me around $5000 tops. (given that I would outsource it to India, and not end up purchasing a similar ready-to-go social networking script … of which there are plenty stable and advanced solutions available for under $500). So, I put in $5000 make a great site and then I start running CPC ads on Google Adwords and other Ad networks at an average CPC of around 10 cents (very reasonable). Now, I’ve done this before - so these stats are realistic… we can assume (in the absolutely worst case) for every 10 visitors to the site 1 signs up. Thats $1 per sign up. So now, to get 250,000 genuine members in a span of say one month - I will have to invest $250,000 into my online media campaign.

Also, the viral effect of a small percentage of members inviting their friends to join in - will probably constitute to another 5% to 10% more members. Lets keep that as a bonus.

So, all in all - if I did this in-house, I can build my own website, brand and community of 250,000 for around $250,000. So, why would I pay $10 million ?

What this shows is that HT Media has not done their math. This is the WORST case scenario. I don’t believe Desi Martini has any established brand in the online space. All I can remember is when they did their brief stint of TV ads a few months ago. Apparently - their TV ad can be seen on their homepage, and has probably played an important role in earning them a higher valuation, as it is a very good ad and has been done very professionally.

HT Media - I know you guys have finally woken up from your cryogenic chambers and now want to get into this space desperately - but you need to first understand and catch up with what you have missed while in hibernation.

I see that you are looking for other acquisitions in other dot com verticals… but, please try not making blunders like this.

Oh boy! Bubble 2.0 cometh.

*added later* - my friend, Amitabh points out that it makes much more sense if they had developed and marketed their required Social Networking website from ground up, in-house… I couldn’t agree more.

— Vishal Lamba    Filed under: Uncategorized | 3 Comments »

I can’t seem to get enough of the brilliant interface that eRail.in has brought as an alternative to all the frustrated online visitors to the Indian IRCTC website. The website has been developed by Vimal Kumar alone, who heads the Delhi based company, 5Map. He has done a brilliant job and has completely over-turned the frustrating experience of searching and booking a ticket online, with a pleasantly user friendly one. This example shows all entrepreneurs out there that there is still plenty of room and potential for innovation in new Indian web models. Way to go, Vimal!

— Vishal Lamba    Filed under: Uncategorized | 5 Comments »

As if people were not already irritated enough with the NautankiTV embedded videos that were popping up on various sites like AgencyFAQs… now you can get to see the wonderful streaming video ads inside a Facebook widget on your friends’ profile pages!

What a superb example of the wonders of the F8 platform! This is a ground breaking widget that will change the way we see the world!

Yah, right.

Why on earth would anyone install the Nautanki player inside their Facebook persona space to show visiting friends the highly drab video ads? I fail completely to see the motive. Maybe, some reader here can post a comment and enlighten my short vision.

And while you’re at it - do let me know the value-add the Nautanki video player is giving visitors on websites that are part of the growing Nautanki Ad Network.

— Vishal Lamba    Filed under: Uncategorized | 2 Comments »