The last few days saw a frenzy of activity in the Indiatimes space. But before we go there, I read a few interesting things that I thought would make good starters. One site I chanced upon was Local Signal, which allows you to choose a city (its a limited list, for now) and once you have, gives you news, events, Q&A, and even blogs from that area. A pretty neat utility site, from what I saw. And now for some news. Hi5, which is really irritating me with invites from people I really haven’t even heard of, has gone mobile. And lastly, AlooTechie tells me that MIH (of the Ibibo ‘fame’) has invested in ‘Singapore-based BuzzCity, which owns a mobile social network myGamma that has more than six lakh members from India’.
But the action has been happening very much at home!! Indiatimes has been rolling out services, like there’s no tomorrow. I first read about Indiatimes’ tie up with Onyomo, for a local search service. With Sulekha having announced some major plans just a few days back, this space has become very interesting indeed. Then it was the launch of AdRingles, an Ad Ringback Tone service (the link explains it well) and MocoLife, a group SMS service which also offers content on subscription. I remember reading that OnMobile, a VAS company had launched its ARBT a couple of months earlier. Since we are mentioning Indiatimes, I just read that they have also launched QnA.
All this made me wonder (as I always do) on what exactly Indiatimes (both web and mobile) is upto. There’s clearly nothing profoundly innovative happening since all the services mentioned above are things that have been done by others, even Mocolife. Incidentally, Medianama has a good analysis of the last one.
Now, I don’t see any decrease in the dominance of the Google, MSN, Yahoo, Rediff in the Indian webspace, unless Indiatimes manages to pull some rabbit out of their hat. With their track record, I wouldn’t bet on that. Which means, they would have to use the mobile platform to gain a foothold in the digital space. One way to do it is to launch cloned services and use their offline media might to build traction. But that wouldn’t be a great strategy since users would slowly shift to better services, once they get comfortable with the medium. I’d still say that the best bet for them is to create synergy with offline products right from a product level (right now its just using them as a communication tool).
For example, look at the multiple editions that TOI has. How difficult would it be to use the TOI backend to provide news/business/events and even the listings (local search) part (Times Classifieds would have tonnes of data), build in the newly launched Flubber, sorry QnA into it, and make city specific sites that would add on to Indiatimes. Now, how difficult would it be to experiment with the iTimes platform of theirs, which anyways is idle (i don’t have stats, but i don’t know anyone who uses it, maybe I’m just not social enough) to build communities around this structure, make a mobile version, and then top it up with services like MocoLife? Digital communities which have a one stop shop for all requirements in their cities – local search, QnA, events…… and even have a group sms service to communicate all this!! Maybe its worth an effort..
Indiatimes better move fast, since Big Adda is pushing the mobile version very hard, judging by the TVCs, and knowing Reliance, they won’t be satisfied by anything less than the premium position in any vertical they operate in. It perhaps is a calculated strategy from them, after seeing the dizzying pace of mobile growth in India. After all, even the great Google sometimes chases mobile more than they do the internet.
until next time, the changing times
itimes networking is total crap site. i created an account and wanted to delete after 10 mins only. why? unlike Facebook this one imposes everything from a daily email to x, y, z, applications that will send notifications to your email. Yes, you can edit it all out in settings, but by the time you do so, your email is full of crap and tons of third parties have your email. If that want bad enough, unlike other networking sites, this does not give a clear indication on how to delete the damn account. i have clicked on every link, and dropped email to their team a few times. still no reply, but the spam keeps on coming. stay away from this nonsense.