It makes me think that there are so many of them, that’s why they are popular or is it the other way around? They are popular and that’s why there are so many of them. This is a classic chicken and egg trap hole. I am of the latter opinion. This begs the question why are they more popular?

Games beautifully cater to psychologically the need of self esteem and self actualization which have been proven to be more important than basic needs. Other apps like maps and navigation cater more to basic needs.  In this fast paced world where everyone looks for instant gratification and recognition, games quietly and aptly fill this need. As you beat your previous score or defeat a buddy’s, you feel satisfaction and pride even if it is momentary.

Games bring out the competitive nature in you. It can induce behavioral changes unlike other passive apps. News apps simply provide information and sometimes overwhelm you with data you cannot and don’t want to grasp. Once you find a game engaging, you usually come back again and again to improve your score, go to the next higher level or beat your friends. Games like Zynga’s Farmville have shown the viral and addictive aspect where gamers change their everyday activities to meet those required by the game.

Even if you have a little bit of nerd in you, games easily talk to that feeling. The high quality touch screen, powerful processors, accelerometers, sensors and now even augmented reality tools on smart phones and mobile devices enable a cool gaming experience. Features like gesture, motion, and pressure do their part to excite the nerd in you. This ability of gaming apps lends it advantages over say a weather app. How many ways can you show the weather and how interactive can you make a weather app?

Is this craze for game apps sustaining and will it be able to defend its place in the app store?

As data bandwidth gets more expensive and carriers in US and Europe are going for tiered pricing. Apps which are light on the network will continue to grow. Games are light on network usage from the carrier’s point, as they use the data resident on the device such as a locally stored game. Apps which require a user to send data real time over the bandwidth like streaming video apps and other social networking apps will get limited if data gets pricier.

Another critical differential is that the size doesn’t matter, when it comes to game developers. Individual creativity competes at par with that of the larger guys and can enrich the ecosystem. Small developers stand an equal chance like the big players for the success of the app. This is not like other apps like multimedia sharing ones, (Netflix, Hulu, Youtube) which have complex issues like privacy agreements and content rights requiring strong negotiation power and size.

Will this be a similar trend in India? In all likelihood. The factors which make game apps so popular are human behavioral elements and are universal.

[Anubha Jayaswal, the author, is a Wharton MBA and works for a leading technology company. She eagerly follows and comments on the telecommunications world.]

1. Dedicated VCs from India, SE Asia and China were invited to listen to pitches from startups which were curated from a larger list. These startups were encouraged to present the “business case” and not the cool technology that they work on. Most of them got feedback on honing their product presentation as well as a lot of inputs about their business models.
2. Business Matching – They did a very good job at collecting information from the attendees and actively connected them with other attendees of interest. One could search on the basis of people coming to an event and their interest areas and thereby connect to anyone whose schedule was free.
3. Thought leadership sessions - As the most read technology blog in India, we were invited to represent Pluggd.in as well as the startup opportunity in India. The ask was to give a short yet insightful presentation into the Indian technology space. The slide deck we presented is below.
OpenWebAsia
View more presentations from pratyushp.
Now to the good part.

Pluggd in to partner with prominent blogs (and bloggers) to create an ecosystem where there is visibility and knowledge sharing across SE Asia – A lot of prominent bloggers and blogs including TC in Asia, e27 in Singapore, Leaderonomics, Startup Digest, DailySocial.net etc expressed interest for creating this. We will have some news for you soon on that.

Most of them got a brief glimpse of www.startupqna.com and had a lot of thoughts on the utility of the idea. We are going to incorporate most of them and make it a stronger platform.

Lastly, we got a lot of feedback on how to make UnPluggd larger, better and sexier. We are all pumped up – and be sure this time its going to be an event you shouldnt miss. Watch this space for more

• The top 10 countries accounted for just over 71% of the total global unique IP addresses seen by Akamai, down less than half a percent from the second quarter,
  and just over two percent less than the same quarter a year ago
• There were 179 countries with fewer than one million unique IP addresses connecting to Akamai in the third quarter of 2009, 137 with fewer than 100,000 unique IP addresses, and 30 with fewer than 1,000 unique IP addresses
• The average connection speed, worldwide stands at 1.7 Mbps. South Korea maintained its position as the country with the highest average connection speed.

Unique IP Addresses Worldwide

Broadband Speed Worldwide

• South Africa has half of the top 10 fastest cities in Africa, with average speeds ranging between 1-1.5 Mbps.
• South Korea, unsurprisingly, has six of the top 10 fastest cities in Asia, all with average speeds above 15 Mbps
• 19% of the Internet connections around the world were at speeds greater than 5 Mbps and South Korea continues to dominate the list.

Key Statistics for India

• 3,343,157 Unique IPs
• Average Speed – 879 KBPS
• Only 0.7% above 5 MBPS, 4.9% above 2 MBPS and 26% below 256 KBPS

Download the report

8 years, 35 Channels, 4.5 Lakh (paying) subscribers, but are they enough?

50% of Worldspace subscribers came via Airtel DTH partnership – so that makes the first few years (or rather first 6 years) a market creation effort and essentially an unsuccessful stint.

Pricey Positioning

Radio is a mass medium and Worldspace focused on premium user segment to start with. Nothing wrong with it (that your GTM strategy), but even after 2 years, they never cared to break the myth that it isn’t a premium product. Or rather, they never cared to go beyond the premium segment.

Worldspace Radio - Who killed the DJ?

Off late, Indian consumers have started exploring newer consumption medium (products/services), but how many of them wanted to explore Worldspace? Were people talking about Worldspace in their school/workplace? Was there ever a community building exercise by Worldspace team? I don’t recall too many initiatives.

The notion of ‘bought into the receiver for lifetime’ was a big hindrance to adoption – and am sure there are multiple ways to break that notion.

Marketing Strategy (or the lack of it)

Worldspace India was creating a market for ‘niche content’ radio in India and you need hell lot of creativity to market your service, especially when you are the only one in that space.

Worldspace roped in A R Rahman as brand ambassador and did just a lip service to the partnership. Beyond Rahman partnership, there was nothing substantial about Worldspace marketing strategy. There was no attempt to acquire new customers or to enter new user segment.

Service too early for the Indian market?

Indian subscribers paying for radio content? Well, subscription based content doesn’t work so well with the Indian mass (free is the word). Even though Worldspace was ad-free, they probably left a lot of money on the table.

The basic hypothesis was value in the content – there surely was, but were they pricing it right?

Essentially, they created a filter (with premium pricing) and didn’t monetize the filter at all (I am sure a lot of Worldspace subscribers would have paid a little more for the value they were getting).

Even acquiring new customers would have been easier with entry pricing and a bit of messaging could have done the trick.

Roadshows would have helped – it’s all about exploring newer ways to reach out to customers, but the first step lies in understanding the real problem statement, i.e. a potential customer’s perception of the service.

What’s your opinion? How does it feel going back to ‘Bollywood crazy’ ‘free’ FM stations?

img credit

The company, in a letter to subscribers have announced the latest developments and subscribers who have paid for services beyond December 31st stand to lose their money.

“On December 31, 2009, the WorldSpace satellite radio broadcast service will be terminated for all customers serviced from India.

This action is an outgrowth of the financial difficulties facing WorldSpace India’s parent company, WorldSpace, Inc., which has been under bankruptcy protection since October 2008. The potential buyer of much of WorldSpace’s global assets has decided not to buy the WorldSpace assets relating to and supporting WorldSpace’s subscription business in India. As a consequence, WorldSpace, Inc. must discontinue its subscriber business in India. Your subscription contract is with WorldSpace, Inc., a US company that is in a bankruptcy proceeding in the United States. The company recognizes that you may have paid for services to be rendered beyond the termination date, but is not in a position to offer a refund for any unused portion of your subscription.

You may have a potential remedy under the U.S. bankruptcy law. You may file a claim under the claims procedure that is intended to protect creditors of the bankrupt company. Sometime early next year, a claim servicing company will send notice to all creditors listed by the company..- source‘

Worldspace Radio - Who killed the DJ?

Launched in 2001, Worldspace India has 35 channels and caters to 4.5 lakh subscribers (majority from Airtel DTH partnership) and contributed 95% to it’s worldwide subscriber base. In hindsight, one can come up with multiple reasons for Worldspace’s failure (great product, bad messaging as it was considered a costly product), what’s really important to note is the debate over niche vs. mass content.

Also, Worldspace catered to niche audience and the hypothesis that niche audience pays premium for niche content may not stand true (lackluster state of English-music-only FM stations is an example, as they fail to attract advertisers).

So things will move back to the normal with listeners flocking to FM stations playing same old ‘hot’ tracks in between the ads.

While Worldspace had technology limitations, I am sure a lot of us will miss the service and the debate of niche content vs. mass content will continue.

What’s your take on subscription content, especially for radio? If you are a worldspace fan, would you pay extra++ for the service (hypothetically speaking)?

Also see: How Local should FM Channels be?, an earlier report that mentions market share captured by pure play Kannada FM stations in a city which has become a hotbed of multiple cultures and languages, i.e. Bangalore.

img credit

Some other interesting findings of the survey are:

• 17 % of the overall advertising spend goes to digital media, while 24.7 % and 19.4 % of the total advertising amount is allocated to print and TV respectively. Outdoor gets 10 %, while 4.5 % ad spend is allotted to radio.
• 33 % of the CMOs feel that they are over-spending on print advertising while 22 % on television.
• 59 % of the respondents would like to invest more in digital advertising.
• Maximum number of CMOs rated website advertising or product based microsites as most effective. Viral campaigns are regarded as the least effective way of digital advertising. Website advertising and viral campaigns get an average weighted score of 100 and 30.7 respectively.
• Search marketing campaigns (score of 94) and e-mail marketing (score of 90) are considered as the 2^nd and 3^rd most effective ways of digital advertising respectively. Banner ads received a score of 78.
• Almost 100 % of the respondents agreed that the main constraint in adoption of the digital medium for advertisement is the lack of understanding of metrics used to measure the effectiveness of digital advertisement. Another difficulty mentioned by CMOs in adoption of digital media is the inability to adapt traditional media practices to new media.
• 75 % felt that in the current economic climate, digital channels would take on a greater focus in their overall marketing strategy.
• Sectors most at ease with adapting to digital media include- Travel, Insurance, Airline/ hospitality, financial services and IT.

Source: afaqs& ciol

While I agree with the sector adaptability and few other points but there are certain findings in this survey which leaves me bit confused.

Do these CMOs really think that a viral campaign is the least effective method of digital advertising?

I somehow disagree; I think a viral campaign done in the right way can really prove to be effective and one of the most economic forms of digital campaigns. Though it totally depends upon the objective and execution of the campaign but there are quite a few successful examples of Indian viral campaigns like Help Bihar or Microsoft Outlook where the campaigns have managed to achieve the desired result in an effective way.

• Rediff- 73
• In.com- 177
• Indiatimes-324

The lesser number of options does reduce the clutter but that is again for the more suave users who will any how find the right way to get to the right place, they need not be shown directions and also they are the ones who wont get you any advertising revenues as they know the difference between a  sponsored link and a usual link. The type of audience that TVC is going to get you are actually very easy to handle, he already trusts you because you were on TV, now you can make them buy just by throwing some choices. He is here to buy, spend money (read, time), so all you need to do is give him choices to do so. You shouldn’t confuse clutter with more options. You can always give more options and keep it ordered and sorted to avoid the clutter. So the design may not exactly be a fail but there is a mismatch between the promotion campaign, target audience and the design. The positioning “Just your stuff” would have better suited if Rediff had implemented some of these suggestions but currently i see “Just no stuff”. pic credit

[Naman is a startup enthusiast and has worked with couple of Indian startups as Product Manager. He writes at The Inspire Blog]

Well, I’m aware that now movies get released on same day in all tier 2 towns as well but this one is a real small town where earlier not even Bollywood films used to get released the same day. But looks like digitization has changed the face of cinema in such smaller towns beyond recognition now.

Bollywood goes Digital (Jai Ho!)

Like many other industries, even Cinema has undergone a sea change over last couple of years with the advent of digital technologies in India. Digitization of Indian cinema has affected movies on all fronts – be it pre production, production or post production, but out of all these, one aspect which has got completely revolutionized with digitization is the distribution and reach of Indian Cinema.

While 2005-2006 saw some initials sign of digital distribution in India, its only 2008-2009 when it has picked up momentum noticeably. The year 2008 saw some prominent films taking the digital distribution route in a big way; for e.g. “Singh is Kingg” which got released in 415* digital theaters or “Ghajini” which released the maximum number of prints in India (1200* digital & analog versions) and made inroads to even some such smaller towns where films never used to get released on the same day as the rest of the world.
Digital solutions in filmed entertainment are now helping the producers to reach relevant audience & increase the number of prints without any additional cost.

Some of the key advantages of digital distribution are:

• Cost effective: Digital distribution is quite economic as against physical one. Cost per copy of digital print is INR 3500 – 5000 whereas cost per physical print comes to approx INR 65000 – 70000*.
• Larger reach: Digitization streamlines the distribution of cinema through satellite technology to even remote towns, thus increasing the reach to a larger audience on the same day of release. What used to be a gap of 4-5 weeks (sometimes even months) between a big & small city release has now come down to almost zero days.
• Reduces scope of piracy: Since the movies get released on same day in all places, so it reduces the scope of piracy & losses due to unauthorized distribution.
• Faster recovery of investment: Wider release of films also leads to faster recovery of investments in its initial days itself. New releases always have higher occupancy initially & such higher occupancy in more areas helps in BO collection in a quicker way. Due to digitization & timely release, now revenues from smaller towns are not considered as “non-existent” for producers.
• Boon for small budget films: Due to high cost of physical prints, earlier producers of small budget films can only afford to release very limited number of prints to theaters with maximum prints being 50-60 only. Thanks to digitization even such producers can now take their movies to mass in a cost effective way.

Beyond these, digital distribution is also leading to some other interesting benefits to filmmakers; now they are looking towards re-releasing some old classics in theaters as an additional money-making avenue. With all the cost consciousness and focus on reducing piracy, digitization is definitely the way to go for Indian Cinema. Currently out of 12,900 theaters in India, approximately 11% are digital ones. By 2013*, it is estimated that there might be around 7000 digital screens in India. This is expected to result in higher reach of films & higher realization per film, thus increasing the financial viability of movies.

*Figures & statistics taken from FICCI-KPMG Media & Entertainment Industry Report – 2009.

What’s interesting about Ankit’s achievements are the questions raised over his credibility (as a hacker):

Ankit Fadia is a typical charlatan who gets published in one article and rides the wave of not only poor journalism but also his own hype. For years, he has been quoted in low end online publications in India (his home country). Each time he is referenced as an ‘expert’ despite having no skills or accomplishments other than being quoted in these articles. No matter how bright this kid is, how much of a “prodigy” he is, he simply cannot be considered an ‘expert’ in security, especially with his FUD-based statements about “computer security” and “terrorism.” [source]

Even AIC (Anti-India Crew), a Pakistani hacker group known for defacing Indian websites has challenged him on his credentials:

..AIC said that it would be defacing the website of the Central Board of Excise and Customs (CBEC), www.cbec.gov.in, within two days and challenged Fadia to prevent the attack by patching the vulnerable website. AIC maintained that Fadia should stop calling himself a hacker, if it succeeded in hacking the CBEC website.AIC kept its promise and defaced the CBEC website after two days. At another defaced website (bhelhyd.co.in), AIC termed the claims of Indian media about Ankit Fadia as “Bullshit – wikipedia

What’s your take on this year’s awards? The only interesting part about the award this time is the overall quality of nominations – consisted of entrepreneurs from different background and wasn’t restricted to the celebrities alone. Infact, a geek winning an award like this is an indication of changing times!

All Web sites including Yahoo and Rediff have this ‘look at me’ design for many years now where each item is screaming at the viewer to ‘look at me.’ We were forced to make it look like a newspaper, and though we wanted to change it since 1995, the time was not right. Then in a survey we conducted recently, we realised that 80 per cent of our users in the US had moved over to the phone and so redesigned the site for them. In the process, we recognized it as a better design than this ‘horseless carriage’ look.is planning to launch the portal in 22 regional Indian languages by early January 2009 – Ajit Balakrishnan

A welcome move, I must say as Rediff is facing stiff competition from the big players (Y/G) and the newest entrant, In.com.

Local language is the need of the hour and there is no way mass content portals can avoid this. For those who still don’t believe in local language support, local content goes back to the very basic USP behind the several English speaking courses in India – ‘the challenge is that we think in our mother tongue, and then convert to english’ – in essence, we are most comfortable with our mother tongue.
Now, that’s an inherent challenge which I strongly believe will work for content portals – I see most of my Telugu and Marathi friends read local e-newspapers – and that is primarily because a lot of local content is available for those languages.
In general, local content creation has been a big challenge and technology like transliteration, local language QWERTY keyboards (phonetic layouts) will help ride the content creation wave.

What’s your take?

Few interest developments:

• OLPC in Local Indian Languages
• Yahoo’s voice search in local accent
• Indian Media goes Vernacular
• Orkut in hindi,
• YouTube’s Bengali Love
• Kalibonca brings the Local Language Keyboard to your PC (and Mobile)

Airtel customers can book tickets on the Airtel WAP site live.airtelworld.com/AirTel Live on all GPRS enabled handsets. Airtel customers can also call 5432191 that would be directed to the Bookmyshow call center for tele-booking and home delivery, for any cinema/Play theatre/concert venue covering any show time.

If you look at ticket booking space, BookmyShow seems to have created a niche (heavy investment in marketing) which has resulted in the site being a de-facto choice for booking tickets.

Do you use Bookmyshow or go to individual movie theatre website to book tickets?

The traffic is largely driven by aggressive marketing campaign across Network18 owned TV channels and consolidation of web18 property (SSO implementation as well?)

The traffic seems to flatten out and In.com might hit a ‘stable’ zone, till they launch their next campaign.

What’s really commendable is that they have taken out the beta tag from the email product – something that Gmail team might just want to take a look at.

What’s your feedback on In.com?

Recommended Read: The Secret Behind In.com’s Traffic, Logo similarity between In and LinkedIn

WiYi is powered by Google apps suite and borrows all the features from Google apps (check out the demo of Sify’s wiyi).

Sify’s Internet Business – Go or No-Go?

Sify’s Internet consumer business is heading southwards (7% decline quarterly basis in consumer business, revenues $7.5mn) and the iGoogle redirection just goes on show their confidence in the business (and by the way, it’s one of the worst designed iGoogle page I have ever come across).

Sify’s WiYi ensures that there is no reason for new users to signin to Sify’s service (and not Google’s) – so what’s the future for SIfy? What user experience are we talking here?

To add some perspective, Google also powers AirtelLive, but the key difference is that Airtel is not at all into Internet consumer business – so it’s a typical broadband partnership. But Sify’s partnership is surely at the cost of it’s consumer business.

Should Sify exit from it’s Internet business to, say, Reliance (has cash, need users inorganically)?

What’s your take?

As per Comscore, Minglebox’s traffic (UU/PV/Avg. Visitor) seems to beat Facebook’s India traffic – but Alexa throws a completely different view!

Who do you trust? Alexa or Comscore?

Comscore doesn’t track the traffic from cybercafes and has a panel size of 16,000 in India (tracks household and office usages, 15+ age group) – so is it a good way to track relative performance of sites?

Maybe.

What about Alexa? Have you come across a single soul who has installed Alexa’s browser toolbar? We haven’t. Can you rely on Alexa for relative performance? Not so sure.

Same with Google trends – works in some cases, grossly misses the point otherwise.

To summarize, following are our top confusions from the digital world:

• Number of Internet users – No matter how you define the ‘user’, most of the reports grossly differ when it comes to defining the total number of Internet users.
• Site traffic (discussed above)
• Size of Internet advertising market in India
• Mobile Advertising Market - 500 crores or..? Very often, we come across reports that estimates the mobile advertising market anywhere from Rs. 40 crores to 500 crores (same with the online gaming market).

Much of the above confusions surmount because of lack of any trusted authority in the Indian market. Is there an opportunity to be one?

Yes.

What’s your take? What are you confused about?

The service will help tourists who come to Delhi by guiding them through the shortest route between any two locations in Delhi/NCR along with distance and an approximate auto rickshaw fare for that route. The service is auto-prompted when a user searches a flight or a train ‘from or to’ Delhi region on Zoomtra.com. The service will also help Delhiites discover routes to the Indira Gandhi international Airport and various Railway Stations from their location. – source

Routeguru has been operating in Delhi/NCR region for the last few years and it’s high time they expand to other cities (their competitors have deep pockets and are forging bigger partnerships).

What’s your take on RouteGuru’s data accuracy?

Interestingly, I am surprised to see bloggers and journalists reporting about MSN India’s Map launch a month after we reported it.

BIG Music & Home Entertainment is also looking at merchandising business (T-shirts/caps/posters etc) under the ‘BIG’ brand.

We are looking at new distribution avenues with the purpose of having a robust distribution network before trying to acquire content. Today, we do not want to be restricted to the music outlets and are targeting family stores and hypermarket

BIG Music & Home Entertainment is targeting revenues of Rs. 100 crore (the Indian Entertainment Industry is worth 850 crores).

Recommended Read: The Great Indian Entertainment Industry – All set to bOOm

There is an immense opportunity in this space (a company in Bangalore offers pretty much similar service, just that they don’t have data partnerships from big players) – and mobile provides a great distribution platform for online players (just the way they are launching an application on DTH services).

Interestingly, Airtel wants to be at the center of the entire ecosystem and all they

want to do is integrate the backend players in their offering – maybe, it’s time they acquire a player in voice recognition space?

Do expect a similar service in local search space, in the next few days.

What’s your take on Airtel’s strategy? Trying to be everything for everybody? Are they able to keep up their service levels?

Recommended Read:

• Bharti Airtel to get into SaaS Business – ‘CIO in the cloud’
• Nokia and Airtel team up for ad network

Let’s try to understand the rationale behind this consolidation:

The Traffic

In.com, thanks to all the aggressive marketing campaigns (plus some other means) seems to beat Web18′s most-trafficked site and the cashcow, moneycontrol.

Apart from the total number of visits,In.com seems to attract more user engagement than any other portal:

The challenges of ‘Too many’

How many brands/products can web18 create? What about the cost involved in marketing all of these properties?

After a while, what’s really important is user-centric features and not a long list of products (Google realized it long time back and Larry said ‘Features, not Products‘)

And consolidating all of them under a brand umbrella is where it makes sense – and only in.com can potentially be that umbrella (rest of the portals have a strong vertical focus) – you will notice that except moneycontrol, all other portals are now being redirected as sub-domain of in.com (301 redirection, so that they don’t lose any search engine juice).

Monetization?

The bigger challenge, in my opinion is monetization – majority of web18 properties’ (to be specific in.com, tech2, moneycontrol etc) ad inventory is still being monetized via Google adsense – something which just doesn’t make sense, owing to the rev share arrangements between Google and the portals (and that shows up in their revenues as well).

Essentially, they were leaving money on the table – and that’s why the investment (via capital18, Network18′s venture arm) in the newly launched ad network, Networkplay – so, do expect a synergy (and deep partnership) there.

Moreover, you need to consolidate salesforce in the times when advertisers are trimming their budgets – otherwise its damn difficult to sell sites having lesser traffic (like josh18/storeguru etc).

Now that In.com has redirected most of the portals, we do expect some sort of personalization in the portal – a sort of my.yahoo/iGoogle feature that can give a glimpse of content across all the sites?

What’s your take on in.com’s strategy?

Recommended Read: The Secret Behind In.com’s Traffic

Also, Network18 has shelved its IPO plans and is planning to raise Rs 2 billion upwards through private placement.

Apart from focusing on retail distribution, the company launched RoadsofIndia (month back) and also launched ‘Citizen Mapper’, a GPS Enthusiast centric initiative aimed at rewarding the users for suggesting additional Points of Interest (POI’s) and also sharing updates on what changes occur in their city.

One can add feedback/PoI’s and feedback ensures that the user automatically gets registered on SatNav’s website and company then rewards the user by crediting Rs. 5 into that account, for every POI that gets incorporated in the map.

MapMyIndia: iNav

MapMyIndia has launched iNav, GPS-based application for mobile phones that offers:

• Graphical map guidance assisted by voice instructions
• Search points of interest near by, along the way or around the destination
• Route recalculation in case recommended turn not taken
• Detours to avoid specific road
• Ability to store your very own favourite locations

Earlier, MapMyIndia partnered with Ford and GM for in-car voice navigation system, that is preloaded with 52 categories of PoIs (point of interest)

Others in this space:

• Nokia too has launched Nokia 6210 Navigator, a GPS-enabled mobile phone with an integrated in-map compass for pedestrian guidance.(and of course, they acquired navteq)
• Blaupunkt launched GPS Device earlier.

Navigation is one business which is still not cracked by any of the companies – thanks to the unavailability of lat/long data.

Who do you think has a strong hold here?

Deloitte studied the Mumbai wireless networks and here are some interesting results:

• Of the total networks sampled (6700), around 36% appeared to be unprotected i.e. not having any encryption on them.
• 52% were using low level of protection i.e Wired Equivalent Privacy (WEP) encryption
• Only 12% networks were using the more secure Wi-Fi Protected Access (WPA) or WPA2.
• 1852 appeared to be business wireless networks. Of these, 42% appeared to have no
  encryption at all.
• 2815 seemed to be residential wireless networks based on nomenclature of the SSID broadcast. Of these, 26% appeared to have no encryption.

So, essentially 88% are relatively easy to compromise – something that owners need to really worry about (especially given the latest case on terrorist’s hacking expertise where they used open wi-fi signals to send emails).

What do you think is the root cause? Lack of awareness?

Download the pdf

In recent years, however, ad expenditure has roughly tracked the economy, and has remained at 0.92 per cent-0.93 per cent of GDP. There is no bubble in ad expenditure to burst, which is why ZenithOptimedia expects global ad expenditure to slow in 2008 and 2009 – source

Launch of NetworkPlay.in

Goosefish media ventures (started by webchutney, has invested in Alootechie) and Capital 18 has invested in NetworkPlay.in, an online ad network that is targeting publishers in verticals across business, technology, news, shopping, social media and entertainment related websites.

Goosefish will merge it’s existing adnetworks (GoSindbad and DivaNation.in) with NetworkPlay.

The ad network will start off with display ads and rich media ads – will initially sell ad inventory on the basis of cost per impression (CPM) and will foray into text ads at a later stage.- source

As a part of the tie-up, content on the Easy Loan, EMI Calculators and FAQ sections on the Reliance Money website will be provided and powered exclusively by Apnaloan.com

ICICI: DishTV

ICICI has partnered with DishTV to launch ICICIACTIVE, an interactive banking service that will enable Dish TV viewers to access information on ICICI Bank products and services from their TV set.

The current content partnership is mainly aimed at providing information, but I believe, conducting transactions seems to be the logical step in the future.

Isn’t DTH a big competitor to Internet?

MSN India has launched it’s live search maps product and now supports 9 cities – Delhi, Mumbai, Chennai, Kolkata, Bengaluru, Hyderabad, Pune, Ahmedabad, and Jaipur (as well as integration with national highways/roads).

Live maps supports driving directions, business listing/PoI searches as well as local search – though the data quality is nothing great to talk about.

Many (or rather most) of the listings do not have accurate lat/long and I believe, these are MSN India’s initial attempt to get the local presence rolling (MSN recently partnered with asklaila for it’s city centric site).

What’s your opinion?

–

Whats in the name? Traffic! Unsolicited traffic!

Well those believing over the success of in.com and thinking that in.com really deserves Alexa rank of 25 (India), need to rethink.
Go to the whois link of in.com, check out the sub-domains section and you will find out for yourself (click on the image for a better view)

Only 19% of the total reach of in.com is actually of the domain in.com.

The rest 81% is “mislead” traffic – that comes in from all sorts of .in domains like gov.in, nic.in, co.in, ac.in, airtel.in, aol.in etc.

How does this happen? Well those using IE must have noticed that when the internet speed is slow or when in other cases if IP address is not resolved, due to congestion or a misspelled domain name, IE automatically goes on to search the domain by suffixing .com, .org, .net etc. to the given domain name.

Suppose if you typed in “abc.ac.in” and if IP address of “abc.ac.in” is not resolved than IE goes on to search “abc.ac.in.com”. And hence lands at on in.com. You can notice the in.com’s redirect link in the address bar in such a case.

in.com has only 3 major sub-domains and these are not the ones mentioned in the who.is data, they are stat.in.com(analytics, probably), BigBoss2 and MTVYouthIcon.

Of course there is no doubt that the content of in.com is useful, that is why the page views is high and 65% of the page views come from the main domain.

But we need to realise that Alexa rank considers high weightage for reach of a domain in ranking it, than the pageviews.(i dont have a proof for this but one can easily notice if you follow Alexa very closely). Hence the rank of in.com has much to do with its name and IE’s functioning than anything else. Most Indian users are using IE as it comes free with windows. And also the internet speed isn’t really good for the Aam Junta.

So until IE does change its functionality, in.com will be enjoying better ranks.

Disclosure: I may be wrong in my discovery. If so, please provide an explanation to the who.is sub-domain data for in.com. Please leave your thoughts in the comments section.

Korea tops the list (102.8) followed by Australia, Japan, Singapore (91.2), New Zealand (87.2), Hong Kong (81), China (76.6), Taiwan (74.8) and Malaysia (64.2) and India (51) on search intensity ranking.[ET]

In terms of unique searchers, China leads the pack (143.5 million searchers conducting 11 billion search queries in July), followed by Japan (61 million searchers conducting nearly 6.2 billion searches) – India just has 23.4 million searchers conducting 1.2 billion searches.

So, essentially India’s challenge is not just the number of Internet users, but also the engagement/usage.

As far as comscore is concerned, their data doesn’t take into account the Internet access from cybercafes (which is the most important data point for India)- but that’s the only piece of data that can be trusted (for the lack of any other credible source of information).

What’s your take on these numbers?

The pocketable navigator guides a person sitting in the car or walking around to its destination through a digital map and voice directions. It doubles up as an in-car entertainer with 1 GB card to download movies, music, games and photos. It is available in around 174 cities of India at a price of Rs 17,990 [ source]

SatNav

SatNav (raised $7mn from Sequoia) has launched its GPS navigation product – SatGuide – for major retail chains across India. SatGuide has partnered with chains like Croma, Staples, E-Zone and Reliance Autozone to bring its range of GPS products into the neighbourhoods of consumers across India.

SatGuide is available in 500 stores and company plans to reach out to more consumers by partnering with more retail stores in the future, taking the number to 3,000 by the end of 2008. [source]

Have you used any of these navigation systems? Any feedback on their accuracy?

“The law would prohibit false or misleading subject lines in all commercial e-mail, and prohibit the use of a third party’s Internet address or domain name without consent.

If the Act is notified by the cabinet, unregis tered advertisers like those offering health sup plements beauty treatments, loans, real estate agents amongst others will come under the scrutiny of the law. ” ET

Like NDNC, govt. would encourage people to forward such unsolicited emails/SMSes and will pursue actions against companies who send these emails.

Do you think it will ever work?

Recommended Read: India least spammy among BRIC

Indiatimes 58888 will rope in advertisers, collect content in the form of ad RBTs from them and pass it on to the mobile operators, who will, in turn, offer these to the mobile subscribers. Similar to caller tunes, consumers may subscribe or opt in for the service through the interactive voice response (IVR) system and SMS. – source

As per the stats, ~30% of the 300 million mobile subscribers in India have opted for caller tune services and ARBT could just open up a very strong revenue channel for operators.

Indiatimes’ AdRingles will serve as a platform enabling advertisers to upload their ad RBTs on the site. Mobile operators will be allowed to pick up the uploaded tones and offer them to subscribers. A subscriber can opt-in for this service by registering via various modes (such as IVR, SMS, USSD) and get rewarded by the operator through different methods.

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Earlier last month, Indiatimes launched MocoLife, a group SMS service that also offers content based on subscription (astrology, cricket scores, bollywood etc).

Indiatimes 5888 is driving whole lot of VAS activity and it’s really amazing to see a hardcore media company is serving as a platform for operators/content players to monetize the subscriber base.

What’s your opinion?