Ghoomo – Movie search for India

November 20, 2007
By sinha

ghoomoGhoomo is a Bangalore based startup that has just launched it’s movie search platform. Using Ghoomo, one can search for theatres, movie show times and read reviews/previews.As per the Subodh (founder), major USP of Ghoomo is:

Internally this is a robust & intelligent search customized for movie vertical and takes care of spelling mistakes & partial words.

Work flow reflect movie search life cycle of movie visitors. For example it effectively integrates movements from theaters to showtimes and vice versa.

Review:
The site has a very texty appeal (which actually is very cool) and has currently indexed 25 Indian cities. Search work pretty fine, but here are a few candid views:

  • Instead of asking users to enter the movie details (wiki styled), how about doing it yourself – one can fetch the data from several sites.
  • How about being the hub for reviews, i.e. for a particular movie, show the reviews from top 5 credible sources.
  • Most importantly, a product like this needs actionable steps – i.e integration with online booking services (OnYoMo is doing it, so Ghoomo has to!)

In general, my feedback is that Ghoomo is relying lot on user generated content, and am not too sure how will that work out for them. The good thing is that there is no pan-India movie search site (with strong branding) and Ghoomo’s cool domain name stands a good chance.

What’s your take?

Other products in this category: Kyazoonga, mvies.in

tags:

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               About the author - Ashish Sinha is a Startup Mentor/Product Strategy Coach, and the founder/chief editor of pluGGd.in. He has launched/managed couple of products (consumer as well as enterprise) in US and India, and now consults with startups/small businesses on their product/media strategy. He can be reached at: ashish (at) pluGGd.in [+91 98452 06443]
  • I agree with Mahesh's analysis. I think that the domain name can be put to even better use.
  • Ashish
    Hey Chetan
    Brilliant find!!!!
    Both the products are from the same company, but it's interesting to note that they have the same listings.

    Hmmmm...not too sure why Subodh is taking the pains of building two brands (with pretty much the same service)
  • It is VERTICAL ripped off by YouMagix.Com or probably pulling data from the same database.

    Just quickly check out http://ahmedabad.ghoomo.com/ and

    http://movies.youmagix.com/India/Gujarat/Ahmeda...

    I see both have the same listings :-)
  • Raj
    Haven't really seen any wiki styled product work in India. Not too sure why ghoomo stands a chance. theur UI is simple, yet dirty (colors are too bad).
  • VIkas
    Too many ads - since this is newly launched, they can get away with few ads.
  • Some of my ideas for Ghoomo.
    1. Include No. Of seats available, Click to Reserve Seats through one click Payment.
    2. Get user mobile number, and intimate them about Seat availibility and New movie. Keep optional this feature.
    3. The UI should StanOut. The site cluttered in Opera. As i tested on 3 popular browser IE, Ffx and Opera.
    4. Try to avoid other city information. i.e if i am in bangalore i am looking ONLY bangalore Based Movies. This can be done using Some opensource IP2Location APIs. Just like the moment you loand on Netvibes, its shows Bangalore Temp automatically.
    5. Include Short Video about Movie or Some Pics/Snaps.
    6. The movement User land on Ghoomo, Its should show Latest Film, In his city with ranking short clip/pic, .
    7. SMS based movie info is also Good feature.

    If Ghoomo wants to stay with UGC, its better to use AMAZON Mturk to Crowdsource.

    The UGC in india wont work, as of now, as most of ppl not aware of it. When ppl land on Ghoomo thier First Major concern is Getting Info about Movie but not to add content. As i ran test with my collegues for Ghoomo, the result was stupendous as my collegue ran this Query which is a new kannada movie and got Accurate Results but when they clicked on "Movie Detail" there were no content and they[my collegues] Straight a way closed the site and informed me about missing content. Its better to DIY crawling..

    After all Its a Very CoolHot Product and Domain is incredible, shd get TradeMark :)
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