Fon WiFi Routers go Web 2.0 Savvy – Fonera 2.0N
Apart from writing on the Indian Telecom space, I like innovation and here is one such product that makes me write about it with a WoW feeling. At first in 2006, Fon / Foneras[ WiFi Spot] was to have FREE WiFI network. The startup is backed by Valley’s most innovative company – Google.
I have version of their router which is semi-intelligent [ has some connected interactive features] However, Fonera 2.0N is much more than that and is closely mapping Web 2.0 successful applications. Read more
Global Social Networks overtake Indian Startups – Facebook Leads – Why the Fall ?
After over 18 months to 2 years in operation, India centric social networking startups are lagging Global peers by a tremendous margin. [Ref - June 2009 Traffic Data for India only ]
Facebook is the undisputed leader with 9.1 m unique visitors and a whopping 800 m page views. This is the only rising graph in the past 12 months. Globally Facebook had over 150 billion page views in June-09 
Placeholder for Orkut – I am not sure of its ranking since data was not made available for the same. But will be competing for the first or second place.
BharatStudent – With an attitude of do whatever - right or wrong – Spam, Adult Videos etc has managed to survive and is able to attract 2.6 m unique visitors with 18 m page views. Subsidiary of NorthGate public listed company.
ibibo – Not just pure play social networking but with other content has managed to get 1.6 m unique visitors and 19 m page views. MIH group company.
myspace - clocked 1.3 m unique visitors with 16 m page views.
Hi5 – popular in East Asia had 1.1 m unique visitors and 31 m page views in India
BigAdda – Anil Ambani’s media blitz! not performing upto expectations had 830K unique visitors and 9.1 m page views.
IndyaRocks – Indian startup surviving the Social Networking Boom has still lost considerable traffic as it has halved since Sept-2008. Recorded 760K unique visitors and 21 m page views
Yaari – clocked 390K unique visitors and 4.8 m page views. Surviving on Google’s Ad Network.
MingleBox – Peak traffic recorded in April 08 and since then has fallen to a fourth. Clocked 150K unique visitors with 2.3 m page views. Focusing now on Education, college and test prep. The status of $7mn raised ? Any info ?
ApnaCircle – Sabeer Bhatia the Hotmail guy failing to impress the Aap ke Apne… managed to get 140K unique visitors and 2.2 m page views.
DesiMartini – The intelligent sell-off by Vivek Pahwa in Nov-07, before the economy crisis deepened had just 77K unique visitors and 1 m page views. Hindustan Times paid around $10 per page view in the Buy-Out, great deal
campus18 – A$$holes have you seen a network being shutdown for refurnishing ?
Why the Disastrous performance of Indian Social Networks ?
Technology Startup – VC $$$ – Me Too attitude won’t work. Consider for example, Mr. Ambani jumping into the bandwagon with really poor talent and pocket full of cash for marketing trying to compete with Facebook. You have the results before you.
Technology and Product Engineering Matters: Why Facebook can come and rule the Indian market and why not the opposite ? Facebook’s engineering team and product managers are simply marvelous. Once you decide on a cool feature, they go to any extreme to bring unmatched user experience. Here is a latest example on how they tweak TCP & UDP for Memcache.
Innovation only survivor of Recession: By observing the traffic pattern over the past 12 months, all the Indian networking sites have taken a hit. Innovators don’t copy, they lead and hence you have to have that out of the box approach rather than the “herd mentality”.
I can go on but would like to read your thoughts, comments and critics. Some more metrics about these networks is available as Paid Report
Online Advertising Security – WebChutney’s Malware Infected Network – Google SafeBrowsing API is for You
I had always wanted to write about Online Advertising in India and the next couple of posts are related to the same. WebChutney which claims itself to be India’s No 1 Digital agency had some poorly implemented Ad network system. Their network was infected by Malware and Google flagged the same which the company Engineers [if any] were probably unaware of. What really happens is hackers take control of Ad Serving Server and insert a script to be served to all users. The Script will serve malicious content from a different server. Unfortunately, Advertising Networks across the world except Google don’t have the capability to analyze such a hack. Google to promote a user friendly web free from Malware gave out its SafeBrowsing API which anybody can use and implement and take care of issues like that of WebChutney. FireFox and Chrome browsers have implemented SafeBrowsing API internally and hence all users going online with those browsers were safe and the rest could have been infected.
WebChutney’s list of clients include Airtel, Kingfisher, Titan, ITC, etc and I wonder how they were able to sign-up these corporates 
I wonder what wast the loss to these clients and others using WebChutney’s network [iGovernment]
Is Online Advertising about Marketing or Technology ? There are over a dozen Ad Networks in India and I am inclined to say none of them have implemented Google’s SafeBrowsing API or a similar system. Internet Advertising once upon a time used to be a total marketing effort with the big guys [newspapers, portals as publishers and Coke, Ford, etc as advertisers] getting all the attention. However, Disruptive Technology like AdWords changed the entire industry and the Big Guys are on the receiving end today
Indian advertisers should realize the importance of technology along with marketing and put a hard effort to innovate otherwise they are digging their own grave
Pixazza Advertising to Monetize Photo Inventory – Microsoft Owns Patent ?
Silicon Valley startup company Pixazza has raised cash from Google selling its Product of monetizing Photo Inventory by Advertisements. Late 2005 and early 2006 seeing the Google Stock hitting a new peak I decided to innovate a competing product for Text based Google’s AdSense.
Influenced by the Software King in the King County, I went into Think Day mode in Jan-06 [he goes out on Think Week]. A mentor in King County who provided me Free accommodation always said that Innovation / Killer products always comes in different form and thus I was always thinking for a different and something original. I stumbled upon an idea [ Shopping on Rich Media as Web 2.0 Apps were moving in that direction] and came across this – Embedding URI in Rich Media. [Proof of concept 13-Jan-2006] However, my joy was short lived as my patent search lead to Microsoft filing for almost similar Patent and my chances of securing the patent weakened. Subsequently, I found out that the Software Czars Research Labs was already developing as an SDK for the same and I totally gave up on that
Now, the unanswered questions on my mind is what is that is screwing up Microsoft so badly that they are always late to reach the Web 2.0 ? Pixazza was founded in 2008 and wondering if they have already licensed the technology or how will they fight Microsoft as Redmond Giant may outright refuse to license their patent for obvious reason
India Comparison Shopping Sites- Where is Innovation ?
Over the past few days I did some research to know how good Indian Startups really are. I chose the Comparison Shopping vertical since we expect a boom in e-Commerce [hopefully]. I found around 8 websites competing in this vertical and its disappointing to see none offering an innovative consumer shopping experience
- Bechna.Com, ShopMania.in – I don’t quiet understand the necessary of hosting classifieds
- CompareIndia.Com – Banking on wide network of sites for cross marketing. Finally after few years, their Web Designers have done an acceptable job
- OxyShopping.Com – replica of pricebragger or dealtime for India
- Naaptol, TolMol – Combination of Review and comparison shopping
- productsearch.rediff.com – Still struggling to make a difference with a Killer Web Service / e-Commerce product
- Chintee – A forthcoming launch from Reliance, another commoditization of service
None of them even attempted to do things differently. You shouldn’t be surprised if VCs / PE funds refuse to fund these startups. They may have a business case, but being a tech startup, they have Zero innovation.
Compare this to how Comparison Shopping is evolving in the US. Two Grad Students from UC Berkeley – Arlo and Shankar have come up with an innovative idea of Visual Based Comparison Check it out Modista.com. I communicated with them. They have already filed for Two Patents and this what they had to say about their technology,
Our algorithms rely entirely on the images themselves. We don’t actually need any other metadata to compute similarity. However, if metadata is available, we can use it as well to improve the results.
They further added,
We focus more on the user experience. Many sites are happy to push you off to a retailer as fast as possible, but we try to keep all the relevant information at a user’s fingertips on Modista itself: sizes, product details, multiple views, etc. This aids in the exploration and discovery process.
Why do I call this a cool product ? Modista managed to bring a new shopping experience to consumers all together. Additionally, they can port this as a FaceBook Application and expand their reach.
The problem of Zero Innovation is not just restricted to Comparison Shopping but to many other Web based Startups. IMHO, the problem is with our ecosystem [peers, mentors, media, work culture, etc]. Why Indian Engineers innovate in the valley or elsewhere and not here ?
160by2 opens Mobile Advertising Platform for MSME + Classifieds
160by2 – Free PC to Mobile and Mobile [GPRS Enabled] to Mobile SMS service provider has opened its Mobile Advertising platform to Micro Small and Medium Enterprises as well. When the service was introduced a year ago, big brands were the major Advertisers. The most popular Advertise on their network was of “Cadbury”.
The company has managed to send over 70 Million messages with a user base of 1.5mn users. Buoyed by this success, the company decided to open the platform for MSMEs as well as Individuals to post daily classifieds. 80 characters is available for SMS content and 80 characters is reserved for the Advertiser.
Registered users have been given a Credit of Rs 5,000 to use it for classifieds. 160by2 will post your classified as an inline Advertisement in the SMS as shown above. 160by2 also takes care of Geo-targeting and context analysis to make the Ad more effective. In our Random test, we found a hit-rate of 50% for Ad relevance and there is certainly scope for improvement in their Smart Match Ad Server Engine. Looks like they are all set to become a big platform.
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