TechCrunch 50 - Session 2: Meme & News

DotSpots: Click to watch their Demo Video at TC50
What's it about: Annotating the Content on the Web. Or converting every content-based page into a Wikipedia.
What's cool: The technology really leverages the power of the Internet to enrich news content. Also, the Server and Browser-based extensions are a great way of catalyzing the network effect.
What's the model: I don't think they can make content publishers pay for this service since they also want to make it into a browser extension. But from the look of it, they could build in ads into this. I foresee a lot of interest in this product from the Internet Goliaths. In all probability, they'll sell the intellectual property for a huge sum if the product sees adoption.
What's the challenge: Making the network effect happen. Filtering the junk.
Hot or Not: HOT

Angstro Click to watch their Demo Video at TC50
What's it about: News alerts about people and companies in your social network.
What's cool: The filtering algorithm in case of people sharing the same name. The algorithm matches the resume/profile with the piece of news.
What's the model: Useful feature in the High Net-worth Individuals (HNI) segment who could spend some money to subscribe to this service. However, it makes more sense for a LinkedIn or even a Monster. Executive search firms using these sites would love it. (I'd love to have this on workosaur.)
What's the challenge: Scaling this from a feature to something more significant. Also, Google Alerts is a great service. Am sure they'd soon figure out an algorithm to make it work better than Angstro.
Hot or Not: NOT

LiveHit: Click to watch their Demo Video at TC50
What's it about: Social News Discovery based on Concurrent Consumption of Content.
What's cool: The social discovery technology in itself is cool. We all know about StumbleUpon.
What's the model: This seems to work like Sphere in terms of recommendations albeit with a social spin to it. The recommended plug then leads to customizable pages of LiveHit with Ad Inventory and the recommended newspiece in an iframe. So the sites using LiveHit make money and LiveHit makes money off them or as a percentage of this ad revenue.
What's the challenge: Technology and Distribution. Social discovery is going to be big but the technology and monetization models will evolve with time. I really think that one of the bigger players is going to be doing this better than LiveHit (Hint: Google already does it in case of YouTube.)
Hot or Not: NOT

Quant The News: Click to watch their Demo Video at TC50
What's it about: A product called StockMood.com. An AI system that that analyzes news stories about stocks, identifying their sentiment, and then measuring their potential impact on a stock's price direction.
What's cool: The potential applications of a sentiment identification technology. (I had seen something similar year or so ago at a company called SpotEazy. They have then changed their biz model but the technology has that WOW effect on you.)
What's the model: Subscriptions to the sentiment analysis by investors. Also, they could license their technology to the online trading systems or look at building a trading system themselves.
What's the challenge: Technology. I am not too sure if it's advanced enough to be relied upon as guidance. Also, as this scales and if it works and people depend on it, more people will find ways of gaming the sentiment. So, the technology needs to hold especially in a system where people have an incentive to game it. I see it more as a fun feature that gauges sentiments during elections or before the launch of a movie or an album.
Hot or Not: NOT

TechCrunch 50 - Session 1: Youth & Culture

TC50 (September 8-10, 2008) is turning out to be the event to watch out in the Web 2.0/Startup space. The event is being streamed live and the videos are also archived on ustream.tv.

Here's my take on the startups featured in the Youth & Culture segment of the event. I'd recommend all readers to check the pitch video first, then to check the individual sites and then post their feedback in the comments section of this post.

BlahGirls (Katalyst Media): Click to watch their Demo Video at TC50
What's it about: Interactive Online Episodes from Katalyst Media (Blah Girls is their first show - Celebrity Gossip News using Animations)
What's cool: Ashton Kutcher & the animations
What's the model: Production house for the Internet. This is all about the content. Katalyst Media has understood its audience well and going by the first episode, seem to be good at the content. Revenue model is proven. They make money through advertisers - product placements in the episodes and traditional advertising on the site.
What's the challenge: The same challenges that a production house faces i.e. Scalability.
Hot or Not: HOT

TweeGee: Click to watch their Demo Video at TC50
What's it about: Online Destination/Social Network for Kids
What's cool: A kid-friendly UI. Proprietary 'Word Up!' safety.
What's the model: I really don't know if they can make money out of this except for advertising kids' wear/chocolates/games/toys. even that I doubt. I do not buy the 'we got the kids hooked and can then port them to other products when they grow up' pitch.
What's the challenge: Lack of a revenue model. No real WOW tech.
Hot or Not: NOT

Shryk: Click to watch their Demo Video at TC50
What's it about: Educational Money Management App called iThryv for Kids.
What's cool: Shyrk has smartly decided to ally with schools to educate kids rather than trying to reach the kids directly.
What's the model: They want to catch 'em young and build "customers for life" for partner banks.
What's the challenge: I have my doubts about the need for such an app. Assuming there is, I don't think its simple enough to make it useful enough. Adoption is going to be a major challenge. Even, if it's useful enough and is adopted, I don't see banks treating this as a starting point for customer acquisition. It could at best be a CSR initiative for the bank rather than a business in itself.
Hot or Not:NOT

Hangout Industries: Click to watch their Demo Video at TC50
What's it about: Facebook/MySpace + Second Life for Kids & Young Adults
What's cool: Awesome 3D Immersive Experience. Especially, the posters & pictures on the walls.
What's the model: Revenue sharing arrangements with partners such as AllPosters.com and apparel/clothing companies. I guess similar transactional layers would come in for music/games/videos.
What's the challenge: Lack of depth in the revenue model. Commissions would never amount to significant revenue. They seem to have a WOW technology though and probably could sell-out to an offline brand wishing to establish a connect in the Young Adults segment or to one of the larger Internet companies.
Hot or Not: NOT

chittR... but why should I?

Well, I started micro-blogging today with twitter. Also read about an Indian clone of the same that goes by the name chittR. And so the questions visit my mind again:

• What makes the guys at chittR think that being Indian is a source of competitive advantage for their micro-blogging platform over a non-Indian but far better twitter?
• What makes the guys at BigAdda and DesiMartini think that being Indian is a source of competitive advantage for their social networking platform over a non-Indian but far better Orkut or Facebook?
• What makes the guys at Indiatimes Mail and Zapakmail think that being Indian is a source of competitive advantage over a non-Indian but far better Gmail or Yahoo! Mail?
• What makes the guys at Fropper think that being Indian is a source of competitive advantage for their blogging platform over a non-Indian but far better Blogger or Wordpress?

Is it that difficult to decipher that being a me-too Web 2.0 product with the Indian tag can not cut ice?

Scrabulous is fabulous!

For the uninitiated, Scrabulous is an online version of popular board game Scrabble. Scrabulous gained immense popularity through its Facebook App. There are nearly 600,000 daily active users for Scrabulous and it rakes in USD 25,000 per month in advertising revenue through banner inventory. The Facebook version of Scrabulous raised the ire of toy-makers Hasbro and Mattel, which jointly own the rights to the game. They asked Facebook to pull down Scrabulous and behind the scenes negotiations have been going on between Hasbro, Scrabulous, and Electronic Arts, which has the license in the U.S. to the online version of the game. Hasbro is trying to get Scrabulous to sell itself to Electronic Arts, or else shut down completely.

Interestingly, Scrabulous has been built independently by two brothers from Kolkata - Rahul (26) and Jayant Agarwalla (21). And while they have simply taken the board game online, they have done a fabulous job of it. I am a Scrabble fan myself - and own a Scrabble Deluxe board from Mattel as well as the Scrabble Game CD from Electronics Arts. Without a doubt, the Scrabulous Facebook experience beats both the official formats. Firstly, one gets to play with members across the social network at any time they desire to do so. That apart, the Scrabulous duo have continuously improved the UI/UXP and launched some great features based on inputs from users.

While Hasbro/Electronic Arts may force the Kolkata brothers to shut down Scrabulous, I am hopeful that they'd go on to build some fabulous new apps/games/products.

Auto-rickshaws - The ideal advertising medium for Internet start-ups

By now, most of us would have seen a lot of dot com ads on the back of auto-rickshaws and cabs/taxis. IMHO, this form of advertising is ideal for Internet start-ups/ventures - it's economical and effective.

Economy
The ability to burn a fortune on fancy TV/Print/Radio/Billboards advertisements is not a viable option for most Internet companies given the scale of their operations and the low monetization opportunities in the industry. Instead, if one is able to put up their brand on 500-1000 autos in each of the major cities (@Rs. 100 per auto per month), their brand is sure to be seen by a majority audience at a fraction of the cost that it would otherwise require to reach the same audience.

Effectiveness
All the people I have spoken to in Mumbai have seen ads by MouthShut, Khichdee & MapMyIndia on Autos.
All of the people I have spoken to in Chennai have seen ads by TestingJobz on Autos here.
All of the people I have spoken to in Delhi have seen ads by PropertySensex and BuySellOldBooks on Autos and SeventyMM on Cabs.
Also, since people follow the traffic, you tend to see the ad for a prolonged period. From whatever I have read, these dot coms have employed close to 200-500 autos in the respective cities. And it sure is being noticed.

Brand Association
I have had several discussions with those in the marketing industry about this form of advertising. More often than not, marketers would tell you that the associations resulting from such advertising would affect the brand adversely. They'll add adjectives like 'cheap,' 'shabby,' and 'shady' to get their point across. I couldn't agree less. MouthShut, which pioneered the concept, has been exploiting this economical and effective method since 2001 and I don't know anyone who thinks of MouthShut as a 'cheap,' shabby' or 'shady' site - even after 6 years of advertising on auto-rickshaws. MapMyIndia, Kijiji, and SeventyMM are some of the other dot coms that have also warmed up to this form of advertising - all of them being dot coms that provide great value to online consumers.

Anyways, those who accept and adopt this innovative form of advertising stand to gain customers without spending much. The cynics can continue to burn their precious funds on traditional media and feel good about the sophistication of their brand.

Skin business on Facebook

Yup! After completely taking over the Classifieds sections of major print publications (Times of India and Hindustan Times), escort services are now using Social Networks to promote their services.

First, escort services create a series of fake profiles on Orkut with revealing pictures of pretty looking girls. They then kick off conversations with other Orkut members and add them as friends. Those with an inclination to use escort services get hooked, numbers are exchanged and the business gets rolling.

Well, a friend of mine recently pointed out how these guys have even started tapping users on the more-secure Facebook network. Here, a fake profile is created and the same is used to create 'compelling' Marketplace listings (Screenshot attched). The listing reads "I am an airhostess to meet me visit http://www.mallikaairhostess.com/.

And when you visit the site mentioned, you are taken to a site which was earlier hosted under the domain http://www.chamadi.com/(Screenshot attached). Note: Chamadi in Hindi means Skin. Here, you have details of the escort services like fees and contact numbers, gallery, etc.

I don't know whether this would be considered by Facebook as an abuse of their services. Or whether they'd take it off after one has reported the same. The print industry in India definitely doesn't have a problem with such ads and seem to make copious amounts of money from the advertisers. I only hope that the online industry doesn't follow suit.

The boy-next-desk turns CEO

When I joined my current organization in Feb 2006, I met up with an extremely smart 21-year old techie named Murli who worked on SEO/SEM initiatives for one of our portals. He was always scouting for freelance projects to leverage his geekiness and make some additional money. Sometime in Jul/Aug 2006, one of his clients invited him for a permanent position at a substantially higher pay. Or so he told all of us. And he moved on.

I pretty much lost touch with Murli after that and only recently did I chance to visit his Orkut/LinkedIn profile on seeing his New Year wishes. And I was pleasantly surprised that Murli has gone on to found a company of his own called Horizon InfoVentures. And Horizon has already seen some fame and success. They have a property listings portal called RealAcres, and the portal was amongst the 13 winners from India at the Red Herring 100 Asia 2007 Awards.

I was also able to dig up a video of Murli being interviewed by Joel Dreyfuss, the Editor-in-Chief at Red Herring magazine. It's quite refreshing, but strange, to see Murli in a formal suit giving spiel. He'd always come to office in a t-shirt and denims. Never thought I'd see him like this.

Rock on Murli! All of us who have worked with you are proud of your achievements and it surely has inspired many of us to take the plunge.