gdp's Comments

MediaNama : Virgin's New Data Card: Competition & Tata Indicom

Fri, 3 Jul 2009 13:01:45 +0000

You don't need FUP on data cards because they have such awful bandwidth (average 2-3 KBps and peak at about 11 KBps) that it is simply impossible to download any decent measure of data on it. Their concern would be more about provisioning capacity on the network itself.

MediaNama : Why The SIM Card Should Be India’s National ID Card

Thu, 2 Jul 2009 02:21:21 +0000

It is an interesting viewpoint on the NIDs, would love to see a more detailed take on this, more on the lines of pricing, memory and existing solutions.

MediaNama : Updated: Facebook Usage In India Grows As Orkut Misses A Trick

Thu, 2 Jul 2009 02:16:31 +0000

Orkut is a placeholder for Google for the time being. It has an abysmal market share in regions that count for a social networking product. I think they are just waiting for Wave to mature and letting go of the immediate gains for significant future gains. Of course, that logic does assume that Wave will do well, which we have to wait and see.

MediaNama : Updated: The New Rediffmail: Minimalist & Mobile; Text Ads

Wed, 1 Jul 2009 15:03:59 +0000

Pretty decent idea to drop the indic language features. It is very likely that the uptake is mico-minimal; not worth the effort that needs to go into integrating the product into the main email product itself. Think about it: of the daily email traffic, what percentage would actually be represented by composition in local languages? Email is really the wrong end to tackle the problem.

MediaNama : Q409 Call: Rediff Buys 26% In Examville, Writes Off Vakow; Debit Card Commerce; REST APIs

Wed, 27 May 2009 06:06:04 +0000

That is an interesting angle to the API story, that switching from F8 to a REST-based API will somehow increase adoption. Shows how precious little integrated thinking happens in our online space. If you are in the apps space (those work using the API), there are only two platforms, F8 and Opensocial that are worth targeting. It does not matter whether your target developers are in India or if they are abroad. Why? Because of the manner in which the app economy works. The app companies make decent money only at massive scale, which is obvious because they use CPM to generate revenue. There are companies out there which make about $200 or around that on a daily basis from the apps. But they also fall under the top 10 apps in either of the platforms. Developers simply won't bite if they have to write three versions of the same app. And the lack of traction just adds to Rediff's woes. A tiny percentage of these companies actually make money, the rest die trying. And even those that make money have a hard time sustaining it. And running the apps are not cheap either, they require significant infrastructure and technology backing that is rapidly turning out to be very specialized a field (message queues, massively sharded DBs, key-value stores etc) now. Coming back to the integrated thinking, I don't think anyone has a clue about how this will actually help the companies themselves in the longer run. If you do a cost-benefit analysis of it, I'd be very surprised to see if there is much filling up the benefits column other than sounding cool. Do they have any metrics on what usage does it require for it to be worthwhile the company's time in running it? What is the intended end-usage? Most importantly, most of them have trouble pulling off simple consumer-facing products in the first place. An API is a nice toy to have, but it is a toy all the same.

MediaNama : MapmyIndia Compatible With Garmin Devices; Global Map Retailing

Mon, 6 Apr 2009 06:06:18 +0000

It is not surprising that MMI has started selling maps for Garmin. If you compare the current number of Garmins out there and the current number of MMI devices that have already been sold, even if MMI manages to sell the data in a year to even 1% of the Garmin user base, it would have a sweet deal on its hands. INR 7K is very steep, if you consider the fact that this is just map data and not the device itself. Would be interesting to see what kind of agreement they have with Garmin on this. Incidentally, I have seen a Garmin showing a decent level of detail within Delhi (http://tr.im/ij4N). It is cheaper to buy a 180-day license of the phone software at less than INR 2K, though you would wind up paying for data if you are on roaming in India, which you can still work around by preloading the maps. MMI has a major license-related problem on its devices, which makes them really expensive. Their cheapest device starts at INR13K, while Satnav's most expensive device is at INR 16K. So they can't really compete on price. From what I understand, the question of mapping data being interoperable does not really arise. Underneath the surface they all share the same shape files and tiles to overlay the details of the location. It just boils down to how do you want to do your distribution of your map data.

MediaNama : It's Official: Bebo Launched In India; Partners With Real Broadcasting

Thu, 19 Mar 2009 07:31:45 +0000

It is a smart idea to not spend much on marketing in these products in India. There is simply no market for these things out here. You can pump in a boatload of cash in SEM and drive traffic, but that kind of traffic acquisition cost can't be sustained in the long run, even if online advertising had not fallen off a cliff. The market size plateaus off at around 3MM page views per day for the properties at reasonable cost/traction and that is way too tiny a number to monetize, especially when the inventory quality is pathetically poor for such properties compared to content inventory.

MediaNama : Editorial: Should We Moderate All Comments?

Mon, 2 Mar 2009 04:04:08 +0000

As a publisher you are already accountable to what you publish on your site, with or without moderation. But being answerable does not mean you will get thrown into the slammer for allowing comments, but allowing anything and everything to be said is an issue. From previous experience in the matter (where we got dragged into a cybercrime cell investigation into some malicious comments), what I remember is that as long as you log the data (unpublish comments, don't delete them) and provide them if the court asks you for it, you are pretty much in the clear. If, as a publisher, you allow comments to be carried on your system that will get you into trouble as any printed material, the issue is not really with blogging or freedom of expression. What stands out about the case is that the community owner is being shown as the intermediary (is this accurate, especially when the court has given enough leeway to the intermediary?), than the platform itself. This will, at least in the short run, open the doors for needless litigation regarding the internet and some sense will prevail, sooner than later. Incidentally, the court has only said the person has to defend himself, than pronounce him guilty. In all probability, with decent enough lawyers, he should be able to walk away from this. An expensive irritant? Certainly it is. Death to freedom of expression? It certainly is not. I guess an ideal solution would be to have a first level of redressal that does not involve the courts. Something like a mandatory offensive content contact link on every website, using which you can notify the platform/community owner about content you may think is offensive. If the requests received on such mechanisms don't get a response or does not get acted upon, it is only then then road to the court is available to the plaintiff. Of course, this means you will need to put away even more resources to monitor that channel of communication and be swamped with requests, but it can be much better than being dragged to court every time. While on topic, it is a good time to point out that you don't have a ToS anywhere on the site. Get one ASAP and ensure all content/comments are in compliance with that :)

MediaNama : NDTV Convergence Launches Tubaah.com; Challenges

Tue, 10 Feb 2009 17:51:42 +0000

The site itself has been built by Tekriti (the same guys who did my.indiatimes.com and itimes.com for TIL?) and it is pretty much a souped-up white label deployment of Tekmedia, as seen at glued.in. NDTV is very much an ASP.net shop, so anything that is on LAMP is a vendor deployment. Rest you can put people and places together and piece together the story. What is even more interesting is that the videos are actually being streamed using Akamai's CDN than the traditional progressive download route that everyone is using. I will confess that I don't know what kind of deal NDTVC has with Akamai, but in most cases, serving streams wind up being a whole lot more expensive than serving clips through a progressive download. The clips on NDTV.com are also streamed the same way. Unless they have a huge issue with partial play outs (ex: only 20% of viewers are watching 90%+ of any clip), streams will be more expensive. Pre-rolls are done via Vdiopia (looks like different inventory from ndtv.com), which should get them decent (but lesser) money, but not enough probably to cover cost per stream served. It is one of those crazy situations where you really don't want to be a runaway success and you don't want to fail either. What exactly is the sweet spot? Your guess is as good as mine. Don't be too surprised if all NDTVC network sites soon start playing clips only from Tubaah, they share common video IDs in any case right now.

MediaNama : NDTV Convergence Launches Tubaah.com; Challenges

Fri, 6 Feb 2009 12:54:11 +0000

Quick, pass me some shades, the innovation light is blinding me :-)

MediaNama : MTNL Launches 3G With Data Priced At Rs. 5/MB

Fri, 6 Feb 2009 12:48:05 +0000

What you had said earlier was about non-mobility of the Internet, was responding specifically to that. In 12-13 years, 3G will be an archaic standard and not something that will potentially change the world. It has not done so in South Korea, which is apparently the bastion of 3G and mobile broadband. Only the latest iPhones are 3G enabled, the iPhone revolution took off without 3G. And regarding the apps on iPhone, the story there is that the platform itself had a use case at a reasonable price for the market it was aiming for. Which is why you don't see the same success with iPhone in India. Different market, different realities, different revolutions.

MediaNama : MTNL Launches 3G With Data Priced At Rs. 5/MB

Fri, 6 Feb 2009 06:21:24 +0000

You can already access your mailbox, blog, photos on the mobile. I have been doing that for the past couple of years now. I don't think the world has been turned upside down as a result of that. Nor will being able to do the same over 3G achieve that end. Not at the current price points, not to mention form-factor issues.

MediaNama : On Google Latitude Vs BIG Maps

Thu, 5 Feb 2009 18:34:52 +0000

Couple of quick notes: 1) Google Maps is still very much a stock international install as an app. It is not localized. Thus you see the gaping holes in the product like directions, traffic data etc. Stupid of them to do that, but I think this is still a tiny market in India. They should not take it easy, but they can afford to. 2) A common mistake that people do while looking at Google's products is to examine the parts individually than look at what the sum of those parts amount to. From that perspective it is a HUGE thing. Google already mines data about where you are searching/accessing its services from what I am guessing is ISP level data, which is dug out from ASNs. This is used for their recommendation services (emphasis mine): "Your recommendations list is automatically generated. It takes into account the feeds you're already subscribed to, as well as information from your Web History, including your location." Google's core business is connecting the various dots about you to draw the best advertising profile picture of you. This is only another step in that process. 3) I have been using various mobile location apps now, incuding Wayfinder, Nokia Maps and Google Maps, the current GM release is by far the and average-Joe-friendly implementation I have seen of the product. It seamlessly ties in with their existing products 4) This is just a ramp-up of their crowd sourced approach to eventually doing complete maps. I still think they can pick up someone like a MapmyIndia for cheap, especially in this environment, but why should they, when you, me and our uncles will do it for them for free? :-)