Tuesday, October 23, 2007

Does it make some sense ?






1. When you google on some topic on Google, it displays a list of a million websites and related links. Does any body go beyond few pages to find relevant information before he tries another keyword for next search ? Does anybody bother about the quality of information on the 1,00,000th page ? Does it provide any link to navigate to any nth page of search result ? Does it worth to provide plethora of information where few precise links and information are enough ?
Does it provide useful information which is not found simply on any website? Everyone finds 99.99% of these 1 million search results as crap and useless. That's the primary reason that local flavored search engines like www.guruji.com, www.asklaila.com, www.justdial.com are hot start-ups in India. They cater to the specific needs of local people with precise information. As for, they provide city specific search and specific details of places people looking for like Chinese restaurant at sector 1, Kolkata. It would be quite interesting to watch how these local search engines take the giant by its horns.


2. Last year Yahoo! offered $1.4 billions to buy Facebook, a social networking site like Orkut. But founder of Facebook rejected this offer. The price tag was kool $2 billion. Google acquired a Chinese video sharing site YouTube for $1.2 billion. Does Facebook deserve such obscene amount of money ? Why didn't Yahoo! create a similar social networking site at the cost of few millions bucks as it has world class of programmers and designers and brand value to attract new users? Ok! later on Yahoo! got some sense not to go for next bid.
It's not doubt that these SNS (Social Networking Sites) and video sharing site are huge hit and are cyber hangouts for millions of users. Market valuation of these sites are huge primarily for millions of users and high site traffic. Do these two factors justify price in the range of billion of dollars ? Justification may be like...revenue through Ads or sharing the critical data with research firms of music industries to analyze trend in music and video preference among users.

I doubt the feasibility of the concept of revenue through Ads. I have put below the screen-shot of the analysis of its users by Orkut on various parameters. This pattern is similar for all SNS.


Maximum users are in the range of 18 to 25 yrs old. They log in to connect to friends, for chatting and some fun and they hardly bother to get some genuine information on any product.
have you ever looked for some product information on Orkut ? Most of the communities or discussion forums are related to their hobbies, film stars, films, school or college. For sake of visibility they can put Ads in such community forums but how many users are active members of community who can even view those Ads ? Once Google tried to put Ads on Orkut related to community topics but later on removed all Ads from it. One major concern is tremendous increase in fake profiles and porn stuffs. Just think...if site has 50% porn content and fake profiles then what kind of Ads it will put on such communities and profiles ? It will also dilute the brand value of site. YouTube contains 60% porn videos. In spite of the fact, acquisition of YouTube by Google highlights the mindless and ruthless competition to acquire the internet space to maintain superiority although it generates no revenue in near future. I wish...may be in near future they can figure out how to generate money from such sites.

3 comments:

Voice said...

sahi...

a good article backed up by proper research (relevant data)

Ms.Lucid said...

well
d article iz well written wid a rich vocab bt it lacks a bit of analysis 4m d othr side of d story...
az in u hv just considered wht u wanted 2!! =P

1.
d million $$$$ search engines designed just pick even d minute link which matches d keywords entered n thus d search result pages at tym exceeds 999999...
for e.g...u type john abraham...
hw wud google knw wht u wanna knw bout him!?
so even if thrz a webpage on "V LUV JOHN ABRAHAM"...tht wud b displayed...
cmon tht might b useful 4 girls in counting hw many more "sautans" dey hv! =D

btw...r u d new marketing manager 4 dese local data retreival sys lyk laila majnoo...?!...
tht u r promoting dm!? ;)

2ndly...
d social networking..
itz a new sector in d cyber world
it cn fetch alot ov useful info bout d users of net...in stats forms wich cn prove beneficial 2 d companies using d e-tech
network n pyramid marketing cn hv a gud platform 4 referrals here at such social sites az well
othr dn tht
sum ov ur points i agree too...(thts said 4 courtesy actually)
=P
lol

all in all
u hv presented ur very own point ov view in n interesting way wd evident facts n stuff
diz also proves hw faarigh u r n thus....ur boss shd read ths!! 8P

keep up ur writing skills
p.s
i also read ur other articles such az safar
in wich u hv ritten bout a bit ov confusion u hv in findin ryt kinda job 4 urself
y dont u quit I.T n go in journalism n media
may b d gurus of diz field will kiss ur feet!! =P
heheh
cheers
peace!

Someshwar said...

hey dude!!
nice blog man.. mein to poora padliya [:)]

Som