Web18’s CricketNext Goes Live

While Web18’s CEO-in-waiting Surya Mantha serves out his notice period at Sify, Web18 has gone ahead and launched a refurbished CricketNext.com, which it had acquired 20-odd days ago. What does the site retain from its previous avataar? From the looks of it – very little.
In terms of colours, structure and just the overall feel of the website, it looks like an IBNLive clone. There are cricket blogs, and a seemingly serious attempt at creating a community with ‘Talking Point’. The front page looks even more cluttered than IBNLive, with far too many images, which force you to search for textual content. Apart from this, the site looks fairly well structured. The front page displays rankings, live scores, a poll, pending matches. The Cricket Videos are from IBNLive. There are links to IBNLive and a news scroller on top. No content from other TV18 portals like MoneyControl, CommoditiesControl, JobsAhead…but that is understandable because the target groups are different. There is a tab that links to the TV18 website, which also looks fresh. Adverts are already up and running, probably ported from other Web18 portals.
From the changes in design and content, it seems that the TV18 group only bought the cricketnext domain, and a handful of visitors. I’m a little surprised that CompareIndia.com wasn’t developed first, because of the obvious synergy with Aawaz, and a possible shopping network. CompareIndia is still under the covers of a ‘Default PLESK Page’ (screencap).
Related:
Surya Mantha Is CEO Of Web18
TV18 Group Plans To Raise $22 Million
TV18 Acquires CricketNext.com and CompareIndia.com
TV18 Group Plans Venture Fund With A Corpus Of Rs 50 Crore
Exclusive: TV 18 Group Acquires Interactive Agency Urban Eye

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