Updated below
(Originally posted on Oct 7 @ 1645hrs)
First up: MIH’s social networking portal is called ibibo. Tagline: “i build – i bond” perhaps explains the name. What’s new or different? As far as I can see – nothing, so far.
They’re currently offering only blog and photo album services. Each has categories, but very few. There’s also a tag cloud, a list of most popular, most commented and most recent blogs.
What is ibibo going to offer that will either make people switch from blogger,wordpress or rediffblogs? How will they get those new to blogging to join, over other popular domains, or maybe even all the other Indian social networking sites?
With very little empty space, I’m wondering where the advertisements will be put. Maybe, like Orkut, they’ll first build it up to a critical number of users, and then place the ads.
According to their blog, it seems ibibo went live on the 22nd of September. The site is still in Beta, so lets wait and watch for new features.
Update:
MIH also has online gaming portals for kids called Mota Fish and Chota Fish. Among the games is one called Los Simpsons where you can shoot Bart and see blood pour out of him. Games for children?
I came across a JuxtConsult page (see on the sidebar here) that lists two studies that they did for MIH Internet: a site audit on the top 50 Indian sites, and a study on Instant Messaging habits (screen cap). So is the IM space next for MIH? Also, MIH are on the lookout for people who “Want to build killer Internet and mobile products”. So, Mobile too?
Also, notice the similarity between ibibo and MIH owned 24.com. Is this what the end product will look like?
Rafat adds: MIH’s parent company Naspers part-owns Tencent, the biggest IM company in China (which operates the IM program under the name QQ), so bringing a version of that to India might be on the cards.
Related:
– Yahoo! India’s Satish Kadu Joins MIH
– Yatra’s Mudit Khosla Joins MIH India As Business Development Head
– Ashish Kashyap Gets Going At MIH; Arunava Sinha Is Head Of Content
– MIH To Launch in India; Online/Mobile Forays
Subscriber content
?
Subscriber content comes from Gigaom Research, bridging the gap between breaking news and long-tail research. Visit any of our reports to learn more and subscribe.
Advertisement
Advertisement
Advertisement
["wijax_f1ae4859af63dec46e7975b6aed9922f","wijax_d13575d88a34cb03449b78ca1d0a31d3"]
{"source":"https:\/\/gigaom.com\/2006\/10\/09\/mih-indias-social-networking-portal-goes-live\/wijax\/49e8740702c6da9341d50357217fb629","varname":"wijax_228314897122b322dbe87576f7e53a93","title_element":"header","title_class":"widget-title","title_before":"%3Cheader%20class%3D%22widget-title%22%3E","title_after":"%3C%2Fheader%3E"}
{"source":"https:\/\/gigaom.com\/2006\/10\/09\/mih-indias-social-networking-portal-goes-live\/wijax\/49e8740702c6da9341d50357217fb629","varname":"wijax_228314897122b322dbe87576f7e53a93","title_element":"header","title_class":"widget-title","title_before":"%3Cheader%20class%3D%22widget-title%22%3E","title_after":"%3C%2Fheader%3E"}
Comments have been disabled for this post