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In January 2008, a global Internet
information provider comScore Media Metrix announced the ranks
for conversational media sites1
in India. Among them, India's ibibo.com (ibibo) was featured at
the sixth position after Orkut2
and Blogger3. ibibo's
unique visitor rank was 24.4
Commenting on the ranking, Ashish Kashyap (Kashyap), CEO of
ibibo.com, said, "We touched a million users in January 2008 and
now that we have built a brand that is both quirky and unique,
we have decided to take things forward."5
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ibibo.com was founded in August 2006 by MIH Web Pvt
Ltd,6 the Indian subsidiary of
Cape Town, South Africa-based global media company, Naspers.
With its headquarters in India located at Gurgaon, Haryana, and a
research and development center at Bangalore, ibibo was founded with the
aim of tapping the growing Internet-savvy youth market in India and
creating a forum where people could bond with each other through the
Internet. Its name signified its intention - 'I Build I Bond'.
The beta version of ibibo.com was released in October 2006, as a
community networking site with facilities like blogging and photo
sharing.
The site planned to differentiate itself from other websites in the
social networking arena. According to Kashyap,
"Our focus will be on local Indian community not the global audience. We
will continue to be innovative and nimble, which I don't see in most of
such sites. Most importantly, we will be disproportionately rewarding
our users, which is a first among such networking sites."7
ibibo.com had a limited release in January 2007 but by May 2008, it had
4.2 million blog posts, 400,725 questions, 1.1 million answers and 2
million photos, apart from polls, votes, and reviews.8
Analysts attributed the success of ibibo.com to the fact that it catered
to the youth in small cities and towns, where social networking was
absent.
It also attracted several users through its innovative approach of
rewarding the users for posting in the blogs, for answering questions,
etc.
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1] Conversational media sites are sites which use
software that allows users to interact and share data with other users.
2] Orkut (Orkut.com) is a popular social networking
site run by one of the world's leading Internet software firms, Google Inc.
Social networking sites use software to build online communities of people who
share interests and activities by enabling sharing of ideas and data. Members of
the community can interact with each other through messaging, email, chat,
video, voice chat, file sharing, blogging, discussion groups, etc,
3] Blogger (Blogger.com) is a blog publishing
website. A blog (or web log) is a website, usually maintained by an individual
who provides regular entries such as comments, articles, or other material (such
as images, video, etc.).
4] www.ibibo.com/aboutus/about.asp
5] Pallavi Srivastava, "No Empty Bucket,"
www.ibibo.com, February 24, 2008.
6] MIH Web Pvt. Ltd is a part of MIH, digital
business division of Naspers.
7] Asit Ranian Mishra, "MIH India Rolls out Ibibo.com,
to Start Reward Program for Users," www.exchange4media.com, October 09, 2006.
8] www.ibibo.com |
