- Unicode nearing 50% of the web
January 28, 2010
Jeetu's shared memory
Readonly access to Jeetu's volatile memory that was temporarily populated with items he reads.
January 31, 2010
Shared Items – January 31, 2010
January 30, 2010
iPad v. A Rock
January 29, 2010
Indian Authors approach US Court over Google Book Settlement
January 28, 2010
Former Amazon exec’s 5 reasons why the iPad is not a Kindle killer
Amazon Fourth Quarter Sales Up 42 Percent, Bezos Says “Millions Of People Own Kindles”
Unicode nearing 50% of the web
Shared Items – January 28, 2010
Apple’s iPad — a broken link? (The Adobe Angle)
Rediff Q3-’10 Results: Revenues Sees 18% Sequential Jump; Total Registered Users At 85 million
Older Posts »
Shared Items – January 31, 2010
iPad v. A Rock
Posted at TechCrunch
by Michael Arrington
This speaks for itself. Thanks to Phil Santoro for creating it and sending it us (a play on the iphone v. rock joke).
Posted at TechCrunch
by Michael Arrington
This speaks for itself. Thanks to Phil Santoro for creating it and sending it us (a play on the iphone v. rock joke).
Indian Authors approach US Court over Google Book Settlement
Posted at Pluggd.in
by sinha
Google Book Settlement Project has been a controversy child and the controversy over settlement has reached Indian shore as well.
Couple of Indian publishers and authors (including Star Publications, Abhinav Publications, Daya Publication House and Pustak Mahal along with the Indian Reprographic Rights Organisation and Federation of Indian Publishers), have approached New York District Court for IRRO (Indian Reprographic Rights Organisation) royalties (source).
Google Book Alliance, GBS 2.0
Open Book Alliance has come out against the GBS 2.0 (Google Book Settlement) over following key points:
- Version 2 still gives Google a de facto exclusive license to “unclaimed works” (which includes millions of books, including “orphan works” and beyond), which will be the largest digital database of books in history.
- Version 2 still forces rights-holders to grant Google a very broad license to use copyrighted books to improve any and all of their commercial services, without compensation for those uses. Google has also indicated that it will still scan and display portions of non-U.S. books that are no longer subject to the proposed deal, forcing those rightsholders to have to sue Google in federal court to have their copyrights respected.
- Version 2 still requires anyone other than Google to face the uncertainties of copyright infringement litigation if they want to try to get access to a comparable license to digital books.[more]
Essentially, what this implies is that Indian authors and publishers are forced to comply to this agreement, by default and will lose revenues once the books are digitized (Google has scanned books in Indian vernacular languages without any permission from authors/publishing house).
» Join our Google group | » Do check out newly launched Answers
» Catch us on Twitter and Facebook
Indian Authors approach US Court over Google Book Settlement
Related posts:
- If I Were A Book – Connecting Authors with International Print Publishers On-Demand Publishing market is still in it’s infancy and guess,…
- Tech News Roundup – Google DNS, Facebook Beacon Settlement..and more Google has launched it’s Public DNS service that, as Google…
- Sulekha books Bloggers with Book Series – to publish 2 books every month Sulekha has launched Sulekha Book Series, an initiative to reward…
Posted at Pluggd.in
by sinha
Google Book Settlement Project has been a controversy child and the controversy over settlement has reached Indian shore as well.
Couple of Indian publishers and authors (including Star Publications, Abhinav Publications, Daya Publication House and Pustak Mahal along with the Indian Reprographic Rights Organisation and Federation of Indian Publishers), have approached New York District Court for IRRO (Indian Reprographic Rights Organisation) royalties (source).
Google Book Alliance, GBS 2.0
Open Book Alliance has come out against the GBS 2.0 (Google Book Settlement) over following key points:
- Version 2 still gives Google a de facto exclusive license to “unclaimed works” (which includes millions of books, including “orphan works” and beyond), which will be the largest digital database of books in history.
- Version 2 still forces rights-holders to grant Google a very broad license to use copyrighted books to improve any and all of their commercial services, without compensation for those uses. Google has also indicated that it will still scan and display portions of non-U.S. books that are no longer subject to the proposed deal, forcing those rightsholders to have to sue Google in federal court to have their copyrights respected.
- Version 2 still requires anyone other than Google to face the uncertainties of copyright infringement litigation if they want to try to get access to a comparable license to digital books.[more]
Essentially, what this implies is that Indian authors and publishers are forced to comply to this agreement, by default and will lose revenues once the books are digitized (Google has scanned books in Indian vernacular languages without any permission from authors/publishing house).
» Join our Google group | » Do check out newly launched Answers
» Catch us on Twitter and Facebook
Indian Authors approach US Court over Google Book Settlement
Related posts:
- If I Were A Book – Connecting Authors with International Print Publishers On-Demand Publishing market is still in it’s infancy and guess,…
- Tech News Roundup – Google DNS, Facebook Beacon Settlement..and more Google has launched it’s Public DNS service that, as Google…
- Sulekha books Bloggers with Book Series – to publish 2 books every month Sulekha has launched Sulekha Book Series, an initiative to reward…
Former Amazon exec’s 5 reasons why the iPad is not a Kindle killer
Posted at www.techflash.com
Former Amazon exec’s 5 reasons why the iPad is not a Kindle killer
by Scott Jacobson on Thursday, January 28, 2010, 1:59pm PST
Amazon.com | Apple | From the trenches | Kindle
Jacobson
Scott Jacobson: First, I’ll apologize for using a list format for this blog post. It is an obvious attempt to cover up my inadequacies as a writer…but those will become abundantly clear momentarily. Second, let me disclaim that mine is a household with two Kindles, four iPhones/iPod Touches, and two iMacs.
And I am a shareholder in both Amazon and Apple. And I worked on the launch of the original Kindle at Amazon. And I plan to buy an iPad. So I’m all sorts of biased. All of that said, here are a few reasons I don’t think iPad is a Kindle killer.
1. Kindle is designed for hard-core readers.
For those of us who like to carry books wherever we go, reading on the bus, on airplanes, on the beach, wherever…Kindle is a great reading device. Sure, it has its limitations. But for people who like to read mass-market stuff (fiction, biographies, history, etc.), the fact that it’s not color and the page turns are not instantaneous isn’t that big of a deal.
It is really good at what it does, and it doesn’t need to do a whole lot more. There is a segment of the market (probably millions, maybe tens of millions, but not hundreds of millions) that will prefer a less-expensive device that does one thing really well. And that segment will continue to choose Kindle.
Kindle vs. iPad
2. Kindle is not just ‘iPod for books.’
Amazon is not dependent on a completely closed loop system (like iPod/iTunes) to be successful. I can buy Kindle books on Amazon.com and then read them on my Amazon Kindle, my Dell laptop, and my Apple iPhone. Amazon will continue to make Kindle part of the reading experience on other people’s hardware because it knows that’s it’s best and only chance of winning.
Who knows, maybe someday Amazon will let other hardware makers build their own e-book readers with ‘Kindle Inside’. I am a fan of Kindle the device, but as an Amazon shareholder, I am happy that Amazon’s success in the e-book space is not solely dependent on the success of its hardware.
3. iPad is expensive (comparing apples-to-apples, or perhaps apples-to-amazons).
Kindle’s 3G connection is free. Well, actually, it’s bundled into the cost of the books you buy on Kindle. A 3G iPad will run you $130 more than the $499 base price, and its data connection will cost you between $180 and $360 per year. To be fair, iPad’s data plan can and will be used for a lot more than downloading books. And you can buy a WiFi version of iPad and avoid the $130 + $180-360 per year. But then you lose one of the features that makes the Kindle experience magical: the ability to download any book in the store, anywhere, in a couple of seconds. In an apples-to-apples cost comparison, Kindle is $259 ($489 for the DX), iPad is $629 + $180 per year.
4. Personalization/Recommendations.
Almost every book I’ve purchased over the past seven or eight years I bought on Amazon. Because of that, Amazon is pretty darn good at recommending books that it thinks I might like. iTunes has held my entire music collection over a similar timeframe, and yet, its music recommendations still suck.
Amazon is better at making personalized recommendations, and it has a much longer history for books I own to inform its suggestions. It’s hard to put a value on that, but it’s real. It will be interesting to see how the iBookstore does here.
5. Amazon can’t afford to lose.
Amazon doesn’t report the revenue from books, but it’s safe to assume that books remain a very significant part of its business. While the transition from physical to digital will take far longer for books than it has for music, Amazon can’t afford to allow Apple to dominate the market for e-books the way it dominates the market for MP3s. Amazon is in this fight for the long-run, and as Jeff is known to say, ‘it’s still day one’. While I’m sure it’s no surprise to Amazon that Apple is entering the e-book market, rest assured Amazon is now doubling down on its investment.
Make no mistake.
Apple is going to be a major player in the e-book market. They will extend the iBookstore to iPhone and iTunes, and they will sync the last page read across all of your devices (just like Kindle). But iPad is not the death knell for Kindle. It is a shot across the bow. And Amazon needs to step up its game. The nice thing about competition is that it fosters innovation. And we the consumers will be the beneficiaries.
Scott Jacobson is a partner at Madrona Venture Group, a Seattle venture capital firm. He previously worked in various roles at Amazon.com. Opinions expressed in guest posts are those of their authors, and don’t necessarily reflect the views of TechFlash or its staff
Posted at www.techflash.com
Former Amazon exec’s 5 reasons why the iPad is not a Kindle killer
by Scott Jacobson on Thursday, January 28, 2010, 1:59pm PST
Amazon.com | Apple | From the trenches | Kindle
Jacobson
Scott Jacobson: First, I’ll apologize for using a list format for this blog post. It is an obvious attempt to cover up my inadequacies as a writer…but those will become abundantly clear momentarily. Second, let me disclaim that mine is a household with two Kindles, four iPhones/iPod Touches, and two iMacs.
And I am a shareholder in both Amazon and Apple. And I worked on the launch of the original Kindle at Amazon. And I plan to buy an iPad. So I’m all sorts of biased. All of that said, here are a few reasons I don’t think iPad is a Kindle killer.
1. Kindle is designed for hard-core readers.
For those of us who like to carry books wherever we go, reading on the bus, on airplanes, on the beach, wherever…Kindle is a great reading device. Sure, it has its limitations. But for people who like to read mass-market stuff (fiction, biographies, history, etc.), the fact that it’s not color and the page turns are not instantaneous isn’t that big of a deal.
It is really good at what it does, and it doesn’t need to do a whole lot more. There is a segment of the market (probably millions, maybe tens of millions, but not hundreds of millions) that will prefer a less-expensive device that does one thing really well. And that segment will continue to choose Kindle.
Kindle vs. iPad
2. Kindle is not just ‘iPod for books.’
Amazon is not dependent on a completely closed loop system (like iPod/iTunes) to be successful. I can buy Kindle books on Amazon.com and then read them on my Amazon Kindle, my Dell laptop, and my Apple iPhone. Amazon will continue to make Kindle part of the reading experience on other people’s hardware because it knows that’s it’s best and only chance of winning.
Who knows, maybe someday Amazon will let other hardware makers build their own e-book readers with ‘Kindle Inside’. I am a fan of Kindle the device, but as an Amazon shareholder, I am happy that Amazon’s success in the e-book space is not solely dependent on the success of its hardware.
3. iPad is expensive (comparing apples-to-apples, or perhaps apples-to-amazons).
Kindle’s 3G connection is free. Well, actually, it’s bundled into the cost of the books you buy on Kindle. A 3G iPad will run you $130 more than the $499 base price, and its data connection will cost you between $180 and $360 per year. To be fair, iPad’s data plan can and will be used for a lot more than downloading books. And you can buy a WiFi version of iPad and avoid the $130 + $180-360 per year. But then you lose one of the features that makes the Kindle experience magical: the ability to download any book in the store, anywhere, in a couple of seconds. In an apples-to-apples cost comparison, Kindle is $259 ($489 for the DX), iPad is $629 + $180 per year.
4. Personalization/Recommendations.
Almost every book I’ve purchased over the past seven or eight years I bought on Amazon. Because of that, Amazon is pretty darn good at recommending books that it thinks I might like. iTunes has held my entire music collection over a similar timeframe, and yet, its music recommendations still suck.
Amazon is better at making personalized recommendations, and it has a much longer history for books I own to inform its suggestions. It’s hard to put a value on that, but it’s real. It will be interesting to see how the iBookstore does here.
5. Amazon can’t afford to lose.
Amazon doesn’t report the revenue from books, but it’s safe to assume that books remain a very significant part of its business. While the transition from physical to digital will take far longer for books than it has for music, Amazon can’t afford to allow Apple to dominate the market for e-books the way it dominates the market for MP3s. Amazon is in this fight for the long-run, and as Jeff is known to say, ‘it’s still day one’. While I’m sure it’s no surprise to Amazon that Apple is entering the e-book market, rest assured Amazon is now doubling down on its investment.
Make no mistake.
Apple is going to be a major player in the e-book market. They will extend the iBookstore to iPhone and iTunes, and they will sync the last page read across all of your devices (just like Kindle). But iPad is not the death knell for Kindle. It is a shot across the bow. And Amazon needs to step up its game. The nice thing about competition is that it fosters innovation. And we the consumers will be the beneficiaries.
Scott Jacobson is a partner at Madrona Venture Group, a Seattle venture capital firm. He previously worked in various roles at Amazon.com. Opinions expressed in guest posts are those of their authors, and don’t necessarily reflect the views of TechFlash or its staff
Amazon Fourth Quarter Sales Up 42 Percent, Bezos Says “Millions Of People Own Kindles”
Posted at TechCrunch
by Erick Schonfeld
The holidays were good to Amazon, which just announced fourth quarter 2009 earnings. Sales were up 42 percent to $9.5 billion in the quarter, and net income shot up 71 percent to $384 million (or 85 cents a share, well above the analyst consensus of 72 cents). Free cash flow was up 113 percent to $2.9 billion. For the full year, sales were $24.5 billion, and net income was $902 million.
Amazon highlighted the success of its Kindle in its earning release, which is not surprising given all the comparison to the iPad which Apple announced yesterday. The one quote from CEO Jeff Bezos in the release is about the Kindle: “Millions of people now own Kindles. And Kindle owners read, a lot. When we have both editions, we sell 6 Kindle books for every 10 physical books. This is year-to-date and includes only paid books — free Kindle books would make the number even higher. It’s been an exciting 27 months.”
Beyond being vague about how many “millions” of people own a Kindle (is it two million or 20 million?), Amazon also mentions that there are now 410,000 books available on the Kindle. The depth and breadth of that catalog is the Kindle’s greatest strength. Amazon also emphasized that its digital books can by synched between its own family of Kindles as well as PCs, “iPhone, iPod touch and soon, Blackberry, Mac and iPad.”
The accounting recognition for the Kindle changed this quarter, with more of the total device price being recognized immediately instead of being deferred. During the conference call there was a mention of $500 million of deferred revenues from shipments from last year which will be apportioned in future quarters. Also asked whether its competitive position has now changed, Amazon emphasized that it will continue to focus on the strength of its existing relationship with publishers and on devices “purpose-built for reading. We believe readers deserve to have a dedicated device with great selection, at a great price.” But other than that would not discuss any competing devices (cough, iPad) or how they might impact the price of the Kindle. Amazon reconfirmed, however, that its Kindle app for the iPhone would be available on the iPad as well
Earnings slides are below:
Request-Webslides_Q409_Final-1 –
Posted at TechCrunch
by Erick Schonfeld
The holidays were good to Amazon, which just announced fourth quarter 2009 earnings. Sales were up 42 percent to $9.5 billion in the quarter, and net income shot up 71 percent to $384 million (or 85 cents a share, well above the analyst consensus of 72 cents). Free cash flow was up 113 percent to $2.9 billion. For the full year, sales were $24.5 billion, and net income was $902 million.
Amazon highlighted the success of its Kindle in its earning release, which is not surprising given all the comparison to the iPad which Apple announced yesterday. The one quote from CEO Jeff Bezos in the release is about the Kindle: “Millions of people now own Kindles. And Kindle owners read, a lot. When we have both editions, we sell 6 Kindle books for every 10 physical books. This is year-to-date and includes only paid books — free Kindle books would make the number even higher. It’s been an exciting 27 months.”
Beyond being vague about how many “millions” of people own a Kindle (is it two million or 20 million?), Amazon also mentions that there are now 410,000 books available on the Kindle. The depth and breadth of that catalog is the Kindle’s greatest strength. Amazon also emphasized that its digital books can by synched between its own family of Kindles as well as PCs, “iPhone, iPod touch and soon, Blackberry, Mac and iPad.”
The accounting recognition for the Kindle changed this quarter, with more of the total device price being recognized immediately instead of being deferred. During the conference call there was a mention of $500 million of deferred revenues from shipments from last year which will be apportioned in future quarters. Also asked whether its competitive position has now changed, Amazon emphasized that it will continue to focus on the strength of its existing relationship with publishers and on devices “purpose-built for reading. We believe readers deserve to have a dedicated device with great selection, at a great price.” But other than that would not discuss any competing devices (cough, iPad) or how they might impact the price of the Kindle. Amazon reconfirmed, however, that its Kindle app for the iPhone would be available on the iPad as well
Earnings slides are below:
Request-Webslides_Q409_Final-1 –
Unicode nearing 50% of the web
Posted at The Official Google Blog
by A Googler
About 18 months ago, we published a graph showing that Unicode on the web had just exceeded all other encodings of text on the web. The growth since then has been even more dramatic.
Web pages can use a variety of different character encodings, like ASCII, Latin-1, or Windows 1252 or Unicode. Most encodings can only represent a few languages, but Unicode can represent thousands: from Arabic to Chinese to Zulu. We have long used Unicode as the internal format for all the text we search: any other encoding is first converted to Unicode for processing.
This graph is from Google internal data, based on our indexing of web pages, and thus may vary somewhat from what other search engines find. However, the trends are pretty clear, and the continued rise in use of Unicode makes it even easier to do the processing for the many languages that we cover.
Searching for “nancials”?
Unicode is growing both in usage and in character coverage. We recently upgraded to the latest version of Unicode, version 5.2 (via ICU and CLDR). This adds over 6,600 new characters: some of mostly academic interest, such as Egyptian Hieroglyphs, but many others for living languages.
We’re constantly improving our handling of existing characters. For example, the characters “fi” can either be represented as two characters (“f” and “i”), or a special display form “fi”. A Google search for [financials] or [office] used to not see these as equivalent — to the software they would just look like *nancials and of*ce. There are thousands of characters like this, and they occur in surprisingly many pages on the web, especially generated PDF documents.
But no longer — after extensive testing, we just recently turned on support for these and thousands of other characters; your searches will now also find these documents. Further steps in our mission to organize the world’s information and make it universally accessible and useful.
And we’re angling for a party when Unicode hits 50%!
Posted by Mark Davis, Senior International Software Architect
Posted at The Official Google Blog
by A Googler
About 18 months ago, we published a graph showing that Unicode on the web had just exceeded all other encodings of text on the web. The growth since then has been even more dramatic.
Web pages can use a variety of different character encodings, like ASCII, Latin-1, or Windows 1252 or Unicode. Most encodings can only represent a few languages, but Unicode can represent thousands: from Arabic to Chinese to Zulu. We have long used Unicode as the internal format for all the text we search: any other encoding is first converted to Unicode for processing.
This graph is from Google internal data, based on our indexing of web pages, and thus may vary somewhat from what other search engines find. However, the trends are pretty clear, and the continued rise in use of Unicode makes it even easier to do the processing for the many languages that we cover.
Searching for “nancials”?
Unicode is growing both in usage and in character coverage. We recently upgraded to the latest version of Unicode, version 5.2 (via ICU and CLDR). This adds over 6,600 new characters: some of mostly academic interest, such as Egyptian Hieroglyphs, but many others for living languages.
We’re constantly improving our handling of existing characters. For example, the characters “fi” can either be represented as two characters (“f” and “i”), or a special display form “fi”. A Google search for [financials] or [office] used to not see these as equivalent — to the software they would just look like *nancials and of*ce. There are thousands of characters like this, and they occur in surprisingly many pages on the web, especially generated PDF documents.
But no longer — after extensive testing, we just recently turned on support for these and thousands of other characters; your searches will now also find these documents. Further steps in our mission to organize the world’s information and make it universally accessible and useful.
And we’re angling for a party when Unicode hits 50%!
Posted by Mark Davis, Senior International Software Architect
Shared Items – January 28, 2010
- Apple#39;s iPad — a broken link? (The Adobe Angle)
January 28, 2010
- Search is getting more social
January 28, 2010 – Time to update you profile at a href=”http://www.google.com/profiles”www.google.com/profiles/a
- Apple#39;s iPad — a broken link? (The Adobe Angle)
- Search is getting more social
January 28, 2010
January 28, 2010 – Time to update you profile at a href=”http://www.google.com/profiles”www.google.com/profiles/a
Apple’s iPad — a broken link? (The Adobe Angle)
Posted at blogs.adobe.com
Apple’s iPad — a broken link?
Posted by Adrian Ludwig
on January 27, 2010 5:00 PM
As I drove by Yerba Buena Theater in San Francisco this morning, I couldn’t help but be impressed. Apple certainly has the ability to excite people with great products, and with the iPhone they even managed to generate momentum for an entire product category. So it’s no surprise that the iPad looks like it’s a pretty good new device.
It was really exciting to see some of the technologies that Adobe has contributed to, like PDF and ePub support, taking center stage in the launch. Adobe technology is at the center of virtually every print and digital workflow, so undoubtedly a lot of what you¹ll see getting delivered to the iPad will have originated in Adobe creative software.
But, as a picture posted on Engadget shows (below), and many others have reported, there’s something important missing from Apple’s approach to connecting consumers to content.
It looks like Apple is continuing to impose restrictions on their devices that limit both content publishers and consumers. Unlike many other ebook readers using the ePub file format, consumers will not be able to access ePub content with Apple’s DRM technology on devices made by other manufacturers. And without Flash support, iPad users will not be able to access the full range of web content, including over 70% of games and 75% of video on the web.
If I want to use the iPad to connect to Disney, Hulu, Miniclip, Farmville, ESPN, Kongregate, or JibJab — not to mention the millions of other sites on the web — I’ll be out of luck.
Adobe and more than 50 of our partners in the Open Screen Project are working to enable developers and content publishers to deliver to any device, so that consumers have open access to their favorite interactive media, content, and applications across platform, regardless of the device that people choose to use.
Posted at blogs.adobe.com
Apple’s iPad — a broken link?
Posted by Adrian Ludwig
on January 27, 2010 5:00 PM
As I drove by Yerba Buena Theater in San Francisco this morning, I couldn’t help but be impressed. Apple certainly has the ability to excite people with great products, and with the iPhone they even managed to generate momentum for an entire product category. So it’s no surprise that the iPad looks like it’s a pretty good new device.
It was really exciting to see some of the technologies that Adobe has contributed to, like PDF and ePub support, taking center stage in the launch. Adobe technology is at the center of virtually every print and digital workflow, so undoubtedly a lot of what you¹ll see getting delivered to the iPad will have originated in Adobe creative software.
But, as a picture posted on Engadget shows (below), and many others have reported, there’s something important missing from Apple’s approach to connecting consumers to content.
It looks like Apple is continuing to impose restrictions on their devices that limit both content publishers and consumers. Unlike many other ebook readers using the ePub file format, consumers will not be able to access ePub content with Apple’s DRM technology on devices made by other manufacturers. And without Flash support, iPad users will not be able to access the full range of web content, including over 70% of games and 75% of video on the web.
If I want to use the iPad to connect to Disney, Hulu, Miniclip, Farmville, ESPN, Kongregate, or JibJab — not to mention the millions of other sites on the web — I’ll be out of luck.
Adobe and more than 50 of our partners in the Open Screen Project are working to enable developers and content publishers to deliver to any device, so that consumers have open access to their favorite interactive media, content, and applications across platform, regardless of the device that people choose to use.
Rediff Q3-’10 Results: Revenues Sees 18% Sequential Jump; Total Registered Users At 85 million
Posted at WATBlog.com – Web, Advertising and Technology Blog in India
by Raghav Soni
Rediff has announced a 18% jump(Q-o-Q) in its revenues at $4.73 Million compared to $4.19 Million in sequential quarter. The internet conglomerate has also registered a heavy decline in its losses which stands at $1.64 Million Vs $2.61 Million in last quarter.
The results might look bad in Y-o-Y scenario but should be compared on sequential quarter basis as Dec-2008 quarter was a tough one for Indian economy and enterprises as a whole.
Indian Online ad revenues contributed majorly to Rediff’s revenue surge whereas U.S publishing business is seen at stagnant phase. Rediff’s operating expenses are showing good signs as it has been declining from past few quarters.
Rediff in the meanwhile has claimed that its user base has grown 14% to 85 million compared to a year ago period. The total user base number looks high in awake to India’s total internet user base (around 50-80 million) despite knowing its focus on NRI market. This might be because rediff is yet to write off a large part of Inactive user base not using it service and also due to duplication of user profiles across it services.
The company continues to maintain its capex plans for next 2-3 more quarters and in our opinion may need to launch some additional properties to penetrate its social based strategy adopted in recent past. Rediff during last quarter launched Songbuzz and even tied-up with diamond comics to bring comics on to mobile platform.
Rediff still do not have any killer property which can bring in ample amount of revenues. Newer properties like Rediff Money are winning users but are far away from becoming segment leaders. Rediff in future could very well utilize its cash balance of $48 Million for smaller acquisitions in Indian market.
Related Posts
- Rediff Q2 Results: Revenues Down 16% (Q-o-Q),To Focus More On Social Features
- Rediff Q2 Result Indicates Slowdown In Ad Revenue – Reports Net Loss Of Rs 2 crores (approx)
- Rediff India Q1 Revenues Up 42% – “We are looking At Acquiring Companies” – Ajit Balakrishnan, Chairman Rediff.com
- Chacha Chaudhary Comics Go Mobile Via Rediff
- It’s Not Just Portals: Now Twitter Decides to Revamp its Home Page and Launches Twitter 101
Follow us on: Twitter | Facebook | Linkedin | Orkut
Our Network: WATShow.com | WATJob.com | WATGame.com | WATPR.com
Posted at WATBlog.com – Web, Advertising and Technology Blog in India
by Raghav Soni
Rediff has announced a 18% jump(Q-o-Q) in its revenues at $4.73 Million compared to $4.19 Million in sequential quarter. The internet conglomerate has also registered a heavy decline in its losses which stands at $1.64 Million Vs $2.61 Million in last quarter.
The results might look bad in Y-o-Y scenario but should be compared on sequential quarter basis as Dec-2008 quarter was a tough one for Indian economy and enterprises as a whole.
Indian Online ad revenues contributed majorly to Rediff’s revenue surge whereas U.S publishing business is seen at stagnant phase. Rediff’s operating expenses are showing good signs as it has been declining from past few quarters.
Rediff in the meanwhile has claimed that its user base has grown 14% to 85 million compared to a year ago period. The total user base number looks high in awake to India’s total internet user base (around 50-80 million) despite knowing its focus on NRI market. This might be because rediff is yet to write off a large part of Inactive user base not using it service and also due to duplication of user profiles across it services.
The company continues to maintain its capex plans for next 2-3 more quarters and in our opinion may need to launch some additional properties to penetrate its social based strategy adopted in recent past. Rediff during last quarter launched Songbuzz and even tied-up with diamond comics to bring comics on to mobile platform.
Rediff still do not have any killer property which can bring in ample amount of revenues. Newer properties like Rediff Money are winning users but are far away from becoming segment leaders. Rediff in future could very well utilize its cash balance of $48 Million for smaller acquisitions in Indian market.
Related Posts
- Rediff Q2 Results: Revenues Down 16% (Q-o-Q),To Focus More On Social Features
- Rediff Q2 Result Indicates Slowdown In Ad Revenue – Reports Net Loss Of Rs 2 crores (approx)
- Rediff India Q1 Revenues Up 42% – “We are looking At Acquiring Companies” – Ajit Balakrishnan, Chairman Rediff.com
- Chacha Chaudhary Comics Go Mobile Via Rediff
- It’s Not Just Portals: Now Twitter Decides to Revamp its Home Page and Launches Twitter 101
Follow us on: Twitter | Facebook | Linkedin | Orkut
Our Network: WATShow.com | WATJob.com | WATGame.com | WATPR.com
Jeetu Mirchandani
