Nikhil,

I think media houses in India are likely to be less impacted by the blogs - individual content creators. Again, I’m not saying they wont..but ‘less likey’—as compared to their western counterparts.

Why ?

Well, thanks to the Indian market being 5 years behind its US counterpart, Indian media houses (esp the newspapers) have quickly learnt of establishing a credible presence online too. In the west, newspapers and traditional media were not expecting that ebay, craigslist and blogs will give them a run for their money. The media that adapted and innovated - NYT, WP etc. seem to have revived...others are headed for doom.

Indian media houses have closely watched the impact and as Mantha says: “because they don’t want to miss out like their media counterparts in the west”..
consequently, you see the deep ties between newspapers && the online portals in India - be it indiatimes, hindustan times, jagran, indian exp etc..

As the number of blogs serving the niche markets starts increasing, content generation for these portals is going to be a major issue.  Creative writers and quality content seem to be in great demand, going by the job ads I see everywhere.

But till blogs become a MAJOR force (like in the US), its going to be an uphill battle in educating people (read aam aadmi) about what blogs are...how they are different from the rediff message boards and stuff....You and I understand. majority of the CS audience gets the difference. ..but hey...I think we still are the minority here…

anyways..enough rambling

ok..the lousy grammar and spelling above need to be pardoned..

We had a nice debate regarding this @ the Pune Blog Camp - last week.

The final conclusion was that - the bloggers, representing modern social media (newspapers going online still represent the traditional media) would be the 5th estate.

Rather than a traditional media vs modern social media fight....modern social media is and will become an individual identity.
In india, traditional media consumption is great and will be tough to dis-lodge mainly because accessibility to social media is limited to the net-savvy junta.

Hey Nikhil, Thanks for the mention.. Just a small correction.. Its Rajiv Dingra not Dhingra ..

Rajiv:my apologies for the oversight. Would have liked to hear your take on the issue at the conference...nevertheless, do let us know what you think.

Pranav: they’re aware, but they’re still too bogged down by their systems - and that doesn’t necessarily make them more stable. Maybe I didn’t emphasize this well enough, but the issue is of fragmentation of advertising spends - that’s the real threat. mainstream media houses will not die, but they are weakening and will continue to weaken. on the internet, they don’t just compete in the local sphere. advertising has more channels now, and mainstream media is likely to gobble up some of those smaller players to counter this fragmentation. however, if they continue to impose their brand of media coverage (read - “editorial for sale") then their audience will move on. At the same time, I must commend IBNlive - they allow their own reporters to criticise the channels policies at the IBNlive blogs...but what of Web18s other publications? Seriously - there’s a market for Federated Media kind of ad networks for helping advertisers discover quality sites...and indeed for a Weblogs Inc.

If we see the pattern of online user generated content, it is mostly in the form of sharing photographs and videos, expressing views through blogs and selling personal belongings like on eBay. The content is from an individual’s point of view unlike in traditional media where the purpose of content is an unbiased (?) dissemination of news and information. The user will access user-generated content and traditional media content for different reasons.

I think big media is not threatened by the advent of the new media but is awakening to the possibilities it offers. Having an internet counterpart will only strengthen their reach. Many of the once offline readers are now converted to online readers. Hence, though the readership of newspapers is dropping, the readers are moving to their online counterparts. So the big media is still getting the visibility. How they monetize this medium is something they still need to innovate.

We need to understand that the users largely seek content in the form of news, information and entertainment from any form of medium. What platform they adopt depends on their environment and their persona. Take a scenario where a user checks her mails the first thing in the morning, then reads newspaper while commuting. While taking a break at work, she browses for online news site and then reads blogs from her favorite list or through RSS. At night, she catches up with Television for her daily bite of drama. Advertisers here have ample opportunities to sell through her mailbox, newspapers, news websites, blogs and TV.

In the above scenario we see a new ecosystem emerging where no particular media is threatened. The infotainment providers need to use these avenues optimally.

Here is my take .. The digital revolution with create a world of have’s and have nots.. or digitally literate and digitally illiterate.. The new media Vs old media will entire depend upon how the numbers evolve with respect to the have’s and have nots in the digitally connected world. The day the numbers start favouring the digitally literate .. pure play old media would lose ground to new media.

I dont think traditional media is going to be affected at all. How else are u going to reach ur aam junta??
but considering the rapid growth of online medium it is definitely a challenge for the traditional medium to keep up with the pace. We also find fragmentation of all the medium. This only proves that every medium is interdependent and has to reach every one of their audience. So I think every media is only growing. As far as the traditional medium keeps up with the pace - its difficult they lose ground to new media

I too believe that traditional media is not going to get affected. Please read my blog post where I provided information to substantiate my argument. Here is the link

http://go2indiaweb20.com/?p=192

Media Houses have no direct impact from online individual content creators - bloggers. In fact, media houses can actually wake up to persuade their Coprorate clientelle to show them the potential of ignoring such content. The idea of creating a Corporate Blog platform is to create a new vista on online dialogue that will and can easily take Maketing and PR to new levels of reaching out to consumers. Why do people nor take into account that the interaction via this platform is a DIRECT one on one. Take the bull by the horns kinda relationship.

This form of dialogue is going to hurt some but in the bargain look at the viral effect of reaching out to people can do. Just the basic presence on such platform can take any corporate a long way. It will be like a deterrent to people who just want to clamber on and ramble on and would seriously seperate serious bloggers and keep them in touch with corporates. Media houses can look at this a new billing to their clients..
Regards,

Excellent stuff Nikhil. Normally when we have mobile on the internet for a larger percentage of our population traditional media (hard copies) will find it tough to survive. WEB18 has taken the right steps. WIth a time lag of 5-7 years all business models that existed and survived in the US do happen in India. So if you look at their internet properties they are not trying to re-invent the wheel but are trying to use a simple copy/paste function of business models.

Today WEB18 has portals like moneycontrol,tech2.,indiwo,compareindia, easymf, stakes in jobstreet(50%), yatra(15%). Now if we look at the global leaders in this space they are marketwatch,morningstar,cnet,kelkoo, ivillage,expedia,monster etc.

So in one way the strategy of adding websites which looks a bit out of place is in fact creating a first mover advantage when these models start to flourish in india.

Unlike conventional belief that internet has no entry barriers I feel that internet is a business where winners take all. Now can anyone take away from google its dominence in the search engine market? While creating another google is next to impossible for a start up in the search space we do have several opportunities for creating unique India centric websites.

Funny no one talked about the potential of using hindi on the internet. The next flow of audiance eyeballs on the net would be for the vernacular space.

Disclosure: I have vested interests in the shares of Tv18 and its group companies.

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