I agree that personal content sharing is what Indians will adopt more rather than putting it for public viewing and I am assuming that option is available on Rediff iShare.

Whatever the business case may be it makes sense for Rediff to create a separate channel to offer regional content as it is India’s largest portal and many people will enjoy watching videos in regional language. I am sure regional media companies will want to put their content on Rediff as it will give them more shelf life and reach. Not too sure how the business deal will work out. 

Though it is early days for broadband but it is good to see companies are optimistic about it taking off and providing services to cater to the early adopters.

In comparison to youtube and facebook Indian offerings have a long way to go, so at this point in time they should not focus on business model but look to create good platforms so that when the broadband peneteration takes off there will be atleast one or two Indian players well positioned to leverage the oppurtunity.

It will be worthwhile to wait and see how rediff ‘s plans on iShare shape up as the early reviews look very positive but they need to get out of the technical issues soon. So I am assuming that they have a long term objective on this one.

On a lighter note - I dont see users complaining about it - I am sure people have really enjoyed the hillarious videos of Rajnikant stunts on other video platforms - there is one on iShare too which is a dubbed version and remix of Matrix and sivaji in tamil.

Over to you Nikhil - would love to read on what are rediff’s plan with iShare by when do they expect to get ROI from this initiative - something more concrete like you did with reliance -

agreed on the point that users from India have not caught the video UGC bug as yet.. but I do see a huge potential in desis living abroad. a lot of them to participate actively on youtube - uploading and commenting. ishare needs to do something about user comments - i see highly watched videos with almost no comments. there’s got to be more involvement, video uploads + comments + community interaction. perhaps we’re not a video-creating nation. not just yet, at least.

Rajiv: haven’t been able to an interview with Ajit yet...but should be fun. Optimism is one thing, but I’m not sure if it makes sense to pump in money this early in India’s broadband evolution. What kind of a scale will you achieve with regional content online, only with NRIs? That said, the speed content delivery at iShare is fantastic, even though their UI is awful. Good video content is often language agnostic, btw..so why do a youtube?

They can tie up with tv serial producers and show serials through this medium, it will atleast attract NRI traffic,
In future, something like Net DJ’s can be hired to run programs , instead of just following youtube.
They can also charge to download serials from archives.,

Is the online video sharing platform (read web 2.0) still in its nascent stage? I guess being from the Music and entertainment industry and as a content provider myself my belief is that indeed it indeed it is. But thats not a reason to panic. Like all tech platforms this will grow with more impending usage from the consumer. Broadband is moving and moving fast. Tata is refurbishing the VSNL platform for better and cleaner usage. However, what is immediately missing for us-the content providers is the green. Unless a 360 degree business model incorporating monies from Ads and downloads is implemented the ishare and youtubes of the world will be more of promo platforms. I would suggest that Rediff needs to build the ishare as a business model to allow third party promoters to play a part by involving contests and advertisements. In such cases the consumer will feel inclined to share and participate, which will also answer Nikhil’s question of how many of us feel inclined to share content. To safeguard the interest of the content providers any social network/sharing platform must allow some revenue model so that content does not become completely free and thus hinder the regular earning model.