Sridhar, the man behind eBulawa.com and eNewss.com is here with us today with his views on blogging in India and the phenomenon of blogging and web 2.0 as a whole. His rich experience with Sybase and many other web media companies along with current involvement with eBulawa and eNewss made us invite him and make him share his valuable views.
Enough said, now meet the man himself with his deft answers:
Sridhar: When I was doing my Masters, I was selected for a research project ‘Siggraph’ in 1999. This was about image search engine. I had to use several web related technologies then to accomplish the tasks and that did help me to venture into web world. My first website was Nayikhabar.com (no longer hosted). This was like samachar.com and did receive decent hits per month. Not knowing the importance of thousands of impressions per month and not able to get the active help from friends, I basically pulled the plug. After that I got a job in Sybase and worked there until last year. Now I am working for startup which develops auditing software for financial companies. For all these years after closing nayikhabar.com, my passion for web never died and started working for ebulawa.com. The inspiration for this was evite and I wanted to bring the same for Indians through ebulawa. eBulawa.com is generating enough money to cover its hosting fee, domain renewals and also for supporting enewss.com. eNewss.com is just my current project.
While working, I realized one fact, that people do appreciate newer technologies but never use them until it means anything for them.
We created great new features at my work place, but companies don’t buy them because they are able to survive with what they have. Customers do signup for Beta programs and try the new features and send us a positive feedback. When it comes to buying and putting these technologies into production, they just say “No, Thanks”.
So, I started adapting new technologies and put them to good use only if it means something for my website users.
IndiaBlogWatch: As the motto goes, Enewss aims to ‘Bridge Indian bloggers globally’. What exactly does Enewss want to achieve by this and how has it been successful so far?
Sridhar: I believe that everything we do should have a direct purpose. Our motto ‘Bridge Indian bloggers globally’ is also designed with a direct purpose in mind. I would like to leverage Indian bloggers to highlight social issues surrounding India, which are obstacles for India’s growth. When a reader visits a particular blog, he is interested in their point of views. Soon, he realizes that this is just one opinion among many and would like to read other opinions from other blogs, as well. Therefore, what I did was to bridge several Indian blogs onto one platform and present it to our readers. Now, readers can easily read and hear the voices and opinions from many of the different voices and insights of Indian bloggers from around the globe all in one location. We would like to highlight several Indian blog posts related to current events helping readers update on blogger’s opinions. By bridging Indian bloggers, we are trying to create a unified force to reckon with. I have received several feedbacks on the motto and people appreciated that.
We were associate sponsors of the recently concluded unconference blog camp at Chennai. We would like to sponsor several such blog meets which would bring Indian bloggers together to help themselves and also help community we live in.
IndiaBlogWatch: Apart from the fact that ‘content is the king’, what other efforts should a Blog Network consider in order to provide its readers the best? What is your perception of ‘best’?
Sridhar: Up until recently, I believed ‘content is the king’. With proliferation of blogs, forums etc there is more content than the powerful search engines like Google and Yahoo can chew. There are several instances where the index servers of these search engines have gone mad dealing with the mammoth loads of content. Coming from a database company like Sybase, I know how hard it is to manage the content and provide it to the user in the way they request. Blog Networks, like yours, should not only invest in producing quality content but also equally invest in making the content meaningful to the end reader. I believe a blog network should provide the best presentation of content and onsite search for all readers.
When a user visits a particular site, he always has a predefined set of news items to look for along with any new information including breaking news. If he does not directly find what he wants, he may take an extra step to search and find items of interest. If you as a blog network fail him on these two counts, then you risk the chance of loosing this user forever. Very few readers care about the technology or implementation details. Vast majority of readers just care about getting the information they are looking for out of your service. Google understood this particular aspect of surfers much earlier than Yahoo and Microsoft. Even though Yahoo and Microsoft invested heavily on technology along with opening new adventures in creating technologies and platforms, Google won the race because of its fast and relevant search results from its single page website. Providing what a reader wants is the best a blog network can do.
IndiaBlogWatch: Tell us something about Enewss and Ebulawa.
Sridhar: I have blogged on India Times and have had some blogs featured on their main page. I also spent 3 years on yahoo message boards, several forums and groups. I always had difficulty in finding other people’s blogs and their opinions. I tried Google, technorati, delicious, digg, etc. Initially I used to get onto one Indian blog and then browsed their blogroll to find other Indian blogs. This is the way I located several Indian blogs. I started adding them to my favorites. The list was going on and on and this method proved too hard to continue. The problem I had locating Indian blogs could very well be the problem of majority of people, so I started thinking like a reader and started working on enewss.com
From a reader’s perspective, he is interested in content first. If he likes it, he will then investigate farther into the site. Therefore, I believed a simple interface like samachar.com would best serve the purpose. This is the way enewss.com emerged concentrating mainly on what a reader would like. I really want the reader to access everything possible on one page.
Initial efforts of eNewss.com were to aggregate the content from Indian Blogs, Indian forums, Indian groups and mainline media and divide them into meaningful categories. We slowly realized most of the forums and groups only generate small amounts of valid content, so we started concentrating heavily on just Indian Blogs and mainline media from India.
Ebulawa was an inspiration of mine to aid individuals with all their event-planning needs by providing them with all the essential tools necessary to hold all their celebrations. Offering tools online such as invitations, announcements, and greeting cards without costing a dime would give them more time and money to spend on other items or gifts for their event.
IndiaBlogWatch: The whole Internet, of course, as a media, is moving towards Web 2.0. How far do you think the phenomenon has emerged successfully?
Sridhar: In one sentence I would say, people have contributed much to the emergence of Web 2.0 technologies. Web 2.0 type technologies were always there but people didn’t adopt them for some time and companies didn’t see any incentive in improving them.
Had our leaders delivered what people had expected and traditional media had lived up to their intended purpose of being the people’s voice Web 2.0 would have died a long time back. People always felt that their needs were neither represented by media nor addressed by politicians. They started venting their anger in the form of protests, strikes etc. With the emergence of the internet, they started reading information from a wide variety of sources. Even that did not help and people started using available resources like forums, groups etc to put their opinions. Due to moderators on most of these types of applications, people always looked elsewhere to vent their opinions and ideas on issues dearer to them without anybody looking over them.
Therefore, the latest technologies (read Web 2.0) have given freedom to people to voice/raise their concerns and has become a democratic tool. Therefore, Web 2.0 has met the aspirations of people and thus I would say companies have expedited the process of refining and creating new technologies. Without people’s participation, there would have been no incentive for companies and Web 2.0 would have died a natural death. Now slowly, the same technology has provided a way for many people to put their talents on the web. There are several instances where people have produced quality video just like a movie production and made their name on the web. There are several instances where bloggers have highlighted discrepancies in traditional media reporting. The list goes on and all the credit goes to Web 2.0.
IndiaBlogWatch: What are your future plans with respect to Enewss? Where do you see Enewss in the next five years?
Sridhar: In the short term, we would like to add more and more Indian bloggers to enewss and concentrate on adding more hardware and software resources.
In the longer term, we have two projects on the table. One is to work exclusively on improving search and the other is to automate the tagging service. Let me go in detail about these two projects.
a) Improving search: As of now, we only implement a basic search facility and the striking feature is to display the results with most recent blog on the search term first. Our improvement will be to use Full Text search API and bring more relevance and speed to search results.
b) Automatic tags: Tagging has the potential to allow abuse for a variety of reasons. A blogger can add too many tags for each blog, just to make it appear in multiple categories/sections. What I am interested in is to implement a software solution to read the entire blog post and create at most 2 or 3 tags relevant to the content. I have a high-level algorithm to accomplish this task, but it is still in its very basic form.
We will not be adapting any new technology, which does not make sense to the reader. We will not do anything which does not bring direct dividends to the reader.
In the next five years, we would like to communicate with Indian bloggers and do more direct community services.
IndiaBlogWatch: Finally, we would like to have your thoughts on the Instablogs Network and its all related sites. Which one is your favorite?
Sridhar: Instablogs is a great resource as it produces a wealth of information on a wide variety of topics like politics, sports, travel etc. I have read some of your blog posts about Instablogs. You have said that Instablogs is a news organization. I would put Instablogs in a different category (I cannot think of a proper name) though, since it can mean so much too many different individuals. You categorize the content at the blog site level (http://www.adpunch.org/, http://www.digimusic.org/, http://www.instatravel.org/, etc.) where as most other networks categorize at the individual post level by using tags or some other technology. Your network has all the ingredients to improve our society, where as other networks does not have that advantage. What I like the most about your network is a dedicated set of sites/bloggers bragging about a particular topic. One such community service will be during Elections. You could pool bloggers from each city and request them to blog about local issues close to them. During election times, bloggers can extensively cover local MLAs, MPs, and local leaders, highlight their credentials providing a great deal of information to the voters, and help them in deciding their next leader. The same bloggers can highlight system in-efficiencies close to them in hospitals, institutions and several government agencies. Such blogs will have more influence on the common man than blogs covering national or international issues. Let your network take blogging to the next level by bringing dynamism to our democracy and increase people’s participation. Our country needs networks like yours covering local and national issues encouraging active discussions. I wish your network good luck for an ever-growing engaging community of bloggers.
My favorite is your technology network. Within this category, I can find useful information from other bloggers on such topics as VOIP and Wifi trends. The technology field is a fascinating one and with news, opinions, and reviews there is much to read.
Comments
That was a real good interview. Indian blog scene is really moving forward everyday. We need more Indian entrepreneurs to come and churn got great products.
Thanks Sridhar for excellent advice regarding Instablogs. We will surely pool dozens of more bloggers from different cities and writing about issues which are ignored by main media.
The interview is really captivating and Sridhar has in actuality highlighted the need of widespread blogging in India that speaks the story of the laymen. And the most motivating words of Sridhar were”Providing what a reader wants is the best a blog network can do.”
That was a good interview indeed. My friends and my seniors in my blogging community have helped me understand the main objective of blogging . This interview further bulds my confidence as a blogger, as i know understand all facets of blogging , right from its objectives to its impact on the society ....
I do agree with Ravi that every fellow wants to get the best but i have a point here. You can’t lay your hands on anything that comes your way being a layman. Financial conditions have to play a major role in the scenario. Creating interest in a gadget or urging the person to buy that gadget is very much different from actually buying that gizmo. Yeps, the tech-world is moving at a swift pace and you try your best to be at pace with it. But, you can’t afford everything. Anything is meant for those who love to flaunt their riches and can buy anything that comes their way.
Naveen said it correctly. Just becuase there is something good/better out there, we will not replace with what we have. Financial conditions, ROI (return on investment) do play a major role in bringing in a change.
Coming to Web 2.0, Most of us are fascinated with the technology and have moved from Web 1.0 to Web 2.0
Now that we are here, to sustain the new technology, we have to engage in realising the benefits out of it.
Community style networks, blog networks etc have generated more interest among us. We have to carry forward this enthusiam further to help ourselves and educate ourselves.
Hopefully India, where such networks are needed, brings in needed change to blog networks usability.
–sri
This is indeed an interesting an awesome interview. It provided us (the bloggers) with a maxim, ‘start thinking like a reader’. I guess like me, my fellow bloggers too will take the opportunity of inculcating it into their work/job.
-THANX