Shuhaib ShariffThe Dark Knight… Yeah, Right!

LocalEngine - A platform for building local (city) portals.

Double Spring Media, the company behind Bangalore’s most loved portal: MyBangalore.com has acquired the rights to the domain name: MyHyderabad.com

We’re launching MyHyderabad.com in November 2010

At this time we are looking for strategic partners and investors in Hyderabad. Interested parties can connect with us here:
http://doublespring.com/contact/

Follow us on FaceBook and Twitter:
http://www.facebook.com/myhyderabad
http://twitter.com/myhyderabad

Former President APJ Abdul Kalam called him a ‘true scientist’. Mitticool, a clay refrigerator that works without electricity had turned the world’s attention to its creator Mansukhbhai Prajapati, a craftsman based in Gujarat:

http://business.rediff.com/slide-show/2010/jun/10/slide-show-1-fridge-that-runs-without-electricity.htm

IMHO: India’s not short of talented innovators. I’ve seen similar ideas (different products) that never really take off … due to lack of financial & marketing support. Wish we had America’s zest for backing talent & celebrating success!

In the first part of this series, I’ve touched upon why the current geodomain development model is flawed and doesn’t really maximize the returns on high quality geodomains.
Before suggesting a better model, let us first understand who our target audience in a geodomain business is: I’d say it’s primarily the residents of the city.

Reason:
Take the example of Denver.com. Who do you think cares more about the city … tourists / travellers OR Denverites? Who needs regular updates on stuff happening in and around the city … tourists / travellers OR Denverites? Who has the ALL important: emotional connect with the city … tourists / travellers OR Denverites?
Clearly, it makes business sense to focus on local residents, because it’s easier to engage them on a long term basis … the emotional connect is difficult to achieve with anybody else.

Local residents are looking for commercial content on city portals. They’re looking to discover & explore local businesses online. Don’t believe it? Check this:

“Research shows that consumers typically spend about 80 percent of their income within 50 miles of their homes, and that about 30 percent of all Internet searches are commercial in nature. In fact, fully one quarter of all searches on the Internet are for both local and commercial content. These consumers are the crown jewel of search because they typically convert into buyers at a higher rate than any other type of online search traffic. As a result, advertisers often pay a premium to place their ads in front of consumers conducting local searches. Researchers forecast that a growing number of local businesses will begin to advertise their products and services through online search in order to reach these highly valuable consumers.”
– Source: Local.com

Next, we need to understand the needs & content consumption patterns of local residents. What do they expect from their local city portal? What will bring them back every day? How do you differentiate your offering from the BIG boys: Yahoo!, Yelp, AOL OR the city’s local newspaper website? How do you monetize?

One can categorize Local CONTENT into TWO types:

1) Content for everyday / frequent consumption
Local News, Reviews, Events, Alerts, Weather, Photos & Videos.

2) Content for Need-based consumption
Local Classifieds, Real Estate, Movie Listings, City Offers, Jobs, Yellow Pages, Online Shopping, Forums, Flight Status, etc.

It is important that content on a geodomain / city portal is highly localized. By including national or international content you will end up competing for eyeballs with Yahoo!, AOL, etc.  By all means that is a losing proposition! Stick to your niche: LOCAL

Monetization:
Geodomains need out-of-the-box thinking. Slapping together Adsense & generic banners (credit cards, insurance, web hosting, etc.) doesn’t help (unless you get millions of impressions each day) Considering that the traffic to geodomains may be significant but not gigantic, generic CPC/CPM advertising is generally a bad idea.

In the next part of this series, I will share some monetization ideas and divulge the secret of building high quality content on geodomains at very low costs.

DoubleSpring has been nominated for TiE50 , TiECon 2010 - MAY 14-15, Santa Clara , CA
Details at  www.tie50.net

A big “Thank You” to the TiE50 Executive Committee, for considering us.

Facebook’s current worth: $10 billion US

Cost of registering & using Facebook: ZERO

Finding your school friends (on facebook), after 15 years: PRICELESS!

If I ever meet Mark Zuckerberg, the first thing I’d tell him:
“What an idea SIR Ji“