Data from analytics provider, StatCounter’s global stats shows that Chrome currently occupies the number two spot among web browsers in India.

The first place is held by Firefox, which currently has a market share of 32.97% after displacing Internet Explorer from the top spot just last month. Google Chrome is second, with 31.75% and is closely followed by Internet Explorer, which has been losing popularity steadily over the past twelve months and currently has only 31.33% market share.

The success of Chrome in the Indian market could be attributed to various factors including advertising on television, which is the most popular form of advertisement in India and the need for faster browsers to compensate for slower Internet speeds in the region. The browser also gets promoted through various other Google services.

When Chrome was launched internationally, in 2008, it secured 10% market share in India, but that went up to 22% within a year, thanks to its technical excellence as well as rapid release cycle.

Last month, Chrome overtook Firefox in the U.K. to occupy second place, with a market share of 22.12% compared to 21.65% for Firefox. Similarly, Chrome has also overtaken IE during the month of July in three countries of South America – Argentina, Chili and Uruguay.

Google’s social network Google Plus, which was launched just a couple of months ago, is also doing well in India, especially when compared to the rest of Asia. 

In India, Google+ had 0.4% market share in mid-July, after it was released but has tapered down to 0.2% since then, according to data from Experian/Hitwise. In Singapore, the social network had 0.8% share a week after its release and grew to 1.2% less than two months later. Google+ has not, however, fared too well in Hong Kong, where it had only 0.074%. This could be largely due to the pre-dominance of local social networks in China and the East Asian region.

Microsoft Advertising recently recently posted the results of research analysing how Indians spend their time online. The study, titled “Living with the Internet” was carried out by Microsoft Advertising, MEC and Mindshare, and it provides interesting results.

Indians were found to spend:

• 49% of their time communicating
• 35% of the time seeking information
• 22% of their time on entertainment activities
• 14% of the time creating content on digital spaces (status updates etc)
• 12% of their time making online transactions.

In addition, it was also found that 81% of time spent reading the news or looking for information, is planned. Similarly, 81% of activities such as communicating, online chatting and networking are also planned. Even downloading or streaming videos, playing games or listening to music are planned 60% of the time.

In contrast, activities such as updating blogs, uploading photos and online transactions are unplanned nearly 50% of the time.

Another issue being studied is the popularity of laptops versus smart phones. While it was found that both gadgets are equally popular for searches on the go, laptops are more popular for other activities.

Laptops were used for communication 51% of the time compared to smart phones 46% of the time. Laptops were used for entertainment 23% of the time versus 17% for smart phones and laptops were used for transactions 13% of the time compared to 8% for smart phones.

This information is especially important to marketers and brands planning to target the Indian subcontinent as the data shows a definite maturing of the online market, thereby enabling advertisers to connect better with their target audience online rather than having no option other than to advertise on television, billboards and newspapers.

The latest report released by Opera, on the state of the mobile Web, indicates that a very large amount of mobile Web traffic is now being generated in India. Among the most popular uses of the mobile Web is to access the popular social network, Facebook, and also to access online videos. Another popular use of the mobile Web in India is for online shopping and online classifieds.

Popularity of the social network Orkut has been declining. While it was once very popular in India as well as Brazil, it is now on a downward trend in India, although it continues to be popular in Brazil.

In contrast, Orkut’s main competitor, Facebook has gained immense popularity in India. Orkut’s loss could be due to a lack of innovation in recent times. Google, the parent company of Orkut, has just launched a new social network Google Plus, which may change the situation in due course of time.

The top 10 mobile sites in India, ranked according to unique users since May 2010 are:

1. google.com
2. facebook.com
3. youtube.com
4. vuclip.com
5. orkut.com
6. mobile2day.com
7. wikipedia.org
8. zedge.net
9. getjar.com
10. filestube.com

Jon von Tetzchner, co-founder of Opera Software, says, “We see India standing tall as a country in rapid development, with Internet-based knowledge at the forefront of that growth. Furthermore, the mobile Web in India has evolved as an important place to do business, as the proportion of people going shopping on the mobile shows.”

According to the report, for one year between May 2010 and May 2011, India was placed at the number three slot as far as Opera Mini users are concerned. Incidentally, Opera handles about 60-65% of the mobile Web traffic in India. During this period, the number of page views per user has also gone up from 390 to 430.

Latin America continues to show steady growth as well. Between May 2010 and May 2011, the number of unique users in this region went up by 535%, the number of page views went up by 1,556% and the data transferred during this period went up by 1,041%.

A study conducted by the Australian Federation Against Copyright Theft (AFACT) shows that piracy affects the Australian economy to the tune of Australian $1.37 billion a year.

The direct losses due to piracy were to the extent of $A575 million including $A225 million for “secondary piracy”, where users borrow pirated products from others. The study also claims that the piracy resulted in the loss of about 6,100 jobs and reduced spending on recreation, clothing housing etc.

Other related businesses, such as cinema owners, local distributors, producers and retailers also lose income due to the piracy. The government also lost taxes to the extent of $A193 million.

It was largely felt that piracy was detrimental and damaging not only to the movie industry but also to the whole Australian economy, and hence it was believed to be imperative to start educating people about the issue immediately.

However, the Internet advocacy group Electronic Frontiers Australia (EFA) believes that the report will not be particularly effective in discouraging piracy. They suggest, instead, that the AFACT should concentrate on providing tools through which users can easily and legally download movies, instead of having to resort to illegal means.

Top social networking sites in India – Jul 2010

According to comScore statistics, Facebook had 20.9 million unique users in India in July 2010, compared to 7.47 million in July 2009, while Orkut had 19.9 million users in July 2010 and 17.7 million users in July 2009. While both networks have shown growth in the last year, Facebook’s 179% growth far outstrips Orkut’s 16% growth rate.

No single factor is likely to be responsible for this change in the market preference. According to Asheesh Raina of Gartner, factors such as Facebook’s intuitive user interface and the availability of various games on Facebook could have effected the change. It is also possible that the international popularity of Facebook could have had a snowball effect. Raina also believes that Orkut will continue to remain popular among older users, while Facebook may be more popular with youngsters.

The data was collected from users who connect from their homes or offices, but not from cybercafés or mobile phones, as the use of mobile phones for social networking is still not very popular in India.

Orkut had to face some resistance in India, and was even taken to court a while ago due to content that was considered offensive to local politicians. Facebook also had to block some pages that the Indian government felt might be perceived as inappropriate by Muslims.

Google won’t be too happy with this news as it marks yet another failure to succeed in the social networking market.

Facebook, on the other hand, has opened an office in India, as the country now represent the 7th largest market in the world with regards to the use of the social networks and is also among the fastest growing markets.

The International Monetary Fund has predicted that the Gross Domestic Product (GDP) in these markets will grow much faster over the next 5 years than in the developed countries.

Keeping this fact in mind, marketers in industries such as media, financial services, telecommunications and consumer products will need to remodel their marketing strategy if they wish to target these developing markets.

Taking into consideration the difference in demand for Internet and mobile connections in these developing countries gives invaluable insight in the market’s requirements.

In developed countries, a per capita income of about $20,000 is required for Internet penetration to reach 50%, and the demand rises further with the income.

Mobile penetration, on the other hand, requires a much lower per capita income – just about $5,000 – to reach 50%. Several consumers also have more than 1 mobile phone, enabling penetration can exceed 100%! In fact, mobile penetration in countries such as Russia and Saudi Arabia is higher than that in the U.S. and Canada due to the fact that  mobile handsets are more affordable than personal computers.

It is estimated that in the next 5-7 years, mobile penetration will be 140 phones for 100 people even in countries with low GDP.

Mobile communication in emerging economies may generate even higher growth in business, than other mediums. While TV and the Internet can be used to reach larger and targeted audiences in developed countries, it may be wiser and easier for marketers to use mobile to reach larger audiences in developing countries, especially since Internet penetration in these countries will still take a while to grow to the same levels as those in the U.K. and Europe.

A reverse innovation model has been created, mobile advertising is being nurtured in developing coutries and then transferred to the developed markets. Investment in mobile advertising and technology would also yield better results to businesses in these developing countries.

Orkut which is owned by Google, is way behind Facebook as a social network on a worldwide scale. But in India and Brazil Orkut has so far been the dominant social network.

However, it now looks as if things are about to change in India.

Growth of Orkut v Facebook in India

According to comScore’s findings, in May 2010, Orkut had 19.7 million unique visitors while Facebook had 18 million unique visitors. But the rate at which Facebook has been growing in India is much faster than the rate at which Orkut is growing.

In the previous year, Facebook had only 6.5 million users in India, which means that they have grown by 177%, while Orkut has grown only by 35% in the same time period.

By that yardstick, it is possible that Facebook has already overtaken Orkut by now.

Facebook for their part are leaving no stone unturned to capture the Indian market. They have started operations in India since march this year and the office will be based in Hyderabad.

They are currently on a hiring spree and intend to hire around 500 professionals to work with them.

They have already appointed Kirthiga Reddy as Director of Online Operations and Manoj Varghese as Director of User Operations.

In the entire Asia pacific region, social media has started affecting the buying decisions of users in a significant manner.

Online product reviews have become very popular and are next in line only to recommendations by family and friends. Products such as consumer electronics, cosmetics and cars are frequently reviewed here.

Interestingly however, different countries vary greatly in the way they share reviews. While the Koreans are most likely to post positive reviews the Chinese are most likely to post negative reviews of any product.

The report also shows that blogging is most popular in Japan, with over 1 million blogs being posted there every month. Twitter which had only about 200,000 users in Japan last year now has over 10 million users, which is 16% of the Japanese Internet population.

In China more than 80% of social media content is through bulletin boards, and new comers indulge in social gaming while the more experienced tend to share content. Virtual product placement in social gaming is very popular and social media celebrities like Sister Phoenix and Mr. Yuan are more popular than real celebrities.

Though Orkut is the most popular social network in India, Facebook is fast gaining in popularity. Twitter is also growing very fast and over 57% OF Twitter users in India, have joined in during the last year. Online product reviews are also very popular here.

In Korea, 95% of the Internet population accesses their social site Naver every month. The elections in June also saw the growth of mobile social media.

Australia has the highest global average for time spent on social media with users spending over 7 hours per month. Activities relating to sports and parenting are frequently discussed here. LinkedIn has also grown in popularity by 99% in the last year.

This rule has been enforced since the beginning of December 2009.

Each mobile handset is supposed to have an International Mobile Equipment Identity (IMEI) code, representing the official mobile operator. This is a 15-digit code that is printed inside the phone. This number allows the operator to track the handset. Whenever a call is made from the handset this number is displayed on the operator’s network.

Since a phone without this code number or a code consisting only of zeroes cannot be tracked, it can be misused by miscreants.

The law was meant to have been enforced back in October 2008, but was postponed repeatedly in order to allow users of cheap or unbranded Chinese handsets to get their phones validated.

It is estimated that about 13% of handsets currently in use in the country are unbranded and such handsets often have a common IMEI.

While there is no official estimate, the BBC has reported that almost 25 million of the 488 million phones in the country will be affected. India presently has the fastest growing mobile phone market, and millions of phones are being added every month.

Pankaj Mohindroo, President of the Indian Cellular Association, which represents mobile operators said, “We have to abide by the requirements of national security and help to create a legal ethical market.”

Research from the UK Trade and Investment government offices has found that despite favourable circumstances only 75,000 businesses in the U.K. are engaged in exporting their products and services.

Chief among the reasons for this low turn out are language and cultural barriers, apart from other factors like administrative restrictions, cross-border logistics etc.

To help businesses overcome these obstacles, Google has tied up with Applied Language Solutions, HSBC, Royal Mail, Institute of Export, U.K. Trade and Investment and Alibaba.com, to launch a new comprehensive solution called Export Adviser.

Google Export Adviser

UK-based businesses interested in export can now avail of this service.

The Export Adviser will help novices to start an export business by guiding them through various steps like identifying and evaluating target markets, judging the market demand, creating an English language keyword list, translating that list and forecasting a cost per click for those multilingual keywords.

The opportunity finder tool offers a neat tie-in between three Google tools to translate keywords, mine keyword data and predict demand in the market, as demonstrated by the simple example below, where a search for ‘seo’ brings up a map showing where most opportunities lie among emerging markets, along with suggestions for related keywords and rising keywords in various languages.

Google Export Adviser’s opportunity finder tool

For those who wish to expand their export business, the Export Box, created in partnership with Applied Language Solutions offers a slightly expensive (considering the target market is SME) solution: For a price of £3,000 users will be provided with the following:

1. A translated website, built as landing pages for specific search terms
2. Keywords and Adverts specially researched and designed for the target country in the target language
3. £1,000 worth of paid advertising on Google AdWords using Multilingual PPC, plus a free Google voucher worth £200
4. A free online shop front and discounts on Gold Supplier membership for Alibaba.com to market products to over 8 million international buyers
5. £1,000 worth of language support
6. Membership to the Institute of Export and discounted international banking with HSBC.

SMEs that don’t want the full support of this £3,000 package are lured by an alternative £200 AdWords voucher, the details of which can be found from AdWords account managers.

Screenshot of Google Export Adviser website

A significant step is the launch of Yahoo! Buzz in India, and the simultaneous release of upgrades to the service.

Yahoo! has probably chosen India as its launch pad for the improved Buzz service in the international market because it is fairly similar to Digg, which is quite popular there. In India the focus of Yahoo! Buzz will obviously be stories related to India. They have initially tied up to work with a few select Indian publishers and may open doors to others later.

The new Yahoo! Buzz feature is called Buzz Updates. Buzz Updates will show its signed in users, the comments and votes which have been posted by their friends. Another feature of Buzz Updates is to suggest a headline and a description when a user submits a URL.

While Yahoo! Buzz is similar to Digg, the latter is certainly more lively and entertaining, but Yahoo! Buzz is also quite popular on the social media circuit.

According to Business Insider news, Yahoo! is also trying to make it big on the social networking scene.

CTO Ari Balogh said a few days ago, that “Yahoo! is looking to buy companies that will allow it to become a big player in social networking and revamp its family of products”. It is also an appropriate time to buy according to him, as values have fallen from what they were 6-9 months ago.

Yahoo! also intends to put in some new products by this fall, which will provide users with a unified experience across all Yahoo! sites and thus help it to grow.

In the meantime, Yahoo! CEO Carol Bartz and Steve Ballmer, CEO of Microsoft are in talks to partner with each other on search, while Yahoo! is also trying to improve its own search capabilities.

Bartz and Ballmer are also encouraging their engineering and product development staff to create better mobile products. They plant to introduce features to unite a user’s personal settings for all Yahoo! products on mobile phone and PCs.

mobile.accuracast.com

Given the recent growth in mobile Internet usage, a number of businesses are now looking to tap into this growth. This new sub-domain allows business owners and marketing professionals to order simple, straight-forward, sleek mobile websites that suit their requirements.

tools.accuracast.com

Our four main tools – the Search Ranking tool, PPC Cost Estimator tool, Monthly Ranking Report and International Search tool – all now have a new home in this sub-domain.

AccuraCast France

The French section of our site has now been moved to its own dedicated .fr domain, and has a slightly different design from the English website. Warning: The website is written only in French (of course!)

AccuraCast India

India, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Sri Lanka and the Middle East will now be served from our Indian office. The Indian site is markedly different from the UK and French sites, and so are the service bundles we offer in the sub-continent. Please note that the service bundles offered on this site are not available to European and North American customers.

AccuraCast Mobile

Unlike the mobile sub-domain, AccuraCast Mobile is a lone-standing mobile site that provides a quick introduction to our business and our services, in a mobile-friendly format. This is just a (relatively) static, information site targeting our mobile audience. It is also one of the best ways to view the Search Daily News headlines from your mobile phone.

SEO-London.info

Perhaps the least obviously related site, SEO-London.info was launched last year to cater to small businesses and start-ups. The site provides bare-bones SEO and PPC services for companies with extremely limited budgets – sort of like a no-frills SEO / PPC agency.

As always, I welcome any comments and feedback from our regular readers, clients and visitors to the site. You can either drop a note in the comment box below, or tweet me directly @AccuraCast on Twitter.

Best wishes,
Farhad Divecha

Twitter users in and around the area started sending eye-witness accounts of the events on a minute by minute basis. Almost 70 – 80 tweets were posted within 5 seconds, and since Twitter has over 6 million users the news was spread really fast.

In fact, even some of the major Television and radio stations such as BBC and CNN used information sent through Twitter and photos posted on Flickr by ordinary citizens who were present at the spot, such as the ones shown above and below here:

Users not only sent out details about the terrorist attack, but also messages asking people to donate blood at the major hospitals, along with the contact numbers to help out in the crisis. Some people also used the site to reassure their near and dear ones about their safety.

Flickr and Twitter were not the only sites used. A new entry was created on Wikipedia, which local users added details to, as they occurred. Somebody else actually pinpointed the location of the buildings where the mayhem in progress on Google Maps.

While the BBC, CNN and every major newspaper has dedicated a lot of space to the events still unfolding in Mumbai, people increasingly seem to turn to user-generated content on sites like Twitter to get the “real”, unfiltered information as it happens.

Important Note: Please remember that these same tools of communication can be used by the terrorists to keep in touch and convey the latest information to each other. Also if citizens post too many details about the rescue operations in progress, the terrorists can benefit from this information, and change their positions or tactics if necessary. Users must therefore exercise caution regarding the information they send out.

Yahoo! has chosen India to beta test this new search feature as India is a very fast growing market. If user reaction to the feature is positive, they will offer this feature in other countries as well. To start with, Glue pages will cover the travel, sports, health, technology, finance and entertainment verticals – topics that will have a large amount of information and several sources.

Glue pages are expected to improve the over all user experience. Mr. Gopal Krishna, Head of Audience at Yahoo! India says, “this concept integrates the best of info in a visually appealing manner.”

The new search results page format is very similar to the search results found on Ask 3D. However, they differ substantially from the Google universal search results page, in that, here the information is be put up in the form of separate columns. The layout of the columns varies from topic to topic. Even the placement of sponsored links seems to be varied across searches.

….
Comparison of Yahoo! Glue pages and Ask 3D results

Search results will now be inclusive of news, videos, music, images, Wikipedia articles and information from other sources. Users can browse through videos, articles and images on a given topic within the same page without needing to click through to visit multiple pages. The time wasted in the actual search process will now be considerably reduced.

Glue pages seem to be indiscriminately “open” in their choice of sources. Content is drawn from sites such as Last.FM, Wikipedia, HowStuffWorks.com and even YouTube, which is owned by their main competitor, Google!

Users who are not satisfied with the Glue pages can switch to the old format by simply clicking on the “classical search” tab. Yahoo! Has obviously put in some time and effort to offer a lot of good information in user friendly manner on their search results page. It is a shame though, that Ask beat them to the punch by a long time, and the improved layout did nothing to help improve Ask’s marketshare. History is not on Yahoo!’s side in this case, even if they are pinning their hopes on attracting and retaining more searchers through this improved search format.

coComment allows users to keep track of all the comments and discussions they are participating in or observing on the web. Users get notified when someone adds to their comment stream or discussion. And, if they’re bloggers, the users can display the comments they make elsewhere back on their own blog.

Farhad Divecha: Let’s start with a quick introduction of what coComment is all about…

Matt Colebourne: Certainly, we are one stop shop to track, manage, share,and explore conversations on the Web. We can keep track of all the conversations that an individual is having, and so they can place comments on 50 different sites, local forums and whole bunch of different places. We will follow all those conversation and they will receive updates. We would also allow them to share those conversations with other people via, say their Facebook profile or any other profile for that matter. Currently we have about fourteen and a half million that we are tracking on a thousands of different sites.

Farhad: So could you essentially pick conversations from a number of places and syndicate or show them on any other place that you wanted to?

Matt: Yes, exactly. And all of your conversation will show up on your profile page on coComment.

Farhad: Can users then decide who can see these conversations and who cannot or is everything just public information?

Matt: Users can decide. The new version gives users the opportunity, should they wish to control who can see everything they say.

Farhad: Let’s talk a bit about the social aspect of this. I find this concept quite interesting because one of the problems that I personally face, and in fact quite a few of the people I have spoken to recently also face, is the problem of too much social variety. We all have profiles on a number of different networks and blogs that we visit regularly.

You start talking in one place about one thing; you like the discussion there and you might share it with a few friends by then starting a new conversation elsewhere about the same topic. A little bit down the line you see somebody else talking about the same topic, and you pipe in there. Soon you have participated in a conversation on the same topic in 10 different places with 10 different people, and you start losing track of what you have said. How does coComment’s offering tie in that social aspect and does it rely in some ways on everybody who is conversing with you also using it?

Matt: No not necessarily; because you can bring people in the conversation using a range of third-party tools such as Twitter but I think what makes a great conversation the first thing is the topic should be something that the audience is interested in, and the other thing is that people who participate in the conversation. For example you could visit a cathedral and just have a look around, which isn’t the most exciting thing for me. However, if the tour guide I appointed was absolutely mesmerising and told me the history of the place and really brought it to life, I would have had a different experience and enjoyed the same activity thoroughly.

For us the question was therefore, if that is what makes a good conversation, how do we bring this model online? We are not trying to build a social network. What we are doing is allowing the natural conversational behaviour to operate on the Internet, allowing people to share stories and getting others to participate.

Farhad: In some ways, though, that still leaves one slight problem unsolved … if you have these conversations in 10 different places, and they might be conversations around a really interesting topic and in each of those places you have two or three really interesting participants with whom you want to carry on the conversation, you still have to go to 10 different places to carry on that conversation, or somehow get all of them to converge in one place.

Matt: Bear in mind that all of those conversation are tracked in a single location, so you are only ever 1 click away from each one. What the system will also do is tell you who your neighbours are, and so therefore point out to you that they are commenting on the four different blogs that you’re commenting on, and therefore you should possibly connect to them. What coComment cannot do is take the user away from the site. So while you can’t bring the conversations together, what you can do is view them all in the same location so that it becomes much easier.

Farhad: That’s good because it does take the pain away to a great degree.

Now let’s talk a little bit now about the reason we actually got in touch in the first place. A post that we published in mid-January talked about the Government of India’s plans to regulate blogging and whether that was a good idea. Also, in recent times we have had a lot of different stories come up in the news from countries like Russia, China and Iraq where people do not enjoy freedom of speech as we do. People in these countries use blogs to voice their opinions and use search engines like Google to find information.

In countries like Iraq where people are not typically connected, even now, to the World Wide Web, and the newspapers are controlled by the government or the dictatorships, people use blogs and the Internet in general to voice opinions that otherwise would never be heard.

How is coComment changing that, or making it easier to give a voice to individuals from the various parts of the world where normally one would never have heard their opinions?

Matt: Firstly the biggest one, probably, is access to a larger audience. What could have been a small cry lost in the wilderness could now be heard by millions if what the individual was saying was relevant.

There is also the bigger issue of freedom of speech. What people who oppose that individual’s freedom of speech tend to use as defence is the disruption created and the impact on other individuals. What we’re doing here is saying “let’s turn things round a little bit.” What we say to people is “let us not impinge on what people want to say,” we say this to publishers, brand owners and corporations as well, “because if the users don’t say it here, they will say it somewhere else, and you may never know about it.”

Rather than censoring on behalf of individuals, we let the other individuals react and take the first person down. We should treat bloggers and their visitors as adult. Users then think about the social consequences of saying something and that makes each user choose what they do or not say. This is a far, far better solution than trying to get an employee or officer or a censor board to moderate on behalf of individuals.

I think we support the freedom of the individual to say what they want and we also support the freedom of the reader to choose what to read.

Farhad: Just playing the devil’s advocate here, one could make the argument that a system like yours could also work very well for those who want to stifle freedom of speech.

Instead of having to monitor a hundred thousand different venues where a person or a dissident could go and speak. Now all they need to do is to come to one place and monitor all the conversations. In some ways, this system is making it easier for dictatorships or governmental regimes who do not advocate freedom of speech and try to thwart it.

It becomes so much easier for the government of China or a dictator or a Communist President to pinpoint who the particular dissident is and where they are voicing those opinions and shut them down by whatever means. And what’s worse is that the means these guys use tend to be a lot more drastic than just banning conversations or user profile or giving them lower trust ranks.

What would your response be to that sort of a counter argument, I mean, it is making things easier, isn’t it?

Matt: We did not make things easier. To be honest with you we do not do anything that could not already be done. We just present conversations in a way that benefit the end user. We have not built anything that can be employed by people who want to abuse freedom of speech to do something they cannot already do.

Farhad: Yes absolutely, you are right there. You have not made it possible, but you have made it easier

Matt: Well we have made it slightly, but bear in mind we certainly mitigated the very small potential for misuse because we don’t require the users to tell us who they are, we don’t require them to be registered for three days and can use the guest id for that period, but also we don’t assume any ownership of the content; The content either belongs to the site that hosts it or to the end user, and what that means is that we believe the content is the user’s content and we will protect their rights to it, and to do whatever they need to with it without heed to any kind of oppressive government.

Farhad: Alright, could you tell me a little bit more about the data privacy aspect. You touched upon this yourself when you said that users don’t need to identify themselves on your website but very often most other websites do require users to identify themselves before they start placing comments also most comment systems will very easily track the IP Address etcetera. So is there some way that users could use the coComment system to hide their identities?

Matt: I wouldn’t say they can actively use it to hide because obviously they’re still commenting on the site and not on coComment. They can essentially use something called meta conversations where the person can write a comment on any website anywhere in the world and it looks like it’s on the site, but actually it is hosted on coComment. Now if they do that those conversations can be public or private. If it’s public, any other coCommenter can see it. If it is private, only the people that you select will see it.

Farhad: When people can see your comments, though, would they also be able to run a backwards check or who is and figure out where you are coming from?

Matt: The point is, that they won’t even see the conversation unless you’ve chosen to let them see it. They won’t even know the conversation is there.

Farhad: But you see, at times with people who want to voice their opinions, they want to share their views but not necessarily be found. Someone who is against the Russian Premier right now, or against the Iraqi government, would want everybody else to hear what his thoughts are but still not necessarily be want to be found.

Matt: In which case this would be perfect. They would set up the system to make the comments public to coComment, make that available to a limited audience, such that those people who are interested get notified and then select whom they want to allow to participate.

Farhad: It would be interesting to know how many people are aware of such things in the third world, and can use it. And with knowledge of such a system whether countries like India and China would even be having debates about regulating blogs because they would then realise that they can’t do much, since there is always going to be a way around it.

Matt: Yes, it is quite a neat way around it, because even though the content appears to be sitting on the site, to end users and the search engines, it is actually sitting on our servers and getting sent direct to the end users.

Farhad: I now have just two last questions – what is the future going to hold for coComment and what do you think is the future of blogging, conversations and social networking online? Which way are we headed? Which way are you guys headed? And which way is the entire blogosphere and the Internet headed, in your opinion?

Matt: Our opinion is that the whole aspect of commenting or conversations is going to become bigger, because essentially Web 2.0 is about interaction, people interacting online is becoming ubiquitous – even my 70-year old mother is going onto website and commenting rather than writing letters. This space is absolutely exploding, and rightly so, because what it does is it enables people to find out more information, to say what they think about it and defend there views publicly in front of thousands, in a way that was never possible before. That can only be a good thing.

Farhad: Well, it has been very interesting talking to you. I think the conversation has touched upon some very interesting topics. For us here it does not seem as much of a minefield as it does out in the East right now. We take this freedom for granted. I would have been shocked if the UK government or the US or Canadian government ever even considered regulating blogs or any other form of social networking, but there are people out there who see blogging as the only venue to air their views. I hope that this right is never taken away from them.

Screenshot of a coComment user profile

View NDTV: Should blogs be regulated?

Blogging has given people the chance to express their views and feelings on various issues that they feel strongly about, while at the same time providing a platform of anonymity for those who may desire it.

In the social mileu of India this has created quite a hue and cry as some of the blogs seem to be quite “provocative” or offensive to other people. These bloggers face the possibility of receiving comments on their blog that may use unacceptable language and be hurtful to the blogger.

There is a debate raging, at present, in the Indian sub-continent about whether blogs should be regulated. Whether this is possible at all is also an issue under discussion.

Regulation of blogs, according to most bloggers, would be an infringement of their basic right to freedom of expression. As with all forms of media the idea of such censorship does not go down well with the blog authors. They believe that blogging has provided them with a forum to express themselves freely, which they could not do earlier and this freedom should not be curtailed.

As far as the issue of hurting sentiments is concerned, bloggers believe that people who feel offended always have the option of not reading these blogs. Hence their right to freedom of expression should not be censored.

While it is rather unlikely that the government of India, or any other country for that matter, can do much to regulate all blogging activity, or stop the message contained in a blog from going out before it gets written, the fact that they are contemplating this is cause for worry in itself.

Vikram Joshi, a charming gay professional who authors one of the popular blogs featured in the NDTV program says, “The reason a lot of us write blogs is because the mainstream media does not cover issues we face enough. Blogs have turned out to be the only way that young gay men like me can be heard and reach out in this society. If the government clamps down even on this, they will be stifling our voices and curbing our freedoms once again, which isn’t very different than what happens in dictatorial regimes!”

Funded with approximately £1 Million of venture capital from a VC started by the founder of Infosys, Zook makes a pretty impressive first entry from India with some rather cool features such as answers facilities and user groups. However, a few features such as signup confirmation via SMS might raise barriers to adoption of the service.