Well, if Mouthshut is bought by Amazon or eBay as a natural reviews and opinions addition for their books and auctions, it wont be a big surprise anymore. Faisal in the interview says a couple of big ones are out shopping, although Faisal is looking for a partner rather than a buyout.
Young Turks on CNBC aired the interview with Mouthshut CEO, Faisal Farooqui, along with Sanjay Kapoor, another entrepreneur in the fashion biz. The two interviews were very different and the contrast between the high-glitz fashion industry which went first, and the world of websites may be a factor in how much the average reader remembers anything from that program. To be sure, MS members would have found it interesting to see Faisal in the flesh.
When I signed up at this site, and among the choices for how I found the site was Rickshaw, I thought someone was surely kidding, and I promptly ticked that box. Not so. An interesting and localised method of advertising and word-of-mouth, and I’d be curious to see how well that works out. A lot of hoo-ha in the ad world about the conversion power of word-of-mouth these days. Faisal admitted that brand recognition takes years to build, and they’re probably not being aggressive.
A hangover from Big Five days, the interesting part of the interview for me was not how Faisal came up with this idea for Mouthshut, but how they managed to keep it going all these years, and how well they’re doing. I see we have Google ads on the reviews these days, although Faisal said they didnt budget for ad-based revenues at all initially. He didnt give out any numbers on revenues, but simply said they were profitable. I’d be more interested in the number of people visiting this site, and staying to become members, member turnover and age profile, etc. MS is not doing the usual things as most sites which prominently display hit counts, member and reviews counts. A surprise is that the interviewer didnt even bother to ask this question about how many consumers are now on MS, though they were talking about all-important the consumer is. Faisal also talked about partnership with product companies as a possible future step.
There was a bit of Faisal in the MS office, checking member reviews on his PDA/cell, etc. Its really hard to see in that brief clip the level of popularity of the site among its members, many of who spend a substantial amount of time on the site. An office and cubicles is hardly interesting viewing. If there had been some way to show member opinions into that brief segment it would have been great PR.
The nice bit was the interviewer turned to the camera at the end of the interview and asked viewers to use Mouthshut to write about the interview. See how the two media could feed each other- a great idea from MS. Ideas arise of rating TV shows like Young Turks, made worthwhile if the interviewees could be persuaded to comment and answer questions on MS.
Another brief bit showed Faisal with his young family. Viewers would have recognized his wife from her profile pic as a member on MS.
The net has its own intellgence, and while great sites often begin with a specific idea or service from the founder, its great to see how the users begin to take it up at that point, and to create their own uses and dimensions.
The interview was just slightly wrong. On the net, the Consumer is not King, but God.