Hello All:
Having read a lot of reviews on one of the web-sites which I have been frequenting rather often, I am tempted to write a review which delves into a website that I have known better than any other. I should mention at the outset that another reason I am writing this review is because of a lot of mis-leading stuff I read about this website in reviews on MS.
My close association with rediff began some two years back when I moved abroad for my MS. Staying out of the country, rediff is one of the best ways to know whats going back home, specially since its mostly up to date.
So what exactly is rediff.com??
Rediff.com is one of the most clicked upon link inside india these days. Its kind of a general portal which offers views on everything. It offers chatting, shopping, downloadable songs, ringtones, REVIEWS..the list goes on. You name it and it is there. Many of the services from rediff are very popular. The chat portal from rediff is one of the most widely used in india. I have in my 6 years of college education (Bachelors and masters) not known an indian, who chatted on any other website and didnt do so from rediff. The popularity of this feature is immense. Well to tell you the truth for sometime even I was glued to this chat feature before I realised the futility in ’’asl please’’. ---------------------------------------------
Why is rediff so popular?
Good Question. One needs to know two things when answering this question. The first is that people at rediff have loads of money. That ropes in a lot of talent (not necessarily though as a lot of other portals started by my own seniors are dying a slow death irrespective of the fact that they have money). You will get an idea about the popularity by the fact that people who analyse political/social situation of the country on this website are from the best known. For example B.Raman who frequently writes about intelligence agencies is one of the best known intelligence agents in the country. If people like this contribute to the website then people will surely heed the opinions there. They also advertised a lot through audio-visual aides which I think helped as well.
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What makes rediff different from other similar websites?
There were a lot of competitors to rediff, indiatimes among them, but they were not as finely focussed as rediff was. As of now certain features of indiatimes are quite popular like the astrological service. So in principle I feel that these other websites kind of focussed on particular stuff and lost meaning as a general portal. rediff on the other hand started its growth in a layer-by-layer fashion and not in an island growth mode. I do not mean that all the features that exist in rediff are among the best, but they meet some very important minimum quality criteria which helps them stand out of the crappy rest.
For people like me who like to read a lot of stuff, there are excellent reviews. Some
of the best reviews I ever read were on rediff and not MS. Well I should add that I joined MS only three days back so this comparison is probably not fair. Also since there are not as many reviews on a particular product on rediff as they are here, so these guys really take care to make sure that what they write is worth a thousand reads. And truly, their quality is quite good.
The news section is up-to-date. I have been following this feature specially very closely and can say that they update their news latest within an hour, incase something new has happened. This needs a dedicated team which I guess this website has.
There is a section called Diary, where people write about their everyday experienecs. Its quite attarctive. There are some well known writers who grew out of this feature. Some of the diary accounts are too good.
Finally the e-mail service. Rediffmail offers 1 GB space for your e-mail account which makes it worth it. I guess the rapidity with which it loads is cool. As far as the security is concerned, I do not understand as to why people have been drumming this all around. A lot of reviews that I read on rediff had comments that say that speed sacrifices on security. I hope these people go back and update themselves on the way security works. A modern day code is unbreakable unless you poison the guy and get the key to it. Its not a 2nd world war code which you could break in an hour or even a day. Its simply unbreakable in the way it works. I cant go into this now though.
I find it very distressing that a lot of people wrote about a lot of features about this website without a careful thought and a long enough experinece. Guess they would consider revising their reviews. And this is one more thing about rediff- it will be very difficult for absolutely any indian portal to beat it.. Till a week back I hadn’t even heard of MS. Seems its a popular portal. So if this is popular then imagine how popular rediff is. Most or nearly all the indians whom I know residing outside india, visit rediff on a regular basis. I bet most of them have not even heard of MS. This is not meant to look down on MS, rather its supposed to highlight the popularity of rediff.
Having come of age, as of now rediff has articles from some the best people in their fields. The best economists, scientists, analysts write frequently on rediff. Among others it has been the only website to have been invited to a lot of functions at the Presidents residence. The news feature is much better than hindustantimes, times of india, etc. The only website which I guess has an equally good news feature online is indian express. But even they do not update as fast as rediff does. So if you are an indian and haven’t checked out this website so far, then its high time that you did.