In my previous reviews about the dotcoms and portals, I have been always emphasising on the customer service and the attitude these dotcoms have. In a recent surveys in an International magazine it has been identified that out of the total investments done by any investors amazing 55% have been done by the so called Angel or Venture Capitalist. Out of the 55% only 10% have survived throughout.
Its not surprising because for any dotcoms to survive just heavy funding or massive advertising doesn’t have the importance. The better the content, the better is the survival rate.
We have been talking about the dotcoms survival, whether it is a brick & mortar or an organisation having just a virtual presence like Fabmart. Fabmart being an E-tailing site on the net with just a virtual presence. In long term, it is really a question mark as to whether it will survive.
But, I would also not say that B&M would survive, take for e.g. Shopperstop , has closed down the online store.
I hate organisations from core that like to talk and boast about things. Similar to Indiatimes and Indya.com, there is one pathetic site called Vindia.com. God only knows how this site has won so many awards, including the totally rigged Chip Awards.
VINDIA
What is there in the site, you must be kidding to ask this, because this site is like a Behlpuri, mixed with a vadapav and little bit of Mc Burger and Pizza. When you mix all the food in one dish, what do you get is a food just fit for dogs. They say this is the youth site. They say, Vindia is a like a virtual college canteen. Utter Bullshit!!.
Profile
Managed by the people behind Channel [v]. What more can you expect from these guys. I had friend working for Vindia and it is said that the amount of Investment made on the infrastructure was not high, like they have said on their site, that it was using some computers which was lying and they didn’t know what do to do, hence they decided to make a website and use the resources properly. Bottom line (Poor End user what have they got is a poor website with poor services)
They have their TV media to promote their site, so amount of investment on advertisements also goes down. Similar to what Indiatimes does.
Design
BELIEVE ME YOU NEED GLARES TO WATCH THIS SITE, WITH THE KIND OF COLORS THEY HAVE USED IN THE SITE.
One of the worst designs, I have ever seen in my life. No proper use of Fonts, pathetic color combination. Its like seeing the song (Samne ye kaun aya dil me hui halchal(remix version)). The colors used are so pain to the eye that you can hardly read anything on the site. When I asked my friend how can you have such color combination, he said that Vindia management thinks, it is the color what today’s youth like. If those are the colors, the youth prefer in India, then obviously they would prefer to watch our PM wearing Govinda’s dress for the UN meet.
Services
Sexuality
They preferred service is to talk about sexuality and they do it very nicely because Channel [V] specialises on Sex. The kind of VJ they have, they prefer more to talk about sex then the actual topic on which they have to speak. So, if you go to this site, you will come half satisfied because what ever they speak, its all half way with no relevant information. This section, they have specially put up to attract the young crowd, as it says “ The more sex shown… more people come towards you.” This is a universal truth so they knew how to use it. You wont believe there is something called condom quiz.
Chat
I have seen better chat services than these. They are as pathetic like Indiatimes. The technology behind their chat services is bad as their site. Eshare’s Expression is the best chat software available in the market, and International giants like Excite, rediff are using it. But Vindia, wanted to be different and they got one of the worst technology for chat. So they failed badly but Chip has made this the best site.
Relationship
Again something, which they can’t survive for long. Relationship is one topic, people like to talk and hear about. You will find lots of stuff to read about and lots of survey to poll about.
As far as relationship is concerned, one of my friend long time back use to work for the times group. He told me that the Agony aunty column which use to appear on the Femina Magazine was all rigged up and these letters and the stories which they use to print were are all made by the Femina people only. Imagine those scary and absurd stories that you read were all not real. But people still believe in those stories. Similarly, in any of the sites , if you see such stories don’t worry or start fantasising because everything is made by the content people.
Music
This is one section they are good at. Some useful information on music.
Movies
There are better sites than Vindia, which provides information on Movies.
Other Services
They do have some other boring services like the humour, vcard that is as boring and waste of time like their site.
Overall a pathetic site, why would you waste your day’s precious time on things like sexuality, relationships, polls, surveys on sex, relationships.
It’s being, seen in one of the survey that out of the total usage time on the net
Email 45%
Chatting & Mp3 & Adult 35%
Education & Research 12%
Online Shopping 8%
So you can see that concentration still is on Email. Companies should concentrate at one place is online shopping, but for it work out, you need an absolutely perfect infrastructure with good real backup like proper dealers and self owned entity. When companies like Amazon can have failed, its really a question mark as to how long are we going to take to understand that just giving big ads, big promotions and bad content expect to survive.
Conclusion
Being Internet expensive proposition for now at least, why will a person waste his precious time and money on a site like Vindia, where I don’t see its usage at least even for 3%.
Because for chatting, there are better sites with more people online,
For relationships, I don’t think people would like to waste time on what others have done in their sex or personal life.
For movies & music there are definitely sites with more in-depth information
Continuing with the series, my next on the list is???? (Keep Guessing)