LESSONS FROM NAPSTER

Lessons To Be Learnt (Reliance / Sify)

1 → Content created by ISCE / CBSE Boards — maybe Reliance & Sify managed to get it free! Content has ”time-bound” but great interest to students & their parents. Content (% marks) literally predicts future / admission. Both, Reliance / Sify spent nothing on content-creation!

2 → What does RIL / Sify get out of this service?

→ Possibly a larger number of subscribers. You have to be an I-Way “member”, or to log into Sify.com; you have to give Sify some demographic data about yourself viz: Name / Address / email / Age / Sex etc. I suppose Reliance also asks for similar info about you, when you buy their cell-phone / become a subscriber. So, both get valuable info about you in exchange for providing online results. These info (especially email IDs) will give them “right” to send you emails in future to promote their other products / services. Since you have given your email ID, voluntarily (without carefully reading “terms” in very small fonts!), you have agreed to receive from them, email messages in future! This is not spam!

→ Both may even earn some money from delivering this content. Reliance may bill you prepaid or postpaid. In case of Sify, their I-Way cybercafe franchisee would certainly charge something to the surfer to login. So Sify will get its “commission” — even on “printing-out mark sheets service.” There is no “free lunch”!

3 → Both have huge, underutilized broadband network. With lakhs of students / parents logging in; their installed capacity utilization rises. This will tremendously boost brand-awareness among young generation, who decide family-spending patterns.

4 → Convenience

Students / parents do not have to go & crowd the college corridors. They can safely plan their vacation from Kerala to Kashmir & get the result delivered to them, wherever they happen to be! You are no more tied / tethered to your hometown / college! On first day, college notice-boards only inform you whether you have “passed” or “failed” (by your seat no. being absent) and if you have passed, then in which class (first class / second class etc). I don’t know if these things have changed now. For getting detailed “subject-wise mark sheet” you had to pay up some “charge” & come back after a few days. With help of digital technology (telecom / internet), Reliance & Sify have telescoped the entire process to “one-stop-shopping”! From any convenient location, a group of friends, can download & “compare” their results, instantaneously — and celebrate! By making available “subject-wise mark sheets” on-the-spot, both Reliance & Sify have made it possible for students to apply for admissions to a large number of colleges, much earlier than before.

From these tiny news-items, we can learn a lot. We can see the “strategies” employed by Reliance / Sify.

“Delivering” of results, is not their job! — nor do they have any real competence in this area — in fact they are ill-equipped to undertake “delivery” and all that. Reliance / Sify are the ULTIMATE delivery-channels! So, if the BOARDS were to agree to “co-operate / collaborate” with Reliance / Sify, this (delivery) “weakness” of the BOARDS can be overcome overnight! And, in many cases, for years together, BOARDS have been making available these “results” to reputed Newspapers, one day in advance. But newspapers had a limited reach. So, the BOARDS are not breaking any rules, by giving the results in advance to Reliance / Sify — who represent the NEW / LATEST ELECTRONIC MEDIA.

Whereas, no newspaper could print, subject-wise, detailed marksheets of lakhs of students, for the sake of “instant availability” — (even if this was legally permitted, which, I don’t think is), this is a very simple thing, for a database server, belonging to Reliance / Sify. So why should BOARDS burden themselves with printing of lakhs of marksheets (a very costly & time-consuming affair) AND further undertake to “distribute” these to thousands of college-principals (under fear of “leakage”!). A huge logistics problem. Just entrust the database to US & sit back & relax.

Here, there are lessons to be learned for our Global Recruiter Webservice / job-adverts on cell-phones / career-graphs / salary graphs / what else?

Kartarya

Nagwekar

Abhi / Nagwekar

Inder / Pooja

This news item appeared in today’s paper.

NAPSTER | APPLE

NAPSTER

▶ Developed unique file-sharing technology

▶ Bilateral swapping of files amongst 70 million users

▶ No revenue-model

▶ Encouraged “piracy” & violated copyrights of record-companies

▶ Posed serious threat to music industry’s survival. Created unhealthy / predatory competition & turned record companies into “Enemies.”

▶ No record of how many songs got “swapped”

APPLE

▶ Uses an existing file-downloading technique

▶ Central database from which every user downloads

▶ Pay-per-download (¢99 cents / song). ≈ #2 million in 2 weeks!

▶ Legally “purchased” copyrights (for each song) in its database from original owners (i.e. Record Companies)

▶ Created an “additional revenue model” for record companies. Created cooperation / “collaboration” with Record companies.

▶ Nearly 2 million songs “sold” in 2 weeks. I am sure record companies can see, thru admin tool, how many & what royalty earned by each.

Only yesterday, I sent to you a note about NAPSTER. Then I saw this news-item in today’s Econ-Times. There are important lessons to be learned, as far as our Webservice vs. job-sites who are bound to look upon us as a serious threat.