Rediff LocalNews - Our thoughts.
According to an exclusive from Medianama - Rediff has launched a Local News platform on top of the existing realtime platform. Welcome to the party! We couldn't be more happier. So we decided to take it for a spin and here are some thoughts:
First look at the product seems to be indicate that its location key words mapped on to a mapping interface. Every looks fine and dandy on the surface. Here is where the approach fails especially in India.
Mutliple Locations with the same name. Did you know that there over 15 Jaipurs and 110 Rampurs in India? (not including village names)
People's names are places names too.
To elucidate both issues lets take the example of Adyar. Most people tend think of Adyar in Chennai. There is also an Adyar in Karnataka (& 3 others) and people with the name Adyar. Ex: "Adyar K. Laxman". If you got to the rediff's local news, all three of the searches point to this page. In such cases the end user has a similar experience to Google News. Also, They seem to use some stemming algorithm which results in really bad results .. Check Thumbe, Karnataka it gives you news stories with the word Thumb :)
At the very least their indexing doesnt seem to work. They have 4 stories for HSR Layout in the last two months. There are over 15+ stories for the same. Proof below.
As you can see, this approach doesnt work and will not for the end user. We have been down this road.
One of the issues that Nikhil from Medianama brought up in his article is the number of sources and coverage within India. When Rediff Launched their realtime platform they claimed to index over 35K sources (Number seems too high). In reality, Google News covers about 200+ sources for India which is less then what they cover in Silicon Valley. By our estimates Rediff covers less than 200 sources for India. Does that mean there is a problem in India in terms of sources as Nikhil seems to point out. Yes and No. By our calculations there over 600+ sources and more being added at a good pace. The problem is three fold.
Being Noticed (The ones that are index by Google News tend to get more traffic & stay on)
Old technology ( Chandigarh Tribune, by our estimates they havent changed in 10+ yrs), not being social.
Consistency ( The graveyard of the number sites launched and have died in huge)
If you run a news and can run it consistently with pretty basic tech (aka wordpress) & good quality content, you can sustain. Just check Mylapore Times (a neighborhood newspaper in Chennai).
There are interesting trend lines that have come up in the last 12 months that give us hope.
A majority of the web sites have redesigned include likes of IANS.
The vernacular news papers that do a phenomenal job of covering tier 3 to tier 5 cities and towns have launched their english versions. Dainik Jagran, Amar Ujala and others.
More international publications are making a foray into India.
So coverage is no longer an issue for good number of population thats online. However there is more work to be down.
And Nikhil, there are sources covering Reckong Peo! Hillpost.in & Times of India covers that region. Proof below.
Rediff & Google news both make the assumption that local news is restricted to the neighborhood only (aka Koramangala). We have found that this is simply not the use case. So for instance if you live in Besant Nagar, Chennai you dont care about Adyar or Indiranagar. The user infact cares what happens around a certain radius of where they live and work.
The Indian express group clears states that crawlers other than Google, Yahoo & MSN are not supposed to index their sites (which we believe isnt a wise decision but nonetheless respect). Rediff doesnt seem to respect it. They seem to be index ExpressBuzz and other sites in violation of robots.txt.
We couldnt be more happier for Rediff to enter this space and recognize the value of the local/hyperlocal space. To be honest, there are others who have approached the same space in the offline world (Jagran's City Plus) and are doing well/expanding. We believe that its a local is a lifestyle experience and this was our learning early on. That would mean that news aggregation in isolation hasn't worked. The end user still loves packaging (although he/she no longer cares whether its done by an editor or a machine as long as the quality is maintained). And given that its a Lifestyle experience, being on mobile is paramount!
Anyways, Welcome to the party Rediff. This space needs more players. We'd be happy to chat. You can reach out to me at [arjunram[at]localbeat[dot]in]
Given that we have critiqued Rediff, and hence it is only fair that we offer our results for the reader to compare and contrast.
News for Adyar (only adyar, chennai)
News for Thumbe. (doesnt include Thumbs)
News for HSR Layout (More news stores than their index)
News for Reckong Peo (We do have results)
Please note that these point to the older interface that is no longer in development. You can get these on the go with our Localbeat apps available on Android & iPhone. More platforms coming soon.