Zopte.com – The Web 2.0 Factory
It is interesting that I start this new blog, with a review of a website that starts from the last letter of the alphabet. Maybe I will end up going from Z to A!
Harsh Jain, the founder of the website, Zopte.com, presented his product at the Bar Camp5, in Mumbai.
Zopte.com
What is it about?
Zopte.com enables anyone to start a Social Networking site, with many of the standard features that such sites need. Getting started with a base level social networking site of your own is very simple. You can select the applications that you need there, and enable them for your own site.
What more?
Your site can be hosted by Zopte and can have your own domain name. With simple markup language like steps that Zopte suggests, you can make your own applications. And add those to your site as well. That in fact, is the clear advantage that zopte offers. Not having to depend on widgets and such, you could potentially create features on your site, by yourself, with simple steps.
The entire service is free at this time.
My observations:
At this time, clearly there are no revenue channels, and clearly there are costs.
At this time, I am seeing challenges in SEO work done on the site’s own pages. If you see the screen shot above, it does not even have a page title. How will the service grow?
Although the site has been “launched”, many of the links on home page itself, appear to be ‘coming soon’.
Wisdom Nuggets:
1. At first view, the service appeared a lot like WordPress.com. Harsh explained the differences, especially with regards to the markup language that enables any kind of new applications to be made and integrated. Fair enough. But then the difference needs to be something that a LOT of people need, something that is easily communicated across the site (at this time, it does not come out so obvious). And after all that, you still m have to face the brand equity factor, in favor of your larger competitor.
2. There has to be a real estimate of the market size for this. If there is so-called markup language, even if it is simple enough, the application is not exactly the kind that a common non-techie user can quickly adapt to! Then when you see the techie space, would they like to use a ready tool, or they would also want to make a tool themselves? Who indeed, would be the regular users of a service like this one? Or put it in another way, the application is a little complicated for common usage, and a little too simple for a flexible techie user.
3. Then there is always the revenue challenge. How will revenue be made? Also once you figure out a revenue channel, you have to see the potential projected value of money that could be made there. Overall viability of the project is determined by summing up these different revenue options.
In conclusion, there is a clear need to figure out the revenue lines and then do a dispassionate working of the larger business plan that could emerge.
If there is an acknowledged challenge to the business model, I may even recommend checking if it is possible to adapt the service for WordPress. Or in other words, offer this platform from within the WordPress pages, and give these value additions to all WordPress users. There would be quick, large scale adaption, and the viability will no longer be your problem alone, but also that of WordPress!!
Inspiration
UPDATED INSPIRATION: Current date: March 9, 2021!
Below is the original note on the inspiration that I had to start this blog, some 12-13 years back. That was when I was tracking some startups and evaluating them. I had not updated this blog much in recent days. And now, the focus would be very different, in any case. At this time, the purpose of my occasional blog post here, would be to discuss and debate a business strategy or an investment idea, for purpose of interaction with other like-minded people.
Hope you find it to be of interest.
The original inspiration from 12-13 years back is as follows:
Attending a Bar Camp, Startup Saturday and the Entrepreneurship Summit, in the last 3 weeks, took me back to 1997-98 days when we were starting up for the first time, with Homeindia.com, along with few other first-generation dot com entrepreneurs in India.
I can see the same energy now, perhaps only magnified by the changes in the economy over these years, the emergence of India as a country to reckon with, the maturity of the ICT businesses, the far larger familiarity of the technologies for students climbing out of their campuses, and of course, the awareness now, about an ecosystem that can encourage entrepreneurship.
There is another change. Me. With 11 years of hands-on Internet experience, there is a larger “intuitive” feel on the industry, there is beyond the romanticism of the business, a better understanding of business realities, of markets, of revenues and results. As one young participant respectfully pointed out, there is the “gray hair” difference.
This has inspired me to start this new blog. To share my 2 cents worth, on new startups that I see coming up. Based only on information that is in the public domain (or shared by the company in public forums), and not based on any private information that entrepreneurs share with me. With an idea to give some new perspectives. Ultimately the business succeeds because of the entrepreneurs and they need to trust their gut. But “outside” views help sometime. And which is what I strive to provide here. With only one goal in mind: to enable the entrepreneur to SUCCEED!!
The Gray Hair Speaketh 