“In.com” Review

Posted on July 11, 2008

Here is the In.com review. It’s a web based service which facilitates you with e-mail account(xyz@in.com), news, music, video games, flight services, matrimonial services, online shopping

What’s that !

If you are wondering what ‘Unified Theory’ (Proposed by Einstein) has to do with an online venture by Web18 group then hold on, it’s actually a modern day “Unified Theory” kind of practice employed by them by launching “In.com”.

It’s a web based service which facilitates you with

E-mail account ( xyz@in.com)
News
Music
Videos
Games
Flight Services
Hotel Booking
Matrimonial Services
Online Shopping

All of them under one domain and that’s In.com.

If one looks at the past Web18 ventures (JobStreet.com, Yatra.com, BookMyShow.com, CricketNext.com and a few others) then ‘In‘ seems a bit seem less and vast (and unified). Rather, it appears to be a rising competition for “Yahoo! India” (because ‘In’ services are India centric only).

However, almost nil popularity of ‘In’ right now is quite justified as they are still to get out of their beta testing phase. Apart from the services that ‘In’ provides, it serves as a social news aggregator as well. They have been testing ‘In’ for more than a year now and this service looks mature enough to get it out within this year or next year at the maximum.

We have been able to bring out a few snapshots of ‘In’ to let you see what it has to offer…

What it offers…

A one stop shop for online Indian audiences to get a bunch of web services together
A place where users can turn a news relevant or useless by voting for or against a news. (Similar to Digg system)
An integrated Ajax based mailing system with possibly the shortest domain till date(xyz@in.com)

Why it can be THE NEXT BIG THING !

Unified Concept – After experiencing the services that ‘In’ has integrated within the system, it appears that the target audience is expected to be huge. Also, the services that have been included are the “On Demand”services from a consumer’s perspective. Hence such a website can contend to be “The Homepage” (the page from where one expects to start his web browsing) for a net surfer.
More Social – It holds an edge over its biggest competitor Yahoo! India (which also provides a slew of services), and that is being more social. A Digg like system lets “In”users suggest/contribute/support/dump a story/news/happening/video etc. This gives users a lot of control and hence user traction can possibly shoot up exponentially.
Smart aggregator – In many ways,“In” works like an aggregator of music, videos, news and other web services. It didn’t serve as the originator of many services but packs them all in one place with a lot of ease
Indian Web 2.0 – Looks like India has certainly crept into Web 2.0 in terms of technology and user experience as “In” has a definite potential to gain international traction (apart from the Indian market) if it widens up its services to international audiences.

Why it may prove to be a Web Struggler !

Yahoo! – It’s majorly Yahoo! and some other budding players in this “All under one domain” genre which consumes the major traction of online Indian audience in this sector. Hence, it will be definitely tough to replace such an established website and users might find “In” irrelevant if they feel already satisfied with Yahoo! India’s services.