If you're new here, you may want to subscribe to my RSS feed or email alerts. Thanks for visiting!
The Web 2.0 phenomenon is spreading rapidly across the globe and a prime facet is video sharing sites. India was kinda slow to adopt blogging or podcasting although it is gradually picking up steam now. The latest fad is video sharing sites. YouTube and its subsequent buyout by Google has motivated a lot of wannabes. Aapka Video is one such site that claims to be “a new service aimed at the budding Mani Ratnams and Karan Johars.” The emphasis is on desi videos and nurturing “desi video makers.”
For the bare facts first, the site allows you to upload videos in various formats after creating an account. You can then share or embed the videos on your blog or MySpace profile via the usual methods. From the point of the user, you can view as many videos as you want without registering. You can mark a video as offensive and probably after enough people have marked it thus, Aapka Video may require you to register to view ‘offensive content’ . But currently, I don’t suppose there are enough votes to mark any video as overly offensive. Let me break the rest of the review into Good, Bad, and Suggested Improvements.
The Good:
Currently the interface is clean, ad-free even without Adblock disabled. The videos are classified into six distinct categories - General, Entertainment, Comedy, Sports, News & Blogs, and Travels and Places. In addition, the site also encourages use of tags after uploading a video for easier searches. There is little or no lag time before a video starts playing but I use a cable connection and haven’t tested it on a dialup. The homepage features the ’specials’, which may be of interest to the vistors on a particular day. Currently, Tendulkar’s 100s are featured since the Master Blaster hit yet another century in the ODI series against the WI. You can browse the videos by selecting Viewed Today, Recently Viewed (how recent?), This Week, This Month, and All Time.
The Bad:
The biggest drawback for me was that the videos refused to play in Firefox. I had to use IE7 to play the videos (can’t remember the last time I opened IE). This is a big drawback if they wish to appeal to the tech savvy crowd in India or elsewhere. The offerings are mostly dominated by raunchy videos or ‘hot’ scenes from desi movies or music videos. Almost half of the videos in the ‘Most Popular’ videos features such content with titles like mujra masala, female wrestling, and <insert actress name here> kiss. But this may be more of a criticism of desi Internet surfing habits. We haven’t yet gotten over our pron fascination. God knows how many years before we do.
Since this site purports to promote user generated videos, I see no specific emphasis in this direction and most of the clips are copyrighted material from Indian channels. The maximum size of videos is 100MB, which doesn’t allow for large-size videos which in fact might be a blessing in disguise. But until then, we have no hope for documentaries at least in continuous format.
Suggested Improvements:
The website could promote user-generated videos on their front page to encourage members to focus on such content instead of uploading music video clips. Since their tagline says, Director Ban Jao, they ought to make this the primary focus of their service. The site also better test for multi-browser compatibility but I’ll let that go since the service is still beta. Since video sharing is relatively new to India, it would help to have tips for budding ‘video makers’.
Incorporating user roles and control like Digg can help generate interest and promote interactivity. They could also offer a paid account for larger videos. The categories are basically useless due to overlap and wrong categorization by users and the site would be better off with tags only. Also, it seems that almost 90% of the content is in entertainment category so Aapka Video would be serve their interests and their visitors interest by focusing on this segment instead of spreading it too thin.
Conclusion:
I am not sure India is ready yet for online video primarily due to bandwidth constraints that impede accessibility in India. We are already inundated with 24-hour news and music channels, so what else are the desi video sites offering apart from the ripped content? Should we promote a funny home videos section first on television and then urge viewers to upload their home videos to a video sharing site? Probably so. The TV show can be a filter-show for the best videos submitted and the website can be a treasure trove of the rest.
The other potential waiting to be tapped is indi-filmmaking. Various film and television institutes across the countries can be invited to share their student works for feedback or for general viewership. Give us more than just a desi-named YouTube.
by Patrix | on Wednesday, January 31st, 2007 at 8:41 pm | 
Technology, Videos, Weblogs . You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.
Both comments and pings are currently closed.
January 31st, 2007 at 9:24 pm reply
[...] founder Patrix posts his review of Aapka Video, a desi video sharing site “aimed at the budding Mani Ratnams and Karan [...]
February 1st, 2007 at 12:14 am reply
[...] post by Nerve Endings Firing Away and software by Elliott [...]
February 1st, 2007 at 12:41 am reply
Patrix - Good review. But I must disagree with the ‘India is not ready due to bandwidth’ claim.
I wont mention our site as its 18 but 90% of our traffic is from India and we stream over 200,000 videos a day!
February 1st, 2007 at 2:25 am reply
Interesting idea for cash-starved graduate students. :)
I might consider it too.
February 1st, 2007 at 9:22 am reply
McGuru, During my visit to India, I noticed that most of the Internet subscribers had a limited bandwidth connection i.e. pay as you go plan. That made them keep an eye on the meter while surfing. If there wasn’t a bandwidth limitation then I bet traffic to your site would explode.
BTW what does it mean when you say, your site is 18? Adult content?
Confused, jump right in! I’m sure you will write great reviews. But remember to disclose whenever it is a paid review.
February 2nd, 2007 at 11:53 am reply
Nice writeup Patrix,
May I sugest a review of my new pet project called KONKAN TV, another viral video site, aimed at serving a niche sector.
I would have to agree with Mc.Guru on the fact that i disagree with your assumption on india not being ready for streaming videos because of limited bandwidth. Well, I have kep that on top of my priority list and would soon be releasing a OFFLINE video viewer whereby users with limited bandwidth can download videos from KONKAN TV and watch them offline at their leisure. Well, the offline video viewer would be available for download fromKONKAN TV soon.
Apart from KONKAN TV just being a viral video site, I also am trying to intorduce a concept of SOCIAL INCOME, a revenue generation stragegy for those without the huge $’s in their pockets and giving the “community” itself to generate and share revenues that KONKAN TV generates. Well, this would be the first of it’s kind where the profits from a webservice would be distributed back to the community that would make KONKAN TV grow.
If time permits, I’d appreciate it if you could also review KONKAN TV.
@comfused: KONKAN TV’s SOCIAL INCOME may be worth a look… do let me know your thoughts on it.
February 19th, 2007 at 5:01 pm reply
[...] for, I think it is okay. I might not reduce my price right now. I have received two requests which I got paid for; one of which was on my Urban Planning [...]