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Work @ Rediff.com |
During my appraisal in April 99, I was commended for an exceptional understanding of the Internet industry, my willingness to continually learn, my dedication and passion for the medium. But what exactly did I do as a Programme Strategist?
In a nutshell, I used to strategically plan and foster partnerships to keep offering users useful services on rediff.com - with the ultimate aim of building online communities. That's a rather open-ended job profile, so here are some of the projects I've worked on at Rediff.com:
At Rediff, the first project I started working on was Rediff Tickets Online - an online movie ticket booking facility that allowed users in Bombay to choose their seats and book their tickets. An indicator of the popularity of this service was the fact that over 20,000 users from suburban Bombay had subscribed and used the service within six months.
To nurture and build this movie-going community, I've also worked on localising Hollywood movie promotions online for a host of movies released by the Indian distributors of Columbia Tristar, Twentieth Century Fox, and Warner Bros.. Introducing the localised online movie promotion allowed the distributors to tap the growing local Internet audience, create hype and attract word-of-mouth and digital publicity. On the other hand, users could now do much more than passive surfing - they could now become active participants. Not only could they browse localised content, but also answer simple quizzes to win prizes from tickets to merchandise! See some of the online movie promotions I've worked on...
Another project I spearheaded at Rediff On The NeT is Rediff Personal Homepages. A free homepage project, it encouraged active Internet use by giving Internet users a place to call their own on the Web. Catering to everyone from newbies to experienced HTML coders meant providing templates and upload options to allow them to get their pages up and running within 5 minutes. In addition, personalisation was made easier with the Scan-A-Snap service offered - in fact we periodically even got photographs from the US for scanning here!
Partnership development was also a key part of my job profile, so as to ensure a wider range of offerings for the user, value addition for our partners and a wider reach for Rediff.com.
- Tie-ups with cinemas give the user added convenience, and the cinemas a hassle-free way of getting online
- Promotions held by corporates on rediff.com got them brand exposure and offered value to our users
- Marketing the site to cybercafes created channel partners to reach the end user and get more eyeballs for our site. In return, cybercafes benefitted from additional time spent surfing by offering users the various services of Rediff.com
- I also set up an affiliate program for the Rediff Shop (books, music, gifts and hotel reservations), in an effort to reach the Internet user wherever he is and give him an entry point to the online shops. In return, the website owners / cybercafe partners get a commission on the transactions funnelled from their sites
I was also actively involved in New Service Development for Rediff.com. Rediff Personal Homepages, the Rediff shareware channel and the Rediff affiliate programme are services that I've spearheaded at Rediff.
That, in a nutshell, is what I did at Rediff.com - more than enough to make me eat, sleep and drink the Internet. But I wasn't complaining!