The beginning
Summer of 2005, I got a crazy idea for a website which today now is a year old misual.com . Mizo community centric website, aggregating news from various sources besides . Content is not restricted to Mizoram related news but goes beyond anything whatever users like. Be it a new software from Google, a movie review, some gay in the news or funny pictures. Anonymous comment is allowed which makes the website very interactive. The website encourages people to “speak their mind” and express themselves not with their middle finger but by participating in the discussion but by expressiong their views and opinions on various topics via comment, with fresh topics coming in every couple of hours. I don’t make any money by running this website. The profit is “lots and lots of fun”. This is by far the most successful initiative of mine besides my first kiss 🙂
Last summer
Again in the summer of 2006 came another wild idea. A website where people could review their work place as you do to products or just talk whatever about their company. This will help job seekers an inside view of what a company would is like. When A company tells you how good they are at dealing with employees, you might believe them. When someone you personally know recommends his company, you believe him. When a fellow employee like you voluntarily speaks of his organization without being asked all by his interest, you are still more likely to believe him than a company expressing itself, like in they do in advertisements. This is also likely to bring bad fortune to many companies when their employees have a platform to speak whatever about it’s poor and bad practices. However, this in turn will create a healthy competition among corporates for better HR practices and polices, eventually acting as a mirror reflecting their good and bad looks.
No doubt, someone will say “This will not work”. Don’t worry, there is always a problem with every good idea. When analysis fails, trust your motivation. When someone in India took job consultancy to the web, the man who did it has skeptics to his left and right. That’s naukri.com, whose founder went on to start 99acres.com as well as Jeevansakthi.com. Job consultancy
is in itself a business but still taking it to the web – there were skeptics. And mind you, the article isn’t about making money.
Officetalk.in was the domain I thought of. It was available. Today, I don’t know. How it would work? Pretty much like misual.com. Editor moderated content. Anybody should be able to create content which is published once an editor reviews it. You also have a forum with categories. May only good posts be promoted to the front page if you don’t want crap on the home page.
In my organization, I see people joining from other towns and cities looking for accommodation every now and then. I am sure this happens every where. Mostly, companies provide temporary accommodation alone. Some have a cell that assists new employees find accommodation. This
could be another feature in the website. There could be a section in the forum “Where to stay” categorized by major cities.
How much it cost to run? My 4000 bucks for 2 years plan from Godaddy.com with 5GB is space, 250 GB of bandwidth should do unless millions drop by everyday. Should that happen, you are likely to earn decent bucks from Google Ads and you should be able to strike a good deal with advertisers. Thats a wild assumption with Ad agencies. Don’t bitch me if I am wrong.
How about legal issues? Would you find yourself in trouble? I can’t tell you the nitty gritty of how to avoid putting yourself behind bars for someone bashing his organization in your website. However, you can precautions such as making users agree to certain terms and conditions as
they register, forcing them responsible for their words.
Idea at news stand
Next idea. As a student, I used to buy old issue of Chip, Digit, PCQuest for like 20 bucks. After I started earning, I buy the new ones regularly for sometime until I got bored. With easy access to the Internet, my thirst for tech article got easily met. I buy only certain month’s edition of tech magazines these days. Exception is Business World which I have always been buying since I left college.When I was in college, my B.Com student roommate used to buy it. It
was 5 bucks then.
Once again, this morning (22ndeptember) I got crazy again. After breakfast at Saravana Bhavan in T.Nagar ,Chennai, off I went to a news stand to buy the Hindu. As I was scanning through magazines, I got this idea up my head. What if there’s a website where I can read reviews of a month’s edition of a magazine. Right now, the only way I know to get a feel of a month’s edition of any magazine without buying is to go to Landmark where you could turn the pages and find out if Beauty is only skin deep remains true for the month’s edition of your favorite magazines. Television did not kill radio. The web too is unlikely to kill printed media. There will be more and more new magazines. We sure need a better way of deciding which to read and should we buy this month’s edition. Don’t we?
Beyond Mouthshut
Mouthshut.com is the mother of all reviews, for products relevant to us in India. But its crowded. Leave alone on the road or in a relation, nobody likes crowd. I don’t know of any website which is India centric and does this. Try it, it just might work. Because of certain some reasons which I don’t even remember, I ended not doing first idea after much delay.This time, I give it to you.
This is my serious effort for an article since school, crazy school and college days , crazy like waking up at 2 AM to have my thoughts in writing which would be large for an article. Articles, poems, initiatives are good when they suddenly come and all on their own from the mind, not asked for. Do bear with me for the typos. I know I need to try harder.
If you find yourself having the same idea before reading this article, give yourself a pat on the back and say “Great minds think a like :-)”. Try these ideas if you like but remember me. If you are a better humorist, add lots and lots of fun.
Blessed be those who turn this idea into reality.
Blessed be those who take this idea to the web.
Blessed be those who remember me for this article for I will buy them a drink.
