Indian Web Sites

Web sites targeting indian users are a lot out there. But there is one thing common in all of them. They all are crap. I am not talking about movie link aggregation sites trying to peddle porn ads in order to make a buck. They are deplorable anyway. I am talking about established sites like rediff, sulekha, timesofindia and others.

I am not talking about the content. We will get there but before that the design screams at you that they are greedy bastards. You get a feeling as if you have stepped into 1999. The front page of every site is loaded and then overloaded with ads of all kinds. The content to ad ratio will be may be 1:100. A few popup ads come up even if you install pop up blockers. Then any link you click on will open at least two pop ups and will refer to an ad which will then refer to the actual content. And of course the back button would be broken because of the intermediate ad in the middle.

The worst part about this is the more popular the web site the more crappy it becomes. We now have all these analysis tools that tell them exactly what visitors are doing. As usual most of them visit the front page and then click on may be a couple of links. So they overload the front page with every ad possible to maximize the revenue they get. I for one hate visiting any of these sites but it does not look to be the standard response in the community. People keep visiting these sites and the greedy bastard mentality on the sites continues to grow. Rediff.com and Times of India in my opinion are the worst of these sites. They are almost identical to the pirated movie link aggregating, porn ad peddling sites you find these days. The fact that they are public companies makes it worse I think. The content value has come down over the years on Rediff and the ads have increased. There is so much fluff on it that it makes me puke.

The content itself is so bad on all these sites. They model their content on gossip sites and skin sites rather than news sites. At least Rediff calls itself a portal and so can peddle skin but Times of India a (once) respectable news paper stooping to the level of a naked picture aggregator to make money on ads is just deplorable. Not that its okay for Rediff to do so but Times does it in an unapologetic way. Not to single these sites out, but sify,sulekha and every other site is like that.

Its just ironical that India with its swarms of tech people produces web sites that wreak of the last decade. Thats what money does to you.