ByIndia.com - Update

                                                                          Update ByIndia.com takes on a new Web 2.0 look!

Web2.0Corp's search engine ByIndia.com is continuing its new makeover. The site is about to launch India's largest Internet sweepstakes worth US$5 million dollars.  Even the site's logo, which has been the same since its launch, is being updated to reflect the site's Web 2.0 character.

"ByIndia.com is a different site than it was four months ago," says William Mobley, CEO of Web2Corp, "we thought it was time to update the site's overall look to reflect that. We believe this update goes a long way to show that ByIndia.com has embraced Web 2.0 and embodies the youthful technology culture in India. Given the power of ByIndia's many different properties, they will take it from here, build unique communities on this Indian-centric site, and showcase themselves as the next leading global online economy."

ByIndia.com was re-launched in October of 2006 after its acquisition by WEB2.0Corp. The site gained an Indian-centric search engine including; news classifieds, video, personal pages and blogs to provide Indian users with features found at web communities like MySpace, YouTube and other popular sites around the world.

The popularity of the site has increased greatly as the Alexa rank for the site has gone from #4 to #1 since the acquisition. The $5 million dollar sweepstakes begins on January 26^th, and is expected to boost the site's traffic even further.

Advertisement or News?

As far as I can tell, this new press release is more of an advertisement than news. The site logo has in fact changed, as have some of the organizational elements. I must say it is taking on a much tailored look too. Everything is much more clean and crisp, and the content appears to have grown and improved slightly.

This press release is just about advertising the $5 million up for grabs to drive traffic to the site. I gave the site a good review on January 11^th, and I still stand by my view that the site is well done. As usual, I do take some offense at being "advertised" at, as we all should. Changing a logo and working some designer overtime a little is no cause to stir the blogosphere! If they wanted to tell the world about the sweepstakes, then they should have used straight advertising.

I noted that the search page is taking on a distinctive Google look, and the people pages are emulating MySpace and the other communities. The auction site looks Yahoo! or maybe Ubid -ish, and it is apparent that the Web2.0Corp developers really want this to be India's version of all the rest. This is not really a bad thing as emulation is how really good things are achieved. I still like the whole package and look forward to reporting on the $5 million dollar sweepstakes winners. Please guys, if you are going to re-announce a re-launch of a web site, have the heart to add something more than buttons!