DesiMartini – HT drank it all !! But Why???
I was a bit more than “surprised” reading this in mint today -”HT Media acquires Social Networking site DesiMartini.com for close to $10 Million”. Whaaattt?? was my first reaction…then some rubbing of eyes and then read the complete news item again. I can understand as every business is starting to recognize the power of social networks, Big media guyz are also eyeing the chance to have one themselves but in this deal i was not able to digest few things :
1. Why DesiMartini??
2. Why $10 Million for that anyway??
i got to know about DesiMartini.com after meeting vivek pahwa at some conference and believe me after looking at the homepage i dint’ even feel like registering at the first place ( credit goes to its design) and started wondering who all are registering here and why (i am still wondering 
)…c’mon we already have facebook, orkut and they serve the purpose.
but as the news says desimartini is boasting of a decent user base of 2.5 lakh people with more than 2.5 million page views a month. good if its true but still i dont see these social networks going anywhere without adding any value to the concept. For HT i dont know how good this deal was (hope they know) but big congrats to vivek and his team. !!
Now i can understand why MingleBox.com received a funding of $7 Million or bigadda.com flowing mindless money on boom advertising or MIH funding ibibo.com but all in all as a web 2.0 entrepreneur the whole idea of creating another social network doesn’t excite me at all…ahh…but when i think about creating ‘close-to’ $10 million 
this seems the easiest path..what say Nikhil ??
Hi Ashish,
Your blog was a good read and made me scratch my head…:) These really were some surprising input for me. Can you throw a bit more light on the facts of valuating the online communities. How are they valuated? By the membership number or by page views or by any other factor? Thanks in advance.
Regards
Umesh
Hey Umesh,
Thanks. there is no fixed criteria to evaluate any online community. Membership size and pages views is for sure a number to be seen but then Engagement in the community is the real deal breaker i suppose. so there may be 1 million members but engagement levels amongst these users cannot be achieved by anyway until the community carries some value. so for example, facebook was always popular and orkut was always a google product but we all joined them when our friends were regulars on them and were updating their stuff which we were interested in. so as to say MySpace is a real rage in US but it hasnt yet picked up in india !! it alla bout the engagement.
Thanks Ashish..