Alexa, a web information and Analytics site, revealed statistics that the users visiting Junglee.com viewed nine pages per visit on an average and were spending approximately seven minutes on the site each time they logged in. Alexa also stated that Ebay.in patronisers generally spent a little over 10 minutes on the site while those who visited Flipkart.com had an average of 8 minutes.

Mahesh Murthy, CEO and Founder of Pinstorm, said,

“It’s very interesting to note how Amazon’s Junglee.com has been able to draw visitors to its site within a few days of launch and without spending any rupee on marketing or traffic building. E-commerce sites in India need to take notice of this.”

Unlike the parent site in the U.S., Amazon.com, Junglee.com has been designed and is being used as an online market arena. It has entered partnerships with many online as well as offline retailers like  Hidesign, HomeShop18, The Bombay Store, Dabur Uveda, Snapdeal, Saholic, Fommy.co.in, Univercell and Spice Group firm.

While the Group Chairman and the Managing Director of Gitanjali Group, Mehul Choksi, has agreed with the trend that Alexa reported, he also stated that the company is extremely happy with the partnership with Amazon.

Meanwhile, the other online industry players are not exactly perturbed by these figures as they say it is too early to make a conclusion as the site was launched only four days ago. They have attributed the website traffic to the attraction that a new site gets when launched.

Well, we agree on that (for now). But you never know what Amazon… yes, Amazon has in store!

Many countries of the world have built up cyber security forces to protect their online data and information from potential threats like hacking, phishing, and spamming.

India however, has not yet taken cyber crime seriously. The country has been on the receiving end lately and has recorded some major cyber crime cases. The Bangalore Facebook Id Password hack fiasco in November being the latest one in the long list.

It is disappointing to realise that a country like India is not well prepared to deal with enemy internet invasions. Indian authorities lack a planned secured  military cyber command and follow lenient regulatory steps to deal with cyber invasions from countries like China, Pakistan and others.

In the high profile Cyber security conference held in Munich on 5th Feb 2012, the deliberations on cyber security indicated the perplexed approach of some nations in avoiding cyber crimes and hack invasions.

Although India’s presence hardly figured in the discussion, it was evident that a country like India needed to pull up their socks in order to deal with the ever increasing cyber threats. It is a known fact that many new terrorist organizations are using modern technology as a shield to disguise and confuse the security system of the country.

Swedish Foreign Minister, Mr. Carl Bildt expressed the fear of losing valuable data to terrorist and hackers due to improper Cyber management and security system. He said,

“ Stealing and using Stuxnet (A worm used to sabotage nuclear devices) might be more easy and dangerous than nuclear weapons.”

Well planned cyber attacks can cripple a nation’s economy, strategic networks, banking and communication infostructure and military assets. Unlike other attacks, here the enemy remains largely unknown and the attack carries a huge risk factor.

Recent past has seen Chinese hackers infiltrating the Indian diplomat’s classified documents and stealing valuable information related to India’s security, defence and military. If India wants to avoid such invasions, serious steps regarding this issue must be taken.

Besides Google, there are 21 social media companies who are scheduled to appear in the Delhi Lower court on March 13th 2012.

This is what Google India’s Chief Business Officer, Mr. Nikesh Arora had to say,

“I’m hoping there will be a balanced debate around it and eventually the right thing would happen. We cannot censor the Web. We cannot censor the ability of people to express themselves around the world.”

He also added,

“I think the idea of censoring everything and pre- clearing everything is going to fundamentally, sort of, taint the growth of the Indian economy in India and vis-a-vis the world.”

The 21 companies in question, including Google and Facebook have challenged summon in Delhi High Court.

The current legal actions are based on a petition filed by a Delhi resident, Vinay Rai, who  had evidence of obscene depiction of Prophet Muhammad, Hindu deities and Jesus Christ, against the listed websites.

However, inspired from Angry Birds, the popular smartphone game, matrimonial website Shaadi.com has recently introduced an online game known as ‘Angry Brides’. Traditionally, dowries – such as clothes, money, cars and jewellery are given to the groom and his parents by the bride’s family. Although the custom is discontinued since the past five decades, it is widely practiced even today. This game aims to highlight and spread the awareness about the menace caused due to dowry harassment in several South Asian nations.

The application is available for free on Facebook, which has already attracted over 2,70,000 ‘likes’.  The game features three different levels in which players will be interacting with three grooms having a heavy dowry price tag. Players will be armed with sandals, brooms, utensils and rolling pin. As a player, you can select any weapon of your choice to strike the dodging grooms. Women, you all thinking of the sandals right?

With every aim (strike), the dowry price tag of the groom decreases. This saved money gets added to player’s score points, known as the “anti-dowry fund”. In order to qualify for the next level, the player needs to accumulate certain points. The points, once collected by players, can either be  posted on the timeline or Wall on Facebook.

Shaadi.com’s Senior Vice-President and Head of Online Marketing, Ram Bhamidi said,

“The Angry Brides game is our way of throwing light on the nuisance of dowry. We wanted to take a stand on this issue in a manner that it would connect with the younger audience. Hence, the idea of an online game was developed.”

The conceptualizing, designing and development of the game has been done by Shaadi.com’s in-house team. While the game is currently exclusive on Facebook, the online portal does have plans of bringing it game to other platforms soon.

L.S Ganesh, Dean of IIT Chennai said, 

“ It has been blocked for some time. The network was getting severely clogged because of the amount of traffic .”

However, tech-savy students have found a way out of this problem. A student says

“ We can use Facebook through a proxy website or by making a small change to the URL. Anyway, usage is not excessive, so nobody seems to be overly upset that the site has been blocked.”

However the Institutes’s Annual festival is ahead and students are concerned about promoting this fest on the social network. Facebook, in the past, has attracted a huge audience for the show and thus the cultural wing of IIT Chennai is currently facing difficulties in promoting the annual festival.

Experts said that it was shocking to witness such measures taken by a top technical institute of a democratic country. It is unusual for an Institute to block a site in order to ensure smooth online traffic.

The case is based on the petition filed by Vinay Rai, in December 2011 who reported obscene pictures about holy deities like Prophet Mohammed and the Son of God, Jesus Christ and many others. The Delhi High Court has thus responded by charging these internet companies for criminal conspiracy. Apparently, there are around 21 companies who are in hot water because of this. Some of renowned brands include the likes of Google, Facebook, Orkut and so on.

On 11th January, Google and Facebook, in their defense told the Delhi High Court that controlling content is not entirely in their hands and that they can control it only when alerted. They said,

“No human interference is possible, and moreover, it can’t be feasible to check such incidents. Billions of people across the globe post their articles on the website”

, to which the Delhi High Court very abruptly replied,

“You just have a stringent check. Otherwise, like China, we may pass orders banning all such web sites.”

Today a lower court has fixed the next hearing for the executives of these companies on the 13th of March. Google and Facebook have appealed against the decisions of the lower court which will be considered next Monday.Well, let’s hope that the matter is taken care of in an appropriate manner as we all will definitely be as good as helpless without Google and even Facebook.

The next bit of information should be a treat for many students who have not yet booked or purchased this technological marvel. Zee News has reported that Aakash is now to be available on rent in college libraries.

Okay, now that you have managed to drill a hole in your ceiling by jumping for joy, what you need to know is that the Aakash tablets that will be available on rent, are fully equipped with subject-wise lectures in the form of a video. These videos will be based on lectures held in various fields such as engineering, humanities and science.

We all know that the Government aims at reaching 220 million school and college students through project ‘Aakash’. Well, renting this tablet in college libraries definitely brings them one step closer to achieving their goal. However, the respective school or college will decide the duration for which this tablet can be rented by a student.

His ideas, however, faced flak from a number of sources on social networking giants like Facebook and Twitter. Social net workers criticized the ideas of Indian IT Minister and have shown their dissent by saying “Kapil Sibal is an Idiot”. The examples given by the IT Minister are of the recent case which had pornographic content on a religious website. Although the demands made by Kapil Sibal are supported by various offensive content usage examples, users believe the real reason behind this idea is to chain the criticism faced by political leaders on such websites.

As soon as this news was made public, a number of tweets against this idea showered in on the social networking website, Twitter. Many angry users have raised questions regarding the Government’s involvement on social media platforms.

The company’s representatives have told Sibal that the Government demands are impossible and it is very difficult to monitor every comment posted on the social media platforms. The volume of user generated content from India is very high and thus, the idea cannot be implemented without a proper law.

People have been using social media platforms to voice their opinions since recent times. The new demands raised by Kapil Sibal however are being seen as an attempt to brick the social freedom of speech.

Facebook is currently one of the most popular social networks in the world. Realizing the potential that it’s huge member base has for offer, many brands around the world try to mark their presence on the website.

The study was carried out by Social Bakers, one of the biggest social media statistic providers in the world. In the statistic, it can be seen that among 100 global brands, close to 25 Indian brands have strong engagement with their fans on the social network.

Pages were ranked under four main categories: Engagement, Number of Fans, Quality of Page and Content. Under these, 30 different parameters were used to filter the results.

On the lists of top ten brands, the first six happen to be Indian Brands. The popular Indian alcohol brand Kingfisher tops the list with 2,174,386 fans on the page followed by FMCG brand Bingo. TATA’s Docomo comes in at number three with a fan base of  3,889,952 fans.

MTV India has a fan base of 2,915,278 members which puts them at number four on the list. TATA’s Photon page with its 1,036,864 members and eBay India with 1,107,276 members stand at fifth and sixth place respectively. Another Indian brand, Shopper’s Stop, with 1,423,026 members is present at Number eight on the list.

There are a lot of pages who have a huge number of fans. But there is a severe lack of interactivity and quality content. This makes the brand communication ineffective as members are not active on the page.

With the results of this new report, many Indian brands will soon turn to Social media in order to gain a competitive edge over others.

This is the first attempt made by the Government to officialize the content that goes up on social media websites like Facebook and Twitter. With the current lack of rules or guidelines, many departments and officials have been shying away from social media.

The new rules, which are expected to be finalized and put into action by the end of this year will help define and achieve the Government’s social media aims.

According to some of the guidelines, popular social networking sites like Facebook shall be used more frequently in order to have better interaction with netizens. The officials who shall be given the task of handling social media shall be given immunity at par with Right to Information laws.

With the new attempt, official data like Policy Announcements and Statements shall be put up on social media websites along with traditional media. In order to be more synchronized, the social media campaigns will be promoted through traditional media.

This new move comes in wake of the Government’s lack of communication during last months India Against Corruption protests. While protesters where using social media to the optimum, Officials did not have any method to communicate their point of view to the masses.

This new move by the Government indicates the immense popularity Social Media has as a form of mass communication.