Tete-a-Tete

Gautam Buragohain brings 14 years of his journalistic expertise to shape and guide the team at BIGOye.com, Reliance ADAG’s entertainment portal. Gautam managed to squeeze time from his Editorial responsibilities to share BIGOye.com’s proposition, functioning and plans.

Tell us something about yourself.

I have been a journalist for the last 14 years. I have worked with leading media houses like The Asian Age, Magna Publications and the Times Of India, before taking up this responsibility.

What are your responsibilities as an Editor for BIGOye.com?

As an Editor I have to drive content for the site. Come up with out-of-box ideas and guide my content team.

Entertainment news websites are passé. How does BIGOye.com differentiate itself from the clutter?

We are moving to new avenues. Everyone has the same content and it’s the packaging which is the USP of our site. BIGOYE is the brainchild of the President of Big Entertainment, Rajesh Sawhney and managed by me (Editor-in Chief) and my colleague Shivkumar Parthasarathy (Head Creative & Operations). Both of them have work experiences of over 14 years having worked in reputed media companies like The Times of India, Yahoo, Magna Publication and The Asian Age to name a few.

Many entertainment news initiatives have bit the dust. What is your content strategy for longevity?

Our idea is to give entertainment a completely different touch and meaning. News, gossip, stories etc. are treated like a complete entertainment package in our site. We have features like OYETWEET, where we bring out the Tweets and status messages of our celebrities, which otherwise is not accessible by the common man. We have a director’s corner where leading directors come and share their film making experiences. And we have started with a new section called Plogging (Photo Blogging) BIGOYE is a one stop site for Entertainment, Infotainment and Sociotainment... We are just 3 months old and have loads of features in the pipeline, but we are the fastest growing internet site.

On news item / article you are proud of?

We have broken couple of good stories. The latest being SRK’s Prophet Mohammed controversy.

Which is the popular section on BIGOye.com?

The special pictorial article we create. It’s really been widely appreciated.

Any startling /inspiring user comment?

We have both flattering and abusive comments. All comments on our site are genuine and uncensored. The learning has come from Big B’s blog. When we started his blog, he told us to upload everything, both positive and negative comments on his blog. We followed the same strategy here as well.

BIGOye.com’s Blog section is being powered by BIGAdda.com (except Vivek Sharma’s). Why is BIGOye.com banking on other Reliance properties for content?

It’s started off as a joint venture by the three Big partners - Zapak, BigAdda and Big Flix. The idea is to take the help of the three existing partners.

Generic Bollywood news has an audience. What about your Trade News section? How has the response been?

We are building on our trade sections and so far the reaction has been positive.

Contests and freebies act as drivers. We could not spot any of them on BIGOye.com. Any particular reason?

It’s on the pipeline. We did one with Mahi Gill (heroine of Dev D) and it was a huge hit. But we realised, it’s a logistics nightmare to keep doing contests and events like this. So we are developing the backend mechanism and shortly will announce couple of contests and freebies.

Could you share a few traffic statistics?

We get around 3 – 4000 visits and 40 – 45000 page views a day.

Is BIGOye.com looking at any offline initiatives?

Yes, talks are on. But I won’t be able to share the details at this stage.

BIGOye.com looking at collaborating with other online properties and brands for unique content initiatives?

Yes, we will have some known brands online soon.