When byte goes bust

TIME FOR Questions. Not KBC or JCPK this time, but CBSE and State Board examinations. That time of the year, when you are asked to ``Switch off'' the idiot box and ``study''.

Time to burn the midnight oil. Not exactly, for cyberspace knows no day or night. This examination season, the dot coms go in for their biggest examination of their existence. For many since their inception, the dots have only kept getting smaller and fading. Going... going... gone. And all that remained of the dot com was a dot, the full stop.

While many have perished in the shakeout, other cyberquake survivors in the dot com education business, have learnt their lessons well enough to take on the new players.

The only thing that's keeping the survivors going is the depth of the foundation they were set up with. For example, esaras.com that started off last year after years of research, and equipped with a detailed database on colleges and admissions, today has a ``captive set of 5000 odd students who have registered and access information''.

Revenue? ``No. However, I do believe (as has started happening) that there is a need to eventually sell the same web based product on a CD to these users,'' Ms.Sheela Subramaniam who runs esaras, says.

The revenue models for the free-to-access portals haven't really proved to be fruitful. Those who survive, do so at the mercy of the venture capitalists and their generous dose of funding.

Considering that bleak a scenario, this examination season, it is time for a sequel. Shakeout-2, when only the fittest will survive. While some have already announced their plans for the examination season, others have diversified into providing information on jobs and careers and database development.

Microcode recently, announced its portal that will help students self-evaluate their level of preparations for the upcoming Tamil Nadu Public Examinations (Plus Two) and rank them on the basis of the marks obtained.

The site that can be accessed from www.trialexam.com or www.checktest.com is another free portal which you could use, but only after registering. Microcode says that it is releasing a new set of questions once every four days, since February 12.

Go2varsity.com, another site that came up earlier this month, will not only provide online-education and help users with employment, but additionally provide entertainment!

``As long as a site sticks to its core-competency and has adequate depth, the entertainment would be a welcome bonus. Minus the depth, it's just another dot com waiting to bite the cyberdust,'' says a dot com entrepreneur.

And there are education portals that are exploring new cyberterritory, gaining ground providing software education for beginners at asktenali.com, thanks to software's closer association with ``dollar'' than ``rupee''.

As the now extinct dot coms have discovered, there is no substitute for content and depth. Content is the key to hit, and what really gets dot coms the clicks and the eye-balls.

By Sudhish Kamath

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Section  : Southern States
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