I had a long association with Cricinfo - from around 1993 end to 2005. I have heard a lot about cricket.com during tihs period. So when I found out that a company called Live Current Media has done a deal with BCCI to develop BCCI's cricket web site and IPL web site and also the domain name cricket.com, I was intrigued.
I went through my old emails to look at the history of cricket.com.
In the days when domain names were seen as the 'be all and end all', all sorts of domain names were acquired by Internet pirates and hawkers in the hope that some sad git will buy them for millions of dollars later on. Cricket.com, they thought will outsmart rivals such as Cricinfo.com. At that time, Cricinfo.com already had huge user base, while Cricket.com had to still build the content.
In 1999, Cricket.com announced that it will develop a world-beating cricket site. They were to partner another site called cricketline.com. Nothing came of it.
A company called Communicate.com owned this domain name cricket.com. They also owned india.com etc. They were working towards building each domain name into a portal with appropriate partner and then make big bucks. However things were not so simple. The company built around india.com went bust later on.
Communicate.com tried finding partners (not buyers) for cricket.com. They wanted someone to pay money, become a JV partner and then develop the site. They wanted offers from Cricinfo.com in the year 2000. Cricinfo did not respond positively. Then, in early 2001, a rather shady entity called Cricmania.com (which was mostly ripping off content from Cricinfo through automatic bots), acquired/partnered Communicate.com to develop Cricket.com. Under the terms of the deal, Cricmania would pay Communicate.com USD 1 million, and Communicate and Cricmania will hold stakes in Cricket.com.
When Cricmania found that making money from Cricket.com was impossible, they thought of turning it into a betting/gambling site. Even that didn't work out. Probably US/Canada laws prevented this from happening.
By the end of 2001, however, the deal between Cricmania and Communicate.com broke down. The domain was back with Communicate.com in early 2002 and they had no cricket content there either. The site has been dormant with no cricket content whatsoever since then.
Live Current Media is the successor to Communicate.com. They are planning to rename the company in 2008. They are hoping to convert their domain names into wonderful businesses. In April 2008, they announced their deal with BCCI.
I do not expect anything useful to come from some domain name hoarders with no experience whatsoever in content management, much less cricket content at that.
BCCI have never understood the web. They are proving that they will never understand it.
hey Sir,
ReplyDeleteI'm Kulveer Taggar, formerly the CEO of Auctomatic and now part of Live Current Media. I'm helping with the cricket.com project.
Thank you for your comments and giving some insight into the background of cricket.com. However, Live Current now has a completely new team to the guys who did that stuff before. The domain gets a lot of organic traffic, so people definitely come to it expecting something around cricket. We want to give them what they want.
I'm 24, have been a cricket fan for many years, and indeed a very big fan of cricinfo.com. My favourite series was the 2001 visit of Australia to India, I used to skip early morning school to follow the commentary on cricinfo, which is when I first found out what a great site it was, obviously built by real fans of the game.
We admire cricinfo.com, and want to work closely with them. So we had a few plans for cricket.com, and out of all of them, this partnership with the IPL looked the most exciting as a way to get started. We certainly have no intention to 'ruin' the game for anyone, or try and make a quick buck (indeed we are investing heavily into this project), any payoff we may get will be well into the future.
Having said that, I will not deny that there have been teething problems around the site, which is mainly due to the fact that these discussions happened so close to the beginning of the tournament.
We do understand the web. My previous venture was funded by the creator of Gmail, Google's Head of Special Initiatives and Paul Graham, the creator of the first web application Viaweb which sold to Yahoo for $50m in 1998.
Anyhow, I'm reaching out here to let you know we are embracing your criticism. Hopefully we will improve.
Best,
Kulveer
Dear Kulveen,
ReplyDeleteThe crux of my posting is... a domain name does not make a site great. The thinking behind cricket.com, historically, has been that. However, it is the content and community that makes a great site. I hope you succeed in building an outstanding cricket site, by building great content.
Good luck.
BCCI's current website is http://bcci.cricket.deepthi.com/
ReplyDeleteI wonder who Deepthi is, and what she's doing on their url!
Hey
ReplyDeleteI am not sure if that is the official BCCI site.
deepthi.com is owned by Nishanth Gopinathan as per whois.net
aandthirtyeights, you are right - after reading your comment, I did a google search with 'BCCI cricket' - this is the site that shows up at the top! This is ridiculous and shameful, not to mention outrageous! BCCI is rolling in money. India is supposed to be some kind of IT superpower. And BCCI can't have their own decent site, without all the stupid adds and other distractions?
ReplyDeleteNikhil Narayanan, if you think that's not the official site of BCCI, then these guys should not be allowed to use the title 'BCCI'. Something fishy, IMO.
I came here via Desipundit. Nice thoughts...!
ReplyDeleteAnd BTW, the official site for BCCI is "bcci.tv" which was launched amidst much funfare back in 2006 and failed for the very reason discussed here - Lack of quality content. I guess that they are now selling tickets for IPL.
Official website for International cricket is,
ReplyDeletewww.bcci.tv
Official website for domestic cricket, developed by Paramatrix Technologies(www.paramatrix.co.in) is,
www.bccicricket.org