MarketHero - no risk stocks trading

A few years back, there was a site called Bollywood Stock Exchange (bwsx.com). This site was built on the idea of creating an online stock exchange where the stars and the movies can be traded with a virtual online currency. Being the bollywood buff that I am, I was totally hooked on to it. Sadly, after a year or so, that site was shut down. I don't know if the close down was because of the lack of users or funds or both but I really liked the idea of creating a virtual online stock trading site simulating the real world market. There hasn't been any other site, using this concept after bwsx and I always felt that this is a potential idea for a fun web2.0 site.

Today, when I was checking out some random blogs, I was pleasantly surprised by the site markethero.in. Its an online game, which simulates the Indian stock market with all the prices and indexes updated from the real world stock exchange. And its has almost all the features that I had in my plan.

It intends to be a fun site with easy and free way to get a hang of the stocks trading without any risk involved. One can buy and sell stocks traded in the Indian markets virtually and maintain a virtual portfolio. As soon as your account is created, you are given a million of virtual rupees to start off with. You can perform all the trading with your virtual money and can earn profits to rise up in the leader board. I not sure about the rules yet, but I guess, its about earning highest profits and win the title of 'market hero'.

The site looks like an internal launch and is in its initial stages of testing and fixes. Their blog says that the site, with the focus on the stocks and trading, would also have some social networking features, like ability to add friends, marking favorites and online chats.

The site has a clean and nice design, with Web2.0 mainly in focus. I wish if the navigation could be a little more intuitive, the only source of information is the blog and I couldn't really locate any contact information about the owners of the site.

On the whole, for me, it would be fun to get into virtual trading and hone up the trading skills, before I can actually start investing in the real market.

The registrations are by invitation only and i haven't got an invite yet. I will update my experiences here, once I manage to get in and explore further.

Ideas for Web 2.0 in India

I have been an avid netizen for a long long time and have seen emerging trends on the internet. These days Web2.0 seems to be the buzz word. There are hundreds of new websites coming up every other day claiming to be a web 2.0 site. Now the term itself is a topic of discussion and i have seen lots articles and posts debating on what it actually means, what can be considered as web 2.0 and if its really something different or just a hype.Whatever it is.. its in your face right now.. vibrant colors, dynamic user generated content, glassy look and feel, social networking features, mash-ups etc. etc. and it looks like it not going to end anytime soon. Now this observation stands true for most sites originating and targeting US and other western countries. but whats the scene in India? One can actually count the sites which would qualify for the title.

I tried to analyze the reasons for this difference and the answers were pretty straight. Such sites thrive mainly on the user generated content and tend to provide features which a common man can use while collaborating with other online users. Although India has most rapidly growing internet users but still the utility for the internet is still limited to send mails and chat. Some urban users also use it to book tickets or use internet banking at the most. And the most widely used site by Indians is Google, which developers like me dwell on.

Basically, if you think about Web 2.0 ideas that can click in Indian market, you would have a very few options like social networking, video sharing, music sharing etc. Most of these are already captured by international sites like orkut , youtube etc. Despite these, we have some local players trying to make a hold on the same ideas bigadda.com and ishare.com by rediff are a good example for such attempts. These sites are almost the clones of the originals with a little desi touch and a few extra features. Lets see if they make an impact, desimartini.com which was launched a few months back is still sitting dormant.

Now coming back to the point, is there anything else which can sell in Indian internet market ? Especially something which can be called web 2.0 ?