IPL boosts the Internet

You all must be ready with your 5 most common online activities and majority of you must have thought of atleast 2-3 out of the activities listed below or may agree to the list.

THE MOST COMMON 5 ACTIVITIES ON INTERNET:

1. Check E – Mail 
2. Search for Jobs 
3. Access Social Networking sites that also includes reading & writing blogs
4. Surf news sites or check sports sites for score updates 
5. Online gaming

Now, just have a look at the figure below:

Click on the image to enlarge

What I mean to say is that the internet experiences a natural increase in the number of users at the time of IPL, because of a simple reason that people are more engaged in 3 of their most common activities. This opportunity is leveraged by various websites and blogs by initiating activities based on the IPL themes. Taking each of them separately:

1. Social Networking Websites: We have already heard that Twitter is the third most popular platform for IPL discussions. So this tells that there is an increase in the

• Number of social networkers(social media traffic)
• The time spent by people on social networking sites
• Number of pages created on Facebook, number of communities created on Orkut, number of tweets re-tweets on Twitter..etc..

2. Cricket Blogs : The IPL is the favourite topic of discussions on majority of the blogs starting right from the player auctions, pre/post match analysis, team probabilities, comments on comments and controversies (How can one forget the infamous blog of KKR’s ‘FakeIplPlayer’). These blogs get a huge hype at the time of IPL and professional cricket bloggers like Brandistics' parent blog AllPaddedUp the following

• High readership
• Benefits their page ranks
• Gets them advertisements
• Provide immense pool of content to write on and for readers to enjoy.

3. Sports Websites: They get a bit overloaded during IPL with almost 2 matches a day from just 1 tournament you got to be on your toes. Live scores, live text commentary, mobile versions of live scores and the comments of cricket experts are the major services these websites bank on. These websites have got a huge traffic from:

• The corporate world that can only access these sites for live updates or are mobile most of the time.
• The travelling audience who has their GPRS enabled mobile phones to access the internet and no access to television (I am targeting very specifically).
• And the ones who access the SMS scoring services.

4. Online streaming of match videos: This one is the latest in the block and has shown a huge potential. I have lot to talk about it, so I keep it safe for my future posts.

A true innovation is the one which benefits the innovator and the environment as a whole. IPL has definitely boosted the internet industry and (If you still not buy this) the prospects are huge in the coming future. So now, are you getting a feel of why I started with IPL as the 22^nd most innovative company, globally? There is lot more left to tell you about the other verticals of entertainment viz. Television industry, Bollywood (film industry to be more precise) and the very own News industry (print + television channels). Keep reading and would love to have your comments and suggestions on my outlook.