Aditya Chatterjee
Media

Mediaah.blogspot.com hits it off with readers

The site, which was relaunched on January 17, 2005, had 275 registrations in a week

This is one website that seems to be drawing surfers by the day. And predictably so, considering that it has a “no-holds-barred” approach to media-related issues, topics, companies and so on. The allusion refers to mediaah.blogspot.com, the website in a web log format, that was relaunched on January 17, 2005.

“Two hundred and seventy-five people have registered between January 12-19, 2005,” says Shivani Maheshwari, wife of journalist Pradyuman Maheshwari, who is managing the website. “January 12 is when we first announced that we were coming back,” she says. “So you can imagine the enthusiasm.”

Since then, the site has been getting about 8-10 subscribers per day. “These are for the newsletter that we issue everyday,” she says.

The site, for the uninitiated, was started by Pradyuman Maheshwari in July 2003. It ran for six months catching the attention of media, marketing and advertising professionals as well as students. Operations, however, were suspended on January 20, 2004, and it indeed came as surprise to many when it was announced that the site would be back this year.

Its subscriber base during its first innings was 9,000. Despite the enthusiastic response this time round, Maheshwari believes that the subscriber base will not cross the 10,000-mark. “That is because Mediaah is not for the masses, but for the industry. We are biased towards journalism with the site targeting media professionals in general,” she says.

The site will soon launch an advisory service offering career guidance to students and young media professionals. The service will be launched on February 1 and will be a weekly feature appearing every Tuesday on the website. Plans are in place to launch a “job bank”, details of which will be announced on February 14, Maheshwari says. All these services will be free-of-cost.

The pay services such as fax-on-demand, media audit and consultancy, which were part of mediaah’s repertoire during its first innings, have been kept on hold at the moment.

“We will look at it, but in a while,” she says.

Mediaah’s reader profile, for the record, includes a large segment of students and young media professionals, followed by mid-to-senior executives from the advertising, media and marketing fraternity.

© 2005 agencyfaqs!

Have news to share? Write to us atnewsteam@afaqs.com