CIT Project Report9GAG.com and its Indian Adaption

Table of Contents

EXECUTIVE SUMMARY.........................................................................................................................3

INTRODUCTION....................................................................................................................................4

SOME STATS........................................................................................................................................4

COMPETITORS.....................................................................................................................................4

BUSINESS MODEL.................................................................................................................................5

TRAFFIC WORKING...............................................................................................................................6Audience Demographics......................................................................................................................6Audience Geography............................................................................................................................6Upstream Sites Google.com facebook.com youtube.com …...............................................................7Sites link to 9GAG.com.........................................................................................................................7

CUSTOMER ACQUISITION AND RETENTION STRATEGY.........................................................................7

MOBILE STRATEGY...............................................................................................................................7

PAYMENT STRATEGY............................................................................................................................7

TECHNOLOGY APPROACH....................................................................................................................8

KEY PARTNERS /VENDOR.....................................................................................................................8

SWOT ANALYSIS...................................................................................................................................9

FUTURE................................................................................................................................................9

COMPETITION-...................................................................................................................................11Direct Competitor-.............................................................................................................................11

WORKING COST, REVENUE AND WORKING TRAFFIC-..........................................................................12Strategy.............................................................................................................................................12Customer Acquisition and Retention Strategy...................................................................................12

PORTER MODEL.................................................................................................................................14

References-................................................................................................................................................15

Executive Summary

9GAG, Inc. operates an online platform, and a social media website whereby users upload and share "user-generated" images, videos, and GIFs. 9GAG, Inc. is based in Mountain View,California. Since the website was launched on April 23rd, 2008, it has grown in popularity, reaching more than 20 million

Facebook “likes” and over 3 million Twitter followers in mid-September 2014.

The revenue model of 9GAG earns revenue through various ads placed on the website.It also depend on the quality and size of the picture.

The report further proposed on the Indian adaption of 9GAG highlighting revenue estimates, cost estimates as well as traffic estimates. The feasibility scenario in Indian context is estimated further and future prospects is analyzed.

Due to the little such a service provider in India, and its popularity in the US, we felt 9GAG entry in India would also be widely accepted and a profitable venture.

Introduction

9GAG is an image-based social media website which is based around user-uploaded, comical images dubbed "Fun" and "le memes".  9GAG, Inc. is based in Mountain View, California. Since the website was launched on

April 23rd, 2008, it has grown in popularity, reaching more than 20 million Facebook “likes”[2] and over 3 million Twitter

followers in mid-September 2014.

The website was cofounded in 2008 by University of Hong Kong student Chris Chan, with the intention of creating an alternative online platform to email on which users could easily share humorous photos or videos.

Content Categories

Content is separated into the following general categories of -hot -trending -fresh -TV -comic 

-geeky -WTF and a few others such as cute, food, Gifs

Some StatsAs of October 2014, 73 Million monthly unique visitorsLess than 50 employeesAlexa Global Rank 220Average time spent by a user on 9gag.com is approximately 8 mins.

Need AddressedCreating one of the funniest yet simplest platform for to publish or collect pictures of Fun.9GAG allows users to subscribe and follow each other.

CompetitorsThe direct competitors for 9GAG.com are > damnlol.com> acidcow.comBoth the websites focus on visual humour and include only images.

The indirect competitors for 9GAG.com are

Reddit.com

Reddit- stylized as reddit, is an entertainment, social networking service and news website where registered community members can submit content, such as text posts or direct links

Business ModelAdvertisements- 9GAG earns revenue though various ads placed on the website.It charges $100 for a 300x250 pixel ad for 66,666 views.It charges $250 for a 300x250 pixel ad for 1,85,185 views.

It charges $500 for a 300x250 pixel ad for 3,92,156 views

In July 2012, 9GAG raised an additional US$2.8 million in funding from Silicon Valley-based venture capital behemoths, including True Ventures and Greycroft Partners. The company later released an iOS iPhone application.

In August 2012, 9GAG received another US$2.8 million in funding from Silicon Valley venture capitalists, including True Ventures and Greycroft Partners, as well as individual investors like Christopher Sacca, Kevin Rose, and Naval Ravikant. This funding was able to support 9GAG's engineering team growth both in Hong Kong and in Silicon Valley.

Revenues-9GAG Revenues-Damnlol Revenues-Acidcow

$ 227,998 / day $ 865 / day $ 6,102 / day$ 6,839,940 / month $ 25,950 / month $ 183,060 / month

$ 82,079,280 / year $ 311,400 / year $ 2,196,720 / year

Website Traffic Estimate

9GAG Damnlol Acidcow

15,080,000 visitors / day 57,751 visitors / day 406,867 visitors / day

452,400,000 visitors / month 1,732,530 visitors / month 12,206,010 visitors / month

5,428,800,000 visitors / year 20,790,360 visitors / year 146,472,120 visitors / year

Traffic Working

Audience Demographics

Audience Geography

Search TrafficKeywords9GAG – 69.60%GAG – 1.43%9 GAG -0.92% GIF -0.85%NSFW-0.73%

Upstream SitesFacebook.comGoogle.comYoutube.com9GAG.tvWikipedia.org

Sites link to 9GAG.comYoutube.comAmazon.comReddit.comImgur.comWikipedia.org

Customer Acquisition and Retention StrategyThe target audience for the website are the people who want to catch a break "Humor is one of life's greatest pleasures," Most of the first time users come through social media. At 9GAG, we want to make it as easy as possible for people to have fun by sharing the things that make them laugh for the universal enjoyment of anyone on the web.

Main focus is to provide Rich customer experience, keeping the loading time minimum and making sharing of images and videos as user friendly as possible.

Most of the website's traffic occurs at home, followed by school or workplace. 9GAG has also expanded to 9gag.tv which is a platform to share and view the humorous videos.

Mobile Strategy9GAG is also taking advantage of the increasing mobile penetration among the people. It has its apps for major platforms like iOS and android phones.The app seamlessly integrates with your visuals 9GAG website and lets you resume them on your mobile device. In a way the app works as a companion to the website which enhance the usability of 9GAG.

Payment StrategyPayment option via credit card is available.They accept transactions through Paypal, Visa, MasterCard etc.

Technology Approach9GAG is written in a combination of HTML/CSS and JavaScript. The JavaScript code handles the client-side and is used to support GIFs and other images uploaded onto the website.9GAG is hosted on GoDaddy, operating as an SSL certificate authority, and runs on Nginx.The site is supported on the Amazon Route 53 nameserver

To further company exposure, 9GAG founders recently launched 9GAG.tv, a platform including videos only. Within a year of the original mobile app launch, 9GAG launched another app for iOS entitled, "9GAG Fast." Unlike the original 9GAG mobile app, 9GAG Fast was created with the idea of being really easy to use. The description of the 9GAG Fast in the Apple App Store simple says, "Super intuitive and dead easy to use, SWIPE, TAP, AND ZOOM. BAM WHAM... For the android operating system, 9GAG First was created with ideally the same idea as 9GAG Fast. 9GAG user are able to log in with their account and write to stranger by sending them a message. They improved 9CHAT by allowing to create groups. It's now possible to write with more people at the same time.

Key Partners /VendorThe company partnered with Silicon Valley-based venture capital behemoths, including True Ventures and Greycroft Partners

SWOT AnalysisStrengths:Global reachRevenueFree of charge for viewersFinancial support by venture capitalists2 second load time

Weaknesses:Image qualityStart up costsControversials GIF’s

Opportunity:Creative use of technologyFirst mover advantageGrowing audience

Threat:Direct & Indirect competitionHigh Capital CostsDependency on social media

Adaptation in Indian Context

Introduction-9GAG.in will be one of its own kind of website, focusing on visual humor.The website will comprise of videos, memes and GIF’s, it will be adopting the business model of its principle company i.e. focusing on advertisements.

Need addressed-Laughter is the Best Medicine, our main focus is to make our audience happy by providing them a platform to view and share hilarious videos, also providing them a platform to write down their opinions about their media.

Competition-The_Unreal_Times.com & News_that_matters_not.com

Both of them are Indian satire, spoof, parody and humour portal featuring satirical articles on politics, entertainment, cricket, media, international affairs and society.

Revenue-Theunrealtimes$ 1,209 / day

$ 36,270 / month

$ 435,240 / year

Website Name9GAG.in. The name has been chosen as per Alexa results wherein the keywords such as 9GAG, GAG,GIF were used to direct the traffic to 9GAG website.

Working Cost, Revenue and Working Traffic-

Strategy

Customer Acquisition and Retention Strategy9GAG would be launched in few major languages that is Gujarati, Punjabi, Tamil, Marathi apart from English and Hindi so as to capture the regional market too.It will help them to utilize their idle time, they should opt for this site whenever they need a break !

In order to retain the audience, we will also send them daily/weekly mailers with the top rated content. Providing them with a platform to comment and get maximum number of likes. By creating trolls of latest news and the trends which are being followed on social media will try to retain the audience.

By Keeping the load time upto 2-3 seconds, we should be able to acquire a larger market share and it should help to retain the audience.

High usage of social media so that the content is shared as much as possible,increasing the visibility of our site.

Making our website SEO friendly i.e. relating words such as humour, jokes, fun videos which have a high frequency with our website

Creating categories which enables audience to view content of their preference.

More Content, less advertising.

Mobile Strategy

Gauging the prevalent sales of smartphones and internet usage in India, mobile apps would be made on major platforms like iOS, android and windows phone. The app would be in sync with the 9GAG website so that one could continue browsing from where they had left.

Payment StrategyPayments (depending on the advertisement package) will be accepted via credit cards and cashcards such as paytm etc.

Technology approach

9GAG will deploy cloud computing services of Amazon Web Services particularly of Amazon EC2 and Amazon S3 for auto scaling of the traffic and Database management respectively.

Key partners/Vendors

The content development part would be given by the individual contributions by users and the admins. The web storage, server infrastructure and the search engine would be handled by the Amazon Web Services.

Porter Model

Industry Rivalry is high, since 9GAG is a part of the entertainment & advertising Industry along with stiff competition from television and online sites.

Threat from new entrants will be high, as already there are various competitors like damnlol.com & acidcow.com .

Threat of Substitutes is high, since there are various others options for advertising and entertainment sites.

Supplier power is medium, as they want to spread their content, as seen from the international model, their power is not very high.

Buyer Power is high, cause of the availability of other service providers which provide unlimited streaming of content on the internet at a minimal price.

References-

https://www.9GAG.com/http://www.worthofweb.com/http://www.alexa.com/http://similarweb.comhttp://www.quora.net/http://www.wikipedia.org/