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Aarpix caught my attention recently, and I’ll be honest, I’m still taken aback by just how much they’re doing! Seriously, I need your help in evaluating this startup.
Here goes:
Aarpix.com is a web, images, audio, video, news, sport, blogs search engine (powered by Windows Live), a dictionary, encyclopedia, casual gaming site, gamer discussion site, article hub, and also a webmail service (powered by Windows Live).
But that’s not all!
Aarpix.net is a full blown social network with profiles, galleries, user blogs, forums, polls, groups, (pant pant writing this is tiring), music sharing, video sharing, classifieds, quizzes, (!! make it stop!), events and perhaps even more.
I’ll be honest - I have no idea - none - about how to evaluate this startup. I didnt see a business model beyond google adsense (and seriously, which young startup kid is thinking beyond that these days anyway?) and cant come to any sort of conclusion on whether what they’re doing is good or bad or what!?
So help me out here - what do you think of them?
Aarpix guys - share some of your usage stats here.
| Written by Osama A. on 06/26/08 in PakStartup |
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June 26th, 2008 at 4:43 pm
Salam-o-Alaikum, Its me Farhan (Founder of Aarpix). I am a regular reader of GreenWhite, and I am surprised that how you have searched Aarpix even though I haven’t yet launched it formally.
A clarification: Search Engine isn’t Powered by Windows Live, It is rather custom build. It takes best results from various search engines and shows the results alongwith thumbnails and quick view.
And Aarpix stands for “All Asian Resource Pixels” that means Aarpix is targeted for Asians especially Pakistanis who live all around the world. The Aim was to take our people out of the traditional songs downloads, or mehndi design stuff websites like hundreds out there.
Since its web 2.0 and user generated content era, we need to move accordingly
So thats what I have aimed.
And as I am a business student, I have made excellent strategies for Aarpix, as its not just a startup, there is entire idea behind it.
I would be happy to know the opinion of you guys
June 26th, 2008 at 6:56 pm
Although I acknowledge the effort but in all honesty, after using the site for 15 mins I found that it was trying to do way more than it should.
Sorry I found that you are trying to cover a lot of services at once and to me that doesn’t work that well since you will not be able to improve on all them at the same pace.
Good effort though.. i will wait and see where this heads
June 26th, 2008 at 7:15 pm
Thanks for writing in. By the way my main focus is to provide a comprehensive social network and I have a comprehensive marketing plan for that
Anyway thanks once again.
June 26th, 2008 at 7:20 pm
Farhan,
You haven’t launched it formally but you *are* promoting it. Paradox isnt it?
June 26th, 2008 at 7:35 pm
not really! Thats why I am confused that my promotional plan hasn’t finalized yet. Where have u seen the promotion of aarpix? or unless you have heard it from a non marketing source
June 26th, 2008 at 7:56 pm
I get that you have a “Comprehensive” business plan.. we all seem to have “comprehensive” business plans
and i would like for you to define what you mean by “comprehensive social network”? is facebook a “comprehensive social network”?
June 26th, 2008 at 8:00 pm
Farhan,
If you are using Aarpix as your alias or status message in Facebook or twitter or elsewhere and have a blog then you’re marketing it I’m afraid.
If you really hadn’t launched formally, you’d be in stealth with absolutely no info before launch.
June 26th, 2008 at 8:07 pm
well, you must have seen orkut, you see thats specifically targeted to youth whereas facebook targets youth and the business community. So yes , facebook is the one. But the research we have done with Pakistanis on the basis of random sampling from major and few minor cities. So we have come to a conclusion and have created a social network exactly according to need of our people. Including business community.
June 26th, 2008 at 8:12 pm
@ Sir Osama!
Ooopss! Well I had that just to know the comments of my contacts
I got your point anyway, I should not have done that. So I have accepted my fault but trust me, I never intended promotion through a facebook display picture 
And Aarpix Blog (http://www.aarpix.com/aarpixblog) also states that Aarpix is not yet launched officially) However a test version is up
June 26th, 2008 at 8:18 pm
Nevertheless, Only a week is left in official launch
June 26th, 2008 at 8:54 pm
Farhan, its not a fault
Its your product, marketing it, dont market it, it doesnt matter.
Fact is nothing will change between now and a week from now that will make us think “oh, now thats marketing” - you’ll try things… some will work, most wont. That’s entrepreneurship - its a process, not a switch.
Different people try different things to get signups and user accesses in social networks - Stop.PK baited cellphone credit, so did Amaana, and it seems to work for both.
June 26th, 2008 at 9:03 pm
Yes signup rewards is included in my marketing plan
It would be quite a different then Stop.PK :-),
ANyway, Its gona be just an experiment, Lets see what happens. I’ll update you with the status .
June 26th, 2008 at 9:25 pm
I tried their image search, and it works
June 26th, 2008 at 10:41 pm
@ Monocoque
June 26th, 2008 at 11:55 pm
Get Naughty on the Beach.. WOW!!! what an Ad for social network side in Pakistan.
Farhan, its bad bad way .. If you are using google adsense, then target those ads which suits you. Making you site enriched with ads wont be making big money for you.
Search engines are mostly powered by ALTAVISTA..now that must be making big money for ya,pal!!
While browsing, when i came across Aarpix.net, i had no idea that how will i get back to aarpix.com… you could have made separate sites for each of the features. Its quite complex as i see it.
Music on title page is titled with ‘be right back’ but while browsing, i came across SHAKIRA album.. but there were no songs btw!!
Now, i thought to check on your company. I went to ABOUT US. I have never seen this statement in websites ..”Here you can add content about your site.”. Now, who in the world wants to add his/her own company info on your about us. Or, is this from some TEMPLATE,pal!!!
More to come.. but if you want us to review.. bring something new.. as you say…YOUR BUSINESS PLAN!!!
You may find me leech here.. but believe me, its good for you!!
June 27th, 2008 at 8:54 am
Hmm ok haven’t you people been pretty nasty with Mr Farhan?
And don’t worry my domain expired without giving any notification and bank Al-Falah credit card is acting funny! I will be back!
June 27th, 2008 at 11:20 am
If I am testing ads on the test run of aarpix, that doesn’t mean that doesn’t mean that I have targeted those ads
And about my marketing plan, I am gona do what anyone else couldn’t dare to
Lets see what happens.
As I have courage of risk taking.
And now I am not gona defend aarpix here anymore, since it isn’t launched yet so its useless.
I’ll be writing to re-review aarpix right after a week inshaAllah
June 27th, 2008 at 12:17 pm
c ya next time.. chao!!!
June 29th, 2008 at 11:13 am
Well it is quite a good effort.
I looked into the technical aspects of it and the “effort” that went into it really, being I’ve been in the web design / development / hosting business since almost a decade now.
Well the main part of the website, namely the search engine which Farhan you said is “custom built”, making one think that you and / or your colleagues built it, and its now powered by Windows live; well I totally agree to the part that its now powered by Windows live, and now lets just visit http://www.inout-search.com/
That would be the script available from http://www.inoutscripts.com, which gives the fully functionality of the search engine out-of-the-box.
Secondly, the social network is again and out-of-the-box solution called phpFox (www.phpfox.com)
The Aarpix mail part is powered by Windows Live which takes hardly an hour to set up.
I fail to see what parts actually took “time and effort” for this “Web 2.0″ website.
The website is hosted by Host Monster (www.hostmonster.com) giving you “unlimited space” for $6.95 per month, which stands to be a shared hosting provider so one can assume that the site isn’t really geared for the mass since such hosts usually will start to crack under extreme traffic.
It can still evolve into a good “platform” of sorts if any of the elements in the website, that is the search, blog, social network, email accounts etc were in any integrated into each other which I don’t see as being there.
Using open source scripts (or ALMOST open source) isn’t bad at all, but it should lead towards further “custom development” which would tie in all the elements of the website and give the users a seamless experience before actually growing any further.
Best of luck!
July 3rd, 2008 at 8:34 am
Nowhere I said that search engine is custom built by me or my team, It is rather customly built by Inout Company.
Secondly, it isn’t bad to use a readymade software or scripts for social networking service or anything.If this was so, then why GreenWhite is using WordPress? And Why The So big Reliance Group’s social network is based on open source and FREE social network software ?
And this is not all, So called Nilaam.pk is using PHPproBid, And everybody is appreciating them just because they are having foriegn investors.
Thanks for your kind opinion about the host and server which nobody asked for , I dont think there is any harm to run a test version on a shared server. And let me tell you, I myself have been associated with a web hosting business and have been dealing with dedicated servers, the day I feel I should move because of heavy traffic,certainly I will.
And at the end Thanks for taking time to write in.
Now GreenWhite tends me to believe that this forum is just to criticise someone if he has taken the initiative. And to make it stop before it launches.
I dont wanted to comment here again, but I had to. So please everybody hangout for few days, everything will be clear then.
July 3rd, 2008 at 10:01 am
Farhan, You will be faced with such criticism at every stage of your product launch be prepared for that, you have done a commendable job feel proud of it all this criticism does not mean to bog you down, take the good hints from these, as these are your best friends taking time out of their life to do a QA of your product,
Entrepreneur ship is a tough job specially so in pakistan where even your family members tend to discourage you and push you towards a comfy job. the harder you are the more you would be able to rise through all this.
Good luck for all your efforts.
July 3rd, 2008 at 10:11 am
i second QAZI on that front…cheer up mate.. what faizan wrote was not at all wrong.. he has to do the review in his own perspective.you just have to dig in to get the ideas from seniors out..
July 3rd, 2008 at 11:12 am
Hey Farhan
I’m sorry if you took my comments the wrong way, but all I tried to do here was to help you (if I can at all) plan out the future path for this endeavor of yours.
By no means did I ever mean to dishearten you, if anything consider it constructive criticism, and nothing more.
We’ve done security consultancy and setups for websites such as www.presidentofpakistan.gov.pk and learnt a lot in the past 10 years as far as projections for future requirements go.
To see new things coming up is always something to be proud of as a Pakistani!
I would never mean to make you feel as if you should give up, but if even a single thing I said previously could help you in any way, that’d make my day.
Once again, best of luck!
August 9th, 2008 at 12:36 am
Hai Farhan.
Tum bhi na :p
August 11th, 2008 at 7:08 pm
There is also http://www.boonex.com/products/dolphin/ .