Rs 1.5 crores for this crap?

A website called ibibo.com has been running a contest called 'Great Indian Blogger Hunt'. The no 1 blog on this site will receive Rs 1.5 lakhs on February 15.

Well, Raj sent me a link to his blog pointing out that the leading blog was actually a 'junk blog'. It just has dozens of entries, some with a single word or just a random photo.

Someone at ibibo seems to have taken note and pulled out the junk blog... only to replace it with another junk blog. 'Jeetna meri zidd nahi, meri aadat hai' is the title and it features one-line posts. 6218 of them to be precise.

This - and other similar efforts on the leaderboard - are blogs in name alone. Ibibo believes that "You don't need to be a great writer, or journalist" to be a blogger. Fair enough. But exhorting folks to "write or show anything - absolutely anything!" is an incomplete instruction.

Given the monetary lure people are posting just about anything... or nothing of any value or interest. And several times over, in the hope of increasing their "ibQ" score. What good is that?

This brings me back to two of my favourite points:

- User-generated content rule # 1 is that quality attracts quality and crap attracts crap. Ibibo should have seeded the site with a few good quality blogs. Perhaps ghost written by themselves. That would have set a benchmark for others to follow.

- Money is important but not everything. You can't stimulate blogging by paying out huge sums to people who don't care about blogging in the first place.

Ibibo has grandly announced a payout of Rs 1.5 CRORES. Which VC was naive enough to fund this 'idea'? And now that it is obviously not working... will they keep their foolish promise?