Launch of Jhanki.com - Online News Sharing Community

Online Community for Sharing News, Jhanki.com Launched

Achieves 30,000 hits and over 1300 stories in launch week.

Jay Joshi, CEO, Imagilon, a New York based media company, today announced the launch of www.jhanki.com, an online community for sharing news and views.

Jhanki – literally glimpse or snapshot in Hindi, is a site where readers can add news stories that they think are interesting, along with their comments. Readers can also vote or “Jhanki” stories posted by others, and post comments. In this way, Jhanki provides a very powerful forum for all Indians to voice and share their opinion about news.

Jhanki includes stories in many categories, including current affairs, international news, Hollywood, bollywood, cricket, television, citizens’ concerns and many others. Within a week of its launch, over 1300 stories, all submitted by readers, can be read on the site. There is no editorial control over the content, it is entirely driven by the community.

The power of the Jhanki concept quickly became apparent as the site became populated by a large number of stories, within the same week of its launch. The launch was promoted through a targeted email campaign to young Indian net users, bloggers and writers, and resulted in site traffic of over 30,000 in the first one week.

Speaking at the occasion, Jay Joshi said, “We felt that the time was right for an online news community, as net usage among Indians is at a never-before high, with almost 40 million users. More and more people are turning to the net to access news, but more importantly, many are also using the net to voice their opinion in the form of blogs and online communities. We designed Jhanki to be a meeting point for news and opinions that would normally be dispersed among various news sites, blogs and communities. Our job is to provide an excellent technical backbone, that makes it easy and fun for users to add news and comments, then the community takes over.”

During the launch period, Jhanki is being promoted through an exciting contest for users, with prizes that include a laptop, iPods and mobile phones. This has motivated many users to use the site very extensively, and also invite their friends to “Jhanki”.

The future plans for www.jhanki.com include – more opportunities for the user community to express their minds, providing public opinion information to media and researchers, and advertising sales.

About Imagilon: Imagilon is a New York based media company. It creates and develops new media businesses in the areas of eCommerce, online magazines and search. Additionally the company is involved in the production of movies and content for cable television. These businesses are targeted to a global audience with an emphasis on the United States, Europe and India. The Imagilon online portfolio includes www.linenplace.com, www.jobberthehunt.com and special interest blogs such as www.stairwaytohaven.com, www.harmonyguru.com, www.wattsgoingon.com and others.

Jay Joshi, who has promoted a number of new media ventures and produced films in Hollywood and India, heads Imagilon. Imagilon’s projects in India are managed by Suhasini Kirloskar, CEO, Ad Astra Media.