TCS Batch 2009 Admin: No monetizing huge traffic
By Suneetha

Orkut is India’s No.1 social network. And Tata Consultancy Services (TCS) is the biggest and most successful Indian tech company. Google recently released a list of Orkut's top 10 communities in India based on an anonymous and aggregated study of the behaviour of Indian users. The TCS 2009 Batch community is at No 5 in the Orkut list.

Techgoss spoke to Rishabh Mangal, owner of the community about its history, sociology and future. Here is the conversation.

Techgoss (TG): What is your computing background?  Are you  with TCS?
Rishabh Mangal (RM):  I have completed my BE in Information Technology this year in June from Lakshmi Narain College of Technology, Bhopal.

I got recruited by TCS on 19th Jan, 09 & waiting for joining date right now.
 
 
TG: How did you get the great idea of starting this? Was it over a cup of coffee with friends, was it at work or was it just while you were working by yourself?
RM: The whole idea was suggested by one of my college senior as well as a TCSer (who owns TCS-2008 Community) during a chat on Gtalk just 2 days after my selection. He found no community exists that time for the 2009 batch and so I initiated it.

TG: Why Orkut?
RM: Simple to answer..........to use all its benefits especially what it’s meant for i.e Social Networking. Its a great platform to meet new people, get new updated information through communities and especially to be in contact with all either a child hood friend or a newly found friend.

TG: While Orkut is a great product, some of the Indians say in the past it was easy to hack.  Have you been hacked?  If yes, how serious was it? Did you ever think it would become the most popular such tech site on Orkut in India?
RM: No I don’t think Orkut can be so vulnerable to any serious attacks by hackers after all it’s the product of none-other than Internet Search giant Google. But yes,  with some safety measures like type of password, deleting cookies we can protect it from hackers.

Well I can’t be sure will its going to be a popular tech site for all common people or not, but yes I can assure at least for TCSers it is and it will remain so.

TG: What were the important milestones?  i.e. 1000 TCS members joining, TCS unofficially endorses you, an important TCS message is broadcast via your popular forum... tell us?
RM: Milestones included some common goals like during the period I started the community:-

-Accumulating as many TCSers I can as the Orkut search option list the names of the communities in order with number of members in it, so we want to keep its name at the top.

-Keeping all the fake persons away from the community as best as possible as community is made for genuine TCSers. But non TCSers are free to consult through scrapbook.

 -Keeping rumours and illogical things away from the facts on the site 

TG: What are the most common things discussed on this site?
RM: Things discussed varies with the days in progress---- like it can be related to CAT-09 and obviously the most about the joining date uncertainties. Then there are more discussions related with any recruitment drive going on by any companies like Nokia, Siemens these days, also related with sports especially the most popular one is the Football thread, or the game threads like Online Sach ka Samna for some entertainment.
 

TG: What is the kind of traffic you draw?
RM: Among more than 8k members there are so many kinds of people active these days....some show interest in tech bytes, some just to hangout for the friends they made in the community, etc

TG: Can you monetize (for your forum's benefit of course) your educated, intelligent, highly paid audience? Many advertisers would like to pitch to such people.
RM: Sorry but I have never thought of such stuff and will not most probably

TG: What were the biggest controversies that your forum has to go through? And what did you learn from them?
RM: Well mostly controversies arises on deletion of any threads created by any member but that’s the part of process in maintaining the community if it found illogical. As is it hurts feelings of thread starter.....but yes if it’s good for all or gained popularity it is sustained in the forum for long.

And also sometimes issue is raised again posting of so many rumours related to joining.

TG: Do you have one forum on Facebook as well?
RM: No, I don’t have it on Facebook. Handling one is itself big enough and also one rarely likes switching between different ones.

TG: Anything else you would like to tell us?
RM: Well I think community is proving good for all of its members in spite of some controversies and incidents occurring sometimes. And yes, it’s a popular community only because of the active participation of its innovative members.  I just played a part of initiating it by providing a base along with much hard efforts put in by my friends too in promoting it initially.