First off, A horizontal portal refers to an Internet portal site that offers a broad range of content and services. Examples could be Rediff, Yahoo!, MSN, AOL etc.

Few days ago LiveMint covered In.com, Web18 launched In.com today. I just explored it and it is really good. Asutosh reported on his blog that Web18 bought the domain for 2 crores! The domain name is pretty cool, and if it is not a rumor then In.com is good domain to have, even if it costs them 2 crores. It goes well with the desi-web these days!

You need to have an invite to access the site .I left my mail id there and the message says it will take me a couple of weeks to get an invite. I also left my mobile number there but got this message. Got invitation, and even got shekhar@in.com as my ID there, which was again another cool ID to have!

In.com comes very close to which was needed for the desi-web for long time, a good UI & UX and easy to use unlike other portals Rediif, Indiatimes, Yahoo! etc… Here are some screenshots…

For now, In.com appears to be a massive meta-search and aggregator in the making; seems to be an attempt to make it the de-facto destination for searching for news, music, travel, videos, games and all kinds of classifieds. Here are main sections…

Videos: aggregating videos from Reuters, Blip.tv, YouTube, ishare, BigAdda and others, essentially aggregating embedded videos. Singh told ContentSutra that even when aggregating content from video-sharing sites, they’re filtering out R-rated content. Nevertheless, there’s a naughty video section, which isn’t “family viewing” (with videos like Big B**bs Karate).

Games: Singh told me that they’ve got around 7000 games; no tie-ups there, they’ve just added a number of embeddable games.

Email: has a tabbed interface with quick switching between tabs. Can attach a maximum of 5 files to an email. Like in case of gmail, text adverts currently appear on the right hand side. Also, there’s empty space on top which will be used for a banner advert. I can be reached at shekhar@in.com

Meta Search: Flight and hotel search tie-up with meta search Bezurk, Matrimonial tie-ups with Bharatmatrimony.com, Hamarijodi.com, LifepartnerIndia.com and WebIndia123 and product search tie-ups with Storeguru, Gadgets.in, Rediff, Indiaplaza, Ebay, Indiatimes, Futurebazaar, Homeshop18, Sify, Indmall and Sirindia

Advertising: Just one advertising spot on the content pages, and two spots on email.

Good thing is, In.com isn’t focusing on creating content, but is aggregating/enabling access to content of all types. That’s similar to what Google has done too with quite a few of their services. So I wouldn’t call it a horizontal portal.

Via: In.com | ContentSutra | ShekLOG