(29 January 2008 7:00 pm)

NEW DELHI: To develop a wider appeal and experiment with a new marketing strategy, social networking company and website ibibo.com has tied up with Zee News to bring "Public Ka Vitt Mantri" (people's finance minister), a budget-based reality show.

"This is the first time we have tied up with a news channel to give a different dimension to our core business of social networking," ibibo.com GM (community marketing) Vivek Bahl told indiantelevision.com.

There will be a total of 10 episodes of 30 minutes each to be aired on Zee News at prime time, starting from 11 February. The contestants will tackle economic issues in relation to the coming budget.

The finalist will be chosen by former finance minister Yashwant Sinha and the public, and will be declared "Public Ka Vitt Mantri" a day before the budget.

To participate, contestants will have to log on to www.ibibo.com and click on "Public Ka Vitt Mantri" and answer key questions asked by senior financial experts and journalists from Zee News and Zee Business.

In addition, participants will also be required to write a blog on why s/he should be "Public Ka Vitt Mantri."

He will mark the participants on their financial acumen, and the viewers will vote for the participant of their choice either by SMS or by visiting www.ibibo.com.

Bahl said that this was a new revenue approach for the social networking site, "which has one million users and that can be checked from live data on the home page itself," he added.

The revenue model for the website is advertisements, and Bahl feels that this reality show is an extension of his company's business.

Founded in August 2006 as ibibo Web (P) Ltd, the product had a limited release in January 2007.

During its Beta release, ibibo.com garnered a registered base of over 950,000 people with high level of activity for its various social applications.

Ibibo.com currently has over four million blog posts, 250,000 questions and 500,000 answers, 130,000 polls and 15,000 opinions, Bahl said, stressing that every data is verifiable on the site.

He explained that unlike other such networks like Orkut, where users register to find back old friends, ibibo.com gets people to meet other new friends based on their areas of interest.

"We give people the context for meeting someone for the first time and exchange shared interests," said Bahl, adding that this can be in the form of a blog, a query on an issue of interest, a review of articles or films or anything else.

"This is the first time we have gone to a news channel using a serious issue of shared interest by millions of Indians, and this is yet another reason for people to network, only the platform here on a TV show will be much wider," Bahl said.

Ibibo.com's core revenue model will be driven by serving targeted advertising, he said.

ibibo.com is backed by multi-million media conglomerate, Naspers, which has principal operations in electronic media (including pay-television, Internet and instant-messaging, subscriber platforms and provision of allied technologies).

It also runs business in print media (including publishing, distribution and printing of magazines, newspapers and books, and the provision of private education services).

Naspers is headquartered at Cape Town, South Africa, with operations located in Sub-Saharan Africa, Greece, Cyprus, the Netherlands, the United States, Thailand, China, Russia, Poland, Brazil and India.