Hossein Jalali

I know a lot of people, especially Iranians who are always more amused about how a product/service generates money, or where the budget is coming from rather than the item themselves want to know more about what is going on behind the scene, how will it survive, WHO OWNS it (could it be Rafsanjani?) … well unfortunately this post will not answer any of those questions so you might as well not read any further. But for those of you who would like to know what features they should be expecting in the coming future I would like to explain two of our plans; one consideration though, we are talking about online, all of a sudden priorities may change, ideas may be erased, new ideas may be added.

One of the features that we have assigned priority one is Flash Games, yes! soon you will not only be able to play flash games but you will also be able to add new ones and see how much others enjoy them. Everyone loves spending time on these addictive low graphic games, especially in Farsi we really don’t have a Persian site that provides such games, soon that will change, the beta will only be a selection of 300 games while we prepare the ability for users to also upload games.

Geo-tagging is becoming quite important for videos, soon you will easily be able to mention the Country/City which the video was originated from. Aggregating content is always a good idea, it helps search engines give better result to the user and that is what we want make sure we do: Give you the result you are looking for, Geo-tagging is one step towards this.

OK, I do not want to overwhelm you with information, but there is something I’d like to point out about Kalam

Kalam is always looking for videos from inside Iran, we appreciate users who spend time to take videos and place them on the site and as probably many of you know we do take very good care of our users, We always have an eye open for high potential amateur video makers and help them grow, so if you like making films and would like others to see them while you make a buck, Kalam is here to help you out.

Every time I describe Kalam, people ask me: “so, you are trying to be another YouTube?”, I don’t blame them, I don’t blame you if you are thinking the same right now, hopefully by the end of this post you will see why we are not “another YouTube”.

Before I start listing the differences I would like to round up all I am going to say in one sentence:
We see YouTube as a huge ocean, it can be dirty, it can be hard to control, and it can be too huge! … Kalam is not and does not want to be an ocean, we are more like a Swimming Pool; we are clean, we are controlled (I will explain this), and we target the Middle East (for now at least).

So our baby is growing. It is as if it were yesterday when we were finalizing the Kalam Farsi website to go live and and see what the world’s reaction would be about such a site. One year has passed since that day and I can easily say more than 70% of Iranian Internet users have spent some time on the site. Now that a year has passed we have gained quite a lot of experience in terms of what users want from the site, how we should provide the service, and how to make life easier for video makers, but the million dollar question remains: how to get loyal viewers on the site? On pen and paper the answer is easy, but implementation is another story.

This is something I have been wanting to do for quite some time, but with all the work I have had in these past few months it seemed like it was never going to happen. I finally decided to take another approach, make a simple site and gradually add new plug-ins and features to the site.

I know at the moment it seems to be quite simple, give it a few weeks I promise to fill it up with more posts, images, and some extra sections.