jump to navigation

Christmas Rings a Bell November 12, 2009

Posted by simarprit in Christmas.
Tags: , , , ,
add a comment

As Thanksgiving Day comes closer, my mind starts looking at what all is happening this year on Christmas and Holidays. I thought my Christmas “fixation”(if I may say so) would end as Compare no longer owns one of the first Christmas Sites in the world Christmas Carnivals – I don’t see it happening. My interest and my involvement remains.

I revisited ChristmasCarnivals.com yesterday and I was thrilled to see the new getup of the site, it looks different and also the integration with Twitter part of it, @ChristmasC has become the largest Christmas Brand on Twitter, started much ahead of its time the Twitter account promises to offer goodies to one and all.

I would love to hear your ideas about what all we should do in Christmas Carnivals to make it  more useful to all age groups and all geographies (Yes, we still maintain Christmas Carnivals)

Christmas Carnivals December 16, 2008

Posted by simarprit in Christmas, Festivals, websites.
Tags: , , , , , ,
add a comment

How do you name a site, Simar?  Why did you name your Valentine site – MyDearValentine.com? Why did you name your Christmas Site Christmas Carnivals and why not Christmas XYZ or XYZ Christmas  http://christmascarnivals.com – Questions like this are put at me very often> My answer – There is a lot to naming a site and I take my job of naming a site seriously.

Let me be in the spirit of Christmas and state the story of naming of Christmas Carnivals and why it is plural and not singular.

Every year since 1941 the downtown New Delhi, referred as Connaught Place plays host to a Christmas Carnival and is all decked up for the Christmas. To us the festival of Diwali is associated with Mela, so Compare went ahead and developed a site DiwaliMela.com and as Christmas had a strong association with Carnival we desired to keep the name Christmas Carnival, however the registrar’s representative did a mistake and booked ChristmasCarnivals.com instead. By the time we realized what had happened, the name was gone.  We did go ahead and block other extension .net but decided to stick with ChristmasCarnivals.com – we worked further to evolve CC as we refer it to, as the single largets place for information about Christmas. There was a big learning to do, and we did go through the whole exercise of understanding Christmas and the festivities around it.

Though the site came up in 1999, it was only in 2007 – did I actually get to see the real Christmas Carnival when I was in the United States around Christmas time. The inputs I gathered were put by the team to great use and we worked on improving CC.

I am proud of the fact that ChristmasCarnivals.com has emerged as the leading Christmas site and about a million souls from all over the world stop at ChristmasCarnivals.com.

So there is a lot  to a name provided you can live to it.

So my 2 cents: Keep the domain name exactly what you want the site to be.

Goodbye Christmas Carnivals Website! May 31, 2008

Posted by simarprit in Christmas, Internet, portals, Review, websites.
Tags: , , , , , , ,
add a comment

Way back in 1999, I was not taken seriously on my attempts to develop a Christmas site. What does a “Sardar” (Sikh) know about Christmas, and what are his credentials. Of course I knew just a little better than nothing about Christmas and had never been to a Church except as a tourist, so I had no credentials, per se.  I knew something about sites, and that got me going. Nine years of profitable ownership later, http://www.christmascarnivals.com is sold. Sold to Side Show Ventures, I am sure Jimmy Sutton  would be a far better owner-manager to my absentee landlord approach. 

Jim, congratulations on your acquiring Christmas Carnivals, it is a good site which offers lot of information on Christmas. It has been very close to my heart , and I would add a lot about the site to this post in next few days.

Let us have a farewell Q & A.

Q: What was the need to design and develop  a website for Christmas? 

A: I don’t need to develop websites, and surely not for a living. To me developing a website is picking up a canvas and letting it known as a painting. On a more serious note, way back in 1999 there were many sites on Christmas, but there was a need for the site on Christmas. Christmas Carnivals was developed to cover that niche. Christmas Carnivals was also developed as a spoke, to the hub and spoke model of  http://www.dgreetings.com. DGreetings, at that time had no significant section on Christmas and Christmas Carnivals acted as a spoke. It was you scratch my back, I scratch yours.  Having said that, Christmas Carnivals is very close to my heart, and would remain so. Every year, the site had a new look and a new treatment, we kept on changing the site

 More to come…