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Rediff releases micro sitcom ‘Ram & Ria’ on Rediff iShare
MUMBAI: Rediff.com‘s social publishing platform for videos, music and photos Rediff iShare has released India‘s first English micro sitcom, to offer Indian users drama, action and comedy all packed in a short film series entitled as Ram & Ria. Conceptualised and produced by PixelKraft, a Media Solutions company based in Chennai, Ram & Ria series features the life of a typical south Indian man and his wife, and showcases their dilemmas as they go about living their life in a metro. The comic short series is full of real-life situations and highlights the humour in the everyday situations in short films of three minutes. Commenting on this initiative, Rediff.com VP marketing Manish Agarwal said, “With broadband becoming a reality in India, more and more people are logging online to watch entertaining videos. Rediff iShare as platform offers a tremendous opportunity for professional content owners to catch these audiences which are shifting from TV to the Internet for entertainment.” “We are delighted with the response we have got so far to the first sitcom series on Rediff iShare, and we expect more such Indian content producer to go live on Rediff iShare,” added Agarwal. The series, which has gone live recently, has already got a great response from audiences online – wherein over 50,000 users have already watched it and have left interesting remarks on the site, stated an official release. The creative director of the series Siddharth Kumar said, “The inspiration to launch the Ram & Ria series came from the dearth of contemporary Indian content, and we strongly believe that there is great market for real content being produced for alternate media‘s like the Internet and mobile.”
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With 57 per cent single new users, Ashley Madison rebrands as discreet dating platform
Platform says majority of new members now identify as single
INDIA: Ashley Madison is shedding the “married-dating” label that defined it for two decades, repositioning itself as a platform for discreet dating in what it calls the post-social media age.
The rebrand, unveiled in India on 27 February, 2026, marks a structural shift in business model and identity. Once synonymous with married dating, the company now describes itself as the “premier destination for discreet dating” under a new tagline: Where Desire Meets Discretion.
The pivot is data-driven. Internal figures show that 57 per cent of global sign-ups between 1 January and 31 December, 2025 identified as single: a notable departure from the platform’s married core. The company argues that its community has already evolved beyond its original positioning.
“In an age where our lives have been constantly put on public display, privacy has become the new luxury,” said Ashley Madison chief strategy officer Paul Keable. He framed the platform’s offering as “ethical discretion” for singles, separated, divorced and non-monogamous users seeking private connections.
The shift also taps into wider digital fatigue. A global survey conducted by YouGov for Ashley Madison, covering 13,071 adults across Australia, Brazil, Canada, Germany, India, Italy, Mexico, Spain, Switzerland, the UK and the US, found mounting discomfort with hyper-public online lives.
Among dating app users, 30 per cent cited constant swiping and messaging as a source of fatigue, while 24 per cent pointed to pressure to curate public-facing profiles and early personal disclosure. Some 27 per cent said fears of screenshots or information being shared contributed to exhaustion; an equal share cited unwanted attention.
The retreat from oversharing appears broader. According to the survey, 46 per cent of adults actively try to keep most aspects of their life private online. Only 8 per cent feel comfortable sharing most aspects publicly, while 35 per cent say they are becoming more selective about what they disclose.
Ashley Madison is betting that this cultural recalibration towards controlled visibility can be monetised. By doubling down on privacy infrastructure and reframing itself around discretion rather than infidelity, the company is attempting to convert reputational baggage into a premium proposition.
