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Sumitr - another Indian social network launches
Sumitr is a new social network targeted towards Indians. Sumitr literally means ‘good friend’. Sumitr has most of the fan fare that you would expect from a social network. Sign up, complete your profile and invite your friends from Yahoo, Google, MSN or Outlook Express to join. You can also associate your spouse and children’s profile to your own.
“Taaza Khabar” is supposed to be an activity stream for all your friends. Upload your mp3 songs to the “MixTape” section and you can create your own ‘mixtape’ and share it with other users. Upload your photos to the ‘Yaadein’ section and share it with your friends and family (they have a 2 GB upload limit for free accounts). Challenge your friends to a bet in the ‘Baazi’ section.
While Sumitr is definitely way better than DesiMartini, Yaari, BigAdda in terms of design and implementation, it still leaves a lot to be desired. For starters, the dark background is a bit of turn-off. I couldnt locate any privacy settings as well. The only implicit privacy setting I believe is that you can view the photos etc. of only the friends in your network. Apparently, privacy can be set while uploading the photos or creating a new mixtape - you can make them either private, public or collaborative.
There’s just something that I cant put my finger on - but for some reason, Sumitr lacks the punch that would motivate me to give up on Orkut & Facebook and start using Sumitr. However, I’m not going to dismiss them just yet. For starters, they just went live. In addition, Muktesh & Ravi, the founders, have some prior entrepreneurial success. They founded www.justindian.com, a classifieds site for Indians in the US and sold it to Sulekha in 2004.
I’ve asked Muktesh to clarify on how they plan to compete with the popularity of Orkut, Facebook, IndyaRocks and if they have a business model. I’ll update the post with his response.
If you need an invite, leave a comment with your email below.
Update: As per Muktesh, their target audience is different than that of Orkut and Facebook. Here’s what he had to say -”We are focused on NRIs and their families. Sumitr is built for the Indian 30 somethings with kids. There are social networks like Facebook and Orkut that cater to a younger audience and are more for meeting and making new friends then keeping in touch with old friends. No one caters to our needs (30 somethings).”
While they definitely seem to be targeting a niche demographic, which forms a major bulk of the NRIs in the US (those who came during the Web 1.0 boom). Lets see how well Sumitr resonates with this 30 something NRI demographic.
(No Ratings Yet)
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14 Responses to “Sumitr - another Indian social network launches”
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“they have a 2 GB upload limit for free accounts” - Does that mean they have paid accounts too?
“Upload your mp3 songs” - If others or at least your friends can download/listen to the music, I don’t think they need to advertise the site anywhere.
It will be interesting to see how sumitr and music labels deal with copyright issues.
Oh no !! Not another SN site. I’m sick of these clones. I wish people would come up with something more innovative,
Hi Gaurav, yes we will have paid accounts eventually. W.r.to to the MP3 songs no you cannot download songs from your friends mixtapes. Only the person who has uploaded the songs can download them.
Hi Raseel, it is not that bad, is it? We have a billion people and about 50 Million outside India and there is still a huge pie left. We think that as a global citizen you will have to have multiple accounts. One for professional purposes, one for every one including non-indians and acquaintances and one for close friends and family friends. We would say we serve the third category.
Signup at Sumitr, create your Parivaar profile and you can interact as a family.
Muktesh,
Thanks for the clarification. I wonder if you can share what would be the difference b/w a free account and a premium account? I think this brings an interesting twist to an SN.
Pranav/Muktesh,
Can you provide me an invite - gaurav|dot|sharma|at|thinkmantradotcom
Gaurav, it is open signup. You don’t need an invite. If you just want to manage your digital content, (Music, Photos etc.,) then you can just signup and use it by yourself. However if you want to share/collaborate with your good friends, you can invite them to join you on Sumitr.
I would like to say that the photos section Yaadein at par and better in presentation than the leading photo management sites. There is nothing like MixTape so far as part of a Social Network. And MixTape and Yaadein are integrated so that you can attach music to your slideshows either from your collection of music or we play by default some tunes.
I hope you come visit us at Sumitr and signup and don’t forget to bring your Parivaar with you (if you are married with/without kids)
Regards
Muktesh
I don’t think the quality checking has been proper. A whole lot of time Application Error message comes up, the usability factors are not considered, the English in many places are bad (or funny -like the confirmation mails address you as ‘Sir’!). Also, the owners say the site is for 30+ and NRIs. I don’t get any indication of them from the site. The people and messages all look the same as other clones.
Dear Ramesh,
Thanks for checking out Sumitr and for the feedback. I really appreciate it. We will make sure we will fix the issues you mentioned. I would really appreciate it if you can point us to the specific issues you mentioned , especially like application errors (that is bad).
regards
Muktesh
Muktesh,
Here is my take on Sumitr and I also added a screenshot with the error.
http://www.gsharma.com/sumitr-yet-another-social-network/
Gaurav, thanks for the screenshot. Is Ramesh and you the same? Looks like you answered to the comment I posted above.
Anyway, thanks for the screenshots and we will take care of it.
The site offers an iPod Shuffle just if one add 10 friends (and all 10 of them sign up). But once the 10 people sign up, the site doesnt say anything about the iPod Shuffle! Wondering how the winner will be intimated about the gift…
@Muktesh - No, I am not Ramesh :). I read his comment and then found the error.
Mukesh,
i appreciate ur thoughts behind brining up this site. in the intial stages ppl has to know the sole purpose of this . i dont wont to compare with other networks like orkut or facebook becoz each has it own style. i suggest to take few steps ahead and make advanced features unique to sumitr. i wish to assit u in this.
here are few of my obseravtions
1.if i invite a person we shld me mitr in both the profiles simultaneously, but now, still the person can again send an invite to me saying to join. i feel this shld not happen.
2. settings has to be enhanced providing more options.
3.parivar is a good thought.
4. Mixtape will gain prominence as it is new in such kind of social networks
wish to be part of sumitr….. a growing site