IndyaRocks launches Social IM integrating popular instant messaging platforms

IndyaRocks will be launching an integrated social instant messenger day after tomorrow. The messenger will integrate all the popular IM platforms like Yahoo, GTalk, MSN and AOL and the user can chat with their buddies from within the Indyarocks site itself. This will be a great viral play for IndyaRocks.

The chat application is launched in partnership with Geodesic and will be monetized via branded campaigns.

They claim to have about 3.2 million registered users now.

While IndyaRocks may still be small, as compared to Orkut / Facebook, I cant help but applaud their efforts at innovation. Slow and steady, they have kept up a constant stream of innovations and features for users. Be it launching new sections on the site or partnering with other content providers, they’ve constantly managed to make the site more complete and more engaging for the users.

MySpace India to launch ‘Secret Shows’

MySpace India is planning to launch their ‘Secret Shows’ concert in India. The identity of the performer will be a secret till the last moment. The first concert is planned for May 29 in Mumbai and will be free for MySpace users.

At long last, we’re seeing some signs of life @ MySpace India.

via ET

Is MySpace India headed for doom ?

Its been almost ten months since MySpace India launched.  At the time of  launch, they claimed to have 500K users with 30%  month to month growth. A lot more was suggested in terms of content tie-ups, TV, music etc.

Ten months down the line, we’re yet to hear or see anything spectacular from them. As per figures released by Comscore last week, MySpace sites had about 740K visitors from India. And that figure seems to include MySpace (US site) as well as MySpace India – so I’m guessing numbers for MySpace India would be even lower. Even though there’s a 110% year over year increase in the traffic to MySpace sites, its still puny as compared to Facebook’s 4 million and Orkut’s 12 million visitors.

And the microsites that were launched as part of MySpace India seem to indicate a similar picture – user participation is quite low.

DelhiHub has only 1000 followers, BangloreHub has 800 followers while MumbaiHub has only 958 followers. There are hardly any new forum topics in all of these hubs. And none of these hubs list the latest events as well. All of them still show events from july 2008.

Besides announcements related to a few key hires (Deep Malhotra from Google and Hari V Krishnan as Country Manager), I havent quite heard of any interesting activity at MySpace India at all.

MySpace India launched a few weeks after MySpace Korea. Since that time, MySpace Korea has closed its office, although the portal still is operational. Similarly, MySpace Netherlands closed down because it couldnt make any headway in that market.

Along the same lines, is MySpace India headed for doom as well ?

India Social Networking traffic increases by 51%

Indian traffic to social networking sites increased by 51% year over year with about 19 million visitors to social networing sites in December 2008.

Orkut still tops the list with a total of 12.8 million visitors and a Y-o-Y change of 81%. Facebook came in second with about 4 million visitors but Y-o-Y at about 150%. hi5 witnessed the biggest Y-oY gains with about 182% increase in traffic.

Apne homebread social networks iBibo and BigAdda didnt fare so well, which each seeing a Y-o-Y decline of 50 % and 25% in number of visitors.

via Comscore

Reliance BigAdda dropped from Google’s search index

Seems that Google has dropped a bazooka on Reliance ADAG’s social networking portal BigAdda.  When you search for ‘Bigadda’ in the big G, the only result from the site that shows up is Amitabh’s blog as result number 2. Other than that, I could’nt find a single search result till at least the 3-4 page.

See below (click for bigger photo):

Read more

IndyaRocks launches SMS based calendar

IndyaRocks has launched a new SMS based calendar feature for their user community. Users can setup reminders for different days and events and users are notified via SMS alerts. Event remdiners can repeat or be one time events.

As per Kalyan, the founder, this feature was introduced since it was requested by the IndyaRocks community. I love the folks @ IndyaRocks. Slow and steady — they keep on launching some awesome features.

Scrabulous caves in, shut down for US and Canada Facebook users

Ever since Scrabulous became a superhit Facebook app and got coverage from leading media (about how they were making more than $20k per month), controversy has always followed it everywhere.

After Hasbro (who has rights to the Scrabble game) launched its own Scrabble application on Facebook, it slapped a lawsuit against Scrabulous and its founders – Rajat and Jayant Agarwalla from Calcutta.

It seems that the brothers have caved in and the Scrabulous application has been shut down for Facebook users from US and Canada. The application is still available to facebook users from elsewhere.

Orkut Apps – Indian apps dominate

Its been almost three months since Orkut apps went live. It seemed like a good time to visit and review some of the most popular Orkut apps and see how well they’re faring.

Orkut has the largest Indian audience amongst all social networks and not surprisingly, it seems that Indian apps seem to the dominate the top 10 list. At the time of this writing, six out of the top 10 Orkut apps were either targeted towards the Indian audience or were built by Indian companies.

Lets look at three of the most popular Orkut apps below:

Chakpak Movies: This Erasmic funded company’s Orkut app seems to have caught up with Indian Orkutters like wildfire. Install the app and you can rate – review movies, view celebrity wallpapers, compare movie tastes with friends etc. One of the most popular and engaging features of this app is the quizzes — I’ve seen so many friends within my own social graph taking the Chakpak movie quiz.

As per Chakpak folks, below are stats related to their app:

Number of app installs: about 0.5 million users have installed the app

Average daily signups: 20 – 25 10,000 – 20,000 average new signups daily

Time spent on the app (engagement): exact number not provided, but in the lower double digit minutes (ie, between 10-20 minutes)
Read more

IndyaRocks launches Eros Entertainment channel, integrates Google Maps

IndyaRocks has partnered with Eros Entertainment to launch a branded community channel. The deal is a win-win scenario for both parties involved – IndyaRocks gets access to new, interesting content related to movies and for Eros, this is just another channel for movie promotion and branding.

Eros Entertainments YouTube channel is here.

IndyaRocks will also launch another feature next week, where all your friends can be plotted on a map. This gives a nice perspective of how your social graph is geographically spread across the world, and you can find – make friends based on a particular region.

The top open source social networking platforms

Here’s a list of some of the most promising open source social networking platforms for those of you who might be interested.

1) BuddyPress

BuddyPress was started by Andy Peatling as a series of plugins for WordPress MU that will turn it into a fully functional social network. It was acquired by AutoMattic, founders of WordPress, and has been launched as a standalone open source project. Features include extended profiles, personal blogs, messaging, friends, groups, albums etc. Few of these features have been launched already while several others are under active development.

While BuddyPress still has a long way to go, it definitely seems to be the most promising open source social networking platform out there. Not only do the founders have the success of WordPress under their belt, the total number of active WordPress installs provides a ready made base for  BuddyPress installs as well.

2) Insoshi

Insoshi is a Ruby on Rails based, open source social networking project and has been incubated by YCombinator. Michael Hartl, the founder, is the author of Railspace: Building a Social Networking Website with RoR. While Insoshi is also under active development, current feature set includes activity feeds, extended profiles with comment walls, friends, forums, blogs, messaging etc.

While Insoshi is awesome, one of the aspects that probably may hamper public adoption is that the project is RoR based and there still arent enough folks with RoR skills (I speak relative to number of folks with PHP skills).

Read more

Next Page »