StartupDunia » India Social Networking

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

pranav — Tue, 29 Jul 2008 15:27:13 +0000

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.

Comments

August 20, 2008, lowtechgal commented: As far as mobile apps for meeting people goes, check out RockeTalk. Neat application for voice chat with video and slide shows. Try m.rocketalk.com from your phone or www.rocketalk.com from the web to download.
August 23, 2008, Kalinga commented: The main problem with facebook is, face book doesn't support "freedom of speech" and suppresses information that administrators don't like. That is the main reason for unpopularity and irreputation of facebook.

Orkut Apps - Indian apps dominate

pranav — Mon, 21 Jul 2008 15:59:08 +0000

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)

Slapster & Crapster:

Games2win is behind these two time-sink apps, where you can slap your friends and crap on your friends (you read that right) instead of just scrapping them. Dont know why or how - but they seem to have caught on to people’s fancy. Stats related to these apps follows below. While I wont be surprised if these numbers are exaggerated, but having two apps in the top 10 is none the less giving Games2Win some great street cred.

Slapster:

Number of app installs: 1.5 million users have installed the app

Number of daily plays: 50,000 plays daily.

Crapster:

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

Number of daily plays: 30,000 plays daily.

SMS Me:

This app is developed by MyCantos, a SMS based social networking company. Using the app, you can send SMS to your friends or to any numbers in India.

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

Number of SMS sent via app: 6 million

It is likely that the current top 10 list may change pretty soon, considering that apps were rolled out for all Orkut users just last weekend.Â That might push some of the apps focused on Indian users down the list and bring others into the limelight.

I’m not a huge fan of applications for just one reason - they dilute the user experience. Its for the same reason that my Facebook usage spiraled downwards - all the application related updates from my friends was screwing up the entire experience for me. At one time, I had several Facebook apps as part of my profile. Then, one fine day, I just went and removed every single one of them.Â If I had lots of spare time at hand, probably I would have indulged in all those time sink Facebook apps.

Comments

July 22, 2008, kerala commented: Hey Pranav, The app directory is different based on your language preference. In simple words, Brazil users see a different app directory and buddy poke leads there. In the India specific app directory chakpak and slapster leads I guess.
July 23, 2008, pranav commented: Kerala, if that is indeed the case, then all English users should see the same app directory..and the Indian apps seem to dominate that list then. Are you 100% sure about this language based difference ? -p
July 24, 2008, tech2blog commented: strange to see sites like chakpak,minglebox flaunt their alexa ranks based on orkut page views beacuse of their apps. how good are they for their stand alone site.iAM NOT SURE IF THEY SHOULD BECOME SO DEPENDENT on other popular social nets.
July 24, 2008, kerala commented: Pranav, Just go to your orkut profile, change your language settings to English UK or English US and then see the app directories. Both will show you different listings. Indian users by default gets English US under the new orkut.co.in domain. same for brazil with co.br domain and rest of the world gets on orkut.com .
July 28, 2008, pranav commented: thanks for sharing that tip kerala. I wasnt aware of it.
August 23, 2008, Kalinga commented: Orkut is able to attract Indians but Facebook is not able to attract Indians. I have few Indian friends on Facebook.

IndyaRocks launches Eros Entertainment channel, integrates Google Maps

pranav — Wed, 16 Jul 2008 15:01:11 +0000

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.

Chinese firm TenCent signs deal to acquire 50% of MIH India Global

pranav — Wed, 18 Jun 2008 16:10:07 +0000

TenCent Holdings, a leading Chinese portal, has secured an option to acquire upto 50% of MIH India Global Ltd. MIH operates the portals iBibo, Dwaar and OneFamily.

TenCent plans to invest $7.5 million in MIH India Global over the next three years.

MIH India Global is backed by media conglomerate Naspers, which, also owns a 35.5% stake in TenCent. Nice !!

via release

Comments

June 20, 2008, Sonia Malhotra commented: $ 7.5 Million for 50% stake in MIH seems unbelievable......so many startups get this much in their first round itself. There's much more than seen here. I think the Balti is worth more than that..... :-) Sonia Malhotra Internetpreneur www.GhumiChale.com India's First Hotels Comparison Engine

The top open source social networking platforms

pranav — Wed, 28 May 2008 17:51:10 +0000

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 forÂ 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).

3)Â Elgg

Elgg started out as an open source social networking project, focusing on the education niche. While the platform had a lot of cutting edge features like support for OpenID, FOAF, API, extensibility via plugins etc., an Elgg powered site wasnt very easy to install and configure. Having tried it out myself, I ran into several issues related to feature and version compatibility. Based on my use, I got the feeling that when Elgg started out, it was never meant to be a social networking platform and was merely stretching itself to fit itself into the genre.

Having said that, Elgg seems to be relaunching this summer with a complete rewrite of its core engine. Lets see how the new version pans out.

4)Â PeopleAggregator

PeopleAggregator is an open source social networking platform from Marc Canter’s BroadbandMechanics.Â Users can either opt for a hosted version or download and host it themselves. Features include APIs, widgets, blogging, groups, profile pages etc. Marc has been a staunch supporter of open standards and hence, PA does provide support for several open standards like OpenID, FOAF, media RSS, OpenEvents.

iTimes, the recently launched social networking site from Indiatimes, is based on PA code.

5) AroudMe

AroundMe is an open source social networking project with Swedish origins. The project has changed substantially since the last time I tried it out. It now comprises of three products - the Personal Identity, the Identity Server and the Collaboration Server. OpenID is at the heart of the project and all identities seem to be using OpenID for authentication.

6) PHPizabi

PHPizabi is a freeware social networking product that has been downloaded about 172,132 times already. While the core engine and a few modules can be downloaded for free, a community marketplace has evolved on the site, where users can buy special modules developed by other community members.Â The company also charges a fee for removing their branding.

7) OpenPNE

OpenPNE is a Japanese open social networking platform. While there are English instructions to install OpenPNE, rest of the project will not make much sense unless you know Japanese.

8 ) MediaWiki based social networking

Wikia, the for profit search engine launched by Jimmy Wales, released some of their social networking components as open source. The components extend MediaWiki (one of the most popular Wiki platforms - WikiPedia is based on MediaWiki) with several social networking features like profile creation, avatars, friends, comment wall etc. You can see some of these features in action on some of the sub sites hosted on Wikia.

Comments

May 28, 2008, rajesh moorjani commented: thanks, this is a great list. even though it is not a direct open source "social networking" tool, i think drupal deserves a mention in this list too. drupal has all the social networking features as modules, and one can make an orkut-like portal using drupal with hardly any programming. rajesh
May 28, 2008, pranav commented: @rajesh, I intentionally left out Drupal and Joomla, since they're more CMS than social networking engines. Yes, there exist modules for drupal and joomla has the community builder component, but I've tried my hand at both -- and customizing these modules / components to my needs resulted in some real ugly code. In other words, building a social networking site using these modules - components is not a very easy - straightforward task. That's why I chose to leave them out of this list. But yes, Drupal - Joomla - either of them can be used as well.
May 28, 2008, Brent McConnell commented: Great list of new and upcoming software. I would recommend that ICEcore be evaluated for inclusion in this list. ICEcore is the open source equivalent of Novell's Teaming + Conferencing and has some really cool collaboration and social networking features. Each user has access to their own set of knowledge tools (blog, wiki, discussion forums, file folders, etc). Plus, users have the ability to create teams that have access to a similar tool set and invite others to join and collaborate. All these features are also indexed and searchable from one index (even attached files) which makes finding things a snap. The next version of ICEcore (now in early Alpha and available from SourceForge) comes with Twitter like features so that users can track one another and share content with other ICEcore users. Again, thanks for a great list and continue the good work.
May 29, 2008, Sudhir commented: Thanks Pranav, A very great compile..
May 29, 2008, pranav commented: @sudhir, glad to help :-)
July 26, 2008, Ramesh commented: Thanks Pranav, for the effort. Its really good. I didnt find Dolphin in the above list mentioned by you? Looking to hear more such articles from you. Cheers!!

WTF - MingleBox makes apps for Orkut ?

pranav — Fri, 09 May 2008 03:40:30 +0000

Yes - MingleBox powers two Orkut apps - iPoke and Teen Patti.

As screwed up as that sounds - MingleBox, which, is supposed to be a social networking site for Indian colleges and universities (they changed focus from being a generic SocNet site) makes apps for Orkut, another social networking site.

Strategically, it makes a lot of sense for Minglebox from a marketing perspective. Hope that the apps spread virally within the huge Indian demographic on Orkut and lure them over to MingleBox. But this sounds as whacked as MySpace building apps for Facebook.

If anyone can figure how Orkut benefits from this (other than getting two additional apps into their fledgling app repository), can you kindly enlighten me ?

Comments

May 10, 2008, Sachin commented: Hi Pranav, This is quite simple ..more people will play/use these games/apps and more they will be addicted to these and visit Orkut. Isn't it? Then Orkut will earn via adsense.
May 10, 2008, Pawan Sahay commented: Hi Pranav, I agree with your point of view.It does sound screwed up.If you look at it...they probably had the applications ready and just integrated it with orkut on a later stage.(i mean not built it specificaly for orkut, as i have heard of the names before As orkut has more number of users and a solid community ,this is one way to market their applications out. But comparing Minglebox with MySpace wont be the correct thing to do...i understand the analogy (one social n/w website building apps for another one)...but if people do start using their apps on orkut and if it becomes popular..they have nothing to loose. Talking about monetary benefits, I dont see any....
May 11, 2008, Abhishek Goyal commented: Orkut has no reason to disallow their apps. And I am not sure if there is any disadvantage for MingleBox in building these apps.
May 11, 2008, pranav commented: @abhishek - minglebox has everything to gain and nothing to lose. however, i dont see how orkut really benefits -- other than getting 2 additional apps on its opensocial platform
May 12, 2008, Rabi Gupta commented: see, in my opinion Orkut is making MingleBox users (who most probably have an Orkut account too..) to cling to their site (and not MingleBox) for a larger time period. On, the other hand, MingleBox gets it's own advertisement and tries to target users who are already over Orkut. But in my opinion, I dont need 2 websites (i already have an account over all of these SNS, but dont use more than 2 ;-))...to just do Social networking.. Do you?? Moreover I dont think that MingleBox has the competency to release their own APIs so as to support App building, since it's a cool concept they tried it other way round :-D...
May 28, 2008, debina commented: i'll watch ramayan every day. i don't missed it nor an day.if imiss,i'll feel sad.infact'gurmeet&debi are cooooooool.

Is Facebook India launching soon ?

pranav — Tue, 06 May 2008 06:26:50 +0000

Is Facebook India launching sometime soon ?

It appears that Facebook founder, Mark Zuckerberg is in India currently, as evident from contents of an internal letter published by TechCrunch today. So, what is he doing in India ? Could it be related to an impending India launch ?

After all, MySpace India officially launched a few weeks back. And even though Facebook grew at a much higher rate in India, it considerably lags Orkut - the social networking leader in the Indian market. Probably, Facebook wants to counter these attempts and enter the market before its too late to the party.

If you have any tips, feel free to leave them in the comments or drop me an email.

Comments

May 6, 2008, naman commented: HEY PRANAV, even i noticed the same. was to write about this media attention strategy that Zuckerberg successfully applied. Atleast he was able to get your attention. soon there will be more blogs talking about faceboook's Inida launch. One line in a letter can get create so much noise. this is what i called truly light and innovative marketing.

Desiji - Yet Another Social network for Indians

pranav — Tue, 29 Apr 2008 00:43:54 +0000

As if there arent enough social networks already competing for the Indian audience, Desiji is yet another social network targeted towards Indians.

The site has the regular fan fare you’d normally expect from a social network such as user profiles, friends, groups/networks, events, videos, classifieds etc.

As per the founders, here’s how they think they’re different:

1) We think Indian as a global then just a local

2) Offer 1 to 1 as well as 1 to Many peer social networking just made for Indian

3) Concept : “Connect, Share, Market”.

Users connect by joining unique concept called Network, which could be
1) regional 2) school 3) college 4) professional and 5) group/interest

4) Focused on Indian between age 15-65

Honestly, I dont think these are any differentiation factors at all.Â I think Desiji does not have the extra punch that would be needed to compete in a market dominated by Orkut, Facebook et. al. Lets see how long they can stay alive and take a shot at the Indian social networking market.

Comments

April 29, 2008, step2blog commented: their logo copied from kijiji good start
April 29, 2008, naman commented: indians SocNet should try and build around orkut. people dont have an apetite to join multiple SocNets
April 29, 2008, aj commented: Per their web site says... "desi" and ji" are separate words. In my opinion Orkut, Facebook, et.... focus on global community.....vs desiji just focus on Indian community worldwide. Its seems just made for Indian. I guess concept makes sense. Lets see how they work it out to make it better. Good Luck.
May 4, 2008, Prashant commented: I wrote about a few of the players in the Indian Social networking space just a few hours ago. I totally share your opinion of just too many social networks being out there. Do let me know on what you think of this. http://maskytech.blogspot.com/2008/05/indian-social-networking-mess.html Cheers:)
May 5, 2008, pranav commented: @prashant you left out itimes, minglebox etc..
May 15, 2008, Randhir commented: None of the sites(indyarocks, desiji, yaari etc ..) have the professional presentation .. They just want to get lucky on the cheap I guess. I just can't believe how and why minglebox got 10 Million, somebody really have to take that money back !!
May 27, 2008, Web Hosting commented: I like the way this site looks. So many networking sites in the market now. Difficult to choose a good one.

Amitabh blogs on BigAdda - what a shitty gimmick from BigAdda

pranav — Mon, 21 Apr 2008 23:44:28 +0000

Scene 1, Take N:

Execs at BigAdda, R-ADAG’s social networking site, nervously thinking of ways to counter MySpace India’s launch.

Exec 1: “Quick…We need something to counter PR efforts from MySpace India’s launch today. Can we pull off a rabbit from the hat ? ”

Exec 2: “Hey, why not ask Amitabh Bachchan (who happens to be Anil Ambani’s buddy) to start a blog on BigAdda ? It seems really creative and will help counter MySpace India’s announcement.”

Exec 1: “But will it work ? Will BigB be open to the idea of blogging ?”

Exec 2: “Who cares ? We’ll have what we need to make big announcement for the day.”

So, BigAdda comes up with the shitty idea of having Amitabh Bachchan to start a blog.

The entire concept seems to have been put together in a jiffy in a totally lame manner.Â Here’s why:

1) Even though BigAdda has a ‘blogs‘ section of its own, the BigB blog is hosted on a separate, WordPress MU install.

2) If you want, you can join BigB and sign up for your own blog on BigAdda - click here to signup - and then flaunt to your mom-GF that you blog alongside BigB. Apparently, the WordPress install is configured to accept signups - see the screenshot below (click for bigger version):

More on this topic in follow up post tomorrow.

Comments

April 22, 2008, Nishant Kyal commented: And also Big B is sitting the nights up to compose posts for the blog which put essays to shame. Seems like Big B was waiting for this rare opportunity to express himself and can't thank BigAdda enough .. lol
April 22, 2008, Ajitesh commented: I swear on that! I tried and easily got the access to wordpress signup window. Not sure of what the guys at BigAdda.com doing?
April 22, 2008, Ankur commented: I think there is a need for you to look at the language you use in your writings. If I were to explain this in your language -- please try to avoid using shitty word like "shitty" in your posts ;). Thank you
April 22, 2008, Ankur commented: *words
April 23, 2008, starblogger commented: i guess the way the blog is written is totally correct. ADAG should mind the kind of news releases it makes.totally non sense.It has also written an article in alootechie about lots and lots of philppene and chine girls using bigadda.what kind of news releases are those.They want show that it is a big advantage for bigadda and the users will be able to interact with those girls.shame on the ADAG GUYS
April 28, 2008, India Mobile Forum commented: Registration has been disabled. LOL
May 2, 2008, Pavan Metri commented: Amitabh should leavy maha actually. He has done nothing for Maharashtra. Majhi Marathi Majhi ladha.............................................. Bhag jao mumbai se...
June 21, 2008, ruhi commented: hi amitabh uncle,aap mere dad jese ho.....me ek middle class family se blong karti hoon...lekin main sapne is aasman se bhi unche dekhti hoon...jab kuch log muje kehte he ki me kuch nahi ban sakti...tab main apni aankhe band karti hoon aur aapke bare me sochti hoon...aur fir dubara apne sapne pure karne ki koshish me lag jaati hoon...muje ek bahut badi actress banna he...actually meri life se jaada muje us unchai se pyar he jaha me pahuchna chahti hoon...agar me famous nahi ho pai to me jinda bhi nahi reh paungi...aur muje famous hone ki himmat aap se hi mailti he...aap ko bhi begnin me kitne logo ne looser kaha tha lekin ab shayad vahi log aapki winnin ke fan ban chuke honge.....aap itne famous isliye ho qki aap ek sachche aur talented ho .......thanks to ur mother and father jinki vajah se aap jaisa insaan hume mila specially muje........thank u so much uncle.....ur daughter .....future ki sabse famous girl ruhi naz
June 21, 2008, ruhi naz commented: hi amitabh uncle,aap mere dad jese ho.....me ek middle class family se blong karti hoon...lekin main sapne is aasman se bhi unche dekhti hoon...jab kuch log muje kehte he ki me kuch nahi ban sakti...tab main apni aankhe band karti hoon aur aapke bare me sochti hoon...aur fir dubara apne sapne pure karne ki koshish me lag jaati hoon...muje ek bahut badi actress banna he...actually meri life se jaada muje us unchai se pyar he jaha me pahuchna chahti hoon...agar me famous nahi ho pai to me jinda bhi nahi reh paungi...aur muje famous hone ki himmat aap se hi milti he...aap ko bhi begnin me kitne logo ne looser kaha tha lekin ab shayad vahi log aapki winnin ke fan ban chuke honge.....aap itne famous isliye ho qki aap ek sachche aur talented ho .......thanks to ur mother and father jinki vajah se aap jaisa insaan hume mila specially muje........thank u so much uncle.....ur daughter .....future ki sabse famous girl ruhi naz

Startup Updates: Improved Lipik.in, IndyaRocks goes mobile, Burrp TV launches

pranav — Sun, 20 Apr 2008 22:06:33 +0000

Lipik.in, which I’d covered earlier, has just launched several new, interesting features. To begin with, they have added support for Punjabi, Kannada and Tamil and several other languages are planned for this year. They have also added support for searching the web using multilingual queries - a super cool feature. Below is a screenshot showing search results for the term à¤®à¤¹à¤¾à¤¤à¥à¤®à¤¾.Â They have also added support for Blogger - so, you can directly post your Indic content, authored on Lipik, to your Blogger account.

I’m a firm believer in localization of content to Indian languages, and I think Lipik is taking the right steps in that direction. Give it a spin and let me know your thoughts.

Meanwhile, IndyaRocks keeps its innovation engine humming. They’ve released a mobile version of the site, which can be accessed at http://m.indyarocks.com. Almost all the features of the online version - people search, browser profiles, friend requests, messaging, graffiti wall, SMS - are available in the mobile version too. Meanwhile, they also launched friend updates (friend feed) for the online version.

Burrp has launched Burrp TV, a slick, TV listings guide for Indian TV lovers. They currently have a guide for 15 channels and have nice features like SMS reminders, broad searching related to TV shows etc. In terms of sticky content related to TV shows, I’d hope that they develop this content over time — passionate Indian TV fans form a strong community around such sticky content (See IndiaForums for an example). I’m not a TV aficionado and will hardly end up using Burrp TV, but it’d indeed be a pretty useful service to all the TV buffs out there.

TechTribe excelling at content piracy

pranav — Tue, 15 Apr 2008 19:37:18 +0000

TechTribe is one of the first professional networking sites to be launched in India. Last year, they secured funding from Canaan Partners, amongst other VC’s.

I’d hardly visited their site ever. Till yesterday, that is. Yesterday, it came to my attention that they are engaging in shoddy act of content piracy - not just content from StartupDunia but lot of other blogs as well.

Here’s how it works - registered users can sign up to blog feeds as part of their profile/dashboard. And instead of showing a small summary of the blog feed, TechTribe displays the entire story in such a spurious manner that it seems as if the TechTribe user has published the story.

See the screenshot below for an example. One of my recent blog posts shows up as if its “published by” some Ranvir Batra.

You might think I’m making a big deal of it, but let me tell you that I debated quite a bit if I should write this post. I got some moderate traffic from the site and so if they yank my posts I’d stand to lose. At the risk of losing this added traffic, I’m writing about this unethical behavior. Why ?

Because I think what TechTribe is doing is morally and ethically repugnant.

It takes a lot of time and energy to write these blog posts. By republishing entire blog posts, they increase their own page-views, stickiness and get to offer ‘free’ content to their users. While I dont know about other bloggers, I find this distasteful. Not once have I been notified in any manner that my blog posts are being republished on their site in their entirety. Of course, they cant control what blog feeds their users sign up for. But hey, here’s a start - why not publish only a small excerpt as opposed to the entire post ? They should have done due diligence that entire blog posts (which are copyrighted by the way) are being re-published on their site.

This is not ‘fair usage’ as per copyright law. If this continues, I’m seriously thinking about looking at various legal options for suing their asses.

Update:Â See Sarah’s awesome post on ReadWriteWeb about this very topic. It discusses whether an external web service has the right to appropriate a blogger’s RSS feeds and build their own brand around the blog content. Exactly what the suckers at TechTribe are doing.

Comments

April 15, 2008, snehal commented: i understand your concern.....but what about google reader that shows the complete blog content for all the blogs that I have subscribed too. I only visit the actual blog sites when I want to add a comment just like this one. I think if they linking back to you and showing the actual source as startupdunia.com, that should be okay. another way to control this would be to have your RSS feed only contain some part of the post...but would be quite irritating for users who are already reading your posts from blog readers. overall i feel you are gaining more mind share this way though not direct users....mind share i feel is a big plus...just my 2 cents....keep up the great work dude!
April 15, 2008, pranav commented: snehal, Google reader is not an end-user / destination site. Google reader is just a web based feed reader - more of a utility app. and I'm not conflicted about mindshare-direct users. Several sites syndicate content from my blog on and off. I have no problems in having my blog posts republished with permission or notification. But if you do it in some shady manner - to increase your own stickiness - you bet I'm gonna be pissed.
April 15, 2008, Ram commented: I checked the site and what they are doing is content theft in the name of community. They are nothing but a spam blog network. You should send them a DMCA notice to take down your content. Shame on these guys, profiting from some one else's content is just a bad business model. By the way who funded them for this content theft idea.
April 15, 2008, Ram commented: There are a lot of blog feeds syndicated including QOT, Trak.in, Codinghorror, Zen habits and more. Don't know whether these people know or not
April 15, 2008, Nishi/Chillibreeze commented: Plagiarism was always a serious issue. It is becoming much more rampant nowadays. We often have incidents where other content providers steal our home page content from Chillibreeze.com. Belive it or not, some have even tried to swipe our About Us page content with a few small tweaks:) We write to them and they take it off- just like that! Check out this blog post by Kamla Bhat- http://kamlabhattshow.com/blog/2008/04/09/msn-s-response-to-plagiarized-content/ That was a small para, but some websites seem to think they can make a living out of stealing content from other websites. And the worst part is they might even get away with it! The need of the hour is an effective plagiarism detection tool/software that is totally foolproof! Coming to think of it, isn't that a great idea for a startup!
April 15, 2008, Debashish commented: Great Expose! I also invite you to read this post of mine :)
April 16, 2008, Vishwas commented: hmm, so google reader is not content theft today, but if they start putting ads on their interface tomorrow, they will become one? Looks like the image above does have credit to startup dunia as original source. PS: rss feed interface allows you to control how much (or how little) of the post goes into the feed, and if the user needs to click there to come back read the full post - may be you want to use that...
April 16, 2008, Raghu commented: Hi pranav!.. i noticed that article of yours on techtribe... it seemed to me as if you guys have a tie-up !! bcoz they had your full article(s) along with the comments too! by the way what do you think they should have done to give the due credit back to startupdunia in the right measure??
April 16, 2008, Ayan commented: Why not snip your RSS feed ? Rather than publishing the entire article with comments on RSS feed, publish only a snapshot that will drive more traffic to your website and stop people is using your article in its entirety.
April 16, 2008, pranav commented: @vishwas - google reader doesnt splash full feeds on their home page. if techtribe wants to be a RSS reader, they can keep these feeds hidden from the general community on the site. And dont be mistaken, giving credit back to StartupDunia does not give them the right to publish entire posts. @raghu - i'm not pissed because they didnt give credit but because (i) they are re-publishing full posts && (ii) no one ever bothered to notify me my full posts are being republished @ayan - I know RSS feeds can be snipped. If you blog, you'll realize that full posts turn out to be better for the audience than snips.
April 16, 2008, Chandra commented: I don't think we can do much about blocking the content theft, but only thing we can do in a situation like this, where we know who is pulling our content, is to block the specific domain or IP address from which these guys are accessing the feeds. Thats really bad on the part of TechTribe guys. It really looks like the TechTribe user has written that article. They need to show the source clearly and the digg like voting system should clearly say these are the articles added from feeds and not actually written by the users.
April 17, 2008, Rohit (techTribe) commented: Pranav, First and foremost, let me clearly state that techTribe's intent is NOT to plagiarilze content so we or the members can claim it as their own work. The use of articles and feeds on techTribe is so members can share what they've written, or they've liked reading - so others can read it and benefit - but not take credit away from the author. With feeds, we have tried to make sure the people reeding a feed can clearly see who the original author was. If we look at the screenshot you posted, there is the TOP HEADER, where right below the name of the the blog, it clearly says "Originally posted by Startup Dunia" - this is a link to the original blog. At the bottom of the post, it has the same - and says "View original post by pranav" - which is again a link. Maybe we can think about whether we should entirely remove the name of the person who uploaded the feed (Ranbir Batra in this case) so there is no confusion whatsoever. As for clipping the feed so it only takes a paragraph or two, we have many members who post their own feeds, and people who would like to have their entire feeds posted on techTribe. If we were to restrict ALL feeds to a certain character limit, we would not support them. There are many partial feeds on techTribe as you would like, and they are controlled by the original blogger themselves. When defining the feed, they've chosen to restrict it to a preview format only. Other suggestions are welcome - i can easily be reached at rohit at techtribe. techTribe's goal is to get articles such as the ones you've written to the community at large, and members do that by haring what they like reading. As you said yourself, this helps drive traffic to the blogger's site as well. In a handful of cases, where there is the entire post being published due to a full RSS feed that the blogger would like removed, we've always done so immediately upon being notified of such issues - yours was removed yesterday as well.
April 17, 2008, pranav commented: Rohit, thanks for stopping by and the clarification. While it may not be TechTribe's intention to plagiarize content, the way in which the feed content is presented is dubious at best. For instance, see the first screenshot above and tell me whether you find anything wrong with the way its presented. If I am a 3rd person, to me, it gives the impression as if the Techtribe user (Ranvir batra in this case) has authored the article. While I am aware of clipping my own feed, I feel I should be in control and able to make that call. About not clipping all feeds on TechTribe to accommodate member blogs, I dont buy your argument. I dont see why all user blogs cant be clipped (including member feeds). Going by your comment above, it would be help drive traffic to their own blog as well. Even 2-3 paragraphs from the original article should be enough to highlight the gist of the article to the community at large. Interested users can then always hop on to the member's blog for further reading While other bloggers may see benefit in getting the additional traffic, I dont. The way I see it - you guys benefit more at my expense. After writing this post, I got emails from a couple of bloggers, who'd been in a similar scenario and had asked that their feeds be removed from TechTribe. If that is indeed the case, it should have set off some bells --that if several folks are complaining, probably this practice needs to be changed.
April 17, 2008, Jonathan Bailey commented: I've been quietly following this thread for much of the day but I ahve to say that I am appalled at Techtribe's response. To demand that bloggers truncate their feed when it is their responsibility to ensure that they are using other people's content in an ethical and legal manner is an outright insult. I know many services that make legitimate mistakes in this area, but none, not even Shyftr, have tried to put the blame no bloggers who just want to serve their readers. In this regard, I would strongly encourage you to look at how sites such as Digg and Reddit handle these issues. They are sites that have managed to build great audiences using other people's content but without actually duplicating the feed. I am sorry for my harsh tone, but that is an irresponsible reply to some very serious and legitimate concerns about your service...
April 18, 2008, Rohit (techTribe) commented: Pranav, I see your point about the main splash page showing the name of the poster. I suggested in my response that we could look at changing that to make sure there's no confusion. We've received all of 2 requests from bloggers about their entire feeds published over the last 6 months, and we'll always removed the feeds when brought to our attention. Jonathan - we are not demanding that bloggers terminate their feed. My response was that we also have bloggers who would like their entire feed present. We are happy to take a look at how others do it - i know we aren't the only site facing this challenge.
April 18, 2008, Anon commented: Hi Pranav, Inspite of all the mistakes Rohit does not seem to feel that what they are doing is wrong. A rose is a rose is a rose by any name. Who knows probably Techtribe is being kicked in tis asses by its VC to show some real traffic. Giving credit back to StartupDunia does not give them the right to publish entire posts. It is appalling to find Rohit's reply. Maybe Techtribe is on its way to deadpool!

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MySpace India launching this week

pranav — Tue, 15 Apr 2008 16:41:11 +0000

As per a CNET story, MySpace India will be launching later this week. This follows its public launch of MySpace Korea.

The India launch will be accompanied with a developer hackathon in Bangalore and a rock concert in Taj Land’s End Amphitheater, Mumbai. And MySpace India beta will launch as English only site.

I just checked the MySpace India page and it is live here.

So, what do you think ? Will the MySpace India launch cause a dent to Orkut’s domination and Facebook’s rise in the Indian market ?

Or is Myspace India too late in the game ?

Comments

April 15, 2008, Varun commented: Well frankly, I dont think so. I feel India is already hooked to Orkut, and with its hard for people to get off it. Would take a lot of time, in case myspace is ever able to get the junta..
April 15, 2008, Robin commented: Social networking website depends largely on the friends, relationships and communities one share on the network.. Orkut being the early provider has conquered the Indian market.. It is tough for any other social networking to capture the No:1 from Orkut.. [Similiar reason why facebook is still lagging behind myspace.. though it is a lot better than myspace.. ]
April 16, 2008, pranav commented: @varun @robin, true -- but orkut itself took 2-3 years to pick up in India. one wrong move by orkut and it wont take long for users to switch. like ppl moved on from friendster. besides, keep in mind that myspace will focus on music and video, just like their us counterpart...and might offer that as bait to college going kids to join myspace.
April 17, 2008, madhu commented: looks like it is relaunching it was launched about 3 months ago after the current launch they might launch it 2-3 times more until they get some visibility in India against orkut

India Social Media marketing - Using Orkut

pranav — Tue, 11 Mar 2008 21:42:35 +0000

Despite the fact that the Indian online population is small, they have latched onto social media pretty early. Social networking sites and blogs are the most popular forms of social media, with a large following from the Indian online audience.

As of June last year, Orkut had 7.2 million unique visitors from India. Facebook had 0.78 million unique visitors, with a month over month surge of a whopping 230% (via AgencyFaqs)

Assuming that India has 24 million Internet users, this means that about 30% of the Indian Internet users have used Orkut.

Blogs have turned out to be shockingly popular - 85% of the online Indian users read blog

Thats almost 20 million Indian Internet users

So, when it comes to digital marketing in India, are Indian marketers warming up to the social media phenomenon ?

In this multi-part series, I’m planning to pick each of the five channels (Orkut, Facebook, YouTube, blogs, brand websites) and discuss various marketing initiatives by Indian companies in each channel.

Advertising - Marketing on Orkut:

Several Indian companies were advertising on Orkut via AdWords, which Google had integrated into Orkut a short while ago. However, rising problems, mainly cultural, forced Google to remove ads from Orkut.

It is unclear at this point as to when ads will be enabled on Orkut again. I guess Google is still trying to figure out a way to effectively monetize Orkut.

Meanwhile, companies can probably pursue guerilla marketing tactics via scraps, but chances of running into legal problems via this method are plenty. Companies can probably provide branded widgets for stuff like greetings, photos, music etc - Orkut does allow users to embed HTML code in scrapbooks and festivals like Diwali, New Year etc. are times when you do see a lot of greetings scraps all over the place.

Several companies like MTV have sought out the option to run official communities on Orkut. Here’s the official MTV India community on Orkut.
At this time, Orkut doesnt offer varied advertising options similar to Facebook’s sponsored groups, social ads, pages etc. (I wonder why). The OpenSocial developer platform is yet to produce any interesting Orkut apps, partly because the OpenSocial platform API was half baked. (The only two publicly released Orkut applications are PhotoAttack and Hangout). As a result, companies cant yet build entertaining, engaging apps like they can for Facebook.

Till Google opens up advertising on Orkut again, the options for marketers to tap into that huge Indian demographic are pretty limited.

Can you think of any innovative ways of marketing on Orkut under the current circumstances ?

Comments

March 13, 2008, Sanjana commented: Well written article. It will be great if you can publish your articles in SiliconIndia also as I am a member of Siliconindia, I am sure that most of the members will like reading it. http://www.siliconindia.com/register.php?id=T49I1Fh5

India Gaming market: Nunook, an awesome, Indian social gaming network

pranav — Fri, 29 Feb 2008 17:33:53 +0000

The Indian gaming market seems to be on a roll lately - FX labs launched their PC game Agni, Trine Studios launched Streets of Mumbai, IndyaRocks launched their casual gaming section.

Nunook would be the latest buzz in the Indian gaming market. They are a cool, new social network for casual Indian gamers. You can play games without signing up on the site, but the point system on Nunook is tightly integrated into the other aspects of the site.

Each time you play a game, you earn points. This in turn, increases your ‘achievement level’ on the site. The higher the level, the more access you get to exclusive content on the site. Points not only get you access to exclusive content, they also enable you to change avatars, and buy collectibles - aka virtual goods. In other words, they earn you bragging rights. Simply put, points are the currency on Nunook.

Of course, you have the social network too. Add friends, invite friends, form teams and play games as a team. As a team, you can also participate in contests and win prizes.

All in all, I think Nunook is awesome. A well designed niche social network with a great level of engagement for the end user. Its great to see such cool sites finally emerging for the Indian audience.

Give it a spin and let me know your thoughts.

Comments

March 2, 2008, amit commented: I agree with you . Infact this is a much better way to build a social network than throwing up blank pages and asking users to signup. But i feel number of games are less on the website. They need to signup with other publishers to increase their game inventory.
March 2, 2008, sagar commented: Yes, the site seems to be promising. Nice to see more people are joining in the gaming race. But as far as the points/Scoring is concerned I think Egglad (http://www.egglad.com) is the first one to implement this.
March 3, 2008, pranav commented: @amit, yes...they need to build their game inventory. But, since they have just gone into beta, I hope it will change when they launch publicly. @sagar, egglad doesnt seem to be targeted towards indian gamers specifically.

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