India Social Networking

8
May 08

WTF – MingleBox makes apps for Orkut ?

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 ?



India Social Networking — 6 comments

6
May 08

Is Facebook India launching soon ?

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.



India Social Networking — 1 comment

28
Apr 08

Desiji – Yet Another Social network for Indians

desijilogo.jpgAs 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

desiji.JPG

Honestly, I dont think these are any differentiation factors at all.  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.



India Social Networking — 7 comments

21
Apr 08

Amitabh blogs on BigAdda – what a shitty gimmick from BigAdda

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.  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):

bigadda.JPG

More on this topic in follow up post tomorrow.



India Social Networking — 9 comments

15
Apr 08

TechTribe excelling at content piracy

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.

ttribe.JPG

Continue reading →



India Social Networking / Internet — 16 comments

15
Apr 08

MySpace India launching this week

india_beta_com.gifAs 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 ?



India Social Networking — 4 comments

11
Mar 08

India Social Media marketing – Using Orkut

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.

Continue reading →



India Online Advertising / India Social Networking — 2 comments

29
Feb 08

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

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.pngNunook 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.

mynookpage.jpg

Continue reading →



India Gaming / India Social Networking / India Startups — 3 comments

27
Feb 08

IndyaRocks launches casual games, video chat

irlogo.jpgEver since its launch, IndyaRocks has continued to amaze me. They innovate and innovate quite frequently. Since their beta launch, they have introduced MoviePlex, SMS-Mobile features, wide screen video etc.

And tomorrow they will be launching their casual gaming section. As per Kalyan, the founder, the initial launch will have 800 casual games. Users will be able to rate, review and share games, with the ability for users to upload their own games. This will enable independent game developers to reach out to IR’s large community. They also plan to launch downloadable and multi-player games in partnership with major game development companies. They have also launched a new video chat feature.

Casual gaming is a flaming hot market – both in the US as well as in India. Zapak is betting big on gaming and recently, FXLabs acquired casual gaming aggregator Knibble for $3 million. So, I wont be surprised if the IndyaRocks gaming section becomes popular in no time.

I asked Kalyan on how they plan to compete with Zapak, which has a huge marketing budget. As per him, they do not intend to compete with Zapak. The gaming section was developed as a request from the member community.

I also asked him about their traffic details and how they are marketing IndyaRocks. In response, Kalyan mentioned that they are getting close to 1.5 – 2 million page views daily and are growing virally. They dont advertise and are pleased with the response generated from blog reviews and press releases.

Continue reading →



India Gaming / India Social Networking — 12 comments

20
Feb 08

SaffronConnect shuts down

It looks like SaffronConnect, one of the umpteen social network for desis – Indians, has called it quits. It is not quite apparent when they closed shop. However, Compete shows zero traffic since November – so I’m guessing they went offline around that time.

sconnect.png

So long SaffronConnect, RIP. You sure wont be missed.



India Social Networking — 2 comments

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