Google OpenSocial: Tackle Facebook Platform headon
Phew..Finished developing a moderate sized Django based app yesterday. A good coding session, in some ways, is like sex - intense and very fulfilling 
Anyways, I digress.
So, the big news today is about Google’s OpenSocial platform - Google’s answer to the wildly popular Facebook platform. Reports of Google opening up Orkut via API came in earlier. However, first glimpses of the concept are emerging only today. And I’m totally taken by it. Google has partnered with other sites like Ning, LinkedIn, hi5, Salesforce etc. as part of the OpenSocial platform. Developers will now be able to use the OpenSocial API to plug into any of these sites and use the following functions:
1) Profile info (user info etc.)
2) Friend network (social graph)
3) Activity streams
This opens up so many, previously unthinkable, new possibilities for developers. While the technical details are yet to be announced, it seems like such an approach will give a dimension of portability to the developer apps (of course, there may be some site specific tweaking that may be needed). The platform breaks down the ‘walled gardens’ that plague the Facebook platform currently. Moreover, from the sounds of it, the API seems to be a plug-in API instead of a web services API. Javascript and HTML is the only arsenal needed to tap into the API.
As we await additional details about the same, its difficult to mask my excitement about this platform. I wont be surprised to see some disruptive apps emerging.
What’s your take on the Opensocial platform ?
If you were able to access the Orkut user profile and social graph data, what are some of the apps you can conceive of ?
TinselVision plans social networking site
TinselVision recently announced tieups with several Indian content providers such as Zee TV, STAR Tv etc. Now, company CEO and Chariman, Chase Weir, tells IndianTelevision that they are also planning a social networking site, which will close the loop into offering a broad spectrum of choices. Desivision.tv, acquired by TinselVision in August, will be incorporated into the social networking site.
Oops…I did it again…..
So says (& proves) the Indian Government.
A while back, it was the key loggers.
Now, they seem to have taken another regressive step towards technology adoption. Not heeding to a recommendation by the IT ministry, a parliamentary committee has proposed that service providers (mobile service providers and Internet websites) will be liable for any obscene and illegal content/activity on their site / using their service.
It’s a regressive step. You cannot run a business if you are held liable for all the content passing through your network. It’s almost impossible for a mobile network to monitor all video clips as a social networking site will find it difficult to monitor all illegal profiles even after you have conducted due diligence, which is very subjective,” said a large industry player, who didn’t want to be named.
via ET
In the age of Web 2.0, when User Generated Content (UGC) is the talk of the world, can you imagine how dumb and incomprehensible this decision is ? In the US, the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) protects the online providers from litigation in case of copyrighted content uploaded by their users.
Without such a shield in place, social networking sites, forums, video sharing and all other forms of online, social media would not be feasible. Imagine if Google India is found liable for all the Orkut notoriety - from the Adnan murder case to the fake Mayawati profiles - they’d find it more economical and wise to shut down Orkut in India than deal with so many legal hassles.
What do you think ?
Sabeer Bhatia enters social networking market with ApnaCircle
Sabeer Bhatia, Hotmail founder, is entering the Indian social networking scene with the soon to be launched site, ApnaCircle. Another stealth site, which offers free conference calls, is also in the works.
via BS
The ‘About Us‘ page on ApnaCircle, however, labels itself as a social as well as a professional networking site. Social or professional, do we really need yet another networking site for India ?
This is Big - Google plans to open Orkut using APIs
TechCrunch reports about a secret meeting held at Google HQ. The objective - to discuss Google’s plans of ‘opening up’. As per TC, Google will be announcing a new set of APIs on November 5 that will allow developers to leverage Google’s social graph data (whatever that means)..
Here’s the most interesting bit:
On November 5 we’ll likely see third party iGoogle gadgets that leverage Orkut’s social graph information - the most basic implementation of what Google is planning. From there we may see a lot more - such as the ability to pull Orkut data outside of Google and into third party applications via the APIs.
This is a H-U-G-E piece of news for two reasons:
1) With 7.2 million Indian users (does not include Indians accessing Orkut from outside India), Orkut is the social networking platform that has the highest number of Indian members. Opening access to Orkut implies instant access to all the Indian users of the site (in other words, a sizeable online Indian population)
2) If the above bolded statement actually happens, this could mean opening up of a whole new industry.
Just look at the applications industry that has been spawned by the recently launched Facebook platform. And Facebook Platform doesnt even allow you to build your standalone app and pull Facebook data into the app. Facebook developer program necessitates you to build the application on Facebook itself.
Contrast this to the possibility above - you can build and host your own application and integrate Orkut data into your application. Not on Orkut. Not on Google. You can pull Orkut data as you like into your own application.
This would be an Indian marketer’s dream come true. Not to mention the tremendous startup opportunities this would open up for Indian entrepreneurs. Of course, we’ll have to wait till such an API is officially announced and consider any ‘gotchas’ that may be involved. None the less, the opportunities that would open up by such a move have gotten me all excited.
What do you think ?
BigAdda - Hype or Happening ?
Reliance has gone on an advertising blitzkrieg for BigAdda. And if the below Alexa graph is anything to go by, the massive campaign is definitely getting BigAdda the eyeballs.
Yes, I know - Alexa is unreliable and the usual yada yada. But for want of a better, free resource I’ll stick to Alexa.
So, the site is definitely hitting huge numbers in terms of traffic and eyeballs. But how many of the visitors are actually getting converted into registered users ?
In an interview with ContentSutra, Rajesh Sawhney, President of Reliance Entertainment discussed about BigAdda and the various projections and plans for BigAdda. As part of the interview, he claims that BigAdda has a registered user base of 100,000.
I did some digging and actually found that the site has about 1000 users and not 100,000 users as Rajesh claims in the interview above. Here’s a screenshot (I didnt want to resize the image to retain the clarity):
If you view the full size image by clicking the thumbnail above, you’ll notice two things of interest towards the bottom of the image:
1) 
which indicates that there are 1000 member profiles.
2) 
Now, there are 42 pages with 24 member profiles on each page ~ which comes out to 1008 user profiles.
Either I’m missing something or some programmer screwed up his maths or Reliance is just hyping the numbers.
As part of the interview, Rajesh also says that BigAdda has about 12,000 videos. Well, if you follow the same kind of calculation above, there are 63 pages of videos with 16 videos per page.
63 * 16 = 1008 total videos (What is it with the site and the number 1008 ? )
Again a case of bad coding or over the top numbers ?
With that said, I leave it upto you to judge but would love to hear what you have to say - Is BigAdda a hype or really happening ?
Update: Several folks pinged me about this mentioning that BigAdda does have more than 1000 users..Not sure about 100,000..But definitely more than 1000. If so, the ‘View all’ or ‘Search All’ labels on the site are a big misnomer (including the videos section). If I search for users and provide all ranges, the search results should show me all the users..Not a subset (1000) of the users. I guess I should have included ‘bad usability’ into the probable suspects above.
Webaroo’s SMS Gupshup goes under the knife
Webaroo’s SMS Gupshup is launching v2.0 of their group SMS service (my earlier review here). Along with major cosmetic design changes, new features include:
- Send SMS’s from the Internet to your groups
- Create and share your own SMS blog with your friends
- Social networking features like inviting friends, group management etc. can now be done via the web also
The new design is definitely quite refreshing and a stark contrast to their earlier design.
The couple of features that I’d be interested in seeing from SMS Gupshup:
1) Webaroo SMS Gupshup labels itself as a group SMS service - however, as of now, only the group creator can post messages to the group. Other members of the group can only receive messages. So, in its current form, the term ‘Group SMS’ may feel like a misnomer depending on how look at it. The ability for other users to be able to post to the group seems to be a very important feature. As an example, say I have a gang of 10 friends who I’d like to stay connected with, using SMS Gupshup. In the current scenario, I’d have to be subscribed to 9 different groups to stay abreast of what each of them is upto. On the contrary, if we could have created a single group (say Mygang) and all the members could post to the group, I’d have to subscribe to just one group.
2) Ability to import contacts - friends from existing social networks
As per company sources, they have about half a million users of the service and on an average send close to a million messages per day. There is no revenue share agreement with the operators, so Webaroo does not get any percentage cut from the operators for each SMS sent using their service. They are beefing up their advertiser relationships and hope to rope in several new advertisers.
The new version of the site goes live over the weekend.
Rediff launches media sharing site iShare
Rediff’s earlier foray into social network, Rediff Connexions, was a miserable failure. Now, they’ve launched a social networking site, iShare, focused on media sharing. Users can upload audio, video and photos to their account and mark each media item as private or public. Items marked public can be viewed, commented, voted and favorited by other members of the site. Users can also embed the photos, videos directly into any other website or blog. They also provide a media uploading tool, similar to the one pioneered by Flickr.
Well, considering that I wasnt expecting anything great from Rediff, I’m glad that I’m not disappointed. Rediff has always ranked low in terms of usability and with the horrendous color scheme, they prove it once again. Red & black on orange and yellow –Yikes !! Design aside, the thumbnails for the photos and the videos are of very bad quality too. I didnt see an option to view large size photos as well (the biggest viewable dimensions were 300×225). Clicking on ‘Help’ takes you to the Rediff Customer Care section which has the vanilla, Rediff look - a stark contrast from the design of iShare. Seriously, do these guys never consider such usability issues ?
One would expect a way better job from a Nasdaq listed, India’s top portal. But the site is amateurish at best.
IndyaRocks public launch on Thursday
IndyaRocks, the sleek social network for Indians (my initial review here), is publicly launching this Thursday. In lieu of the public beta, they’ve also introduced several new, additional features on the site.
MoviePlex - They now have a section focusing on User Generated Content for Bollywood. It includes reviews, news, wallpapers, videos and forum discussions revolving around Bollywood. See below for a screenshot. Additional commercial features based on this section are in the works.
Tribes - Users can now join tribes or communities. Each tribe has an associated ‘media center’, where members of that tribe can contribute content specific to that tribe
Part two of the India Online 2007 report
In an earlier post, I summarized key points from the first part of the ‘India Online 2007′ report by JuxtConsult. Some interesting points from the second installment of the series:
- E-commerce in India reached Rs. 2300 crores
- 10.8 million or 43% of the total Internet population shopped online - an increase of 76% YoY
- Online travel booking seems to be the biggest e-commerce activity. 84% of the 10.8 million shoppers have booked their travel online at least once
- The 10 most popular activities include email, IM, chatting, e-greetings, dating (What ??), news, sports, music, games
- Fastest growing online activites include social networking (one third of Internet users use social networking) and online matrimony
- 27% of Indian Internet population read blogs, 15% comment on blogs and 7% write a blog themselves
I guess I’m too nerdy to accept and realize that chatting and e-greetings are still some of the most popular activities online.
via ET