IndyaRocks really rocks
When I wrote about IndyaRocks a few days back, I was wondering if this was THE MySpace of India.
After having taken a test ride earlier today, I came away impressed. I think they very well have the potential to rock the Indian social networking scene and challenge Orkut’s reign in the Indian market.
IndyaRocks has been founded by Kalyan Manyam, a 27 year old Hyderabad resident. In his former life, he was head of APAC sales for a US based company and prior to that he founded Innova, a health care technology company. He is an active member of TiE Hyderabad chapter and on the program committee for TiE-ISB connect conference.
On to the review…
Once you’ve created your profile, you’re ready to socialize and build your network. Every user gets access to their own diary (personal scrapbook), Graffiti wall (similar to the Facebook wall or scrapbook in Orkut), calendar, private messaging-inbox, personal bookmarks and of course managing their friends list. Some of the features are very well integrated and add up to a seamless and rich user experience. For instance, when you add friends into your network, their birthdays get automatically added as events on your calendar and you’ll be sent reminders as their birthday approaches. Using the personal bookmarks feature, you can bookmark profiles of other users and keep a track of what they’re upto (Facebook pioneered some of these features).
Besides the Graffiti wall, private messaging and searching / browsing user profiles, they add other dimensions for social interaction – via user blogs, photos, forums and classifieds. As a registered user, you can write your own blog and also browse through other member blogs. You can also subscribe to other member blogs. An integrated Rich Text Editor allows you to embed videos, pictures, smileys, change fonts etc. as part of your blog posts.
They also have a feature rich photo sharing section with support for AJAXy uploads, tagging, privacy controls, photo stream subscriptions, ‘blog this’ for public photos, commenting and rating photos. Thanks to the use of AJAX in the upload form, I was able to upload a couple of photos (~500 KB) within no time.
The forums and classifieds sections are sparsely populated as of yet, considering that they’re still in private beta. Another useful feature integrated into the forums and classifieds is clipping (aka bookmarking). So, you can ‘clip’ the forum posts or classifieds that interest you for viewing later.
SMS based mobile features are also tightly coupled into the site. You can choose to have mobile alerts sent to you when any of your friend sends you a message or posts graffiti on your wall. Similarly, you can reply/post an SMS to your friend by simply sending an SMS to 6263 in the following format:
Ir {username} {msg}
Overall, IndyaRocks provides a great user experience. AJAX usage is not overdone and is used in the right places. At the same time, they do not compromise on the privacy of the user. Fine grained privacy controls are provided to each user – so each user has full control on who gets to see what information. So, for example, you can set the access settings so that only your friends can view your email address. If you do not wish to receive mobile alerts, you can turn them off. You can also customize the appearance and pimp your profile page by adding custom CSS styling to your profile.
They have also launched IRocksLayouts, which users can use to pimp their profile layout and appearance. See below for a pimped up profile:
As per Kalyan, they have a strong mobile strategy in place and some unique features will be launched very soon. In addition, Groups-tribes, photo tools, regional entertainment content are some of the other features in the pipeline.
In terms of features and appearance, they are more similar to Facebook than MySpace. None the less, they’ve done a brilliant job at implementing all the features and very likely will reshape the social networking landscape in the Indian market. Watch out Yaari, Minglebox, Orkut…
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iam reading your article from hongkong airport.i signed up for an invite and got it in 5 mins.all the features seem to very well integrated and as you said better than orkut.lookn forward to try the sms integration.will explore more about indyarocks.
Well I don’t know if I share your enthusiasm that it will challenge orkut, because I think Orkut as Google in the Indian context of WOM Strategy. The reason being, I ask everyone who has an Orkut account, ‘That why do you have an Orkut account?’ and the answer is always the same, because everyone does. WOM strategy is very powerful, Google being the best example. I personally don’t have an Orkut account and might not have Indian Rocks account either, but great post, I always like reading your blog for the information it provides me.
Cheers
i signed up , i liked it and i invited my friends from orkut.i sent 150 invites yesterday and today when i login to indyarocks i see 21 has joined.
Rajiv,
It took Orkut about 2-3 years to get to where it is in terms of Indian user base adoption. I was on Orkut since it launched and have witnessed how Indian users started slowly warming up to it.
In terms of features and stuff, IR is much more potent than orkut. It will take some time for the user adoption to grow and overthrow Orkut. I’ve mentioned this before — first mover in social networking space has a lot of advantages. Later entrants have the uphill battle of convincing users to switch to their network.
Lets see how IR does on that front.
Pranav.
Exactly Pranav, I agree with you completely and that is why cynicism.
What I want to learn or see is how can this be done in a matter of minimum time. What PR strategy NOT MARKETING can be applied that this uphill battle becomes flat or easier to climb. We saw how Ibibo bombed with its strategy. I hope Indya Rocks does not make a mistake of similar and poor marketing, hopefully it uses PR as I think, social media is more of a PR domain.
Link for Ibibo (http://indianpr.wordpress.com/2007/03/22/ibibo-mih-nasper-the-worst-marketing-strategy/)
Pranav and Rajiv,
Agree with you on the user adoption. We surely have an uphill battle. Though a small company we will surely enjoy challenging Orkut on the user adoption. On the feature set side, we have been getting good reviews about Indyarocks from Orkut users too.
And yes.. you will NEVER see any attempts from IR to corrupt the online space with “irrelevant prize monies” and other lame attempts being practised by a few sites. We respect our users and we will never try to value their contribution with money.
Keep it India-specific for best adoption. Otherwise it comes across as a myspace-clone with a different target demographic; not good enough in my opinion.
Even with small changes like having State dropdowns if the user is in India will make a more powerful statement.
i have been using myspace and orkut for a long time and most of my friends are in orkut(dont remember why).when i first signed on to indyarocks every thing looked like greek and latin to me(so i can for sure say this one is def.not a clone of myspace).i spent about 10 mins exploring diff.features of the site and got to understand all the features.i was kind of amazed by the interactivity between differnt modules.i realized it was both a tool for interacting and sharing with others as well as a tool for organizing ones stuff.the same evening i logged in to orkut and for some reason felt as if orkut is kind of getting old,so i went ahead and invited all my friends to join indyarocks(now most of my friends who joined like IR)for now only 26 have joined out of my 150 invitations.i will send reminders to others some time soon.Now coming to myspace-well thats no more a space for me.isnt myspace kind of cluttered.
Hi Pranav.. Wonderful review. Thanks a ton for the encouraging comments yaar.. We will strive to keep up to the expectations..
dodt u guys thinks its a clone myspace integrated website. with some additional features on clone myspace like this competing with myspace is a bullshit.and paying for press release like this wont be a worth in a future.ur product has to be great if any one goona compete with orkut.ur presence in the web has to be felt not with these kind of bullshitting press release.and i have seen in that website that guy asks for help and suggestions to improve his website.its kind of a crap.will he reward the users with the revenue share.he wont.thats a basic human nature right.
hmmmmmmmm mr.mashable .cool down. you sound as if ur burning some where.any how i like indyarocks,its kinda cool.
i asked for rss feeds in the blogs and the guys at indyarocks have done it-i ilke the way these guys are listening to the users
whats different ? every thing
one of the best designed site from India.Looking forward to see where it is headed.
IndyaRocks seems to give more personlization like myspace. Even though there is a lot of space in social networking market. They will jave tough time getting people..because currently user of social networking portal and not happy with new invitation coming up everyday.
Agree Akash ,but indyarocks seems to have a different game plan alltogether.iam just waiting for them to launch their service(along with the features they mentioned in”coming soon” link.)It will be definetly be intresting to see their approach towards building a strong userbase.
The best thing i like about indyarocks is its easy navigation and user friendlyness-though help is needed at some places(which iam sure they are looking in to)
I’ve been closely monitoring the online space for the last decade or so and I’m inclined to think that social networking will take a few years to get ingrained.
And then another few years to start producing value – I mean that in business terms.
It’s all very fine for multiple people to get into this space but who is the target audience – schoolkids and college students.
While this is supposed to be a powerful sector for ad spend, I just don’t see what the applicability will be for the Indian Internet scene.
But then again, I’m not a member of any social networking site either – so I must not be in the target audience!
Just give it some time. The social networking phenomenon has already taken over the US, Europe and Japan.
I didn’t know about Indyarocks until I read this article, actually! I was linked thru India Web 2.0 News.
Indyarocks really rocking with innovative stuff!! cool social networking, great look n feel, nice wesite design, getting better day by day.. cheers to development team!!
i have the worst experince that i ever had from any site…i m a user of indyarocks pls dnt sms from this site it will be delivered 1000 time and u cant stop them
Dear Sir,
I dont know why but on my PC the website is not opened. Earlier it was opening quickly. Please look into this.
Vipin madan
hello
i have the worst experince that i ever had from any site, and why the hell should i migrate from orkut to this site and ask my friends to do the same
very addictive site
just went to browse the site spent 45 mins in moviplex and games pages
gettin frns in indyarocks is just awesome…..there are lot of profile modification features which attracts the viewer…