rkut may be the leader in social networking websites in India, but that has not stopped other players from trying to gain a foothold. Along with the early birds such as Humsabka, Yaari, Fropper and MingleBox, there are some new entrants such as sirfdosti, desimartini, indyarocks, apundesi, snehaha, saffronconnect and Big Adda.
Vivek Pahwa, COO of desimartini says, "There is no clear leader in this space. Hence, you see many companies launching social networking portals."
According to Navin Mittal, who is the head of fropper and one of the early birds in this domain, the buyout of MySpace by News Corp and orkut by Google has attracted a lot of people to this space. Many companies, therefore, see a potential buyout of social networking sites by international players. But not many Indian players have been able to make a mark for themselves. Fropper became the first social networking portal to run full-fledged TVCs, followed by desimartini.
The revenue model for most websites is advertising; the other revenue model, according to Pahwa, is through mobile marketing. With mobile integrated features like SMS being offered on social networking sites, one cannot ignore mobile marketing opportunities.
Another means to generate revenue is through online retailing, that is, by launching products on these sites. However, that is not possible without a huge database of users. Hence, the objective of existing social networking websites is to increase the database so that it is viable for brands to come on-board the website, to target consumers. The advantage is that brands will have user profiles as well.
Mittal feels that members do not want to see ads. He says, "We strive to keep fropper as an authentic community for Indian audiences. We do not allow communities around brands, sex, or hatred. The reason being that we don't want any company to promote their product on our social networking website."
Recently, Humsabka offered 3GB space to its users free of cost, something uncommon for a social networking website. Avnish Saxena who founded Humsabka says, "We have users from orkut and MySpace creating an account at humsabka. This is because orkut and MySpace are all about keeping in touch with old friends while ours is about making new friends." The challenge for new entrants is differentiation.
Kavita Iyer, COO of minglebox, says, "There are no silver bullets or known formulae to succeed. But it is essential to stay tuned to the needs of the user community and innovate every day with each user's experience - backed by relevant technology." So, while the market will be competitive, it will take a lot of innovation and focus on product and technology to create a winning product that satisfies a real need.
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