Indyarocks is an India focused online and mobile based social networking site that is currently in private beta. Its look & feel is similar to various other SNS sites, but one point of difference is its focus on the mobile strategy (the I in the name Indyarocks is styled as a mobile phone). It is being built by a six member team (based in Hyderabad and California), which is headed by Kalyan Manyam, a serial entrepreneur and an active TiE member. They are angel funded by two highly placed Indians (who Kalyan wished not to identify).
Indyarocks has a clean UI and a simple navigation. It has all the features that have become an unstated standard for SNS sites- detailed profile, blogs, forums, photos (unlimited), classifieds, calendar, graphiti et al. You can customize you profile’s look & feel through these CSS effects. The mobile dimension is actuated through free 2 way Mobile SMS interactivity (enabled through short code 6263). You can also use SMS to capture thoughts and post in real-time to your personal diary. The calendar feature holds details about birthdays of friends, events etc and these can be notified to you mobile through SMS alerts. Kalyam informs me about the cross pollination of features on Indyarocks e.g. you can use photos from your albums while posting to blogs, forums or classifieds. New features planned are- video, Bollywood related entertainment features, photo tools, the concept of tribes etc. The website’s future revenue strategy will be based on mobile content/services and internet/mobile based ads.
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IndyaRocks looks a good site but it has a tall task ahead. The Indian social networking space already has a bunch of players (let me count – Fropper, Yaari, MingleBox, DesiMartini, Pihook, Snehah, Humsabka, Orkut, Jhoom, Yo4Ya, GoYaar etc; let me know which ones I have missed out, I’m sure there are quite a few), that are trying to be the Indian MySpace/Facebook. The perceived differences amongst these sites are actually quite low, which suggests that the reasons that may contribute to any of these site achieving dominance over others, may have little to do with product features (per se). The current leader in this pack is of course Orkut, and clearly its position is little influenced by any of its features, but by other factors like – first mover advantage, Google’s ubiquitous reach via search, Gmail etc.
Add to this the impending launch of social networking sites by some of the big daddies of India’s internet/entertainment industry. Reliance Entertainment is gearing up for the launch of its social networking site (called BigAdda). I am aware of two other Indian internet powerhouses that are readying their own SNS sites – Indiatimes & Naukri (please don’t ask me the source of this info, but its completely reliable). There are a couple of other relatively big internet players that also seem to be eyeing this space (this inference is speculative and is not backed up by anything more reliable than hearsay). All in all, in six months to a year, its extremely likely that all the twenty (or so) competitors in this space would be leaving no stones unturned to outdo each other. You should expect some real high pitched action- high voltage TV campaigns, media deals and maybe some mergers and acquisitions as well.
Notwithstanding the competition, some consolation to the various players may be the fact that there is space for more than one at the top. Its possible that instead of one clear leader (or default choice), 3-4 sites may attain critical mass and offer commercial viability.
Remember what happened in 99-2000. Too many people chasing too few ideas.
the mobile features working pretty good and UI is very pleasent.irocks seems to have real socialnetworking features in the sense how diff features are integrated.
80% of india’s internet users are male. ’nuff said about social networking sites and their chances in this country. think utilitarian, people.
Too many social networking sites by now and more are coming up as you said Naukri and Indiatimes are planning to launch their own SNS and Relaince too..now the questions are .. Will netizens sign in to different SNS for ex. and if yes- Why should I switch to Indyarocks or desimartini or any other SNS. Also as a user will I get enough time to check my messages on different SNS even if i create account on multiple SNS. Why should I create my account on altogether new SNS if the current SNS (lets say Orkut) is satiating my social networking need and giving me the benefits of finding old and new friends on it..now every other youth netizen is on Orkut. Its like this- If i have an e-mail account say G-mail, why will i switch to other e-mail account and tell all other that you can contact me on other e-mail id i created. Now the real question- monetisation? How it is going to happen? How much time it will take to breakeven?
I totally agree with Shalini Jain that “the situation is like 1999-2000 ..too few ideas, too many people chasing it”. Atleast companies like Naukri, Indiatimes and Relaince are not expected to be followers instead they should innovate and bring out new concepts in the online market.
Kapil,
Well said; frankly, your question should be answered by the people who are creating these sites…as I said the perceived differentiation is low…
Monetization is also an issue, but a secondary one. The first challenge is to create a site that gets people hooked…if you are smart enough to do that, you should be smart enough to make money out of that as well.
rgds
Amit
its intresting.the curiosity is killing us.looking forward to see reliance,naukri and what ever to come up with their social networking portals.well i feel its not how many people are coming up with social networking sites but how they are positioning them selves.WHY IN THE FIRST PLACE SHOULD WE THINK THAT THERE SHOULD BE ANY DIFFERENTIAION IN THE CONCEPT.we shouldnot forget how myspace was called a clone of friendster and how is orkut any different from the myspace concept.its all about linking up people.i tried indyarocks and i feel they really have done a brillinant job at connecting all the features.they are in private beta,they are listning to their users and are in the process of stabilizing their features-infact i my self made a request to add some kind of rss feeds to the blogs section and they said they will add it pretty soon in a week or so.
y come to a conclusion so soon(i remember orkut taking 2-3 yrs to get critical numbers)-lets just wait and see .
here is the first article that directed me to indyarocks.its comprehensive and we might get a better understanding reading this
http://www.startupdunia.com/2007/04/01/indyarocks-really-rocks/
Came across Kalyan’s interview in this site; http://www.pluggd.in/2007/04/startup-juice-interview-with-founder_09.html
only time will tell how these guys fare with other social nets.
A new social networking site from Reliance Entertainment called http://www.bigadda.com, which is to release very soon…by that time, u can visit the site and vote for which logo u find better…
http://indyarocks.com/ is not a well designed site. Why you want to know ?
go to indyarocks.com homepage and then right click on your desktop then select properties and select Appearance then go to advanced button. Then from the drop down menu select Window. Then from the right side change the color to red. Now you go back to indyarocks.com.
I hope you can understand now. The designers forget to mention a background color in their CSS…..
More Info at
Booming Social Networking in INDIA
http://www.wittysparks.com/2007/04/28/booming-social-networking-in-india
indyarocks gives some killer customization options to its users. the problem is that there may be way too many options that they offer. can get really complicated. i checked out a review on http://www.watblog.com
How many social networking sites have come and gone… i have lost track of the number of social netwrking sites i am a member of.. every now and then a friend sends an invitation to join a new site evry week. how much goyaar would be able to capture the market is still unknown. what can be their strategy, targetting indians.. well I have heard tht before. i hope atleast one site makes it big. fropper currently has been doing a lot of offline publicity tht has helped it a lot. i hope goyaar also wont mind doing the same… lots of competition these sites have to find a way to beat it.. by providing something innovative.
Regards,
Rochit Jain
MSN I NIIPET
MSN
http://www.indyarocks.com is awsome. I love the way they are working with their users. Damn, they engage with almost every user and take feedback and immediately work on it.
Hey Piyal, I see that they have also worked on the issue you have pointed out. All the best Indyarocks. Stay good..
when are they opening it up for public.i had applied for an invite and still havent recieved it.
Well, Indiatimes.com had a sns venture called “Clubs”…it was folded up couple of years back….
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I’ve been using goyaar for the past year with my firneds and i think it is really amazin – maybe they need to somehow make it more clear what all it does, because it is the most flexible of any of those other sites. They just also added a really awesome search engine to find all Indian content (even from the web) – like video, podcasts n’ stuff…they are the closest to Facebook for India.
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wow 🙂
its very reasonable article.
Good post.
realy good post
thx 🙂