Zillr is what I would describe as JAISNS (just another Indian social networking site) with a couple of differences: a) it is targeted specifically at the Indian diaspora in UAE (United Arab Emirates) and b) its rising popularity there invited a ban from the UAE authorities without assigning a reason. Other than that, Zillr looks like an Orkut clone i.e. old UI of Orkut (screenshot below).

The site was launched eight months back and currently has 52K members (growing 400 a day). Almost all its users are Indians (either in the UAE or in India). Ravish Kumar (the guy behind zillr) informs me that Zillr managed to break into the top 500 sites in UAE in just 45 days. Then their site got blocked for an unspecified reason, which saw their traffic reduce from 10 mn monthly pageviews to 4 mn (currently it is 6 mn). Ravish emailed Etisalat (Emirates Telecommunications Corporation) inquiring about the reason for the ban, but never got an official reply. Apparently, this happens often to other sites as well. To fight the ban, Ravish created this online petition and tried to use that to mobilise support against the blockage.

Something else worth pointing out is that Zillr averages 30-35 pages per visit (as per stats shared with me). Now this number is quite significant. I created an account on Zillr just to explore this and the website’s page loading was fast & zippy. Just shows that site speed is a critical driver to site stickiness.