3 Oct, 2006
I’ve been hearing whispers that Google will integrate their social network Orkut with the mobile social networking app they acquired last year, Dodgeball. While it’s not rocket science to make the connection between the two products (both are social networking), the reasons to join the two are becoming more compelling… via ReadWriteWeb
Well, if this could happen in Brazil, India would be the next. So, Yaari.com needs to make it’s mark before Google comes with it’s offering.
2 Oct, 2006
Somehow managed to get access to Yaari.com through a friend’s ID. So here is a screenshot depicting the very obvious features of any social networking site.
Unlike Fropper, this site is free. The obvious question is how does a free social networking site survive, online advertising?, no, Prerna Gupta - CEO yaari.com is smarter! (our absolute faith in this, forced us to think and led to some more research).
So here are the screenshots that strike the chord.
The revenue comes from sms, tie up with Mobile Carriers in India, get a part of money user spends on receiving an sms (the standard rate in India is approx Rs.5 per sms, and typically carrier would not mind giving a rupee to a partner) from web and cash in on the volumes.
Smart as it might seem, but again the “Idea” in itself isn’t at all original. Yaari.com appears to be inspired by SMS.ac (A San Diego based Social Networking company with a registered user base of over 50 million in over 180 countries - Source). Sms.ac has more features than yaari has, but then they are moving in the right direction. Alerts and SMS messaging itself would amount to a lot of revenues.
Seems, Yaari.com has come up with an indianized version of SMS.ac. But that’s what has been happening in the consumer internet market in India. SMS volumes in India are unbelievably high, Just to give us a hint
“60m sms messages were sent new year’s eve in India in 2005 -Source“
