Internet in India

Google (Nasdaq: GOOG - message board) will soon announce that its Google Talk instant messaging and VOIP service will be built into its social networking site Orkut, Google’s version of MySpace.The company says its Google Talk and Orkut development teams are busy putting the finishing touches on the integration. The announcement will likely be made sometime next week.

-Source

Merging Social Networking and Instant Messaging, though a no-brainer, is a requirement. This would certainly increase user retention. Google’s certainly focusing on Orkut now!

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.

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“

The fact that India has over 18 million Internet users in the age group of (15+) (Source:http://www.financialexpress.com/fe_full_story.php?content_id=137510) inspired me to do some research around social networking sites coming up in India.

It seems a lot is happening:
www.peopleaggregator.net - Open Social Networking, *Open Source P2P Social Network Engine*, Marc Canter (Broadband Mechanics: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marc_Canter)  started it. Based on FOAF. v1.1 is  already live.
Read more on http://slashdot.org/articles/04/03/30/2333258.shtml

Upcoming Social Networking Sites in India
www.Fropper.com - Gaining momentum in India, they are marketing heavily in India
www.yaari.com - Lot of Buzz around this, upcoming social networking site, customized to Indian user’s needs, that’s what they claim on there blogs.
www.linknsurf.com - Mobile Social Networking
www.goyaar.com - beta live

www.humsubka.com - Seems to be a MySpace clone

It’s interesting to note that, mobile social networking has also started to pick up in India.

I’ve been trying to figure out exactly what features are customized to India. Next post probably!