It's Desi Vs Pardesi in social networking

MUMBAI, INDIA: Orkut, Facebook, MySpace, Friendster, Hi5five and others social networking sites (SNS) are hugely popular among Internet users in India. However, they do lack the essence of Indian culture and flavor.

These predominantly foreign SNSs with its cultural limitation have given ample space and opportunities for growth SNS in India.

These desi networking sites are far ahead from the formers, in terms of giving more than just socializing experience on the net.

Fropper.com, BigAdda.com, Indyarocks.com and Apnacircle.com are some of the Indian community portals, which are banking and promoting the desi flavor to draw the Indian netizens.

Most of these desi networking sites have some common features like sharing photos and videos, blogs, groups, scraps, chats, discussion forms, SMS, downloadable ring tones, wallpapers, screensavers, along with the regular filmy music and videos for entertainment.

Also each site has given more focus on user’s privacy. However, their themes are quite unique enough to pull audiences, which are growing rapidly and promoting the social networking concept here. Among them, People Interactive’s Fropper.com is India’s first desi community site.

According to site’s business head, Navin Mittal, Fropper.com launched in April 2003 is considered the pioneer of social networking sites in India. Built on the premise ‘meaningful relationships on the net’ using the Web2.0 platform, initially it used discussion forums, chats and scraps for user interactions. However, Orkut’s growth in India led Mittal to rethink Fropper’s strategy.

“In 2006, the site added new features such as ezBlogs, ezMoney and regional music, videos that wasn’t the copy of other SNS but based on users’ feedback, their likes and interests,” explains Mittal.

He opines, “English speakers are more involved in blogging, while ezBlogs aims to de-emphasis it and allows users to express their opinions and views easily. Moreover, the ezMoney helps to make money via blogs.” It caters free original music across nine regional languages plus the Hindi songs, albums and classical music.

For this, Mittal has tied up with PPL and IPRS for licensing and copyrights of content and pays as per content consumed. Fropper.com has over four million registered users that have 24x7 support, where it monitors, authenticates and moderates all content.

About the desi culture, Mittal says, “Site’s hallmark is its Indianness, Indian users and also all the content is desi as per our culture.” Interestingly, Bigadda.com, a youth focused networking site launched in August 2007 by Anil Dhirubhai Ambani Group (ADAG), already has over three millions users today.

“The site’s uniqueness is the user-friendly navigation, unlike the foreign SNS that have cumbersome navigation and complex structure. Its vibrant colours make it very lively and youthful appealing as the target audience looks for inspirations and influencers,” says Shivanandan Pare, COO, Bigadda.com.

Keeping the youth’s lingo, the site has communities called ‘addas’ like sports, fashion, photography, books, art, apart from music and movies.

It caters across all tastes and interest via media sharing – photos, videos, music and self-expression – identity creations, blogs, forums and addas. Also, it offers free reference library, unlimited multimedia and bin space and for cell users it has Mobileadda, SMS alerts and WAP (wireless application protocol) features.

Indyarocks.com, another SNS, blends socializing with entertainment. According to Kalyan Manyam, site’s Operations head, a networking site’s idea came around 2006, when Orkut was the sole SNS. Manyam’s entertainment-based SNS, launched in June 2007, already has over 2.5 million users.

About the Bollywood theme, Manyan explains, “In our culture, films are integral and important; and same aspect parts Indyarocks from other foreign SNS.”

“With the high cell user base, the site allows user to post message or scrap in SMS form. And allows the dual message access on cell phone and on the site. The SMS feature offers better communication for the users on the move,” concludes Manyam.

What do you think of the network sites? Are these sites promoting the ‘forbidden fruit’ rather than friendship?