TekChakra.com

Every week we hear of yet another India specific Social network being setup and launched. Many of them with big media budgets and deep pockets - throwing a slew of TV advertisements at us.

Some of it just doesn’t make sense. Are we going back to the Bubble1.0? Or is there a true hidden pot of gold at the end of the rainbow, this time around. I wonder.

My reasoning tells me that they are trying to quickly gain loyalty from the initial influx of members - and plant the seeds of their viral growth before others snap up these people. By getting an initial seed market share, they will be able to grow virally and quickly once they achieve the tipping point - and once people become part of one social network with their old and new friends, they will be less likely to shift away or fit in with another Social Network - offering the same features.

The true value is in the users “social network”- and not the features being offered by the service (although features and GUI are important here, they dont play that much of a predominant role in the long run). The key to success, is to quickly garner up enough users, reach the tipping point quickly and grow exponentially thereafter.

The technology that powers these Social Networks is pretty basic to develop, and if you have a few thousand dollars to spare - you can easily purchase a very stable tried-and-tested out-of-the-box “white label” commercial solution that will get you up and running in as little as 48 hours. These white label solutions are as powerful and feature rich as the leading global social networks. You can find a list reveiwed by Techcrunch here or a detailed list here. My favourite white label ready-to-go solutions are, in no particular order of priority -

• Affinity Circles
• Crowd Factory
• Small World Labs
• Sparta Social Networks
• PHPizabi
• Leverage Software
• Kwiqq

There. Now, the technological secret is out of the box So, next time someone tells you how complicated the technology is to put together - its not. Its easily purchasable and is, infact pretty non-complicated to develop. For the record, I recently hired 3 interns to develop a Social Networking Solution in 3 to 4 months flat. Also, I do have reason to believe that Rediff’s new ishare media sharing service uses a packaged white label solution by Kickapps (atleast it looks very similar).

Given this scenario of low barrier of entry, that allows any mom-and-pop garage run show to enter the field, I wonder which of Indian Social Networking players are justified with their big media spending strategies. After all, Friendster was once upon a time the first mover with the biggest name in the Social Networking industry - but is now failing miserably as users flock to the other offerings.

As a second part to this post, I will review the players in the Indian market, including the overseas global networks like Orkut, Facebook, Linkedin etc. that are spreading like wild fire amongst Indians. I will base my review purely on readily available stats and research. You may read the second part to this post here.

— Vishal Lamba    Filed under: Uncategorized