Wednesday, September 26, 2007

Mushrooming Social Networking Sites

New social networking websites keep cropping up everyday in India and I am really frustrated by all the invitations I receive on my office email id from totally strange people. I can understand that people send invitations to get the prizes which are generally offered by the websites.

While some websites give you option to prevent all further invitations on your email, youmint only gives option to decline an invitation. I would like to prevent any invitation being sent to my official email id, if possible.

Also I would like these websites to be good internet samaritans and have a policy that if somebody keeps inviting totally strangers on their website and if they get multiple reports to confirm that, sender is banned from their website and yes I am here saying "Don't Be Evil" :-)

Also I am not sure where is this new crop of networking sites like www.bigadda.com, www.youmint.com, apnacircle.com, www.yaari.com, www.desimartini.com heading? I think nowhere and 90% of them are going to be closed down within a year. Also most of them seem to lure users by offering either free iPods or free SMSs.

They all are trying same things, same way and obviously all of them can't be successful doing the same things as dozen others.

3 comments:

mayank gupta said...

Hey Sachin,

You are absolutely right...Even I feel that starting a social network without any particular USP is actually stupid. Linkedin is one network, which I think is great because they offer something different and they concentrate on business connections and not just informal connections...like this facebook is offering good options like they allow developers to make use of their database...this is something which makes them the hottest product in the market.

What do you think about it ?
http://www.reviewsaurus.com

Sachin Palewar said...

Mayank,

Thanks for your comment.

Yes I also think that LinkedIn is the best professional networking tool today. I used to be on Orkut earlier but then I was fed up with all that non-sense scrapping and un-moderated communities and messages that I deleted my profile and now I only use LinkedIn and it has already won me some business.

Not sure about facebook, keep hearing about that but I think that's also more inclined towards social networking so haven't tried that yet.

Saikat said...

Hey Sachin,
Compliments on the great observation. I am also very much amused on how social networks keep mushrooming almost everyday.
I thought of creating something funny and satirical on the future of social networking.

http://www.citipals.com/social_networks_mania
Have a look and smile :-)

PS: My website deals with lifestyle entities and I would like to invite you there to contribute in anyway you wish.
Cheers!
Saikat B

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