Tagging…before i go any further lets just talk briefly what it is and why it is important? (also for the benefit of our chief blogger :P) Tagging is giving a name or keyword to each url u have visited and found worth remembering, and well why is it great is because you can share your tags with others and see their tags - which is loosely termed as social bookmarking!!!…before i start i must admit i am addicted to tagging and might sound like an evagelist for Del.icio.us but truly i feel if the essense of Web 2.0 is sharing, then Del.icio.us and digg and their prototypes are actually at the forefront of this changing Web. And this is so because not only are these guys the sole user driven aggregators of the information available on the web.. but also because they provide some sort of sanity to the vastness of information in terms of its popularity and relavance.

Of late, a bunch of Indian social bookmarking sites have sprung up and are gradually gaining traction in terms of both popularity and users. All in all, we found out 9 tagging sites in india and here’s a run down
on them:

Indiagram - One of the first indian book-marking sites i came across. The site is run by three guys, out of an appartment belonging to one of the three (a microsoft in making :D). The best thing about the site is usability, and the tag cloud feature (which should be the most obvious thing for a social bookmaring site and yet isn’t for most). We have been doing our share of testing with the site and it has given us good amount of traffic too.

Putvote - They are the latest to join the band-wagon. They work more or less the DIGG way but when it comes to creating a sense of active community, they are by-far the best. Looking at the number of votes for articles/posts, they also seem to enjoying decent amount of traffic. And of course the hard to ignore language of the site "Each time you put vote, article score made big by a number of points.This score shows how well-liked the article is, like good Indian girl.The more well-liked the article, (like Dream girl Hema Malini) the higher on the headlines page it goes.In other words – You putting vote, computer selecting winner" (need i say anything further :D). we were stalking the web to see how many users would these sites be getting, and guess where we found out (read the comments on the page) that Putvote get around 150 unique user a day ;))

Humdigg - Simply put A digg clone, good point about the site would be a clean interface, Url enabled search both category and user wise, also it give a solution of linking tags directly to the users blog.

Forums of india - Another entry into the group of digg clones based in India is Forums Of India, this site is run by a indian software professional based out of Chicago. Looks wise the site seemed ancient and doesnt seem to be attracting lot of traffic either.

Newscola - This site has been launched by RHR Networks, the Bangalore based startup that runs Bixee, Pixrat, Apnamarket etc. It seems to be getting around 120 unique users a month day (right out of the horses mouth - now comeon you cant say thats stalking :D). The focus seems to be largely news articles which are india specific. Though lot of bloggers point out that the interface looks a lot similar to Reddit (popular
US based site), we’d say its slightly better than that and much more pleasing to the eye…simpler and cleaner

Indianpad - By far the most feature driven indian tagging site. You have got everything here from audio uploads and ratings to a tag cloud that can be customised to show latest tags, most popular ones and soon, and also even a customisable sidebar for quick links to add more features and tools to your page!!!. if all this wasnt enough, theres more - a live userlisting with googlemaps - so if you know someone called Rajiv(:P) from mumbai ( provided he uses a tagging service :P) you can search for him and see his tags …there’s even a way for users to put google ads on indiapad and earn money.

Indiamarks - ok by the time i reached this one i was kind of wondering what made all these guys keep a prefix "India" infront of their site’s name - indiamarks / indiagram / indiapad / indiabytes ….phewww!!!. This site belongs to a Pune/Silicon Valey based company called Better labs who have also a slew of other Web 2.0 offering - Indiagoes, indiavents, indiahappening. Unlike the other sites mentioned above, this site doesnt funtion in a Digg- fashion(there’s no ranking/voting mechanism) , but more or less like del.icio.us.

Rambhai - lol… Only if i understood what it meant :P, but i simply love their tag-line "A place for the Argumentative Indian", the look and feel of the site is pretty rudimentry, despite all my efforts to know more about the users and owner, i only got to know that Rambhai has been the chaiwaala outside IIMA, and this is his effort to extend chai-time discussions on the net :D.

IndianBytes - Another digg styled Indian tagging site, instead of digging here you say cheers!!!. Seems like the latest entrant in the indian tagging scene. Like Indiapad, they also allow tag/user -listing on the site(u need to be signed in to view that)

• http://tinyurl.com/o7tyzh

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