India 2.0 Part 6 – WATblog Exclusive

Since we started the India 2.0 series the activity in the web 2.0 space in India has grown manifold. Our last part India 2.0 part 5 featured 8 web 2.0 sites and we thought it would be the longest post on WATblog for sometime.. But guess we proved ourselves worng in just a week.. So here we (that includes both Garima and Me as she has reviewed half of the sites mentioned here) are profiling 9 web 2.0 sites that are in the indian space and some of them are owned by indians directed towards an international audience as well.

For the benefit of our readers we have divided these sites as Social Networking, Search Engines, Online Collaboration,  and Online Organisers

SOCIAL NETWORKING

Yaari.com – We have mentioned yaari.com a few times in our articles as it was under wraps and was still to be launched. But finally last week Yaari.com launched its beta version with an invite only model. I was one of the priviledged few to get an invite.

So what exactly is Yaari.com? Yaari is an attempt by its founders to provide a forum to freely express their views, propagate their passions and enjoy each other. In short another social networking platform.

What’s hot? Many features are worth a mention some of them are a first. Firstly along with the basics like profile, blogs, there is video and audio upload options. There is also the usual groups events sharing features. The most striking feature is the drag and drop profile section where i can arrange parts of my profile as i want i.e. i can keep my friend’s list and their comments on top if i want to. Also the popularity score is a way of engaging the user with the site. They also have yaari mobile which helps you connect with your friends by sending them a message on their mobile through the web or even browse through their profile through your phone. Yaari mobile is also their way of generating revenue.

What’s not? What they lack is that somewhere yaari doesn’t make me fill up all my details.. while this might be seen as a good feauture to some.. from the point of view of social networking when im browsing someone’s profile i want to read more about them.. and this can be done by automatically redirecting the user to each section and having many fields with radio buttons and options to choose from.. something orkut.com does perfectly.

Jhoom.in – Another one of the growing India based social networking sites. What’s different is this one? Not much..but nevertheless its a well made social networking website.

So what exactly is jhoom.in? Ill let Wikipedia’s definition of social networking do the explanation (for those who till today dont understand social networking)

What’s hot? Good interface and sign up procedure. Also the ability to choose which field to hide and which field to make public is a plus. Well according to me a social network should ahve the easiest sign up procedures as signing up more and more users is imperative for its growth especially at an early stage of its life, Jhoom makes the sign up and form filling procedure very easy even though we can compare or call it inspired by orkut.com.

What’s not? There is no usp.. Its just another social networking site offering the same things blogs, scraps (in this case called guest book), albums, etc.. with just and indianised look. The only way it can grow is when more and more users sign up which after a while would level out..

Snehah.com – Before we go any further,the word SnehaH is a sanskrit word, which means Friendship. Hence, needless to explain this has to be a social networking site. Well, though it works similar to Myspace, it tries to differ from it in interface and the design of the site

So what is exactly Snehah?  its basically a social networking site for making friends, joining communities with regular networking feature, the USP here as the owners would also like to say is “Indian community”, but is it actually a USP?

What’s hot? I must admit this site certainly has a good registration process, which informs the user in real-time about the available of user Id, feasibility of the password and other minor details. Also commendable is the speed of the site, it took me relatively less time to upload my picture than that it takes even in orkut!!!

What’s not? same old story…how many "me too" social networks would we see in india? i dont see anything new in SnehaH which doesnt exist in a Myspace, friendster, orkut, hi5 or even humsabka, go yaar and hundred others!!! . Also the compulsory display picture upload for getting registered was a major turn-off.

SEARCH ENGINES

Guruji.com – Guruji is a local search engine founded by two Delhi IIT graduates which recently got $ 7 million seed funding from Sequoia Capital India.

So what exactly is Guruji? The site claims to be "the first crawler based search engine for India and India related content. Our (guruji.com’s) proprietary algorithm automatically identifies India related content on the web and organizes it in such a way that you get the most relevant results fast"

What’s hot? Well, considering the site launched with a $ 7 million funding itself makes it too hot to be tracked within the indian online market. Talking about search result, i tried comparing the search results for the word "achar" (pickle in Hindi) on both guruji and google. while google showed wikipedia’s article on what achar means and other general information, search results on guruji actually gave me much more of local content…even when i tried using google serach on pages from india, guruji’s gyan (content) was still more relevant .The company also plans to offer a choice to search data in indian languages in next six months.

What’s not? Agreed search is big in india with 65 million Indians using searching online but getting indians to shift from a google or yahoo to guruji is going to be a challenge for the site. Also their homepage is the regular search instead of loacal search shich is a minus as i felt that local search is the USP and should be the homepage.

Onyomo.com – Another localised search engine in our list of india 2.0 search related sites.

So what exacly is Onyomo? Onyomo which stands for "on your move", has been around the scenes for sometime now. Currently the service is only offered for Delhi/NCR and Bangalore. However there is news of them adding localized search for mumbai as well.

What’s hot? if getting local is the right mantra for internet in india, then this is it. Not only the user gets to see  delhi’s best lounge bar, restaurants with details but also information such as the nearest atm, florists and even beauty saloon. And extending the service to mobile phones for free or delivering data to an IM client ensures that the service is accessible to a much larger audience.The site has a neat ajaxified UI too.

What’s not? even though the product and the concept seemed good to me, i somehow sensed a lack of vibrant community on the site where people were rating places, lounges etc.

Kosmix.com – Kosmix is a website meant for a US audience but managed my Indians. Its a search engine which makes search easy by categorising it. It has also featured in the Time’s 50 coolest website list.

So what exactly is Kosmix? Well in one sentence it would be called a categorised search engine i.e. a search engine that provides categories so that your search doesn’t show irrelevant results.

What’s hot? Well a truely international product and quite visibly targetted towards the US markets. I think kosmix as an idea makes a lot of sense as it could be called a niche search engine. They started off with health search which till now remains their homepage.

What’s not? well search habits are difficult to change. I guess kosmix would have to offer more number of categories with some really good value add if it needs to survive in the international search engine market.

ONLINE ORGANISERS 

Gurulib.com - Gurulib. help organize home libraries by cataloging books, movies, music, games and software online.

So what exactly is Gurulib? Well, if you are a book, movies, games, music, or even online software freak and want to categorise things that you already possess or would want to in future, gurulib is the place to be. For example, if you want to categorise a book owned by you , you would need to know the ISBN number for book (and UPC code for otherwise). On entering this number, gurulib cataloges information like author, synopsis, genre, front cover etc. automatically fetched from either Amazon database or from 530 public and university libraries around the world.

 What’s hot? one of the most innovative feature of this site is that you can keep your virtual book shelfs private and hence visible only to the owner or make it public and share the catalog with your friends. which mean, You and your friends can then access your library on the web at http://www.gurulib.com/username.GuruLib uses Amazon E-commerce API and Z39.50 library network protocol to access over 54 million cataloged titles in 530 public and university libraries around the world

What’s not? how many indians including you and me would actually get on categorising our offline products such as books, cd’s , DVD’s online? alsothe design looks very amateur, and the fact that the front page is nearly a byte-for-byte rip-off of Google’s login page does not inspire enough confidence in me to sign up for an account.

Buxfer.com – Buxfer.com is a ajax based site again started by Indians but for an international audience. Buxfer can be termed as an online expenses and income planner cum organiser.

So what exactly is Buxfer.com? Buxfer.com as said before helps you keep track of your expenses and incomes by reporting, tagging and searching bills. these could be any kind of bills or even money borrowed or lent out to someone. one can add groups and share this data with the groups or individual contacts as well as tag each expense of income. The transaction detail sheet helps you get an overview of your expenses and incomes.

What’s hot? A great tool for organising you incomes and expenses online especially as all of us forget so many things and bills we spend on. Also the interface is very user friendly and easy to understand. Quite a remarkable product if you consider usability.

What’s not? Well its targetted to the US though thats a plus in many ways. Also somehow the concept of sharing ones expenses and incomes might not take off that well thats just a thought. But on the whole very few "whats not" on this one..

ONLINE COLLABORATION

Zoho.com – Zoho.com, as most would be aware by now, is a free web-based office suite including word processor, spreadsheet, and presentation applications, Virtual Office for email and collaboration, an online database with scripting application and more. Zoho is one of the brands from AdventNet, an Indian software company started in 1996.

So what exactly is Zoho office suite? this basically allows users to do concurrent editing/collection of the same document by multiple users.You can make an online presentation to a distributed audience, all of them connecting through a browser. it helps you manage your data in a professionally managed data center, which is not only secure but is also avilable to you wherever you go.

What’s hot? Zoho has a much more robust set of office tools with 13+ online tools available.The tools available on Zoho are much more integrated than Google’s and include a product called Zoho Virtual Office. Zoho Virtual office provides web based email, web documents and sharing, calendar, tasks and reporting, contacts, notes, bookmarks, instant Messaging, groupspace, wireless handheld access, and multi language support all wrapped into one online interface. even if we start comparing individual tools with other comtemporaries like a Zoho writer with writely, Zoho writer still scores high in features such as support for importing documents by email, a finer document search, template support and more

What’s not? well, if you dont have online access,a purely online office suite can actually leave you empty handed in the middle of nowhere, therefore, plug-ins that provide disconnected-mode of work become a must for such suits which is still lacking.

Ok.. Thats it for this time.. phew.. 9 sites is the maximum we have covered and if you liked reading then you should give garima credit too as this time she helped me out with half of them. I guess thats what collaborative blogging is all about .. Till next time which i think will be very soon as web 2.0 is booming in India with every second day we are witnessing new sites. Cheers