India 2.0 Part 7 – WATblog Exclusive

Firstly i would like to apologize to all WATblog readers for taking so much time for the Part 7 of the India 2.0 series. I guess i pay the price of being an entrepreneur trying to change the way fresher recruitment is done in India. In short have been busy with generating revenue and answering questions of investors regarding why should my company get funding!

Anyways so i finally found time to put the India 2.0 part 7 together! here it goes..

SEARCH ENGINES

Sangeetix.com – Sangeetix is a social search and discovery engine for hindi media content. Sangeetix crawls and indexes several websites and blogs for songs, lyrics, podcasts etc. and allows you to search them. Sangeetix goes beyond search, you can also bookmark or tag your favorite results and share them with others. Sangeetix also helps you discover new music based on similarly tagged songs.

So what exactly is sangeetix? – Ever thought of searching music and playing it off the web? Searching lyrics of hindi songs? Well ever thought of a search engine just for hindi music? Thats Sangeetix!

Whats hot? – Well the concept itself is quite hot! a search engine for hindi muic which allows you to listen to songs and download the lyrics sounds like a good idea given the fact that India is a hindi film music crazy country.

Whats not? – Well the reach is what’s not great.. I explain what i mean by that.. while searching a competitor for sangeetix i came across dhingana.com which has a wide variety of songs which were hosted on its server and played a few and they played almost instantly! While sangeetix took a lot of time to play a song and not only that their crawler doesn’t index that many songs as yet so its likely you might not find what you are looking for..

Overall Rating – 3.8/5 User Interface - 4/5   Concept - 4.5/5 Content - 3/5

Sapne.com – Sapne.com is the one stop free shop that finds relevant matrimonial profiles from all over the web. Sapne provides a simple Google style search interface allowing you to search by a few simple keywords.

So what exactly is sapne? – Like sangeetix sapne is a search engine for matrimonials. And its not the first search engin for online classifieds. Bixee.com is another search engine for online jobs.

Whats hot? – Well yet again the concept is hot! As there are so many matrimonial sites mushrooming a prospective matrimonial services seeker would like to go through all of them at once and thats what sapne provides.

Whats not? – Well again not enough matrimonial profile to index. Most of the sites which are indexed can be called as B grade or C grade sites. I guess only the profiles which are viewable by non members as well are the ones that sapne crawler can index. A search for the keyword http://www.shaadi.com/ showed that they have just 4000 profiles indexed from shaadi.

Overall Rating – 3.6/5 User Interface - 4.5/5   Concept - 4.0/5 Content - 2.5/5

Other search engines which are worth a mention are bhrama.in and raftaar.com which are both vernacular search engines and are woth a visit.

BLOGGING 

Stuffablog.com – Well this is web application which is targetted only to bloggers. Stuffablog is a god’s gift to lazy bloggers who feel lethargic about giving related links to his or her post!

So what exactly is Stuffablog.com? – Well its a fantastic application developed by an indian techie which enables you to enrich your blog content by adding related content from Tags, Y! Map, Flickr, Y! News, Y! Answers, Amazon, Icons and Y! SiteSearch! phew!

Whats hot? Actually i was quite impressed with this to give you an idea of what its like click here. Its a fantastic application for bloggers and blogging who are looking both giving their readers more knowledge and also making money as added content and outgoing links will help google page rank and will also help content related ads like google ads.

Whats not? – Honestly im still searching for what i dont like about stuffablog! When i do find some issue ill post it out here.

Overall Rating – 4.5/5 User Interface - 4.5/5   Concept - 4.5/5 Content - 4.5/5

Instablogs.com – Instablogs, as a blog network, has over a 100 blogs under their umbrella and the team is managed by Ankit and Nandini Maheshwari who are based in New Delhi. Now they have moved into building a blogging community by giving bloggers an opportunity to have a common platform to interact and blog.

So what exactly is instablogs.com? – Ok here’s what it is.. 100 blogs around 75 bloggers come together on a common platform instablogs.com. So the content from these hundred blogs is also posted on Instablogs.com as small snippets with the source being credited to the original blog. For example celebguru.org is a movie related blog from the instablog network and posts from celebguru.org are posted on instablogs.com as a small 3 line snippet with the source linking back to celebguru.org. Besides this they also have an Instablogs community which is like blogger where you get your own domain [like myname.instablogs.com] that revolves around your activity in the Instablogs zone. Comments can be posted by readers on your stories, your friends’ activity, your popular stories and other things. Like blogger there are templates as well.

Whats hot? – Two things are very hot! Firstly the Concept of community meets blogging platform and the second is the user interface which is very very well executed. Having 75 inhouse bloggers blogging about all different topics that you would probably expect from a full fledged newspaper is a great plus. Also including a community aspect which allows new users to registed their own blogs just adds to the user generated content and involvement of the readers.

Whats not? – Content is a big let down! And i dont mean the quality of whats written.. I mean the fact that all the bloggers are following the same format of posting 3 lines on instablogs and linking to the source which again is a instablog network website. I mean when i tried reading anything on instablog i had to inevitably click on go on the network blog. There is hardly any content on instablog.com itself it works more like digg or a redirection website for its network blogs. The reason for this could be the fact that the network blogs have ads on them and the bloggers are probably earning from those ads thereby explaining the reason behind this format of putting the post. There are no ads on instablogs.com though there is maked out spaces for ad display which suggests that ads would soon be displayed on instablogs.com as well.

Overall Rating – 3.8/5 User Interface - 5/5   Concept - 4.5/5 Content - 2/5

SOCIAL NETWORKING

Mymuv.com – We haven’t been able to check this site out but got to know about it from this article. Mymuv from what we understand is a community build around the lifestyle changes taking place in people’s life. Here is an excerpt from Webyantra’s review of Mymuv.com "MyMuv is a site that attempts to track lifestyle changes and trends. It is currently in private beta and launching next week. MyMuv (as the name suggests) is a place where you can record and share the movements (muvs) in your likes/dislikes with regard to products, brands, places, people, ideas, concepts et al – anything that reflects your persona.". Read the entire review here

Yo4ya.com – Another social network that is still in closed beta still haven’t got a chance to go through the site. But by the looks of it its got a good design. More on Yo4ya soon.

Hikut.com – A social network which could be termed as a hybrid between hi5 and orkut! Thats why i think they named it Hikut.com. But its not only the name they have exact features of both these international social networking sites.

So what exactly is Hikut? – Well in simple words Hi5+Orkut=Hikut.com. It has all the features like blogs, forum, events, classifieds, music, chat and instant messenger. You can add friends scrap them (like orkut) or you can chat with them in chartrooms (Like hi5)

Whats hot? – Im not sure whats hot? its like any other social network in beta version..

Whats not? – Its another social network with no visible differentiating factor and just follows Orkut.com! My question is whats next? Chirkut.com? [Chirkut is non-dictionary hindi word often used in Uttar Pradesh and Bihar (two states from India) to praise a person for being loser, stupid and dullard.]

Overall Rating – 2/5 User Interface - 3/5   Concept - 1/5 Content - 2/5

Well like hikut.com there is also indiagrid.com which has more emphasis on classifieds alongwith social networking. Frankly im tired of seeing more and more social networking sites. Here is a list of indian social networking sites i know of.. Yaari.com, Humsubka.com, GoYaar.com, Fropper.com, Jhoom.in, Snehah.com, Minglebox.com, Ibibo.com, Hikut.com, Indiagrid.com, Yo4Ya.com (still to launch) (and now my brain has stopped working! Phew!). I am still to understand how they plan to counter competition from sites like Hi5.com and orkut.com and the recent popular one gazzag.com?

Hope you enjoyed reading on India’s progess in web 2.0 arena. If you want to keep yourself updated on what’s happening internationally we suggest you visit THIS LINK and listen in to to what some of the internet industry’s leading thinkers and innovators have to say about the future of Web 2.0.

Till next time.. keep reading WATblog.. cheers!