After the facebook model in which the sites were focussed on college students only it seems like everyone out there wants to replicate and redo the same in India.
Minglebox has been one such startup which though open to public is looking to specifically cater to the college going audience.
They are trying very hard by launching virals like collegitis and most of their mails to users has subjects like "Join your classmates at So and so college on Minglebox". Their latest attempt has been "Teachers day blogs" where they are asking their users to blog about their fond memories about teachers. Im sure there will be more such initiatives in th future as well. Atleast whats heartening is that they have started using their brains for marketing instead of blindly spamming on orkut.
Another site that is targetting the colleges and especially the study abroad students is Bharatstudent.com. This portal which is backed by Northgate Technologies had been in the news earlier for being the only social network to have reached the top 100 sites in India. But their claims are marred by accusations of spamming and pornographic content usage and other questionable means to drive traffic. Bharatstudent.com has launched Campus Awards 2007 as a platform for grading the best schools and colleges across India.
According to this article, over 1,00,000 schools and colleges across the country have been considered for the awards. Shortlisted campuses will have to nominate themselves with necessary information at the Bharatstudent.com/campusawards.php.
Besides for the above two the latest entrant into campus life has been Campus18 the Raghav Behl backed youth community that we featured here. Campus18 is actually having representative across colleges to build traction on the site.
I not sure if the above sites have actually doing anything different than just social networking for college students thereby not adding substantial value than an orkut or a facebook. I believe Communities started by students for their own set of Institutes around a certain pain point. This could be project sharing, notes sharing, events, admissions or possibly all. I think there is tremendous potential in networking tools linked with need based activities for college goers like exam dates, courses, career discussions, notes exchanging, events, projects etc. There are a few small sites that are doing this for a niche audience but nothing there on a large scale.
