Reliance To Start Social Networking Site
You’re reading this here first: ContentSutra has learnt from sources that Anil Ambani company Reliance Entertainment is working on a social networking portal that they intend to launch shortly. The site will be similar to Orkut, but with additional features. More details when we have them.
A social network seems to be the ideal platform to connect the many Reliance Entertainment ventures: Zapak, Adlabs, BigFM. Zapak had a launch budget of $2 million; lets see how much Reliance Entertainment puts behind the launch of their social net…
Related:
– Reliance Entertainment President Rajesh Sawhney Discusses The Big Picture
– Rajesh Sawhney, President Of Reliance Entertainment On BIG FM Online, Gaming And Music On Demand
nikhil,
thats some scoop..
One thing I've always wondered about new social networking companies. How to lure the current user base from Orkut ?
Orkut wasnt an instant hit. It took a long time (at least cpl of years) to get where it is in terms of Indian user base.
And the main hindrance in social networks – you would move if your entire network moves.
However, considering reliance's muscle and all the affliated holdings (adlabs, zapak)..they can create the right bait for users.
wow, with that money , Its quite possible
I dont understand y wil one switch from orkut when it is already free. what cheaper can reliance bring if something is freely available…
Akshay: is it about free, or about friends already being there?
Here's a hypothetical example: Lets say I'm playing multiplayer chess at Zapak– I'm anonymous as is the other person…reliance can connect the two of us using the zapak login ID on the social net. secondly, not everyone is there at social networking sites, and reliance has the media (BigFM) and money muscle to get new people there…the difficulty will be in retaining them, I think…since many of them will find their friends online at orkut, and could easily switch.
Pranav: I have a different theory on Orkut: Orkut acquired users one by one. I signed up, and then just forgot about it. What really got it going was that in September 2005 (I think), Orkut was integrated with google accounts…the emails sent to everyone about the integration led everyone to log in again, and search for friends again…the sustained activity followed thereafter.
I still think Reliance will find it difficult to get users to switch, but it's not unknown to happen. it did with facebook…
Nikhil,
It did with facebook, because facebook exclusively catered to the US univ. students (ie, you could register only if you had an *.edu email id). Just like Gmail restricted signup initially, this created a frenzy for facebook. also, originally, meant only for harvard.edu..
once it took off, only then it spread like wildfire. So, in a way,I wont say that the users 'switched' to facebook.
Myspace got to where it is because Friendstr screwed up – in terms of site performance, mismanagement etc. And myspace offered haven for all these friendstr defectors — thats when myspace starting takin off.
But as I said – Reliance has Adlabs and Zapak. As you put it in the post, integrate the content from the other two to lure in the users. As an example – Adlabs releases a movie – and then rabid fans can join the community and invite other friends. obviously, one can devise many such (& better) technics.
Finally, with all the mishappenings with Orkut and Govt India, who knows – Reliance may be able to leverage those – just a long thought.
Hi Nikhil/Pranav,
Gr8 scoop, I have been tracking the scene and have done meetups with most of the new SocNet businesses IBIBO, Yaari, MingleBox et al and have noticed that almost all are driven to compete with Orkut, which seems to be a result of the current 9.43% of 40 mill odd users. Indians now are third largest next to 66% brazilians, 10.2% Americans.
However the main thing to note here is that if you focus on the basic numbers only about 10% of the IAMAI number of 35% [3.6 mill] is on orkut.
So are the other 90% intenet users here completely uninterested in social networking… or havent found Orkut interesting enough? For long scraps have been the mainstay.
The Indian users have some nice communities too, however there is a lot more that can be done.
Now thats where the real muscle of BigFM, Adlabs Films, Adlabs Multiplexes can come in handy.
More soon, lemme try and find out more too.
Merging this services with reliance mobile will surely gain them a market share.,
What this will be is a niche (games, entertainment) socNet. nothing more, nothing less. Hence there is no 'concept' nor 'need' to lure
users away from orkut, etc.
Renu,
If you see the IAMAI report on Internet usage in India, you'll see that email, news, jobs and matrimony are still the top activities of online Indian population. So, yes — social networking does not gel with a whole segment of people (to some extent me included).
Also, remember, a great chunk of the 9.43% of Indians on Orkut are NRI's too. Those should be excluded if you were to determine the actual number of Indians on Orkut.
Pranav.
y dont these guys concentrate on zapak and make it work first.
when we see the forums on zapak 95 % of the comments are nothing but complaints