Social networks are going to be like men?
..in that they all pretty much look and act the same.
A good friend sent me this Makkadman video link. Warning: you're not going to get it, unless you understand Hindi and really Hindi films.:)
It turns out the spoof Hindi-Spiderman-animation is a advertisement for this social networking site: DesiMartini.
Check out the site. Does the UI look vaguely familiar???
I spent at least a minute trying to figure out how it was related to facebook; if it was related to facebook etc., etc.
Its not, but it looks exactly like it.
Given how many white-label social networking tool providers there are now (i.e. companies that make the site for you and slap your branding on it), a social network site is basically a commodity (GigaOM post on this way back) and just as everyone's personal blogs kinda look alike (because of the limit on Blogger templates), its a matter of time before everyone's social networks kinda start looking alike, especially if systems such as Ning continue to gain in popularity,
DesiMartini's incredibly cheesy TV ad is is below. Its interesting that they thought it made economic sense to buy TV ad time for a social networking site. I can't remember seeing Myspace or Facebook ads on TV in the US. My understanding is that Orkut is the leading social networking site in India. I'm on Orkut, pretty active on it, and have employment-related vested interests in seeing the property do well. Also Orkut seems like a really nice guy who TAed a class I was in and once let me a quarter for laundry. But there is room for improvement on features on Orkut, especially given what Facebook has done recently. Facebook/Myspace are still very US-centric, so maybe there is an opportunity there...
Do I think there are too many social-networking sites in the world? Yes. Are some tof them incredibly unnecessary? I think so!. Do I think some new ones might still succeed? Yes, but it'll be hard, but some will. I have no idea which though, but I have a theory..that's another post.:)
A good friend sent me this Makkadman video link. Warning: you're not going to get it, unless you understand Hindi and really Hindi films.:)
It turns out the spoof Hindi-Spiderman-animation is a advertisement for this social networking site: DesiMartini.
Check out the site. Does the UI look vaguely familiar???
I spent at least a minute trying to figure out how it was related to facebook; if it was related to facebook etc., etc.
Its not, but it looks exactly like it.
Given how many white-label social networking tool providers there are now (i.e. companies that make the site for you and slap your branding on it), a social network site is basically a commodity (GigaOM post on this way back) and just as everyone's personal blogs kinda look alike (because of the limit on Blogger templates), its a matter of time before everyone's social networks kinda start looking alike, especially if systems such as Ning continue to gain in popularity,
DesiMartini's incredibly cheesy TV ad is is below. Its interesting that they thought it made economic sense to buy TV ad time for a social networking site. I can't remember seeing Myspace or Facebook ads on TV in the US. My understanding is that Orkut is the leading social networking site in India. I'm on Orkut, pretty active on it, and have employment-related vested interests in seeing the property do well. Also Orkut seems like a really nice guy who TAed a class I was in and once let me a quarter for laundry. But there is room for improvement on features on Orkut, especially given what Facebook has done recently. Facebook/Myspace are still very US-centric, so maybe there is an opportunity there...
Do I think there are too many social-networking sites in the world? Yes. Are some tof them incredibly unnecessary? I think so!. Do I think some new ones might still succeed? Yes, but it'll be hard, but some will. I have no idea which though, but I have a theory..that's another post.:)
