Yahoo India announced that it has launched yet another social network for the 16-24 age bracket in an attempt to capture the growing market in India. And although scant details are available, it sounds interesting.
Dubbed SpotM, the new social network will bring college-aged and those close to going to college together in one space. There’s no word on how Yahoo will be able to ensure everyone using the service is really as old as they claim, but Yahoo believes it can manage that problem.
SpotM attempts to differentiate itself by offering two features: the idea of a secret friend and SMS integration with anonymous chat. According to Yahoo, SpotM will allow users to make friends with other users and if they choose, make those friends private so other users don’t know about the relationship. SMS integration with anonymous chat will let users correspond via SMS without revealing their phone number.
It’s nice to see Yahoo try something new, but whether or not its privacy initiatives will really work in its favor remains in doubt. As social networks become more popular, it’s transparency that parenting groups are looking for, not privacy. And once those issues arise, every social network buckles under the pressure. Will Yahoo be any different?
SpotM is currently in private beta.
They will have to do a heck of a job to get the likes of Orkut , Facebook and some more out of business in India . Lets see !..
Secret relationships !.
I’m not too sure about this new initiative by Yahoo since already within a span of 2-3 years there have been plethora of Social Networking Sites (SNS) developed by Indians and Intl giants like Google etc. So this SpotM better be good, different, fast, high on usability and wide reaching otherwise another failed investment I suppose to nudge Indian expectations.
Still waiting for another post from TC on this new initiative from Yahoo.
Actually competition within the 16-24 bracket would be more like friendster. or even the local ones like bharatstudent, and secret friend and anonymous chatting… tell me what does that sound like to you?
When yahoo will start operation in Bangladesh? We want to see yahoo.com.bd at least!
Good for india. Lets see.
Another dumb move my Yahoo!. Its really hard to gain any substantial market share from Orkut, Facebook and 10 other local social networks.
Another dumb move by Yahoo!. Its really hard to gain any substantial market share from Orkut, Facebook and 10 other local social networks.
Yahoo is living up to its name isn’t it?
I think Yahoo needs to regroup and find out what they can do that will show that they are ahead by 3 months, then few months later, regroup again and try and see what they can do that will show that they are ahead by 6 months, until they get to a point where they are building something that is about 1 years into the future. As risky as it is, they might get somewhere with 5 out of 10 products as opposed to going backwards in time and losing 10 out of 10 products.
amen!!!
When MySpace banged the internet, no one had a clue that Facebook will thrash it out so badly in a span of less than 2 years. And like ‘Sampad’ above talked about Usability, many users still find Facebook difficult to use.
Its also true that every moment a new social network is getting born, with search for its guardians. You know what, I came through this brightkite.com which looked much like linkedin.
My personal opinion is Yahoo! can give tough competition to other players, with its unique features. I would love to buzz people around from my iPhone without giving my name and no. How cool is that?
And private friend, wow, again… my girl friend will never know which girl I’m peeking at. LOLzzz. On Orkut, she always see my friends, and what they talk. Damn! someone send me an invite to SpotM.
You are so obviously a foreigner, MySpace is still the biggest in the US. The US is the most valuable, by far, for monetization. Notice how many large companies they partner with?
India just doesn’t have enough money to spend…. yet
@Tim: Looks like you shake your ass a lot on myspace and you are unaware of what’s going around. If not sure, compare myspace and facebook on alexa.com and do visit some sites like http://mashable...l-key-features/
It’s true that US is very valuable for monetization but everything in no longer confined to US. For any company or brand to be successful, they have to work globally and look for feeding variety of worldwide audience.
India may not have that much power of money, but they have something much greater – Sharp Minds. And never ever underestimate that.
You might know that Internet users in India are slightly less than that of US. But what you might not know is that only 5% of India’s population is on Net compared to 72% of America. Imagine what difference it will make in coming future for businesses esp. in terms of monetization as you said.
@JohnnyBoy: LOL. So true, belee dat
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let’s see!
Yahoo has a good chance of making this a success. Yahoo is a good enough name in India and if Yahoo could integrate those popular services (messenger,mail and flickr) into one SN then it can work. Another thing is the popularity of Orkut in India. If they can build some good viral strategy then there is a good chance they can pull users out of Orkut ( in bulk). But again if this is targeted towards college crowd, only a handful of them will join Yahoo SN.
I see http://www.spotm.com booked by someone else — well yahoo has booked spotm.in
“There’s no word on how Yahoo will be able to ensure everyone using the service is really as old as they claim”
Thats easy they wont ask myspace, ask facebook, ask bebbo, ask blackplanet and ask every other social networking site with people under 18.
There is no sound way of verifying age because they dont have a credit card, bank account or anyother way to verify the age of a minor; you could try using a school email address but most schools dont give students email addresses.
I’d love to see how this will integrate with Fire Eagle. I can see some serious potential.
Even http://www.ibibo.com is encroaching indian social networking market slowly..
Companies see scope and they sure are trying. If the instincts are strong, no mountain is tougher to cross. iBibo, Spotm, Orkut, MySpace.. all of them will add some value or other.
lets see how this work , per my knowledge spotm got new stuff lke flikr kinda.. which i think is cool and we can edit some other profile too , franky now im anti facbook coz of its new look and myspace is always spammed and i know one site which is rockin thats smp and butterflymonkey .
lets see how spotm works
yahoo creating active web sid i am glad but i have n’t seen any web fo halping woman or man or coupal who is been having hard to have a child and there are many many thausand of people .Who is been suffering and streggling with there livies.as a Indian i wish i can help them through my people and my countrey.yahoo can make that kind of helpfull web where woman can get help to find other woman who can help other woman who can get some egg doner plan and get coupal have child. many couple are crying and suffering to much like many other countries in forenge countries helping there people.yahoo india can do that kind of help to.
Please give it a try http://oyhello.com/.
It’s the best social network in india now.
Enjoy!
I heard of a new social networking site for Indian students by the name of Social Synapse. http://www.socialsynapse.com . They are currently accepting beta testers.
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Here is a social networking site which promises to offer clutter free environment – http://www.yoyoindia.com.
Thanks, there is more reason to comment than ever before!