Is Minglebox tingling the Janta?

I recently came across a podcast interview with Kavita Iyer, one of the founders of a new social networking site - Minglebox.

My first thoughts when i saw the podcast link to Kavita's interview, was "not another one!!"

In many ways it reminded me of the *Pet.com mania during the dotcom
boom. Every other guy had a mypet.com, yourpet.com and almost every one
of these was funded by a popular VC firm.

So what am i doing in Minglebox!!!

One thing that Kavita did mention and that actually got me interested
was the list of features that this site potentially offered!!! So i
thought hey why not check it out. May be these guys do have something
different after all.

Here's my take on what i've seen so far.

Lets do the pluses first ..

They have indeed flattened the learning curve for most of their applications. Which is great...

This place certainly gives you a feeling of belonging. If you are a
true 'desi', you'll feel absolutely at home. I simply loved some of those typically desi wordings that add to give a great feel.

The campus feature is nice and has a comprehensive(well almost) list of all campuses in the country. Though, i do think it should allow people to add campuses,
probably with an approval process so that there is no duplication. One
of my campuses is missing and im not too happy about it(Please note!!!).

Adding friends. Well lets look at it this way.

I have a profile on orkut. I have created a profile on hi5, friendster
etc etc. So why would i register on minglebox? Surely not because it
has a very attractive chit-chat feature (Which is very nice indeed!!).

Well one potent reason i can think of, is because most of my friends
are on it. And there is a possibility of finding many more of my friends.

One way to make this easy for a lot of people who are already
registered and who want to move to Minglebox to use some of its good
features like chit-chat etc, is to allow them to import a contacts list
or send an invitation out to all their friends on orkut or hi5 without having
to mention each persons email id.

I think Gazzag is doing a great job on this front. And its never too
late!! I havent invited anyone yet. Waiting for that feature to be
added. :)

Well and looks like a lot of good stuff is still on its way.

So coming to the important bit now. Where is the money?

Many people get away saying, its too early and can be worked out etc.
Google can afford to run Orkut without a revenue model. They dont need
additional bandwidth. They have tons lying around unused that they are
paying for anyways.

Even google has ads on orkut these days.

Yes, Advertisement is definitely one of the revenue models. But relying
on advertisements or hoping somebody will buy out a site is no longer a
safe bet.

This being the case, what will be of utmost importance will be : who will use the site?

From what i see the site seems to be targetted at the college going
crowd. But its interesting to note that a majority of users on orkut or
other social networking sites are in their late 20's or 30's. Thats the
'working and single' crowd.

Thats good news. There is money in those wallets. And some of those mobile services that are to be offered on minglebox could hit it off with the crowd.


Having said that. There are quite a few sites eyeing the same space. Yaari, Jhoom, fropper to name a few... So lets differentiate people!!

All the best guys.