MySpace launched in India last evening and apart from the very abrasive Raghu Dixit Project, sounds like it was a fun launch party. The Rupert Murdoch-backed social networking website is the oldest in the business and has somewhere between 80-250 million registered users. The India homepage opens up to reveal some people called ‘campus stars’ from the irritating Channel V show currently on air. And there is also an Amitabh Bachchan video up.
The launch got me thinking about our very own social networking me-toos. It is getting to be a rather crowded market and apart from foreign players such as Facebook and Google’s Orkut, there are also desi big-ticket players such as Reliance Communications’ BigAdda. Jostling with these heavyweights are a bunch of startups — Minglebox (backed by Sequoia Capital India), Desimartini (acquired by HT Media’s Firefly eVentures), Yaari — which, please don’t mind my saying so, looks a bit B-grade — or even Fropper, which happens to be the oldest and is backed by People Interactive. All of them expect to make money from advertising. I’m not seeing much light, at least for startups, at the end of the tunnel.
