Making Lifestreaming Click in India

Social Networking continues to attract entrepreneurs and investors alike, despite growing concerns about the long-term business viability of the segment. And a bunch of local entrepreneurs have already latched on to so-called next generation social networking models, termed ‘lifestreaming’. Indian startups such as Lifeblob (received $1 million from Seedfund this month) and LifeinLines, which follow global precedents, fall within this category. What is the future of such me-too startups? Is ‘lifestreaming’ as a model really the next generation of social networking? Norwest Venture Partners India managing director Niren Shah, who was part of the original Baazee management team and served as senior director of strategy and ventures at eBay in the US prior to Norwest, shares his thoughts on the space.

Thoughts on Lifestreaming

By Niren Shah

There have been several startups in the space of Digital Lifestyle Aggregation (DLA) which have come up globally in the past 18 months. DLAs let users create and organize memorable digital assets (using emails, photos, videos, documents, SMS, blogs, social apps, etc.) and help them share these with family and friends. Users use it to build personal diaries, family tree histories (genealogy) for social casting, etc.

I think it is an interesting space especially for ‘Gen Y’ whose life revolves around the online world and I believe it will continue to grown in the long term. Globally, the early adopters have been the Internet savvy ‘digerati’ who want to preserve their digital memories for the future. Companies are busy acquiring users for the long term, which works well since these users put in so much time to build content that they are unlikely to ever leave — instead, they are the ones encouraging friends and family to join!

While I like the concept of ‘lifestreaming’ I wonder whether this may be somewhat early for the Indian Internet consumer. The one thing I do worry about is the competition — more than ten websites have emerged globally. I would also be watching future entrants like Google which have enough content (through properties such as OpenSocial, Youtube, Picasa, Android, Google Maps, Blogger, etc.) to make lifestreaming a very seamless experience for the mass market.

Specific to LifeinLines and Lifeblob: Both companies have good websites and feature sets. I really liked LifeinLine’s focus on SMS/MMS and Lifeblob’s fantastic UI. I would encourage the companies to continue this consumer focus and to experiment further to make their proposition more simple, relevant and mainstream for the Indian consumer. I can see that both teams are truly passionate (by reading their lifestreams) and I wish them the very best in their entrepreneurial endeavours.

Photo Courtesy: Norwest Venture Partners