Adding to the list of his attempts to create an ongoing business Sabeer Bhatia has gone for yet another attempt. This time its called ApnaCircle.
Social networking is hot. In fact with Facebook on the block from last 3 years its gone red hot. Everybody wants to start a Social Networking site. We at here in India have got a lot of them.
However, till recently the market for professional Social Networking was un-addressed. Across the seas Linked-In is the biggest site for professional networking. ApnaCircle aims at tapping this market in India. The competitors to ApnaCircle are InfoEdge's Brijj.com and SiliconIndia.com. As far as I can see its a good move by Bhatia. But as we all know the difference always lies in execution,marketing and adding value for the user.
Unfortunately, initial look says, ApnaCircle is a disappointment. The site design is average. At least with the $400 million deal on hotmail I would expect that Bhatia wasn't low on money to pay it to a good web-design company. The site which started with professional networking at first now displays "Social & Professional Networking" as its aim. So, it seems to me that it has changed (or should I say lost? ) its focus.
The News Feed section contains feeds where users are advertising their products. For e.g. as of writing this, my News Feed section is showing "Your Horoscope of the Day" and " New Products available on apnacircle.com". Did they get into shopping as well? I didn't know that. There is no clear distinction between Social circle and Professional circle. What if folks at my office are also in my social circle?
Also from the time I've joined I've got several mails from some Russian girls who would like to date me. Although I'm excited about this proposition I can't help to note that its spam and am surprised that ApnaCircle's folks are not doing anything about it. These Russian girls are also notoriously famous for spamming your email boxes too. Now they seem to have found a new ground as well.
To attract users they also have a point system which adds more points as you invite more friends and send more scraps, etc. The points can then be redeemed for some gift which will be delivered right to your doorstep.
Conclusion: I think ApnaCircle folks tried to get greedy with grabbing the wholesome pie of Social as well as Professional networking. And as far as I can see they are not getting anywhere. With confused focus, bad design and no value add to the user I don't think this venture is going anywhere. Social NW is already crowded and Orkut currently reigns there. If they change their policy to only stick to Professional NW I think they can still resurrect and make a difference.
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