The thing with social media is – you can never predict what will work – it isn’t just about the concept, but also about timing. Indiagames launched their mobile community – Tadkalive – on Airtel Live around two months ago, and I tried it out over the weekend.
Tadkalive has features that most online social networking sites have, scraps, blog posts, blog posts, photo albums, forums etc, , and also private chat rooms, and video albums. All the photo and video content, Indiagames CEO Vishal Gondal tells me, is moderated manually, and uploaded only once approved. These can be emailed in, or sent via MMS. There are also text messages and posts, including posts on ‘how to hack gprs’, ‘how to avoid billing from Airtel’ (heh), as well as some inappropriate content, but Gondal says Indiagames is monitoring that too. I found the feature that allows people to be virtually going steady, or getting engaged or married rather unusual…
The community is currently only accessible on Airtel, via Airtel Live for Rs.30 a month, and free via the Internet. I couldn’t access it via Airtel’s ‘Mobile Office’ gprs, so had to get Airtel Live enabled. Indiagames plans to launch the community on other operator WAP portals, and allow interoperability. As to why they didn’t launch it independent of the operator, accessible via GPRS, Gondal says that hosting it with operator allows him to monetize the site immediately, and the operator also promotes the site on his WAP portal – so faster signups.
But how many have signed up so far? At the time that I’d logged in, there were 357 users online, and Indiagames provides some stats:
Tadkalive has 20,000 paid users, of which around 8000 are active. In all around 42,000 messages have been posted, with 16,000 relationship requests sent. There are more than a thousand photo albums, and (surprisingly) around 75 percent of those uploading multimedia content have used MMS. A maximum of around 500 users have been online at any time. Around 60 percent users are between 19 and 28, and 70 percent of all users are male.
I also noticed a downloads section that hosts content like Wallpapers, Ringtones, Animations and Games, all with a price tag, and powered by Indiagames. How else is this portal going to be monetized? Advertising, says Gondal.
I think Indiagames might have an gotten a head start by being the first, but once GPRS usage increases, they will face competition from operator independent WAP sites. Question is, once they’re used to Tadkalive – will users switch?
Related:
– @3GSM India: Mobile Communities, Moderation And Monetization
– India Gears Up For Mobile Communities
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