Yahoo is SpotM in India
By Azam on September 19, 2008 
SpotM is Yahoo India social network with interesting features for the Indian market. SpotM will target the 16-24 the college going age bracket in an attempt to capture the growing market in India. Google and Facebook have been increasing their share of the Indian social networking market. Yhaoo will likely try to tap into its large Yahoo mail user base to the new SpotM service.
Yahoo has interesting features for the Indian market
- The idea of a secret friend - i.e. you can make friends and if you want, keep them secret.
- SMS integration/Anonymous chat - One can have private conversations with others without revealing their mobile number.
SpotM will allow users to make friends with other users and if they choose, make those friends private so other users don’t know about the relationship. SMS integration with anonymous chat will let users correspond via SMS without revealing their phone number.
This seems to be tailored to the Indian cultural norms or to work around privacy issues. The ability to interact with the opposite sex in a conservative culture should be a big hit. At the same time, I would expect from previous experience that the service could be abused by aggressive use and overtly ambitious individuals.
Google has been a big hit with Orkut in the social networking dominating the scene. Other sites like hi5 and Friendster have been popular and show signs of continued interest. MySpace has been virtually nonexistent in the net citizens in India. Facebook seems to be the popular flavor that has been spreading. Yahoo efforts will be interesting since the brad is quite popular for email and for chat use. Yahoo strategy seems to focus on themes that will like be viral by offering SMS and anonymity to flirt in secret. Combining the mobile phone SMS and Social networking is a deadly combination for the youth in India.
Categories : India, TechTags : , Facebook, Google, Orkut, Social networking, SpotM, Yahoo India