Trends in India - Mobile Social Networking Sees Explosive Growth

8/4/2019 Trends in India - Mobile Social Networking Sees Explosive Growth

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Trends in India

Mobile social networking sees explosive growth

Mumbai: Social networking isnt confined to the fully-abled community anymorethe sites haveopened up new avenues to connect the hearing impaired and deaf communities. Rajesh Ketkar, a 32-year-

old hearing impaired person, who heads a Vadodara-based NGO, Mook Badhir Mandal (MBM), has

found a solution to problems faced by the hearing impaired in RockeTalka mobile social networkingplatform.

RockeTalk allows users to send video messages that makes communication easy for the community

because facial expressions are critical during a conversation between two hearing impaired persons.

With video messaging, talking to one another becomes easy. In addition, users can also send their video

messages to an interpreter who in turn would talk to a normal person on their behalf over the phone, saidKetkar. MBM has even prepared two short films demonstrating the use of this application and uploaded iton various other social networking sites.

With 70 per cent of Indias mobile internet users coming from SEC A and B cities, the 46 million mobileinternet users, according to a report published by the Internet and Mobile Association of India (IAMAI),

are a valued user base that has got the bigger social networking giants like Facebook, Twitter, Google

Plus and LinkedIn investing in their mobile platforms.

But dedicated mobile application developers like Nimbuzz, SMSGupShup, RockeTalk and Mig33 have

painstakingly built large mobile user communities that show no signs of slowing down.

Keeping the Indian user happy

Chris Chandler, VP, Business Development of Mig33 claims having 50 million users worldwide. We arevery popular in tier II and tier III cities of India. Before expanding, we did a pilot and went to cities across

India and found that we enjoy popularity in cities like Patna, Bharuch, Jalandhar, Vapi, Valsad and towns

in Gujarat, Haryana.

Mig33 is a social mobile platform where users make new friends, chat with them, exchange virtual goods

and play social games. Chandler says the company has seen its NRI user base connecting to their

community from across the globe.

For example, a lot of Gujaratis live in Tanzania, Mozambique and South Africa, among others, and we

have a good user base there. We have seen mobile community members connecting with them in chatrooms, exchange virtual gifts and play social games.


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Nimbuzz, a cross-platform chat app, allows users to send messages to other instant

messenger applications like Windows Live, Google Talk or Facebook. The app

also allows free voice calls to other Nimbuzz users over WiFi or 3G without using

any voice minutes. Jamshed V Rajan, country head, Nimbuzz cites that while their

smartphone users log into the application around six times every day, feature

phone users (entry to mid-level handset models) were logging in about less than

twice a day.

This was mostly due to the lack of push notification feature that updates users about the social networkactivity on their handsets, says Rajan. The company promptly launched a new SMS-based notificationfeature that sent offline updates to its feature phone users. Our feature phone users now log in five times

a day to the application.

RockeTalk, which started out as a mobile peer-to-peer voice messaging system, has evolved into a social

media platform in the last two years. Rajiv Kumar, CEO & founder, RockeTalk says: We have over 6.7monthly active users in India alone and over 2.5 million active coming from around the world. There are

more than hundred thousand communities on RockeTalk in India and we are adding a new user every 4

seconds.

Kumar says Anna Hazares anti-corruption movement caught the imagination of the RockeTalksubscribers and within 48 hours over 3,200 messages were shared within the community. A group ofusers from Maharashtra used RockeTalk for live discussions by using voice & video messaging about

anti-corruption. Annas supporters used mobile multimedia as a big tool to convey their support andRockeTalk witnessed numerous live video and audio feeds that were circulated in India and abroad.

Innovating to keep users interested

Reports from Analysis Mason estimate that the number of users in India who use social networking

services on mobile web would reach 72 million by 2014. The key factors behind the trend are the falling

cost of smartphones and data charges.

With 63 per cent of active mobile internet users coming from the top eight metros, Nimbuzz is listening

closely to what users want from their mobile social networks. We have introduced a social game andhave smart-bots like cricket and astrology, that give customised updates to users, says Rajan. For as littleas Rs 1, Nimbuzz will soon allow users to customise their social gaming avatars or buy in-game upgrades.

Mobile social platforms like RockeTalk have even opened their APIs for third-party developers to build

applications using its platform that would be released in the coming months. Celebrity chat, mobilesocial gaming, dating, etc are few of the examples. Additionally, for entertainment and infotainment

needs RockeTalk has partnered with Hungama.com for movies related content, says Kumar.

Users who dont use data services or internet on their mobiles are being pulled into social networking too.SMSGupShup has built its network of 50 million users with it free SMS-based messaging service. Co-

founder and chief executive Beerud Sheth says: We are managing an active base of five million user-

generated communities and thats a heavy SMS traffic to maintain.

The group messaging company has found a ready audience with users like Dheeraj Desai, a stock traderfrom Mumbai, who is part of several user communities on SMSGupShup that discuss stock market

technicals and tips with fellow traders every morning. Most markets tips and news that we share onSMSGupShup was earlier done over group phone calls. But this is a free group message service, which


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means the originator can send 100 SMSes to recipients and they can reply to him, all free of cost, saysDesai.

Sheth and his team of 200 employees are now looking to introduce paid services that would allow group

peer-to-peer messages for a fraction of cost of SMSes. Marketers and government institutions alreadyuse our platform to reach to their target customer but we will begin to monetize our individual user

community by collaborating with telecom operators and giving group messaging services for a lot cheaperthan a SMS.

Five months ago U2opia Mobile, a value-added services (MVAS) developer, launched an application that

works on USSD and allows users to access Facebook without a GPRS connection. Umesh Menon, co-

founder, u2opia says: Although and estimated 40 per cent of the market has data capable phones, weestimate just 10 per cent actually use data on their phone. The application, onetwish has crossed 150,000users in under three months and has collaborated with Airtel, Tata, Idea and Videocon in India.

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Trends in India - Mobile Social Networking Sees Explosive Growth