Ibibo.com creates a new social graph

Can you tell us something about ibibo.com?

Ibibo.com is a local social utility that enables you to discover new people.
There are numerous local social utilities available on ibibo that drive
creation, collaboration, and discovery of new people. Ibibo.com has crafted
these social utilities into the social graph. It is this combination of local
utilities and discovery of new people that creates the core differentiation for
ibibo.com.

There are numerous other local social utilities available on ibibo.com that
further catalyze discovery of people. Some include tools such as Call for Free
enables users to speak to each other over their mobiles for free and that too
without the need for sharing their mobile numbers. Games on ibibo.com further
add to the dimension and enhance the context of making new friends.

What makes ibibo.com different from a number of social networking portals
like Facebook, Orkut and the likes?

Ibibo.com enables you to create a new social graph. In other words, it enables
you to discover new people and friends. This is unlike other sites that help you
connect with your offline social connections. Young population, especially from
mid-tier and small cities and towns in India, have a big need to create new
social connections driven by the fact that they do not have very strong offline
networks. Ibibo meets this need by providing a platform where they can create
their virtual persona.

Ashish Kashyap, CEO, ibibo Web

The second key differentiator of ibibo.com is the presence of numerous
utilitarian tools within the social network that drive a context for making new
friends. Social classifieds and social search services such as Sawaal within
the social network is a strong paradigm for this differentiator. We believe that
utilitarian needs need to marry emotional needs to make it meaningful for users.

Do you think social networking portals have been able to move beyond the
usual friends reconnect to networking?

Ibibo.com is a great paradigm of social networking moving beyond the usual
friends reconnects kind of thing. On ibibo.com, Indian youth are enabled to
discover new friends and create a new social graph. The other key trend being
projected by us is the movement to niche and interest-based social networks from
the usual ones. Ibibo Networks another service-onefamily.com-is a first of its
kind initiative in India that enables extended families to connect and
collaboratively manage their family network.

Stuti Das

stutid@cybermedia.co.in