Reliance ADA’s Entertainment divisions Indian social networking venture Bigadda.com is launched as alpha. For quite some time they have placed a logo poll to generate curiosity about the product and they advertised on Google Adwords. Currently memberships are based on invitations, i myself don’t have any invitation to check out the features, so these are just my initial thoughts.

Design of the site looks good but with almost same set of features as orkut. Main features include photos, videos, blogs, communities s(addas). There is nothing special in the site which sets apart from other sites operating in this space in India. Indian Social networking space is already crowded with some other players, now lets watch how reliance will steal the show with their marketing strategies.

Update: I wrote this post yesterday and today i got an invitation to bigadda.com, so here i go again. Take a look at the features.

Home page: see yourself

Features

Blogs: There is nothing much to say about it

Photos: One can upload unlimited photos, maximum photo size is 10M. Uploaded photos look blurry, the problem may be with the processing of these pics

Videos: Up to 10 min of video can be uploaded, file size restrictions are 30MB. Currently they support only flash videos, other formats will be added soon. Members can upload bollywood or hollywood content, that means one place for movies.

Addas: These are groups where like minded users can discuss about various topics.

Mail: This is to send messages to bigadda members and not for general usage, inbox size is 2GB which is of no use.

Scribbles: Orkut scraps with new name.

Things to improve:

Ability to embed videos from other site like youtube
Cleaning of obscene material (look at the most viewed pics)
To add some features like SMS

After seeing all the features i feel this is indianized (mind you there is nothing indianized) orkut.