SMS your way to online social networking

Mumbai: Online social networking is one of the fastest growing internet-based activities, and all the international giants are looking at acquiring some of these sites.

DesiMartini.com, an SMS-based online social networking site for Indians around the world, launched by Pahwa KBS last month, says it has plans to beat the competition and reach a registered user base of 1 million members in six months.

DesiMartini.com integrates appealing elements from popular web-based social networking sites such as Orkut, Friendster and MySpace, but goes further and enhances the user experience through a user interface and useful SMS-based features.

Started by 25-year-old Vivek Pahwa, a recent graduate from the Indian School of Business, and the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, the site lets users create their own customisable homepages, send in updates (what they are doing) via SMS wherever they are, upload and share pictures, join groups and communities, chat with other members, and stay in touch with old friends and discover new ones.

It also lets users send free SMS's to cell phones throughout the country. It has planned an extensive media campaign that will commence in the first week of January in its attempt to reach a user base of 1 million members by May, 2007.

Pahwa, claims that having an in-house development team is a big advantage and wants the site to evolve and improve to suit the needs of it's users. He also says that a good user interface, speed of loading and the number of registered users are keys to success for a social networking website and that his site has the first two and now is ready to go after the third.