Indian counterparts of orkut, Hi5 and Myspace are sprouting up. But are they any good? Kaushik Chatterji finds out for you...

International social networking sites have been there for a while now. But what's really set the scene on fire in India is orkut. Somehow, it caught the people's fancy, and you can see the results - virtually everyone you know is on it. In fact, it's the international networking site with the most Indians, by both numbers and percentage.

But now that there are India-specific social networking sites. Should you consider joining them? We dissect four new sites feature by feature, to help you decide!.

width="86" valign="top" class="txt" bgcolor="#FEF1F1">Groups - Same as orkut communities

	Minglebox.com	Yaari.com	GoYaar.com	HumSubka.com
Registration & settings	U can't change email or display name - only your real name & password.	Like gmail, you need an invite to join. U can change security settings / display name after joining.	U can change privacy settings /email after joining	U canchange privacy settings/ email after joining
Rating	2/5	3/5	4/5	4/5
Blogs	U can format, add pics /links/ tags and preview. Seen as a collection of entries with latest on top.	Has 'Journals'... - single entries,many formattingoptions but no preview. Comments allowed.	Formatting options are good but no preview. Blog can be viewed only 1 post at a time.	You can make an entry and categorise it - that's it. But display is 1 entry at a time.
Rating	10/13	6/13	8/13	4/13
User interaction	Like scraps you can 'chit chat' here. There is a 'block user option. Only site of the four with ' testimonials' feature.	Scraps become 'shout outs'. U can report users for abuse, and 'pinch' people, similar to orkut's teasers.	U can interact via the 'white board', can report abuse	Scraps are 'comments'. U can give a"heat”rating to anyone u find hot; "forward to friend", "add to favorites" and "live chat".
Rating	5/12	9/12	6/12	10/12
Photos & AV	U can search for tags across all the albums, upload multiple photos, and see % upload progress. U can't upload audio or video files.	No multiple photo upload option. Can upload audio and video files but one at a time	Limit of 10 photos, max 1 MB each. No... multiple uploads. Can add external album links and embed code from Youtube etc.	Allows photo, audio and video - but one at a time uploads only.Limit of 600 KB per pic , no photo albums. Offers live streaming.
Rating	8/14	8/14	4/14	7/14
Aesthetics	Funky, youthful look with customisable colour schemes.	Plain Jane; drag boxes on your profile anywhere over the page.	Looks decent, but has a very HI5-ish feel to it. No customisability.	Drab, but it does provide a crappy option to use a static template.
Rating	3/3	1/3	1/3	1/3
Extra features	Has Taaza Buzz, a current affairs issue posted by the webmaster, on which users can comment.	Although the site is invitation-only, non-members can view profiles using the direct link.	Provides a useless option called "classes",u can join or add the tuition classes you go to.	Has polls, which are severely limited by the fact that u can give exactly 4 options.
Rating	2/2	1/2	1/2	1/2
Same as orkut communities	Same as orkut communities	Same as orkut communities	Same as orkut communities
Rating	5/6	4/6	3/6	2/6
Profile- All involve filling in the same things, which gets repetitive if you've joined multiple sites.	Has single page editing and catchy punch lines with each field but detail wise far behind the other sites.	Multiple pages. Innovative Qs like “Songs stuck in my head”. Irritating rule of providing a verifiable company email ID. Very few educational institutes listed!	Long, detailed registration. Same problems as yaari on company and educational institute fronts. You can search by clicking on entries in a profile.	Registration process goes on and on. Boringly philosophical with Qs like "Success to you means".
Rating	5/8	4/8	3/8	2/8
SMS facility	Not available.	Similar to Yahoo! messenger.	You can smsfrom the website.	You can sms from the website.
Rating	0/2	2/2	1/2	valign="top" class="txt" bgcolor="#FEF1F1">1/2
Search	Only by name/ location.	Weird syntax search - provides filters only in case of no results.	When we searched, we could find just 21 people on this site!	Good search filters, and returns satisfactory results.
Rating	3/4	3/4	2/4	4/4
Institution	Comparatively exhaustive list of colleges, u join your "campus" as it's called. Loads of options.	Limited database - you have to choose from a pre specified list. Can search for batchmates.	Limited database - you have to choose from a pre specified list. Can search for batchmates.	The only way you can put your school/ college is to manually enter, and then create a group.
Rating	6/6	2/6	2/6	0/6
Overall- None of these sites are path breaking…	Minglebox is fresher in its looks, has a more Indian feeland some cool new features. I mailed the tech team regarding my college "campus" and got a prompt response. Expect further improvements!	Good, but offers nothing distinctively new or special. Plus the invite-only feature is a bummer. Feels elitist - the colleges featured are only the top ones. Too many Stanford alums - becoz the owner of the site is one herself.	OK. Just about. Too few people to interact with!	Boring, scores with sheer quantity of features. Then again, it tries to do too much, and misses the target by some miles. Boring crowd
Rating	49/ 75	43/ 75	35/75	36/75
What about Orkut?? Going by the above rating criteria, orkut gets a shockingly low 31! Before you tear this page apart, let me explain why. Orkut does not offer blogs (coz they have Blogger) or while photohosting is limited (they want you to use picasa). They should integrate these options - as well as Youtube - with orkut. I'm sure they will, one of these days. Orkut's main advantage remains the CROWD. Yup, all the cool and not so cool and even despicable people you know or want to know or whatever are already on it.And human beings are lazy… so let's see how many actually decide to try out something new and give these sites a fighting chance. Watch this space!