I am a Indian. I thought many times whether there were any social bookmarking sites specifically targetted at Indian audience or not. We always tend to use Digg, Stumbleupon, Del.icio.us and other such sites. But what if you have a Indian audience targetted blog and don’t want to submit your story to above sites because of fear of getting lost among global audience and global stories. Don’t worry as there are approximately 30 Indian Social Bookmarking sites running at the moment. Some are very popular and some are average but atleast you have a great platform to reach to a Indian audience and get targetted Indian traffic. So following is the list of such Social Bookmarking sites. I have included a mini review of them – listing small notes about them.

  1. IndianPad – Probably the best among out there. Receives great traffic. Has even a Hindi Section. Supports Video too. Has Voting and bookmarking tools too. Supports Revenue Sharing too via Adsense.
  2. HumSurfer – Interface Sucks. Even with Indian name, more of content on frontpage is not Indian. Not much tools to use. Uses Popup ads(Sucks). But still much better than others. Ranks good in google and should provide much needed traffic boost.
  3. Rambhai – Probably second highest in receiving traffic after IndianPad. They seriously need a SEO consultant. A homepage header tag is one of most basic tweaks to be done. Tools Page is here. Needs a good custom design too. The design current is too common.
  4. indiamarks – Looks ubercool. Nice traffic. But they insist that instead of just sharing links, share good content. Good Policy. Truly Indian.
  5. hotklix – Is launched by Indiatimes. Should have a global reach but still stories are not submitted as frequently as they should be. Indiatimes need to promote it more. No Tools Again.
  6. OneView – Seems promising. Seems a combi of Stumbleupon and Del.icio.us Have lots of tools to offer.
  7. IndiaSphere – High Traffic. Videos section separate. Has a aggregator of feeds from various other bookmarking sites too.
  8. BestofIndya – Can’t these sites hire proper designers. Looks promising content wise. Lots of cool tools.
  9. IndianBytes – Seems a high traffic site. No Tools? :o Supports Revenue Sharing.
  10. Sursaa – Features stories from many regional language sites too. No user registration. Only method is to submit via the code pasted on the respective site. No information as to what’s the diff between user submitted content and content fetched under other regional headings. I have send them a mail regarding this query.
  11. IndianTags – Looks Good. But not much voting and activity. Needs to improve upon it.
  12. vBharat – Looks Promising. But not frequent content and content is mixed with non indian too. Here is one tool and bookmarklets.
  13. Xoomly – Looks Good. But No tools.
  14. SpotOnce – Looks Cool. No tools and not much traffic.
  15. BharatBoom -Rocking traffic. But too much mix of other country’s content with Indian content. Not totally Bharat Boom! And no tools again.
  16. Indiha – Cool Site. Good Content. And no tools either.
  17. One Bookmarks – Very high traffic but that maybe due to main site’s contribution. Bookmarks site is on a subdomain. Have some bookmarking tools and a firefox addon. Separate sections for regional languages.
  18. Sepia Mutiny – Atleast should have support for IST Time. Have a separate section for events. Nothing much to say here.
  19. YeaWo – Lots of Ads! Has a (empty) forum too. BTW you can advertise for free. And maybe this is the reason for Adblindness.
  20. NewsCola – Looks boring and Bad. From ibibo.
  21. Newzly – (Previously HumDigg) – Better design. Good Tools. But no Support or contact information.
  22. Jhaanki – Low Traffic Directory sort of site. Main page content only from bollywood with one vote each?
  23. GyanIn – Good Traffic but not much submissions to talk off. No tool except a browser bookmarklet.
  24. Charchaa – Seems Ok. Separate sections for pictures, blogs (allows users to create their own blogs) and videos! Again no tools except a bookmarklet. Have a groups section too.
  25. Dolbajao – Promising but no tools either. Ok Traffic.
  26. SlashIndia – True Slashdot Clone. But don’t use it. Nobody has submitted a story for past 1 year. Just for the heck of it and to increase the list count, I listed here. Highly not recommended.
  27. RateVin – Ok Traffic, no design. No Tools. And they seriously need to impose limit on image size of submitted entries. Not much submissions and no voting being done too.
  28. ApnaStory – Looks new with not much traffic. And pls somebody tell these sites to integrate some submission tools.
  29. Chalo – Good Traffic but looks stupid with all stories on front page with just one vote each?
  30. DiggSamachar – Complete Digg Clone. Maybe Digg should sue them? All Popular front page stories are more than month old?
  31. SurfUrls – Looks Promising.
  32. Tagz – Latest one to launch – was launched on September 1, 2008. Do visit it. Looks Promising and maybe the only social networking site to support OpenID login.
  33. Stamp-a-Story – Not a good domain name. Default Pligg theme does not help. Need to add lot to make it popular. And 1 vote stories at front page does not help either.

There are lot many which are below under another list. They are not much mentioning about. You can safely ignore them for your needs.

  1. In.Com Read – Despite being so popular, I kept in here because user submitted stories won’t make it to front page. You still need to click a tab for it. And all front page stories are from even bigger sites.
  2. Forums of India – Strange Name. Why the video section on top? Not good stories.
  3. PutVote – What happened to it? No Links? It seemed popular some time back.
  4. MahaWeb World – Seems they installed new version of pligg recently forgot to change anything. All stories about bollywood and around 1 year old.
  5. DesiDummy – Everything non Indian except the name. Sucks big time.
  6. Ready2Beat -Maybe not allowing submissions to reach front page since all top stories are from well known sources. Traffic is very low. No Indian Content. Just found this site from another Indian source. Maybe that’s why its listed here. Otherwise seems there is no Indian connection. Pathetic Traffic.
  7. Strollby – Looks like only popular links being submitted. BTW check their reviews on some companies and products.
  8. YoIndia – Only reason to list this here is because it does not accept content from users. Its a content aggregator but gets good traffic. For reaching submit your story to BestofIndya.

There are some social bookmarking sites which are made for a specific niche too. They are:

  1. Pixrat (Acquired by ibibo recently – was pixrat.com earlier) – Specific aggregator of photos on the net. Concept similar to Flickr except for the fact that Flickr hosts pictures on their site, Pixrat aggregates pic links only.
  2. IndiaStudyChannel – Only for Educational Sites.
  3. God of Cricket – Only related to Cricket. Even have some tools.
  4. Aaj Tak Bollywood – Related to Indian Cinema(Bollywood)

Now atlast contains a section of some different type of bookmarking sites. They are unique and special in their own way. Only 2 such sites are there which come under this category:

  1. HttpFuse – They have some common and popular topics under which bookmarks are submitted. Promotes quality and useful content. Its not made for giving traffic but sharing quality links on important and popular topics. Must check out.
  2. Hooeey – Got featured on Mashable twice!! Its not a social bookmarking site actually but a bookmark saver. It can save your bookmarks online and allow you to share or take them with you. Again worth checking.

Finally the list is over. The biggest problem I faced in making this list was that several sites which are very popular are down at the moment. I have listed them too. Maybe in near future they will revive. So keep in mind with following sites – may not be reliable.

  1. http://www.b4upad.com/
  2. www.tellalink.com – Shut down Permanently
  3. http://www.tagza.com/ – Down for Upgrade.
  4. http://indiagram.com/ – Again very popular – but owner wants it to be back…hopefully soon.
  5. http://shunya.in/ – No Idea what happened.
  6. http://www.bookmarks.nazariya.com/ – Seems broken. Can somebody pls fix it?
  7. http://www.blogg-buzz.com/ – Became very popular but maybe due to copyright notes shut down because at one time Google Video’s Site top videos were called Blog Buzz. Maybe shut down due to some other reason too. This site’s owner can be reached here and here.

An Interesting Note With so many bookmarking sites open, somebody came up with an idea to clone Addthis service and opened up Prachaarthis – Uses only Humsurfer, IndianPad, Tagza and Sursaa and links to other main services like Digg.

If you think I missed any service, pls do comment here. And do submit this post to any of the above sites for promotion! :D

Newly Added: vBharat and ApnaStory – On September 15

SpotOnce and HotKlix – September 16

Indiha – September 19

SurfUrls, IndianTags, DiggSamachar, Chalo, Stamp-A-Story, In.Com Read Bookmarks at Nazariya – September 22

How do you like my efforts btw? Pls share. And never underestimate India!

(Image courtsey: Monsterbox Productions)

NOTE: Sites are not listed in any particular order. I have not ranked them and I cannot since I have not tested them all. Will test a few soon and tell you with my report.

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