It's a sickness; a bug with the tendency to affect otherwise level-headed conglomerates
It's a sickness; a bug with the tendency to affect otherwise level-headed conglomerates. It helps explain why massive funds are now cheerfully, and routinely, diverted towards the next big social networking experiment.
Minus the jargon, a social network is nothing more than individuals and the relationships they create among themselves. Take this premise online though, and you have a potentially captive audience to milk. This may be why the Godrej group, long associated with objects decidedly offline -- soap, refrigerators, bags of frozen chicken -- has launched GoJiyo.com, its humble shot at social networking.
Its one valid aim, for now, is a platform for youth to connect with the brand. However, given how loose connotations surrounding the word 'connect' are, this could mean pretty much anything a verbose brand manager chooses to define at a later date.
At first glance, GoJiyo is a rough-around-the-edges cousin of once popular virtual world SecondLife. Like the latter, it promises multiple 3D regions to explore, the possibility of meeting like-minded people and, like SecondLife's Linden dollar, an economy called Karmic.
What struck me first when I logged on to the '3D online world' was the liberal use of adjectives. Grammar was clearly not important in this magical place, nor was the need for a simpler login process. It was 'bright', I was promised. Also, 'bold, fantastical, beautiful and truly dazzling.' All I had to do was struggle to get started.
Despite picking myself a male avatar, GoJiyo insisted I accessorise with women's clothing. Despite logging on via IE and Firefox, it insisted I download plug-ins that it then refused to let me download. Despite enabling all cookies, it kept throwing up pages informing me that cookies hadn't been enabled. In short, it refused to let me be part of its bright, shiny kingdom.
Back in 2007, Wipro Technologies launched its Innovation Isle in SecondLife, following this with a Service Oriented Architecture-solutions lab for customers. Folk who like this sort of thing now have other virtual worlds to pick from, and with simpler logins -- like 'Kaneva', or 'Active Worlds'. The thing is, even though 18 million accounts were supposedly registered on SecondLife by January 2010, the numbers from India have never been encouraging. Bandwidth is always a barrier, followed by content compelling enough to encourage stickiness.
Given how hard I tried to Go and Jiyo, and my subsequent failures, I can safely say that Godrej has addressed neither problem effectively. The platitudes on every page are tiresome, the graphics aren't exciting enough and, two hours after my first attempt, it still refuses to grant me entrance.
Until it gets its act together, then, I intend to Jiyo where I currently am.
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Lindsay Pereira is Editor, MiD Day Online
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