A new social networking site – Bigadda (www.bigadda.com) – has been getting rave reviews in the Indian media. Claims like 15 members signing up every minute to the site hoping to attract 10 million users by 2010 are doing the round.

Intrigued, I decided to check it out and see for myself what the buzz what all about. So here goes.

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Pic: bigadda.com

Global networking sites like Orkut are benefiting from India’s huge number of young people, but many local ventures want to claim the clicks

- Nandini Lakshman, BusinessWeek

For the past year, global networking sites have been growing in popularity among young Indians. According to JuxtConsult, a New Delhi-based online research and advisory company, 44% of Indian online traffic uses the Internet just for social networking. Google’s (GOOG) Orkut is the most popular social networking site in India, with a 64% market share. Facebook is also winning many Indian fans, especially students.

But in the last six months, a plethora of local sites has emerged to compete with the Americans. Today, there are more than a dozen India-based and focused social networking sites with colorful Hindi names that are synonyms for community (bigadda.com) and friends (yaari.com). “I guess it’s a cool thing to do,” says Praveen Gandhi, managing partner of Seed Fund India, an early stage Mumbai venture capital fund. He claims in the last year he’s had fund requests from over 50 entrepreneurs wanting to set up social networking sites locally.

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