This social networking site is clicking well

P ranav Bhasin’s vision was to build a real social network, out of real events, that doesn’t leave any room for duplicity.

But when he quit his job as senior manager with Trilogy, Bhasin didn’t have more than an inkling of how to create this authentic and intricate web that was just an idea. The seven years he spent leading teams across India, the US and China, focussing on interactive marketing, was the backbone of his plan, though.

Bhasin, with a couple of his friends, Rakesh Rajan and Vishnu GS — they were part of his team at Trilogy — began work on the idea in the beginning of 2007. They developed several prototypes and ran it past many friends. Based on the feedback they got, they honed it further to arrive at Lifeblob.

After many brainstorming sessions “and a lot of coffee, the Lifeblob idea emerged,” Bhasin says. “When you take a photograph, it is testimony to what happened then — the event, place and people are captured in that image. Lifeblob will string pictures together and help you connect in multiple levels using the various attributes of the photograph uploaded,” says Bhasin.

They started by stringing photographs into a timeline, which clearly showed how inter-connections happen. “As we progressed, we found simpler ways to organise it all. Different routes for navigation were added,” he explains citing an example. “Click on a photograph of your group of friends taken a couple of years ago at your graduation ceremony. The people in it would now be doing diverse things. When you are viewing the first image, the recent photographs of the people would show up as well. This will take you through their life-streams. So using photographs, you can track each of your friends.”

Besides connecting with your own friends, this will help you discover others with similar interests.

It’s the authenticity factor that differentiates Lifeblob from other social networking sites, he says. “Other sites let you pick your friends at random. There is nothing to show that you are friends with so and so person. We don’t ask people who their friends are. We just ask for the photograph and that way, Lifeblob stays authentic. We have richer content.”

Lifeblob is extremely useful for amateur and hobby photographers, believes Bhasin. “Now almost everyone has a camera and is interested in photography. When we show them images clicked by others on similar themes, they can improve their own compositions,” he says. The site allows them to contact others based on these images as well.

The site was launched officially in November 2007, and since then, new features are routinely added based on user feedback. It offers tips for photographers and also coordinates with photography clubs and others to conduct programmes and courses. Lifeblob also came up with an e-book recently, Shoot like a Pro with Compact Camera.

The book was open-sourced and has been downloaded close to 6,000 times. They are also launching photography-related merchandise later this month.

Lifeblob has over 20,000 members and over 3 million photographs. Anyone can sign up on it for free and unlike Flickr or Picasa, there is no upper limit on how many photographs one is allowed to upload. You alone determine your network.

Log on to http://www.lifeblob.com/