While Twitter asks “What are you doing?”, chittr gets into your mind with “What are you thinking‘?
chittr is an Indian startup that is building a microblogging platform targeted towards the Indian market.
In their own words:
chittR is a microblogging site for India. A cross-platform push messaging product, which works seamlessly across IM (GoogleTalk, Yahoo! Messenger, SMS and Web). Users can send and receive updates from either of these interfaces. (Interface agnostic)
Details of chittr:
Once you register, you can invite your friends, follow others as well as build your own follower list. There are multiple options to receive alerts (via IM/mobile/on chittr’s web inbox).
Overall, chittr is an interesting product and is a good attempt to replicate the success of Twitter. But here are a few key missing elements:
- The UI is well AJAXified, yet too overwhelming. Twitter has been really smart with keep it’s UI neat and simple.
- A general feedback to all startups: Don’t have such a detailed dashboard that one gets confused with the site offering. Currently, chittr’s dashboard is too confusing with too many options (Incoming updates/fwds/replies!). Ideally, one should be smart enough to club contextual menus in one place and stay cleaner.
- At a high level – Is chittr a “What are you thinking” site? If yes, then why do I see messages like “market close at 18770?” I believe chittr founders have to specify whether it’s a twitter like “what are you thinking” site or a pure microblogging platform (like smsgupshup) or something like vakaow.
Overall, my take is very simple – chittr needs to clearly define their offering/positioning and stick to it for another few months (and then move on to other areas). Also, they need not copy the twitter lingo as well (Indian mobile users may not be very familiar with Twitter and the terminology used).
In future, chittr is planning to closed group based microblogging as well. For viral adoption, I strongly urge them to think of building widgets which one can be embedded in one’s blog/site.
“A general feedback to all startups”: I want to add one more point to this:
Remember for any Internet Company One Should Design Product in such a way that People visiting your site Should come to know What it is all about in ONE SECONE, yes Its ONE SECOND .
I request all startups to Read Getting Real by 37Signals Company before hastening the development of process.
Thanks for the review, in fact I came across this site through other review site. They have done good job for Alpha, it’s abvious they will comeout with Beta with more improvements.
are listening to this. Regarding the question, it’s open to all and they can use how they want. In twitter also we see lot of things not related to question. it’s only clue for people to start blogging, what they think?. Given the technology is latest, flex, they need to improve on layout part. I am using this from past 1 month, and message flows are cool on WEB, IM and SMS. Certainly I am eagerly waiting for Beta release.
I am die hard fan of microblogging, and wanted something like http://www.chittr.com in India. First thing I would like to highlight is smsgupshup and vakaow are not microblogging sites, they are group SMS sites, and as for I know chittr is the first micro blog site for India.
I totally agree with improvement you suggested, I hope founders who are in stealth mode
@Mahesh:Awesome i/p. I completely agree with you that if one isn’t too sure about the site (within the first few seconds), chances are that the visitor will never come back.
@Yellowsaffire: “smsgupshup and vakaow are not microblogging sites” – well, it depends how you want to define microblogging. MicroBlogging, technically means “either to be viewed by anyone or by a restricted group which can be chosen by the user.”
So, smsguphshup and vakow are a vertical microblogging platforms with mashed up features!!
Anyways, what I am talking about is purely the end user perspective and I am sure 90% of mobile users in India have not even heard abt microblogging. (and thats’ why i said do not copy the twitter lingo).
And twitter has been and is still positioned as a “what are you doing” service – that’s the USP of it’s service.
This is an good attempt but it seems that team has tried to do too much . page is very cluttered . they should have kept the things simple at least for the start . trying to provide differentiator from the day one is not a good idea .
there scrolling USER ICON remind me of you tube . conversation string is a mashup of Facebook News Feed and Twitter Update List.
but one thing must be said about these guys …….whoever they are they know the tech good . sleek Ajax implementation speak for it self . get your self a good Usability person [ i can introduce] ask them to review your site and suggest change .
by any count this is a better site than smsgupshup crap put by Webaroo . that site sucks like anything .
Dudes, good attempt.. Usability needs to improve.. can be ignored in alpha. Change the first screen to define what Mahesh sez.
You guys are on trak.. Get the microblogging guys hooked on to it.
All the very best.
This site sucks big time. It takes hour to get me to the front page. I don’t know why everyone is trying to copy the concepts which are going on successfully around the world. Cant these people think something new and different. Anyway whatever you are doing, all the best and please keep up the good indian spirit and do something new instead of copying twitter.
Srini, i think copying does’nt matter, if it serves a fruitful purpose. Not giving a rationale to follow stuff, but twitter is a primarily web concept for india, as SMS costs are high. if chittR fills the gap, we should embrace the indian effort, and help keep the flag flying high.
Lets see how do these guys do it. I found this site down since yesterday so not able to comment more.
I Agree with Srini. Why Chittr? I am not against localized version as far as having a good value. Let us see what is new offering compared to Twitter that can attract user to use it. Why not a single ‘indian effort’ creates something new than copying always.
Agreed Aniket, we must look at the offering coming up.. and see how they define microblogging..
Microblogging is good for the people on the move.. who do not have enough time to blog, i guess writing a line or two does not make it a good enough topic for some one else to write.
looks like chittr has shut it’s shop. any idea?
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twitter and others are no doubt nice, but I always wanted to bring in a concept to microblogging !
I hereby post a Review-Request for http://www.emote.in ,
A microblogging service; which is a platform to -
1. Make yourself heard, comment on news, stories and current affair.
2. Share your experiences, memories and events with your friends and family.
3. Connect with different people with similar emotional attributes as yours.
(eg: if attrocities on animals make you sad, connect with others who share the same feeling)
4. Jot-down your experiences. You usually have so many things to say – a constant stream of thoughts, comments and observations running through your head continuously.
5. Last but not the least, has everything (and much more) that twiiter has.
6. A wonderful timeline coming shortly (in few weeks)
After receiveing the $85 quote to repair my growing old Polaris cleaner I knew it was time for a new one. With all the incentives on the 380 or 3900 I used to be going to go along with the 380 which was really cheaper (after incentives) than the 280 but I began asking round – principally pool professionals – and all (eight for eight) recommeneded the 280 even when the value were higher.