With giants like Facebook and Google+ on top of the list with over a billion registered users, it is getting increasingly difficult to make a breakthrough in today’s market, but Govinda Giri was determined to reinvent the way we communicate through social media. The newly launched
Sagoon is more than just a platform for sharing content, and what’s interesting is that they will pay you for using their services. Needless to say, this is definitely worth a try.
Upon signing up for Sagoon, $5 will be credited to your Social Smart Card, which aims to improve the way we shop and buy gifts online. Unfortunately, they have yet to provide a list of vendors for this credit system, though that should coincide with the launch of its mobile version in a few months’ time.
Right off the homepage, you will realise that the usual newsfeed layout is absent. Instead, Sagoon chose to go with an integrated social calendar that allows you to create, customise, and keep track of your plans for the days ahead — Facebook Events can certainly learn a thing or two from this. This also comes with the weather forecast for the next two days.
Another interesting feature in Sagoon is the ‘secret box’, a fresh new way to share content in an easy secure manner. It allows you to either send three new photos using your webcam or existing images from your computer, add secret texts, and preview before sending out the private message.
The team behind this new social networking site based in India does this really well through a neat interface, where information shared with your friends will expire after they have read it, so you can be assured that none of your secrets will be saved on Sagoon’s server.
There’s also a feature to share memorable events to specific groups of people, by sorting your contacts into the groups provided: friends, family, or co-workers. This system for managing contacts will also allow you to choose who you want to share your secret messages with.
Since Sagoon is still in its nascent stage in open beta, there is certainly room for it to unleash its potential through their dedicated user feedback system. But even with more than 10,000 registered users, it will still be a big challenge to persuade all our friends to jump on to another platform, especially since we are rather content with Facebook.
YANTRICK’S VERDICT: Sagoon definitely has the potential to develop into a household name in the future but for now, it has to do much more to persuade anyone to sign up for yet another social networking service.