Online Indian Male 2.0

Startup Sundaramoorthy and Venture Venkatakrishnan meet up at Barista, Besant Nagar over some coffee. Actually make that Latte with carcinogenic artifical sweeteners. And they discuss some very disturbing Internet stats.

SS: Did you know that 60% of Facebook users are women?
VV: Yes. And over 55% of MySpace users as well?
SS: The Indian Blogosphere is also overwhelmingly dominated by women. A look at any comment thread in the Indian Web will convince you of that.
VV: Apart from rediff of course.
SS: Oh yes, that reminds me. Did you see the latest stats from the Gabtun of Web Analytics – Chinna Counter?
VV: No. Is he good?
SS: Oh yeah. He is the absolute authority on desi web stats. And this is what he had to say about Indian men on the web.

VV: Sad. What happened to those good old days of the All Male Web. Web 2.0 seems to be all about 2.0 chromosomes, of the X variety specifically.
SS: We must do something about it. We must restore a sense of balance to the Indian Web. We must buy up some land in the valley between Trisulam hill and St Thomas Mount and startup some Web companies that bring the machismo back to the web.
VV: What do you have in mind?
SS: Pigg.

VV: Pigg?
SS: Yes. Pigg.mc actually. An exclusively male social platform where men can share, discuss and vote up ideas on how to restore male hegemony on the Indian blogosphere.
VV: Awesome. What else?
SS: I used to be a Flickr user, but now there are too many women there. They and their enhanced visual sensitivities, passing judgement on my weak reds, insubstantial beiges, poor shadows and anaemic contrast. Bah. I have always wanted an all-male Photosharing app where real men can post photos without all this critical commentary from women, where we can also privately share images of item girls we secretly love.
VV: Yeah.
SS: So I propose

VV: I’m in. I’d angel fund mattr.com even in my sleep.
SS: Im not done yet. Have you ever had to change the channel when a particularly raunchy song featuring your favourite actress played on TV, just to maintain a personal image of being a morally upright citizen who deplores the objectification of women in Kollywood?
VV: Many a time.
SS: Of course, you could watch it on later on youtube in the private, but personally, I can’t stand all the rest of junk I have to wade through there. So I propose an exclusive social video site dedicated to songs we cannot watch with the family.

VV: Could you pass me the telescope please?
SS: What ever for?
VV: You have gone so far away that even my laser surgery enhanced 20/20 eyesight cannot spot you without some optical help.
SS: And we shouldn’t forget cricket. As the city with the largest cricket lovers to Indian national team cricketers ratio, I believe we need a space to meet up, socialize and rant about all these years of TN-bias in the BCCI. Where I can rip apart vetthuparties such as Arun Lal, Vikram Rathore and David Johnson, who got selected while Sridharan Sharath was always given a miss.

VV: Absolutely required.
SS: And finally, we need to do something about the village folk of our state. I envision a social platform, where rural machismo is on central display. I’m talking Kaavadi, extreme piercing, Jalli kattu and of course, walking on coals.
VV: And what are you going to call that one?
SS: My personal favourite is walking on coals, and even more importantly, I can’t seem to conjure up a suitable pun using the other ones, so I’m planning to call this one