Atul Kasbekar, Diya Mirza, Madhur Bhandarkar and Shankar Mahadevan at the launch of bigadda.com in Mumbai

www.bigadda.com

Another virtual hang-out. After Zapak.com, a popular gaming site, Reliance Entertainment, has flagged off bigadda.com. This website enables “networking and self-expression” by allowing users to create, upload and share videos and photos in a “public, yet private, space”.

“Connecting online is now a global game,” says Siddhartha Roy, COO, BigAdda. Some of the features include blogs, scribbles and Addas (communities). “What’s unique about the scribble feature is that it has privacy settings. Only those on your friends list can scribble and you can hide scribbles if you want to. If any of your friends are online, you can choose to appear available like on IM (instant messenger),” explains Roy.

Reliance has also roped in celebrities like glamour photographer Atul Kasbekar to spearhead a mobile photo contest and music director Shankar Mahadevan to encourage people to compose and share original music. Top golfer Irina Brar will create a Sports Adda specially focusing on girls in sports and filmmaker Madhur Bhandarkar will encourage youngsters to share original scripts and video stories.