Sequoia Capital funded website Minglebox.com appears to have gone in for a mid-course correction, writes Pluggd.in. Minglebox was built as an online alternative to a “college hangout” (more on that here) featuring college events but now is being positioned as a “College, Education and Career” site.

The site now features:

– Educational content for preparation for MBA
– Country specific information for studying in UK, USA, Canada, Australia and Singapore
– Counlelling: They’ve also added a segment for counselling from the head of test preparation from IMS, an MBA training institute. 
– Courses Database: for MBA and IT courses

Advertisers on the site include colleges like the Asian Institute of Gaming and Animation, and foreign education counselling agencies like “The Chopras“. 

With this, Minglebox will be competing head-on with other sites in the education space like Pagalguy.com, and Info Edge’s Shiksha.com. 

Minglebox isn’t the first social networking site to go in for a mid-course correction - early last year, People Group owned Fropper.com repositioned itself as a social networking site. It had been launched as a dating site. What’s interesting is that Sequoia Capital India has invested in both People Interactive and Minglebox.com

Funds, Internet, Sequoia Capital India, Social Media, Startups
Tags: Education, Minglebox, Pagalguy.com, Sequoia Capital India, Shiksha.com, Social Networking

1. Few Thoughts

   #1 Link to contentsutra is broken .

   #2 This is SAD . they were First of Web2.0 type business funded in India and they are acting so irresponsibly . Started with the idea of copying Facebook , resorted to spamming orkut than changed track to music streaming for a while , now trying to be a hybrid of Shiksha +pagalguy +searchmycampus and god knows what’s next ? Free SMS ,Ad Network,Airline Ticket ? they should realize what it do to investor confidence about feasibility of such ventures .

   SAD part is that When they will close the shop founders will give PR Sound bites like
   ” Although Initial user response was good .Still our venture was ahead of time and India is not ready for such things yet Plus given the economic conditions we were not able to raise next round etc etc ” they will not admit that they were CLUELESS .

   Media will print there soundbites as wisdom and VCs will Quote them to next entrepreneur with a decent idea.

   In this hoopla noone will remember that sites like pagalguy,mouthshut,sulekha have done all this UGC stuff successfully . long before .

   I have one request to Minglebox and media. Please try to glorify this and present it as a lack of market of such stuff in India . Go down in oblivion decently and gracefully . PLEASE . You will be doing great service to entrepreneur who will come Next.

   Posted by Long Time Listner Repeat Caller | November 5, 2008, 11:49 am

2. I think it’s a good move to change strategy from what they began with, because the social net wasn’t working. What is sad is that they began with a me-too.

   Funnily enough, I’d written on my personal blog a couple of years ago, about vertical specific social nets emerging because of a glut of generic social nets.

   The next step - the integration of social networking into content sites. Watch out for BuddyPress.

   Posted by Nikhil Pahwa | November 6, 2008, 9:51 am