A well made app, but... - the ApnaCircle Smartphone App

Just yesterday, LinkedIn announced that it had crossed 20 million users from India. Add 30 more million people to that, and you’d have 50 million, which is the number of users ApnaCircle claims to have. If these numbers are anything to go by, that would make ApnaCircle the second largest professional network in the world. However, there has always been a sense of suspicion that ApnaCircle has exuded, as there are no real validations for these numbers.

However, that isn’t the focus of the story today. ApnaCircle has recently launched a smartphone app for the BlackBerry, iOS and Android platform. After having played around with it for a bit, here’s what we think about the ApnaCircle Smartphone app -

A well built app, but...

Remember how the old Facebook app used to look? ApnaCircle’s landing page’s layout is eerily

reminiscent of it. A user is presented with six tiles. When clicked, these tiles lead to the corresponding lists, such as the contact lists, news feed, visits etc. Some pages, like the profile page are very similar to the current LinkedIn app. However, the news feed is nothing like anything I’ve ever seen before. And I don’t mean that in a good way -

The news section is divided into two sections. The top quarter is a sideways scrolling list. Relevant news pieces are carried in small rectangular tiles, which carries a heading, an excerpt and a featured image. This arrangement is very cluttered. The other three fourth of the screen is news from your contacts.

Here’s why this isn’t great - Firstly, apps like LinkedIn and Facebook have integrated both these categories of news into one feed. And secondly, the cards are laid out as a horizontal list, which provides

more information that ApnaCircle’s arrangement and is less cluttered.

The performance of the app however, is rock solid. It feels like a completely native app and there weren’t any glitches that we faced in our time with the app so far. The articles open up within the app itself, rather than opening a browser, which more and more apps are following to keep the user’s experience within the app. This again is a good thing.

A good move, but...

ApnaCircle claims that its largest user base is in China, where it has reported to have 4 times the number of users of LinkedIn. If this is true, given that China is the the largest smartphone market in the world, a smartphone app will complement it’s popularity in China.

However, content is king for social networks, and ApnaCircle is left wanting in this area. LinkedIn’s

recent acquisition of Pulse and the Influencers initiatives was to improve the quality of content and its delivery within the social network’s ecosystem. As a user, I love reading Arianna Huffington or Steven Sinofsky's blog posts on LinkedIn, and it ensures that I come back to the social network everyday. This however, isn’t the case with ApnaCircle. I don’t find the content compelling enough for me to go back to it.

Overall, this is a well built app. It feels good to use with no sluggishness or lag whatsoever. However, there are some user experience issues caused by the weird layout of the app in places, and it definitely needs better content. Another problem that it faces is a lack of users. For a platform that claims to have over 50 million users, it was difficult to find people I know on the platform. Most in my inner ‘circle’ had the same problem.

It’s a good product, but all this will be so much more relevant if there was a way to validate their user base and growth data.

Download the app and tell us what you think