MyVishwa is a social network with a difference. For one thing, it is the first that I’ve seen which is browser based, in that it runs within a Firefox windowed tab environment. It is also the first time I’ve come across a social network where you earn money from using it. Uh-oh I hear you mutter.

The basic premise of the site is sound. You set up your social network based around different ‘circles’ of people, ranging from the inner circle of close family, out to professional groups and the whole network population. In this way you can determine what and how much to share with each circle. And of course you can tap them for information, jobs or whatever else you need. There’s also a full range of personal information tools to use, like email, calendaring, to-do notes, blog editor, and even a Q&A section for getting answers to your tricky questions.

So far so three. The slightly dubious bit comes with the revenue earning bit. The site promises to pay you for clicking adverts, rating products and services on the site, registering the serial number of products that you own and for posting job openings. As you’ve probably guessed from the name, the site hails out of the Indian sub-continent, and while this sort of thing may make more sense there, I somehow can’t see Facebook adopting a similar business model any time soon.

The interface is a somewhat interesting if quirky combination of Web 1.0 and Web 2.0, which sort of works, in that you can navigate around quite easily from the top menu, and retrace your steps via a series of open Firefox activity tabs. The range of activities by the way is absolutely huge, ranging from listening to music or religious lectures (linked and instantly available) to dating and even real estate. Yep, you can buy or rent something from within the application directly. Strange but true, and one of the benefits of using an open browser motif which can link out to external sources of data instantly.

This is a something of a strange review for us to do, because of the alien-ness of the service. On the one hand it’s an incredibly impressive and complex application to have created, and on the other, it looks very empty of people. From a first viewing there seems to be very little social interaction going on, which indicates that each of the personal networks exists in a closed garden, only touching base with others through shared activities. Or it could simply mean that the service is too new to have attracted many users.

I can’t remember ever having seen such a densely featured web application before (it comes with a groups function to rival Google Groups AND a classified advertising section like Craigslist for Pete’s sake), so from that point of view I have to salute the work. It is also available in 11 languages, and just blows me away in terms of the time they must have spent pulling together the different application sets.

However, I can’t say that it really offers anything compelling enough to demand my adoption. Perhaps more is less? Or perhaps it’s just that this is a networked application that doesn’t really feel networked? It’s a sterling effort no question, and hopefully will find an audience somewhere, so I genuinely wish them well. Take a look and see what you think.