Whenever we search for a particular term on the web, the search engines usually dish out results numbering tens of thousands. It is quite a mammoth task to sift through the search results, advertisements and promotional material to find the information that we were looking for.

Social bookmarking sites come to the rescue in such cases as they have relevant articles contributed by users, categorized into different sections. The contribution of articles for such sites is entirely by the users and they can also rate the articles contributed by other users. The articles with the highest number of ratings or votes appear on top of the list.

The new social bookmarking site, YeaWo (possibly a pun on the Hindi term, ‘Yeah Woh’, meaning ‘this and that’) also follows the same pattern, where users can contribute articles and vote for articles contributed by other voters. The difference is that the content in YeaWo is totally India related. The information posted by users is broadly categorized into news, business, technology, entertainment and lifestyle among others.

To post content, the user must first become a member, a procedure that most sites ask for. Once (s)he acquires a login ID the user can post articles as links from other websites, vote for articles posted by others and participate in discussions across various topics in the forum, in YeaWo.

The revenue for YeaWo would primarily come from advertisements, though YeaWo is likely to offer free ad space till the end of the year 2008. The search option just searches on the basis of the tags given and not on the words that are actually on the web site. For instance I searched for Kashmir, a burning issue in the country now. But the search yielded zero results despite a link to an article on Kashmir right beside the search button.

When compared with other similar social bookmarking sites like Digg or Reddit, or even Indian sites like IndianPad, YeaWo leaves much to be desired for in terms of user friendliness, content and design. It has its USP of being a site relevant to India related information. But one should give the site its due as it is relatively new to the web space and it would take some time for such sites to gain familiarity with the users. Till then, YeaWo, we will keep watching.