Facebook may not be hard on the heels of Google yet but its spectacular growth is threatening to cast the internet search giant’s own networking site, Orkut, to the fringes of internet, at least in India.
The world’s second-most visited website after Google, which turned six on Friday, could surpass Orkut in the number of users to become India’s top social networking site by September, say a couple of studies. Though Orkut now has 15.5 million users compared to Facebook’s 10.4 million as of December, the Google site’s additions are at a sluggish 1.8% per month, says data from Mumbai-based Komli Ad Networks. Facebook, in contrast, is growing at a compounded 7.8% a month since July.
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They say ‘Whatever happens, happens for the best’. At least it fits Orkut’s claims of being clueless on how they managed to introduce their new chat option for everyone. The novel options offered by the popular networking site for chat should be a treat for users, reveals the official Orkut blog. With a host of new thrilling features coming their way, Orkut chatting is going to be much more fun.
Orkut chat’s new additional features include Chat pop out, Group chat and Chat list. Also, now chatting with multiple friends at the same time is possible with the mentioned features.
The first feature is dubbed as the Chat pop out. This feature allows users to individually view the chats. Also, separate windows can be used for the same. The second feature being the Group chat offers users to chat with several friends simultaneously. Now how cool is that? Finally, the Chat list feature gives a sneak peak to its users about the availability of their friends. It also updates them about how their friends are logged in. If they are online through Orkut, Gmail, iGoogle or Google talk.
Now chatting can be real fun via Orkut. Besides the company also plans to bring in some more super-cool features to chat in the near future. So hold on and stay tuned for all their forthcoming news.
Google’s social networking site Orkut seems to be growing briskly in India. In the past one year, the number of Orkut users has swelled to 17.1 million -- up by about 80 per cent. India now has 18 per cent share of the total number of Orkut users worldwide, bettered only by Brazil and the US .
“India has been exciting for us. The next phase of growth for us will come from tier-II and III cities here,” says Rahul Kulkarni, Google’s product manager (India). This growth in Orkut numbers is higher than internet growth in India, the company says. The Google Internet Bus is one such initiative that spreads awareness about the internet and social networking in rural areas.
“We have evolved our applications as well. It’s not only communities that are getting formed, but NGOs too are being put together on Orkut,” says Kulkarni, explaining the reasons behind Orkut’s growth in India. Kulkarni, however, stopped short of predicting how the growth rate will be for the next year.
The next trend in social networking, according to Google, will be interoperability of sites. “This could mean Facebook and Twitter users will be able to operate Orkut seamlessly,” says Kulkarni.
Facebook vs Orkut. Which one of these do you have an account in? Chances are, both. Orkut was an early entrant into the Indian Social Networking Scenario. Facebook, which arrived much later, however seems to grabbed quite some attention. Though both were launched at the same time, Facebook was initially not very popular in India.
Facebook has already generated waves across the world by becoming the No. 1 Social Networking site in the USA overtaking one-time market leader, Myspace and becoming THE most popular site in Indonesia
Well, just to go over the Orkut and the Facebook battle for the grater number of users in india, Orkut still leads. Orkut leads with 13 million users, while Facebook has just 3.2 million users in India. Moreover, the traffic ranks of these social networking sites also reflect the dominance of Orkut over Facebook in India. Orkut has a traffic rank of 4 whereas Facebook has come up to the 8th spot in the overall Alexa traffic rank for India.
So, as per Alexa rankings, it’s clearly visible that Orkut is more prominent than Facebook in India.But the question is, for how long?
Facebook has been growing slowly in India but for the past 3 months since its growth began accelerating rapidly. Its popularity started increasing somewhere near the start of this year and since then the growth has been very productive for Facebook. The result being, the number of users joining Facebook almost doubled in the month of May and June. While Facebook has been growing slowly and steadily in India for the last couple of years, Facebook exploded in May and June, doubling from 1.6 million to 3.2 million monthly active users in the country in the last 60 days.
days.
Orkut has been trying to capitalise on its already large audience base in India, but Facebook is trying its best to woo audiences over. So, Facebook is definitely gaining momentum in the social networking race, with frequent improvements and increased customisation. But will it surpass Orkut in the race for the best social networking site in India ?
America On Line (AOL) is set to launch Bebo – the social networking site it acquired a year ago - in India’s already crowded social media space dominated by Orkut and Facebok amongst others, with a focus on openness and the ability to share content from across networking sites.
It must also face domestically strong sites like Desimartini.com, part of the Hindustan Times Group, and Bigadda, part of the Reliance ADAG tribe.
AOL’s Bebo also has a tie-up with Real Entertainment, which launched the TV channel Real this month.
According to industry researcher comScore, Orkut topped the list of most popular social networking site in India at the end of December 2008 with about 12.8 million visitors, followed by Facebook with close to 4 million visitors.
“Our experience in the market combined with the market potential and increased broadband and mobile connectivity, will allow us to reach Indian users,” Nicole Vanderbilt, vice president International, Bebo told Hindustan Times.
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