Indians going Global with a mouse click: Online social networking

The Comscore report on Indian Social networking revealed three important findings -

1. Over 19 millions Indians are visiting social networking sites showing an increase of 51% from previous year.

2. Global social networking sites such as Orkut, Facebook, hi5, LinkedIn are more popular among Indians and have shown an increase in the number of visits.

3. The top four social networking sites used by Indian internet users are -

• Orkut – 12.8 million visitors (up 81% from last year)
• Facebook -  4 million visitors (up 150% from last year)
• Bharatstudent.com – 3.3 million visitors (up 88% from last year)
• hi5 – 2 million visitors (up 182% from last year)

It may be important to note that the data for this analysis excludes site visitations from public cybercafes and mobile phones or PDAs.

The report noted that a social networking website with a global brand positioning is more likely to succeed in India. I think this points out to an interesting trend that Indians are using online social networking to maintain contacts with non-resident Indian friends and being a part of global culture. In my interviews too with young people in India I found that most of them view new communication technologies such as Internet and mobile phones as having globalizing potential. The “value” that young people in India seek from engaging in online social networking is “forming and maintaining long – distance friendships.”