Facebook overtakes Orkut in India: comScore

New Delhi: Internet giant Google's social networking platform Orkut has lost yet another turf to the surge of Facebook.

India, one of the few countries where Orkut retained the top spot amongst social networking websites, now has more people logging on to Facebook, says marketing research company comScore.

According to comScore, Facebook grabbed the number one ranking in the social networking category for the first time in July with 20.9 million visitors, up 179 per cent versus year ago. Orkut registered a growth of only 16 per cent in the same time period.

Social networking is what Indians spend most time on while online. According to the latest figures released by marketing research company comScore, 84 percent of India's Internet audience visit social networking sites. This makes India the world's seventh largest market for social networking and here are the 10 most frequented social networking websites the country.
Amongst the top 10 social networking sites in India, Shtyle.fm registered the most impressive growth at 281 per cent since July 2009. The website had 1.55 million unique visitors in July 2010.
Digg-inspired social content website Yahoo! Buzz has made some inroads into India since its launch in 2008. Yahoo! Buzz grew 233 per cent in India during July 2009 to July 2010 and had 1.8 million unique visitors in July 2010.
The Indian social networking website ibibo had 2.9 million unique visitors in July 2010 growing 89 per cent since July 2009.
With the mobile phone boom in India the popularity of Zedge.net has also soared in India. Community-driven Zedge provides free content and tools for mobile phones. With an 81 per cent growth since July 2009, Zedge.net had 3.2 million unique visitors in July 2010.
Indians discovered the benefits of professional social networking and this led to a rise in LinkedIn.com's figures for India. In July 2010, the website had about 3.3 million unique visitors from India.
With Indian celebrities waking up to the power of the microblogging service Twitter, more and more Indians are actively tweeting. Indian topics regularly feature amongst the top trends on Twitter. While the reach of Twitter in India (8 per cent of Internet users) is much behind the figures in Indonesia and Brazil (over 20 per cent), it is indeed fast catching up growing 239 per cent over the last year. Twitter had 3.3 million unique visitors from India in July 2010.
Yahoo! owns two of the top ten social networking sites in India: Yahoo! Pulse and Yahoo! Buzz. Yahoo! integrated and improved upon Yahoo! Profiles and Yahoo! 360 to create Pulse. And the pulse seems to be throbbing in India with 3.5 million unique visitors in July 2010.
The social networking site targeted towards young Indians, BharatStudent.com, is ranked number three amongst the top social networking websites in India. With Twitter catching up very fast, BharatStudent.com's 3 per cent growth in unique visitors since July 2009 will not be enough for it to hold on to the No. 3 position for long. The website had 4.4 million unique visitors in July 2010.
After a long reign as the most popular social networking website in India for long, Orkut was finally pushed to the number two position. With only low double-digit growth (16 per cent) over the last year, chances are this Google property might slide down even further in India. Orkut had about 19.87 million unique visitors from India in July 2010.
The world's top social networking website has finally conquered India, racing past Orkut with an impressive 179 per cent growth since July 2009. Facebook registered 20.87 million unique visitors from India in July 2010, that is over 50 per cent of India's total Internet audience.

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Facebook overtakes Orkut in India

"The social networking phenomenon continues to gain steam worldwide, and India represents one of the fastest growing markets at the moment," says Will Hodgman, comScore executive vice president for the Asia-Pacific region. "Though Facebook has tripled its audience in the past year to pace the growth for the category, several other social networking sites have posted their own sizeable gains."

In July 2010, more than 33 million Internet users aged 15 and above visited social networking sites in India, representing 84 per cent of the total Internet audience. While India's total Internet audience grew 13 per cent, social networking usage rose 43 per cent.

This makes India the world's seventh largest market for social networking. Only US, China, Germany, Russian Federation, Brazil and the UK rank above India.

Amongst the top social networking sites, Twitter had the most impressive growth with 239 per cent increase in the number of visitors since July 2009.

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