The gregarious web
Dilip Cherian, Founder Partner, Perfect Relations, is an anxious man these days. His big worry: he is slowly getting addicted to the social networking site Facebook. Cherian, 51, realised it during his recent Afghanistan trip where he was spending long hours on the site. A recent convert, Cherian joined Facebook three months back when a friend’s daughter sent him an invite to be her friend on the site. Since then, Cherian has, hold your breath, found 250 more friends with whom he is regularly in touch.
Cherian is not the lone socialnetworker on a roll. According to India Online 2007, a survey conducted by online research and advisory firm JuxtConsult, social networking sites in India have rallied up 44 per cent of the internet time with over 11 million Indians getting hooked on to it.
In India, the online social networking market is clearly dominated by the international websites due to their first-mover advantage. Latest figures from comScore, an internet marketing research company, indicate emergence of Facebook as a challenger to Orkut, MySpace and Hi5 in India. From 238,000 users in January 2007, Facebook has grown by 230 per cent to 785,000 users from India in June 2007. According to the report, Facebook’s growth in India was phenomenal between April and June 2007, when it added 323,000 users.
Not to be left behind, desi social-networking sites are also multiplying. Rediff.com launched iShare in July and claimed a million users in a month. Reliance’s sevenweek-old BigAdda has already garnered half-a-million users and is hoping to net another 10 million by 2010. InfoEdge has come out with a professional networking site called Brijj.com that has a ‘pay and contact’ model, while Bangalore-based social networking site minglebox is focused on college-goers. Recently launched, ApnaCircle is being promoted by Sabeer Bhatia, one of the co-founders of Hotmail.
Not to be left behind, desi social-networking sites are also multiplying. Rediff.com launched iShare in July and claimed a million users in a month. Reliance’s sevenweek-old BigAdda has already garnered half-a-million users and is hoping to net another 10 million by 2010. InfoEdge has come out with a professional networking site called Brijj.com that has a ‘pay and contact’ model, while Bangalore-based social networking site minglebox is focused on college-goers. Recently launched, ApnaCircle is being promoted by Sabeer Bhatia, one of the co-founders of Hotmail.
Fun Quotient
The reason for Facebook’s popularity among the top executives in India is not only its ease of use or the privacy shield that it offers, but inexorably because a lot of people enjoy the applications that the site has to offer. Deep Kalra, 38, Founder and CEO, MakeMyTrip, considers Facebook addictive as the fun quotient is high. “You can meet friends, play party games, pry into your friend’s list and see who they are chatting up or just check what they are up to through their profile status.” Kalra has an eightyear-old who’s hooked to Barbie.com. As a professional and as the father of a would-be member of the social networking space, Kalra wanted to check out Facebook and figure out the phenomenon himself. He got caught in the virtual hang-out zone instead.
It was Facebook that came to rescue when Ashutosh Khanna, 40, lost touch with a lot of his old neighbourhood friends from Havelock Square in Delhi after a section of the area got demolished. A couple of months back, Khanna, Client Partner at Korn/Ferry International, a global consultancy and recruitment company, logged on to Facebook and found Malini Rao, a friend from the same area. This encounter at Facebook resulted in Rao telling Khanna about a community blog of the old residents who had to move out of the locality. A site addict now, he happily spends an hour on Facebook before going to sleep and has trouble sleeping if he doesn’t check out his Facebook account at least once a day. Khanna did visit other networking sites but decided to ignore them when he realised they didn’t have any fun applications or games and were too teeny for his taste.
It’s Simply Marketing
For some, the site serves as a turf for network-based marketing. Lloyd Mathias, MD (India & South West Asia), Motorola, says he wanted to check out Facebook like any other marketer would. “I wanted to know what others wanted.” What he had not bargained for was a continuous obsession with the site; but that’s what Lloyd is suffering from recently. For the 40-year-old marketer, the secret of Facebook’s success lies in the fairly simple usability, easy-to-use applications, and, of course, the first-mover advantage. Mathias, who checks his Facebook account more than five times a week, says the site helps fuel both the needs— staying in touch with old friends as well as getting in touch with some more people.
Mobile’s the Buzz
As social networking moves beyond the computer, the numbers continue to swell. Rajiv Karwal, Founder and CEO, Milagrow Solutions, is part of the growing tribe of CEOs who find it necessary to have Facebook on their mobile phones. “I won’t say I am hooked to it but the instant there is a notification alert, I have to look it up immediately.” Karwal, 44, who logs on to the site at least twice daily, says in the last four months he has found around 140 friends and on an average gets 4-5 invites daily. “Facebook helped me connect with my old colleagues from Philips, LG, Kelvinator and Reliance. Even though there is no cause to mail people specifically, I can always say a ‘hi’ through Facebook.” Karwal is also logged on to Orkut and LinkedIn but has no plans of migrating completely from any of these sites.
Bumpy Trek Ahead?
Not everyone, however, is as upbeat about the social networking site. Jaspreet Bindra, Country Manager, MSN India, warns of Facebook becoming a trivial site like other social networking sites. “There are too many trivial applications like sending hugs, chocolates and gifts. Facebook is in danger of becoming more like MySpace. So while everyone is excited about the social networking sites right now, too much exposure is going to disturb some individuals in a very serious way.” While Facebook offers partial screening of messages, no site is completely fraud-free. People need to be very careful while using such sites, he adds.
Siddhartha Roy, Chief Operating Officer, BigAdda, differs. His site has a tracking system that maintains a log of every bit of user interaction. Plus, parental mail is issued to the parent of any user who is below 18 years. “We have tied up with local television channels for content as unlike foreign players, we want to create a market for the Indian youth only,” explains Roy. Next on agenda? BigAdda plans to go wireless soon.
Other home-grown sites like iShare, Fropper, Yaari and minglebox are also gearing up to challenge the international heavy-weights. Their success, however, will depend on whether they are able to leverage their local knowledge and content to differentiate their offering. Nevertheless, for a segment that grew from almost nothing to 11 million users in over a year (according to JuxtConsult), this is certainly a space to watch.
