Recent anecdotal evidence, namely the sudden arrival of friends and relatives living in India on Facebook, suggests that Facebook has suddenly mushroomed in India, slowly overtaking Orkut as the social network of choice. There are some hard statistical numbers to back that claim, WATBlog as early as 2009 had shed light on this trend. Meanwhile back here in the US, the homeland of Facebook and Orkut, people are grasping at straws to explain how Facebook has nearly half of India’s population. Maybe it’s related to the fact that a small percentage of Indians and Brazilians are now on Facebook?
So the question become how did upcoming Goliath Facebook conquer reigning Goliath Orkut (Google)? Was it the “Like” button? Was it Facebook’s clean UI compared to Orkut? Was it Facebook’s ability to integrate with Twitter and other platforms?
Earlier this year, Tunku Varadarajan authored an insightful article in the Daily Beast “Why India Loves Facebook”. Sree Srinivasan sums up the article with this hilarious (but true) quote:
“They take to it naturally and with great passion. It allows them to do two things they love: Tell everyone what they are doing; and stick their noses into other people’s business.”
Further investigation reveals that Facebook’s popularity in India is related to all of the above and then this: [Pluggd.in via @amreekandesi]
Indian movies, Bollywood movies in particular, are notorious for this creative solution to most issues in this world, song and dance. Naturally when Zuck (Mark Zuckerberg, CEO Facebook) visited India this year he got to use this “formula” to symbolize a. Facebook’s triumph over Google (Orkut) and b. Facebook dancing its way into Indian Internet users’ hearts.
Providing a venue for gupshup, breaking out into impromptu dance, the Facebookwalas sure know how to get the attention of the Indians.
Sergey Brin, are you listening?
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Bonus photo of Zuck in India. Zuck goes all out on the India angle with an elephant in the background and a street kid (get it? Slumdog Millionaire) on his side. (pic via DigitalBlog.India)
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