Ok I must say that my love for orkut has been the real reason ive never really signed up with facebook. But with unlimited invites and some real recommendations from some really intelligent people i know I finally signed up 3 weeks ago and gave it a try..

Well i must say i was impressed with facebook!

But that made me dig a lil more into what’s it thats attracting Indians into the facebook phenomenon.

But Before we digg into facebook and do a comparison on orkut and facebook lets first understand Orkut and the problems orkut faces in India.

What was Orkut and what did it do different?

Orkut was one of its kind open social network which came at a time when there were few others. Prior to orkut there was hi5 (which was pretty popular in India in 2005) which allowed you to view your friends friend  but when orkut came it revolutionized the network phenomenon by giving you access to practically everyone on the network (In reality this was just perception as any search on orkut just shows last 1000 active users results). (This Hi5 vs Orkut case study is explained well in our Social networking in India presentation).

Orkut’s problems in India

1) Openess lead to Exploitation - Being such an open social network has its pros as well as cons, It soon started getting into problems such as fake profiles, negative communities, communalism etc.

2) Orkuts becoming Pornkut? But what’s worse that orkut soon started becoming a joint for porn and guys posting pics of indian girls (many their own ex gf’s). So besides the public outcry on the various fake pictures and controversial communities its seems like the biggest problem orkut is facing is that of being bombarded with porn profiles!

So how has these problems impacted the user experience on Orkut?

1) Search Results are Affected - I did a search on orkut for India based girls across any age group and out of the first ten pages of result i found only 7 REAL profiles the rest were fake porn profiles. This is in stark contrast to almost a year ago when i had done the same search on orkut i saw many good looking REAL profiles and very few porn profiles!

2) Interactivity is affected - Yes scrapping and the openess of orkut did get it the traffic and soft corner among indian youth but it also attracted an indian youth which is sort of suppressed at home due to religious and social conservatism and hence kind of obsessed with porn (dont believe me? Check the top 100 sites in india by alexa atleast 10 of them are porn). And this very porn obsessed audience is now driving away the REAL people who made orkut a success. Girls have started removing their pics from their albums after cases of morphing. Girls have started to stop replying to scraps due to many "Add me as friend requests". Also many of my friends have deactivated scrap alerts. 

3) Stagnating Experience - Those who have recently joined orkut may still find it an exciting experience as its one of the most visited social networks in India and hence you will be able to find anyone from your school, kindergarten, office or any other possible place on orkut (connecting with long lost friends).. BUT.. Those who have been on the network for 1 year upwards orkut is turning out to be what I call a STAGNATING EXPERIENCE!

Now lets understand what facebook was and how popular did it become?

Before opening up to the general public facebook was a social network for students from american schools and colleges. For instance, according to a profiling done by Mashable, In September 2005 approximately 85% of the students in the supported colleges had a Facebook account, with 60% of them logging in daily.

Well that was way back in 2005 and ofcourse that was an american audience! The crucial question is.. 

Is Facebook popular in India?

Now for all those who might have not heard or obviously like me are too much in love with orkut to care Facebook is fast gaining popularity with the Indian audience.

When I had joined Facebook 3 weeks back it was ranked 39th most popular site according to alexa.com and in just 3 weeks it has become 29th most popular site in India!

But you might argue that orkut is 2nd most popular site and Facebook still has a long way to go..

Well Let me illustrate my point with an alexa.com graph..

The above graph clearly shows a stagnant trend for orkut and an upward graph for facebook.

So how did all the indians get attracted to facebook?

Well as i mention facebook was targetted at american students in schools and universities and many of these students are indians who have left india to study abroad. Facebook became a way for them to keep in touch with both their american friends and also invite friends from india even though they werent from universities abroad.
So slowly all these upmarket indian community (both staying in India and staying abroad) started populating facebook. Then facebook opened its doors to the general public recently thereby allowing anyone to signup.

Now here is a comparison of orkut with facebook on why i feel facebook is the next big thing in India..

Well to illustrate some traffic trends to back my crystal ball gazing into social networking future here is an alexa comparison of orkut and facebook of the last 3 years.

As you can see facebook seems to be rising while orkut seems to slowing down and also the facebook current rise is similar to that of orkut in the early part of 2006 (around the same time 1+ Million Indian users were on Orkut). So whats so special about facebook thats making the above graph look like it is?

Whats so special in Facebook? And why do i see it becoming that popular in India?

1) Firstly its opened up recently so all the problems mentioned above with regards to orkut is mising in facebook.
2) Also facebook has some really great features which move far ahead and even beyond one’s imagination. Primarily because it recently opened its API which has got a host of developers developing some cool applications which are increasing delight and interaction among users on a whole new different level.

(Currently more than 65 million applications are already created are being used on Facebook in the first month itself! Which is increasing interactivity beyond imagination.)

Lets have a close look at the features..

Invitation

As soon as i signed up Facebook asked me to add my friends from my email address by asking me to input my username and password and then it shows me which of my friends from my address book are on facebook and just a click of a button and voila i got a group of 30 friends added to me! No seraching required! Additionally it lets me invite others on my address book who are not on facebook.

Interactivity

This is where facebook scores highly over orkut. The only interactive feature which has become a huge hit with orkutters has been scrapping! But Facebook is one which not only has the scrapping feature called "The Wall" in facebook but its the unlimited applications that are being developed by its evergrowing developers community. These applications are causing a long tail (I recommend reading The long tail by Cris Anderson to understand this better.) which basically means that each and every application would have atleast one user in facebook thereby meaning delight and uniqueness in experience among different users on the same social network.

Search

The search at facebook is probably its weekest feature. The normal search primarily searches names of other users and the advanced search can only search your friends. This is where orkut’s openness scores over facebook’s supposedly more secured network. Though as mentioned above openness can lead to exploitation. So the fact that facebook is a little less open and more secured may actually work in Its favour.

Conclusion 

In conclusion id like to say that though currently orkut is huge in India with it also being nominated as the mtv youth icon but unless it innovates and gives its early adopters a reason to come back more and more it will surely lose out its Indian audience to a rising phenomenon people know by Facebook.com.

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