A Look At Indian Facebook Fan Pages Reveals Insights
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There’s been quite a bit of talk in the international community with respect to Facebook Fan Pages. On one level they are the ideal example of decentralized Social Media Branding.
TechCrunch did an interesting post on ‘Can Google Trends Predict the Elections’. Well, if you look at Facebook Pages, then its quite clear that Barrack Obama (most number of fans on Facebook) has the highest following keeping in mind a very specific demographic. Having said that, Facebook Fan pages I doubt can predict the elections because they do not represent the large volume of Internet users that Google does. Far more people use search on Google as opposed to fan pages on Facebook (1 Million Searches per Minute). Obama however, it seems has struck the right chord with the young, technologically inclined, progressive American Audience.
Because there has been so much talk about Fan Pages – I decided to do a tiny survey of Indian Fan Pages on Facebook.
Here is a Compilation of Indian Fan Pages:
Scrabulous, which was developed by Kolkatta based techies is the ‘Indian’ Fan Page with the highest number of Fans. I wouldn’t count Scrabulous as ‘Indian’ in terms of the appeal because it appeals to a primarily International audience. Incidentally Scrabulous is the application with the most number of fans on all of Facebook.
Atif Aslam tops the Indian Chart (well he’s Pakistani but of late he’s become very famous in India). He has a duplicate group as well and that group too is pretty highly rated. Both his groups combined, he becomes the person from the Indian Subcontinent with the highest number of fans. That’s probably because of a combined Indian and Pakistani support. Both of Atif’s Fan Pages top SRK, which is quite astonishing. Both are youth icons, SRK is more famous. Maybe he is too old and uncool for Facebookers in India (slightly above 500, 000 in number).
Roadies 5.0 is big winner. The Knight Riders are the most visible IPL Team. The NGO Avaaz makes it to the top as well. The table is rounded up by Dil Chahta Hai, the movie.
Atif Aslam is Ranked 532 on the Facebook Fan Page all time list.
Roadies is Ranked 559.
Both their ranks are not bad at all considering that Indian users are quite miniscule on Facebook. I din’t see too many other fan pages beyond the US and UK based pages.
The Kind of Fan Pages that Work on Facebook:
- Person Based Pages
- Band/ Team/ Group Based Pages
- TV Show/ Movie Based Pages
Younger, fresher content is more popular on Facebook. The exception here being Dil Chahta Hai but I think Dil Chahta Hai is still as fresh as it was when I first saw it.
Sample This: Madhu Singh (UK Based), a visual artist who does some hip shows has more fans than the eternal American Godess Oprah!
Im not surprised to see no brands on the list. People do not connect with brands, they connect with topics. They like to associate only with brands that have a cult. So brands like Apple and Victoria’s Secret Pink are right up there. Certain uncool brands do not even figure. For brands to have fans, offline activities are far more important than online activities and integration of these activities with online activities is important as well. The synergy is as important, if not more important than the offline support.
Indian Brands, even the ones that are youth based and have a certain attitude that resonates with the youth, are poorly represented. Certain American brands have benefited quite a bit by being where their audiences are. Sample an Indian Brand like Café Coffee Day – a brand that thrives on conversations has no ‘activity’ on its fan page.
(Anyone heard of WATConsult?)
Current Topics are also likely to generate a greater buzz than topics that are not in the public’s short-term memory (this is again where offline and online can synergize). That is why the Barrack Obama page has close to a million fans and Sex And the City: The Movie has more fans than Sex and the City (the Tv Series).
(These Figures were taken into account on 11/ 6/ 2007)
I personally believe that groups on Facebook are more viral. Once applications can be built into groups, they will definitely overtake Fan Pages in terms of relevance to brands. But I doubt Facebook wants that. For obvious reasons. They want brands to pursue social ads.
Just a small suggestion for Facebook. They should make groups more ‘involvement oriented’. So members of groups should get an abridged summary of group happenings every week. This will make sure people stay in touch with the group and do not unnecessarily join groups they don’t really ‘feel’ for.
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good work……my guess is that u must have taken atleast 6 hours+ to complete this post …..correct me if i m wrong
thanks! haha no it wasnt that long - 2 hours did it. But i think something similar is necessary on Orkut as well… just to understand mindsets. So that a matrix of the audience on each Social Network can be prepared…