January 4th, 2009
Recap of the Social Networking Space in India in 2008
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Rajiv Dingra at WATBlog has a great recap of the social networking space in India in 2008.
The highlight, for me, is the war for the #1 spot between Facebook and Orkut. Orkut introduced the OpenSocial applications platform and replicated several Facebook features, offered themes, and provided regional language and mobile support. Facebook also added key features like chat that are likely to become popular in India. As I showed in my analysis of search trends for social networking sites in India, interest in Orkut is stagnant, while interest in Facebook is growing, even though the gap between the two is still significant.
The other social networking sites in India positioned themselves on content, instead of social networking features. BigAdda and Ibibo focused on entertainment and positioned themselves as quasi blogging platforms by getting celebrities like Amitabh Bachchan and Ravi Shastri to blog for them. However, as I showed in my analysis of search trends for blogging platforms in India, unlike blogging platforms like Wordpress and Blogger/ Blogspot, which have shown slow but consistent growth, the interest in Ibibo and BigAdda has fluctuated significantly, probably based on whether they were running big ad campaigns at the time.
There hasn’t been much to write home about the other social networking sites in India. MySpace launched in India in 2008, but has failed to get significant traction outside the big cities. Minglebox has chosen to directly complete with BharatStudent in the education space. Fropper, DesiMartini and Yaari have remained under the radar for most of the year, except when Yaari has been accused of phishing.
As I have said before, focusing on content is a smart strategy for Indian social networking sites, as they fight the twin battles of relevance (w.r.t. Facebook/ Orkut/ MySpace)and monetization but I don’t think it will be enough –
Google, for instance, has struggled to monetize both YouTube and Orkut and it hasn’t even tried to monetize Blogger. Moreover, if social network users are resentful of ads intruding into their social interactions, content creators have come to expect at least a part of the ad revenue pie, even if they “choose” to put ads next to their content.
I don’t think that significant advertising on Indian social networking sites will happen in 2009, and if it does happen, I don’t think it will be very effective. (I’m also surprised that brands are trying to do lead generation on Indian social networking sites. What are they thinking?)
Marketing on social media is a long term, low burn game and I’m not sure how many Indian brands (or social networking sites, or advertising agencies) understand it or are willing to doing it.
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Why do you say this?
Gaurav
(I’m also surprised that brands are trying to do lead generation on Indian social networking sites. What are they thinking?)
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@Gaurav: I’m hardly a social media purist, but why would brands try to do lead generation in the social networking context, where the users aren’t even thinking about buying things? Why wouldn’t brands focus on search for lead generation and on social media for customer support and brand engagement?
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Gaurav, 2009 will be for businesses using social networks and indian social media will go to next step in 2009.
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[...] sites in India, with the exception of BharatStudent’s surprise #3 position. I knew that both Ibibo and BigAdda were struggling, in spite of refocusing on entertainment, but I thought BigAdda was struggling more. Part of the [...]