India loves Orkut

Even as Google plays an April Fool on gullible Gmail users, Orkut, its other property, continues to blaze away with runaway success. Those of us, who have passed their prime in pre-Internet age, usually loathe wandering about in social media websites. Not so the present brigades of teens and 20s.

Since both my son and daughter swear by Orkut day in day out, I’ve some inkling of what goes around. Most of them fake their names and identity, and prefer to have photos of either celebrities or something abstract. Chatting for hours, without ever stopping if possible, gives them a kick, and of course the more ‘scraps’ one has, the more cool and socially acceptable he or she is. [Orkut Buyukkokten's image source]

In India, where Internet population is miniscule compared to other countries, and where ecommerce is still limited mainly to ticket booking sites of Indian Railway and the different airlines, it’s a magic of sort that the country ranks 3rd among country-wise Orkut users. Out of about 45 million users, India’s share is a robust 13.27% behind Brazil (56.68%) and US (18.59%) [ref: Wikipedia]

If the above figures do not show you the darkness behind India’s strong Orkut popularity, the following ones will (taken from Internet World Stats). These are latest Internet usage figures:

• Brazil: 32,130,000 Internet users, 17.2% penetration
• US: 211,108,086 Internet users, 69.9% penetration
• India: 40,000,000 Internet users, 3.5% penetration

Looking at them, 2 things become pretty obvious. One of course is that India lags far behind in Internet usage in spite of spectacular tech success. Second – and this is dangerous – is Indians, especially the youngsters, like too much of chatting instead of doing anything worthwhile on Internet.

Be that as it may, if you still feel chatting comes to you more naturally on Internet to the exclusion of everything else, here are some non-Orkut options for you:

1. Facebook
   Appears more popular in US than Orkut. Many say it’s much better and has more features. A recent survey indicates Facebook is most visited site in US by both females in 17-25 age group (69%) and males (56%).
2. Friendster
3. Hi5
4. LinkedIn
5. MySpace
6. Tagged
7. Xanga
   Perhaps the oldest of them all, it started in 1998 initially as a site for sharing book and music reviews.
8. Zorpia
   Hong Kong based, but it has an Indians-only popular group.

Related reading:

1. Local language websites
2. Have you socialized today?

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