Social Networking India News & Articles

Social Media moves so fast, it’s hard to keep up. Here’s the week’s top stories, in scan-friendly format.

This week:

• Orkut is India’s Most Popular Social Network -- comScore
• Yammer Launches Downloadable Version
• Facebook Climbs Down in TOS Row
• One in Ten Internet Users now on Twitter
• Twitter launches Integrated Search and Trends
• Baidu Bearish on Revenues

Orkut is India’s Most Popular Social Network -- comScore

If we think of social network start-ups as social experiments, and why wouldn’t we, then if Facebook is Athenian democracy (admittedly a stretch), and if MySpace is the Enlightenment (stretchier yet), then we might liken Google Orkut to Mao’s Cultural Revolution.

By which we mean that we’ve always thought of it as a bloody and gruesome Social disaster, just in case you didn’t get that subtle analogy.

But we may have to revise that view, because the vast and growing Indian market can’t get enough of Orkut, and comScore’s latest figures state that it is in fact the most-visited social network in India, in a market that drew 18m viewers in December 2008 alone.

comScore’s report on India’s 2008 figures is arresting. Internet audience as a whole rose by a fifth, while social network audience grew by 50%. Facebook, BharatStudent, Hi5 and ibibo make up the rest of India’s top five social networking  sites. MySpace and Linkedin limp in at numbers 6 and 7.