Frankly, I am not-so-active on the social networking site Facebook, as much I am on Twitter (@viralsss). But, that by no means undermine the value of much popular Facebook in my eyes, as I actually realize that it is a more complete social media platform than Twitter.
In fact, while talking to people, I’ve often realized that Twitter is something which still not many Indians are well versed with. Most of them have simply heard about Twitter, but do not know what it is all about. Surprisingly, some even feel it as boring.
For Indians, Twitter burst into fame due to glamour and celebrity touch associated with it. Moreover, news channels are often found relaying the popular tweets from Bollywood personalities to highlight their viewpoint on debatable issues.
Than, again, cricketing legend Sachin Tendulkar (sachin_rt) joining the Twitter bandwagon, also turned attention of millions of fans towards Twitter. Like it or dislike it – apart from sporadic attention seeking, Twitter continues to remain an alien to a large majority of Indians, even today.
It’s official now – Facebook has 25 million users in India. The average time spent by users on Facebook in this land of agriculture is 3 hrs per month; which is more than double the time spent by users on Yahoo, YouTube (1 hr 20 min) and MSN (40 min).
The social media has so changed the dynamics of the internet usage trend in India that even Google, which was almost synonymous to the world of internet, lags far behind (1 hr 50 min) on average time spent by users searching something, to freaking on Facebook.
In the words of David Fischer, vice-president, advertising and global operations of Facebook.com, this social networking site took users from the ‘what’ to ‘who’; and personalized the information amongst the users.
He further adds that the Facebook mission is to build the social graph, with around 15 million friend connections being made every day on this site and three times more turn-up in case of connections with various brands.
They say… nothing is ever-sustainable; neither did Google’s dominance out-live social media’s reach. Facebook is still in fast growth phase. Twitter is relatively new kid on the block. But, one thing for sure, no body can live on past laurels in this immensely innovative world.
The trick of the trade for the Web world could be to keep the wheels of innovation chugging along in the direction of youngistaan model of social media focus.