@dvocable

In India, Orkut rules. If you are young, say below 40, and you mention (even by mistake) that you do not have an Orkut account, you are sure to receive shock expressions.  There seems to be no other social networking site in sight that can overthrow Orkut, at least a for a long time to come. I’m sorry but can’t see even the desi ones standing a chance. However, there is one I think that can pose a threat to Orkut’s dominance. Who are we talking about? None other but Facebook.  

Rajesh has talked about this and I second it. To take the discussion forward, let me say considering the number of Facebook invites exchanging in the emails nowadays, it is reminiscent of how Orkut invites were getting shared and exchanged some years back.

Let me try an analogy. Years back, we all used to have Yahoomails, Hotmails, and various other email services – content with with the 25 or so MBs we used to get with each account. Then suddenly Gmail came along. Suddenly all the previous email services became pale in front of it. It’s true even today everybody has a Yahoo or Hotmail account and comparatively these services might be having larger user bases but Gmail seems to be the preferred second email service one uses after the office email account (at least all my friends, media contacts and clients use Gmail). Today in India, I see Facebook as a Gmail and Orkut as a Yahoo or a Hotmail.

Why is that?

1. Features laden – Facebook is feature packed – much more than Orkut. Once the users get a hand of the social networking thingy in Orkut and they are ready to explore more, they would definitely like to gear up to Facebook. Orkut today offers just what Internet Explorer used to offer before Firefox came along. We used to work on Internet Explorer to just ’surf’ the web. Then came Firefox announcing that we could surf with tabs, develop and put addons, manipulate webpages, and customise how the browsers look.  Similarly, right now we are just plain ‘networking’ on Orkut - sending each other scraps and exchanging messages in communities. Facebook, on the other hand, can become your start-up page (just like Netvibes or iGoogle) combined with social networking elements, given its expanding sets of third-party applications. For instance, put in a to-do list and an email module on your profile page and make them invisible to your friends. Throw in feed readers. It can also be your twitter.

2. Something different – Every tom, dick and harry today has an Orkut account. Some people are going to feel ‘we want a more niche social network’ – some place special than this general hangout place.  You get scraped by everybody and get spam friends requests by the day if you are a girl.

3. More privacy - No more of those Orkut woes where somebody downloaded your pictures and morphed them into something silly. You cannot see a person’s profile page in Facebook unless you are his/her friend. If you want to be friends, all you can do is send a message or poke him/her first.

4. A customisable and classier interface – Ever wondered why your boss is not on Orkut? Maybe it is because it is full of kids and everything there look so ‘teen’. Facebook has a more mature, cleaner, and classier interface. I love the white and blue combination. You can also customise your profile page as you want. Throw in funkier applications or plain business modules, it is your choice.

Given a choice, on a maturity/seriousness scale of 10 – I would put Linkedin at 10, Orkut at 1, and Facebook at 5. So it fits between the extremes.

5. It’s more aspirational, like Rajesh said - the lure of a more global member-base, coupled with familiar Indian faces (many who have studied or are studying overseas) already friends with global buddies… making them more accessible to new joins.

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