David strikes Goliath again, with Facebook overtaking Google’s Orkut in India.
Orkut was leading social networking scene in India, but marketing research company comScore reported says not anymore.
According to comScore, Facebook climbed to the number one spot in July 2010 with 179 percent growth in the last one last year, while Orkut registered a growth of 16 percent within the same time period.
An interesting fact shown by the report is the popularity of social networking sites in India. In July 2010, more than 33 million internet users age 15 and above visited social networking sites, representing 84 percent of the total internet audience in India.
“The social networking phenomenon continues to gain steam worldwide, and India represents one of the fastest growing markets at the moment,” says Will Hodgman, comScore executive vice president for the Asia-Pacific region. “Though Facebook has tripled its audience in the past year to pace the growth for the category, several other social networking sites have posted their own sizeable gains.”
In terms of unique users, Facebook took the top spot with 20.9 million users, orkut dropped to second with 19.6 million users, and Twitter with 3.3 million users took the fifth place.
Twitter show the highest growth rate with an impressive growth of 239 percent from last year.
India now the world’s seventh largest market for social networking. In terms of unique visitors for social networking sites, United States retains top spot, followed by China, Germany, Russian Federation, Brazil, United Kingdom, India, France, Japan, and South Korea.
Note: This comScore data reports doesn’t include visitation from public computers such as internet cafes or access from mobile phones and PDAs.
Have you ever wondered how popular social network games are?
Well, according to a report from research firm NPD Group, 56.8 million people in the United States, which is one-fifth of the total population of United States.
Out of the 56 million people, 35% were entirely new to video games. The ones who have never played any type of video game before. Among them older and female users were more prone to be attracted by social games.
The survey also showed other interesting fact about social games.
Out of the 56.8 million people, 53% were females while 47% were males, indicating that social network games doesn’t appeal more to the fairer sex.
The survey showed that 10% of social network gamers have spent real money on these games and 11% indicated that they are likely to make future purchase.
Social network games are also affecting the amount of spending on other types of gaming activities. Gamers indicated they spent up to 20% less on traditional games since they started playing social network games.
Social network games are part and parcel of Facebook. Its impact and following is massive. Among social network games, Zynga’s FarmVille is the most popular game on Facebook with over 62 million monthly users.
Google goes shopping yet again while Facebook decided to stay home.
The face-off between Google and Facebook seems inevitable and can be expected very soon going by the urgency shown by both the giants.
With Orkut a passé, Google wave gone, and Google Buzz failing to make a ‘Pop,’ Google is going all out to launch it’s rumored Social gaming network dubbed “Google Me” with such ingredients that it remains hot for a long, long time (or will it sizzle out again?)
Techcrunch reported that Google has acquired San Francisco-based start-up Jambool and its gaming product Social Gold.
Jambool’s Social Gold is an online virtual payment platform which can be incorporated in virtual worlds, social games and applications, MMOs, and other online games portal.
The deal amount is reportedly $70 – $75 million – $55 million for Jambool and another $15 – $20 million in an earnout.
This deal comes even before the news of Google’s acquisition of social app developer Slide for $280 million have died. Apart from that, if you remember, Google had also invested around $100 million to $200 million in Facebook leading game developer Zynga. There are also rumors in the air that the company is also under negotiations with other top social gaming companies like EA’s Playfish and Disney’s Playdom to establish games-friendly network.
With it’s hand on social gaming companies, social app developer and a virtual currency payment platform, does it mean “Google Me” is almost out?
While Google is busy shopping, as told earlier, Facebook has decided to stay at home for the next 60 days. During this period, the company’s office will remain open 24×7 to revamp some of it’s products.
We will see if working from the inside or outside is a better approach when the final show down happens…or will it happen?
Facebook announced last Friday that is all set to double the size of its data center at Prineville, Oregon.
Facebook is reportedly going to add 160,000 square foot shell to the 147,000 square foot facility now being built.
“We are making excellent progress on the first phase of our Prineville Data Center and we are hoping to finish construction of that phase in the first quarter of 2011,” said Tom Furlong, Director of Site Operations for Facebook. “To meet the needs of our growing business, we have decided to go ahead with the second phase of the project, which was an option we put in place when we broke ground earlier this year. The second phase should be finished by early 2012.”
The expansion also brings good news for the Prineville community, as the proposed expansion will create 35 long-term jobs and the construction project will employ 150 to 200 worker on any given day.
Interested candidates are also advised to head to Facebook’s careers page for more information regarding employment opportunities.
According to a Wall Street Journal report, search-engine gaint Google Inc is in talks with gaming companies.
The reason – Google Inc is preparing to launch a gaming social network to rival Facebook.
The Journal reports that the search engine giant have already talked to various popular developers of online games for the service such as Zynga Game Network Inc, Electronic Arts Inc’s Playfish, and Playdom Inc.
A smarter move by Google, i would say, as social games and application have been one of the major driving factor for the success of Facebook.
Google Chief Executive Eric Schmidt decline to confirm the development by saying “the world doesn’t need a copy of the same thing,” when asked whether the company plans to launch such service.
While it is not clear when common people like us around the world will get a feel of this offering in the news.
Facebook, the undisputed leader of online social network, has so far enjoyed continued success and have overcome different services rolled out to rival it, and will not sit quite on its achievements anytime soon, especially with competitors such as Google breathing fire down its neck.
It is also worth mentioning that Google’s recent service, Google Buzz failed to make as much buzz as it did before it was launched.
But, before i sign off, i would like to add something more – Eric’s answer really makes me eager to know more about the project, as to how different will this new service be. A service to rival Facebook at this moment? All i can think of is the massive amount of punch – excitement, addiction, and importance – this new service will need to have on the users and i can’t wait to feel it 
This is hardly surprising to anybody following Facebook Login, but Facebook creator Mark Zuckerberg just made things official on the company’s blog. Facebook now has 500 million members. According to Zuckerberg, the landmark has been hit this morning.
Facebook has assembled a collection of stories that users have contributed with the company, describing the effect Facebook has had on their lives.
Additionally, Facebook has put together a scrapbook with messages of thanks.
It had been only five and a half months ago when Facebook celebrated its 6th birthday and hit 400 million active users. At this rate, does that mean Facebook will grow to 600 million people by the end of the year?
Zuckerberg is very confident they will hit one billion active users at some point.
Not yet, but according to Mark Zuckerberg, with an aggressive international growth strategy Facebook will be the first social network to reach the 1 billion user mark. Facebook currently has 500 million users globally, and they predict it will take less than two years to double the number of users.
Because Facebook is already the dominant social network in the western world, their strategy is to compete with established social networks in countries like China, Japan, Russia, and South Korea. Facebook has fewer than 1 million users in Russia, so there is potential for huge growth in these markets.
Will Facebook be able to beat everyone to the chase, my guess is they will… They have a huge head start. Only time will tell.
There’s a new trend sweeping the globe, baby boomers are flocking to Facebook. It’s reported that more than 27% of Americans over the age of 50 are using social networks, and a majority of them prefer Facebook to second tier social networks like MySpace, LinkedIn, and Twitter. According to a recent study 49% of adults ages 50 to 64 and 40% of all adults over age 50 are very comfortable using the Internet. This growing group of older Facebook users are primarily useing social networking tools to keep in touch with family members.
