The year 2011 truly belonged to the digital consumer. Social networking sites became the meeting point for almost anything — from finding friends to protesting against corruption. In 2011, India touched the 100-million mark in terms of internet users, 85 million being active users. The numbers may be relatively small compared to other markets, but this is a significant base for online firms. For LinkedIn, India is the second-largest base after the US. Google+ has garnered four million users in a short span and Facebook has close to 40 million Indian users. Here’s what you can expect in 2012.
PROFESSIONAL NETWORKING
If 2011 was a year in which online networking garnered attention the world over, in India, we saw professional networking gain immense traction with professionals. People have realised the value of building their online identity of record and have, thus, started leveraging such platforms to showcase and brand themselves. Not only professionals, but students and entrepreneurs have also started using these networking options as a launch pad for their career that helps them establish their profiles, connect with like-minded professionals and generate leads and business development. To give you an example, one of our members, Purvish Diwanji, director, Satyajit Chemicals, created a free company page on LinkedIn. He connected with prospective international partners and got a $15000 assignment from a buyer in South Africa.
THE FORECAST FOR 2012
Professional networking in India will continue to grow. The primary reason for this is the large number of individuals entering the workforce. Having started our India operations in 2009, we have grown from a mere 3.4 million to a 13 million member base, the largest market after the US. The growth opportunity in India is, thus, tremendous. Professional networks need to continue to remain contextual and relevant to its audiences. As long as we continue to connect talent with opportunity, our members, recruiters and brands will derive value from the platform.
DOMINANT PLATFORM: MOBILE OR ONLINE?
Mobile and online content is always evolving. Our mission is to make professionals productive and successful and to do this we will be present on relevant platforms. We work where the professional works — applications for the BlackBerry, Android and iOS give them the ability to engage on groups, read the top news in their industry, look up a person before a meeting or simply connect with a new contact without the need to be stationed on a computer. A mobile product cannot host just a profile, but needs added features to provide maximum value to a user. That is why you see that we have various features that drive value and engagement on the go. With mobile penetration increasing in India, supported by affordable data access, this platform, in my opinion will lead to increased engagement among professionals.
Hari V Krishnan, Country Manager, LinkedIn India
SOCIAL NETWORKING
If Facebook was big in 2010, it grew bigger in 2012. According to the statistics from Socialbakers.com, there are an estimated 40 million Indians on the social networking site. Twitter has come a long way to becoming the preferred voice of millions of Indians in 2011, and the trend seems to continue. Today the site has more than 7 million Indian’s tweeting. Google’s social networking attempt, Google+ too opened well in India and quickly added 4 million subscribers. The latest networking site, however, is still trying to stand on its feet. Data from a report by Nielson and AbsolutData predicts that over the next six months 45,000 online Indians intend to join social networking sites each day. The report also claims that Indians spend more time on social media than they do checking personal email.
THE FORECAST FOR 2012
Sunil Chandarana, CTO, EBS Interactive, says, “Google+ has made all the efforts possible to compete with Facebook in 2011 but it clearly has not been able to make users switch from Facebook to Google+. Features like Video Hangouts and Circle had generated some curiosity and prompted people to create their profile on Google+ but it will not be able to get more users or make users switch from Facebook. I am positive that Facebook and Twitter will become bigger in social search and will take a bigger pie from Google or Yahoo search engine.”
The top three sites (Facebook, Linkedin and Twitter) accounted for 97 per cent of the total visits and 98 per cent of the overall time spent on social networks — leaving very little for anyone else. The trend is expected to move ahead in 2012 too.
Chandarana also believes that by next year Facebook will further rise in India and gain popularity especially with brands that use the site to engage and interact with customers. Experts agree that social media will no longer be about getting fans to click the ‘like’ button on Facebook, but to find creative ways to keep them. On Twitter, it is no longer about trying to think of enough tweets to fill a day, instead it is about how to use Twitter to create positive customer service interactions in real time.
Vizisense states in its report that youngsters prefer to visit Facebook and social media pages of companies rather than their websites for information. Experian data also shows that one in every eight pages viewed on the Internet by an Indian user is Facebook, making it the second single biggest source of traffic after Google.
Clearly, Facebook’s position remains undeterred ahead. Hareesh Tibrewalla, joint CEO, Social Wavelength predicts, “Facebook fatigue is a myth. There are always some dropouts when there is an exponential growth curve. The number of minutes being spent on Facebook by users is going to increase.” Tibrewalla adds that while no global social networking site is set to emerge from India in 2012, there is an opportunity for specialised networks.
“Take for instance the likes of Pagalguy, Bharatstudent, etc and I think we will see domain specific India centric social network brands emerge in the coming year (for example, a network for chartered accountants, a network for SMBs, etc).”
As we get into the next 200 million Indian users, there might just be an opportunity for building vernacular or regional social networking portals, believes Avendus Capital. “Vernacular portals could be the best bet to provide these services. But will sites like Facebook beat them to it? The jury is still out, but so far there have been few Indian sites that have been able to build a solid user experience,” states the report.
What remains to be seen how Google+ will evolve in India. However, Tibrewalla concludes, “I don’t think Google+ has any great future, in India or elsewhere. It will probably die a natural death.” Avendus Capital, on other hand, reasons that users put significant amount of time on building a social networking page that leads to some level of emotional connect and stickiness with the site. “And migrating from one social network to another is difficult. While Google+ got the sign-ups, it is struggling to get the usage,” the report highlights.
-Priyanka Joshi
SOCIAL GAMING
India will have 300 to 400 million Internet users by 2015 and almost 50 per cent of these users will be playing some sort of social games. There are compelling reasons to believe so.
For Facebook, India represents the third-largest market in terms of users. Video platforms, like YouTube, have now become mainstream phenomenon. At the last count, the song Kolaveri di saw some 35 million hits -- a good indicator that shows internet users are getting social. Add to this the mobile uptake, especially the social mobile phenomenon.
Interestingly, the second most popular activity, after updating status on a social networking site, is playing games. Facebook is the biggest gaming network. While this is largely true in the US, several countries, including India, are at the inflection point of using content in the social context.
We have seen with the success of Ra.One social game. So far, the game has been downloaded 9 million times on platforms like Facebook, iPhone and so on. On Nokia alone we have seen 2.5 million downloads. We have seen a mass adoption starting to happen. For UTV Indiagames we have seen a three-fold growth in this segment.
For 2012 and beyond, I think the most used platform for social gaming will be the mobile. With Google giving a Google+ account to every Android phone user, for many the first experience of a social platform will be through a mobile. What will also add to the gaming explosion is the transaction method. With micro-transaction becoming the norm, users have access to games for free.
I wouldn’t be too surprised to see a success story like Angry Bird coming from India soon.
Vishal Gondal, CEO UTV Indiagames
MOBILE NETWORKING
The big daddies of the internet — Google and Facebook — might be eyeing the mobile platform for the next phase of growth, but mobile networking platforms such as SMSGupshup, Rocketalk and Migg33 are hardly intimidated.
Mobile social networking site Nimbuzz is hoping that its registered customers would double next year. It currently has a user base of 75 million and has a current growth rate of two million registrations each month. “This year we have grown at the same pace as we did last year and we expect to grow the same way next year,” said Joby Babu, head of operations at Nimbuzz. And it is not alone in being bullish. Sites like SMSGupshup, Rocketalk, migg33 and others that provide text and data connectivity-based usage used mainly over the mobile are all seeing double-digit growth.
They claim that they are not in direct competition with more popular social networking sites like Facebook, Twitter and Google+.
Mobile networking sites use unique applications. One of them is integrating chatting application across messengers be it Google Talk, Yahoo or Facebook. Mobile networking provides for video chat as well. Add to that, the company banks on social gaming and applications like Avatars that helps in altering profiles to get sticky usage. Nimbuzz claims that their users have contributed over 60 million downloads on Getjar, a free application provider.
Mobile networking sites allow consumers to group together based on common interests and use it as a platform to network and make friends. A number of such platforms also cater to semi-urban and rural population. SMSGupshup, which claims to have over 32 million subscribers, has a huge fan following in these areas and has popular communities. This network, which has 32 million users, allows members to form groups and communities on shayari, jokes, finance, religion, business, technology and education. It allows them to make communities that can stay in touch through free SMSes.
A strong rural and semi-urban appeal is something that these mobile social networks claim differentiate them from others. Around 75 per cent of users of mobile networks belong to B and C class towns.
A mobile first user survey, commissioned by mig33 says mobile social networks provide for free socialising, which is a taboo in many of these areas. Semi-urban areas also point out a trend wherein users of mobile networking sites do not share their real identities and details.
This is not the case with more popular social networking sites like Facebook. “Although, 92 per cent of the mobile-first community in tier-I cities is also on Facebook, in tier-III cities this falls to 48 per cent,” the report said. The report also says that increasingly these users are catching onto the internet thereby saving on text messaging, due to heightened usage.
These networking sites are also constantly looking to upgrade and innovate.
“We plan to build our client on newer platforms and launch new games. We also plan to continue partnering with third party developers all around the globe as part of our game developer programme,” said Mahip Vyas, country manager, mig33, India.
-Katya B Naidu
