Indian social sites losing share to international goliaths

Copyright Mail Today 2009 | New Delhi
The current period of economic slowdown is not the best of times for Indian social networking websites as most are fast losing market share to international goliaths such as Orkut, Facebook and Twitter.

Worse, over the past one year the growth of the desi e-pals business has been rather pale. In fact, Internet business experts see these websites increasing their share only marginally in the near future, too.

According to industry experts, the local social networking websites such as BigAdda, Ibibo, Yaari and MingleBsox, among others, set up over the past two-three years lack the stickiness factor as compared to the global biggies such as Orkut and Facebook.

Rajiv Dhingra, founder, Watmedia, says, "The urban population in the metros has been early adopters of international networking websites such as Facebook and Orkut; and so is the case with marketers."

"While users tend to create profiles on multiple sites, including the local ones, over a period of time with most of these early adopters spreading the viral affect to other users, the usage of the local ones gets limited." Dhingra adds.

According to a study by market research firm Comscore, the total unique visitors to international websites increased between December 2007 and 2008, while the local networking sites registered a fall in the number of visitors.

For instance, Ibibo saw a 50 per cent fall in the numbers of visitors, Reliance ADAG backed BigAdda saw a dip of 25 per cent, Persoft slid by a whopping 79 per cent and Fropper by three per cent. On the other hand, during this period visitors to Orkut and Facebook grew by a huge 51 and 81 per cent, respectively.

Networking websites thrive on advertising. And advertisers, quite presumably, choose the networks that attract the largest number of visitors. But, the desi networking sites are losing heavily on advertising revenues, which has forced them to toy with new innovations in order to regain lost grounds.

Ashish Kashyap, chief executive officer, Ibibo. com, says, "We are merely two years old in the business and have positioned our site as a platform for showcasing talent. We have strategic tie- ups with leading players in the media and entertainment industry for further strengthening the platform. Brands are also using our network aggressively."

While international websites have gathered pace across the metros as well as the B and C grade cities, the local websites to a large extent claim to be targeting the smaller cities and towns.

Ironically, this appears to make little sense looking at the poor broadband penetration in these areas. Out of the 50 million Internet users in the country most are in the metros.

Shivanandan Pare, chief operating officer, Big Adda, said, "We are looking at networking as an opportunity to reach untapped markets and promote this platform both on the Internet and mobile.