Facebook has 4.4 million users in India (as on October 14th 2009). While this is impressive indeed, the rate of growth has been nothing short of phenomenal. We had reported earlier here that in July 2009 facebook was adding new members at the rate of 25,000/day! We checked recently and discovered that since then (i.e. between July 30th & October 14th they have managed to add only an additional 690,000 users at the rate of 9,200 users/day. Still impressive yes, but the think tank in facebook decided to get down and change the rules of the game. Considering that Orkut, the predominant social networking site in India claims 13 million users, FB must have wondered as to what would be the easiest way to reach out to the other 9 million odd low hanging fruits. Simple….target existing users and offer to find their orkut friends on facebook. See the image below
Facebook is luring users away from Orkut
And now that Diwali or Deepavali is close at hand FB is trying to use the festive season to tell people to connect to friends using what else, FB!! Diwali is a festival of lights, sweets & fireworks in addition to celebrating the victory of good over evil , hardly the day you would want to sit hunched over your laptop and update facebook. Grow up FB and understand the social and cultural intricacies of every nation you are in…
