I am no social media guru neither I am proponent of it. But it’s highly unlikely that I would ignore it someday. Earlier when my social network was limited only to Orkut, I never imagined that my migration to then relatively new social media site, Facebook, would be so smooth that I would never turn back to Orkut. In India, migrating entire social status to Facebook from Orkut has steadily growing, albeit for different reasons; confirms NielsenWire’s latest finding.
Traditionally, Indian netizens prefer Orkut for their social media obligations, but picture is fast changing. The survey findings also point to fact that three of the seven biggest online brands are social media sites namely Facebook, Wikipedia & YouTube. Overall 74{af589cdba9d77786c8c861317dbad60bba1e2ebbf56e2ffab874a1b59fde9ce3} of netizens have already visited one or other social media site. Moreover, according to the report, social media is having growing impact over consumer’s purchase decision, especially in Asia-Pacific region. Is it really true? Let’s find it out.
According to the report:
- Although 70{af589cdba9d77786c8c861317dbad60bba1e2ebbf56e2ffab874a1b59fde9ce3} of the social media users in India prefer Orkut over Facebook, later is gaining market share with 50{af589cdba9d77786c8c861317dbad60bba1e2ebbf56e2ffab874a1b59fde9ce3} of users claiming to use Facebook more often than 38{af589cdba9d77786c8c861317dbad60bba1e2ebbf56e2ffab874a1b59fde9ce3} for Orkut.
- The reasons for switching to Facebook vary; from better looks & feel, more features to friend’s migration are cited as major reasons for growing popularity of Facebook in India.
- Twitter, the micro-blogging site, is growing exponentially India (Thanks to Indian Celebrities for pushing their agenda on Twitter…), with more than half of the Twitter users (57{af589cdba9d77786c8c861317dbad60bba1e2ebbf56e2ffab874a1b59fde9ce3}) signed on in last one year period.
- 55{af589cdba9d77786c8c861317dbad60bba1e2ebbf56e2ffab874a1b59fde9ce3} of the Indian consumers, who read online product reviews, have made purchase decisions based on online feedback.
But does the growing Facebook influence matter? Let’s look at another finding ( albeit for US consumers only), which shows that although Facebook appears to be only options for Social media enthusiasts, in terms of Customer Satisfaction Index, it’s ranked at bottom.
It’s hardly surprising for me. First of all, migration to Facebook is just need based and not always preferred as choice. I do agree that Facebook has better features & feel, but then that’s not all. Then why users prefer Facebook? Study says that there’re three main reasons to Facebook’s growth, which is nearing 500 million users base soon. They are:-
- Facebook is monopoly.
- Younger people just don’t bother about anything.
- Users are willing to suffer but still want to stick to Facebook. (Surprising! )
With growing concerns over Facebook’s Privacy Issue, it wouldn’t be surprising to see, why people don’t trust the system they use daily. Moreover, Facebook appears to be more controlling over user’s profile and less sympathetic over its concerns. Even many Facebook users complain about too many Spam invitations in their Inbox as main reason for their enmity towards social media giant. We all dislike monopoly. So be it Microsoft or Google or nowadays Facebook, we don’t want to see them growing at cost of losing our own freedom of choosing. The similar analogy could be applied to Microsoft in earlier years. Although more than 95{af589cdba9d77786c8c861317dbad60bba1e2ebbf56e2ffab874a1b59fde9ce3} of desktop computer users prefer MS Windows, they hardly trust the organization & its policy overall. Facebook is no exception!
Did I mention that you can only deactivate your Facebook account but can’t delete it?
