Friday, 19 October 2012
Facebook's user base in India grows to 65 million
Posted on 00:01 by Maria Scott
Facebook has announced its user base in India has grown to 65 million
users, from just 8 million in 2010 - a growth that has made it an
essential market for the company today, competing with Brazil and
Indonesia for the number two spot.
As of August 2012, the user base was around 50 million, suggesting a rapid growth of the social networking website in rural and urban parts of the country.
According to Head of Facebook India
Kirthiga Reddy, companies have increased their expenditure on online
advertisements, which is now growing at 25 percent year-on-year. “Our
reach can be a strong platform for marketers,” she told the media after
inauguration of the company's refurbished office in Hyderabad.
She further revealed that top brands across the sectors in the country were using Facebook
to engage with their customers. Moreover, Facebook is now aiming at the
small and medium companies, for which the network recently teamed up
with industry body FICCI.
“We are interacting with SMEs through
the industry body on how they can build a presence on Facebook and
engage with their customers,” Kirthiga said.
With an increasing Internet population,
including the smartphone users, in India, Facebook is expected to post
growth at the same pace in the near future. However, sustaining the
growth will not be that easy.
As WSJ in its report points out,
the social networking website has cater to millions of Indians still
using the feature and low-tech phones. Moreover, it has to make its
platform more accessible to the local developers to boost its ecosystem.
If Facebook's model succeeds in India, it could apply same in other
emerging markets such as Indonesia and Brazil.
“As we think about how to deliver the
best possible Facebook experience to an emerging-market customer, India
is probably the best place to incubate and experiment on different ways
we can deliver that experience," WSJ quotes Meenal Balar, Facebook's
director for international growth as saying.
That being said, Facebook has definitely
taken a lot of measures to make its services popular in the country. It
recently rolled out support for Hindi and seven other Indian languages
for its feature phone app. Moreover, it is currently running a scheme
under which it is offering Rs. 50 talktime for new users signing up via
mobile phone. Read more about the Facebook scheme here.
Source: http://www.thinkdigit.com/Internet/Facebooks-user-base-in-India-grows-to_11100.html
Source: http://www.thinkdigit.com/Internet/Facebooks-user-base-in-India-grows-to_11100.html
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