Orkut Vs Facebook : Head-to-Head

In this rapid globalization era we are spreading our social relationship vigorously. Building up relations and spreading our relations make us crazy. When it comes to online social networking, websites are commonly used. These websites are known as social networking sites. Social networking websites function like an online community of internet users. Social networking sites, sometimes referred to as "friend-of-a-friend" sites, build upon the concept of traditional social networks, where you are connected to new people through people you already know. The purpose of some networking sites may be purely social, allowing users to establish friendships or romantic relationships, while others may focus on establishing business connections.

Although there are many social networking site among them orkut, facebook, hi5, twitter, myspace are most known. Due to no. of players in the same market there are huge competitions among them. When the question of tough competition in India comes it is definitely between orkut and facebook.

Facebook and Orkut are two of the most popular social networking sites, with both offering very similar features and capabilities. Facebook is a 3 and a half year old social network for friendship and a community hub, while orkut handled by google was triggered into action on January 2004

Advantages of Orkut:

· Within Orkut you can view people's profiles regardless if they are a 'friend' or not.

· People are more comfortable with orkut, as the GUI(graphic user interface), basically the look and feel is user-friendly, its’ easy to navigate, application are minimal and it focused on more on simply scrapping friends, making friends and may be to an extent sharing photos/videos

· The integration of Google Chat (may be there is an opportunity for Microsoft to go after Facebook for the same purpose).

Advantages of Facebook:

· Simple and professional user interface.

· Explanation for being added as a friend.

· Unique groups or communities.

· Security of user’s profile and information.

· Many other fun applications.

The War for Share

Orkut has become very popular, but over the last few months Facebook is extremely gaining popularity in India.

• Orkut tops the list of the most visited social networking site with more than 12.8 million visitors. This means an increase of 81 % from the last year.
• Orkut’s audience was three times the size of its nearest competitor in the category.
• Facebook.com ranked at the number 2 spot with 4 million visitors. This has been an increase of 150 % as compared to the previous year.

I guess, many of the advanced users are moving on to Facebook and while the change will take its own sweet time to cascade across other user segments, Orkut surely will face the heat in the coming months. Although orkut has the first mover advantage in social networking site, Facebook is following aggressive marketing. To be the largest social network in the world, Facebook is ducking it out overseas with a number of other social networks to establish regional dominance. In India, Google-owned Orkut has nearly twice as many unique visitors as Facebook. So Facebook has taken to some fairly aggressive measures: it now actively promotes a special Orkut import tool that lets users transfer their social graphs over to Facebook. This application will connect your Orkut Profile to your Facebook Profile, so that you can see your Orkut friends and read your Scraps right here in facebook. You don’t even have to provide your login/password. All you do is specify your Orkut Profile URL! Even though Facebook is kicking every other socionet’s butt worldwide, things are very different in India. Orkut’s traffic is way above Facebook and any homegrown socionet. While both are trying to beat each other and eat each others market share, but it is the users who will determine the winner. Orkut and Facebooks have their own strengths and weaknesses. What makes each one unique simply is bound by how a user likes the space.