Just as the title sounds surprising, you never thought this would be the case judging by how huge Facebook and Orkut are in India.
Together, Facebook and Orkut cater to about 90% of the users in the social media space. But it isn’t quite the case when we talk about the mobile social networking space in India.
According to mobile analytics company Informate, the most used mobile social networking application in India is RockeTalk. RockeTalk is a voice and video-based social networking application for mobile phones available across all mobile networks.
“Users can create any combination of text, voice, photo, and video messages, share with any contacts, join communities and chat with individuals and groups, and access a variety of entertainment and content. RockeTalk makes communication between individuals and groups easy and rich, and facilitates a new form of self-expression that informs, entertains and connects people through the media they create,” as explained on its website.
Orkut came in second, followed by Qeep, Facebook and Twitter. The social networking giant, Facebook stood at fourth position with less than half of RockeTalk’s reach. Here is a graphical representation depicting the reach of social networking applications in India:
Mobile social networking in India is growing rapidly. A report released by Analysys Mason stated that the number of mobile social networking users in India was expected to reach around 72 million by 2014. This forecasted figure is close to the current number of Internet users in the country. The increase in smartphone sales and introduction of 3G network will certainly help India to reach 72 million users by 2014.
To ride on the mobile wave, Rocketalk plans to raise $10 million through a second round of funding over the next few months. Currently with 4 million active users, Rocketalk is targeting to reach 20 million subscribers over the next 12 to 18 months. However, with Facebook being the top social network in the world, Orkut being one of the top social networks in India with a 18 million user base and Twitter surging forward at a 100% year-on-year growth rate in India, it is hard to predict who will be capture the mobile social networking market in India.
Mr. Karthik Srinivasan- Head of Digital Strategy at Edelman said, “I haven’t used Rocketalk, so its unfair for me to comment on the social networking application. But I personally don’t think there’s any decent market for mobile social networking in India. It’s more of a function of social networking via mobiles, which doesn’t need dedicated platforms like RockeTalk when inbuilt Facebook & Twitter applications are more than adequate.”
“I don’t see the need to think of a new platform for the sake of mobiles alone; it has to go through the same growth pains of any social network – mobile or otherwise. Also, most mobile brands recognize Twitter and FB as default apps/widgets and install them as a pre-loaded piece. That helps their spread too,” he added.
Only time will tell if RockeTalk can continue to win the mobile race.
Hi.. I am a RockeTalk user and I first heard about it when I travelled to Gujarat, India; later when I came back to Mumbai, me and my friends have become an active user .. we use it for life blogging and to send voice & Video chats.. to us its doing wonders and its free to download..
thanks for the share. sounds great!
I personally love rt or rocketalk its lot of fun , yes it becomes a lil slow sometimes but the whole jumbhori of life that you get see is amazing. its like a bi-scope into millions of lives from different parts of world and you just go in and keep on getting amused
@Karthik Srinivasan- Head of Digital Strategy at Edelman- if you are serious about PR or any kind of brand building in India, ignoring the mobile users is not a very wise thing to do. Platforms like RockeTalk are meant for the masses and not just the ‘Metro’ users who have access to computers at their work place. I strongly feel that everyone looking at any kind of Digital Strategy, needs to be more aware of the ‘mobile only’ audience and take the mobile users seriously- that is where the numbers are, that where the reach is. There are several challenges and barriers to entry but social networks – with no web component, have been around for a long time. Mobile social networks are a class of networks that cater to different needs- things that the web networks take for granted. I agree that it should be compared to any social network but mobile social networking is a class of its own with several players in the field. That said, Rocketalk is a more ‘complete’ social network than any of the others I have seen. The users truly get a full multimedia experience without ever having to go anywhere near a computer! For other networks- including Facebook and Orkut – their mobile apps are mere extensions of their web network – giving a watered down feature set of the web.
Well that is threatening for Facebook if such a huge amount of user are using another Social Networks.Quite interesting for me as a Facebook claims itself a Social Network Giant and it is even.
http://www.facebookguru.net
Amy: I did not imply in any way that I/we are ignoring mobile users. That, as you rightly put it, is indeed not a wise thing to do. We have worked on mobile campaigns but have taken other options beyond RockeTalk, at least so far – like SMSGupShup, for example. I will take a serious look at RockeTalk, thanks to your comment.
If you are implying that RockeTalk is the best option to reach mobile users in India, I wouldn’t be able to comment on that, based only on this article and your comment – we’d need to explore that based on specific client requirements.
That said, a small request: While adding sentences like, “Rocketalk is a more ‘complete’ social network than any of the others I have seen” could you please reveal the nature of your association with RockeTalk? On a quick glance, you seem to be RockeTalk’s product manager (http://www.linkedin.com/pub/amy-tandon/6/a7b/4bb) – disclosure of such association would help in authenticating your statement better. For more, refer to this blog post of mine http://bit.ly/9TJHGW – apologies for the plug, I assume it is within context.
However, if you are not the Amy Tandon who works for RockeTalk, apologies for the above paragraph.
Karthik
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