Orkut India: 3 times Facebook traffic
By Pulkit Sharma

ComScore, which collects facts and figures on the internet, has just released its research on the social networking websites in India. The report found visitation to the social networking category increased 51 percent from the previous year to more than 19 million visitors in December 2008.   Google’s Orkut, with its early entry in India, continues to dominate Facebook.

The study also found that global social networking brands continued to gain prominence in India during the year, with Orkut, Facebook, hi5, LinkedIn and MySpace each witnessing significant increases in visitation.

Orkut reigned as the most visited social networking site in December 2008 with more than 12.8 million visitors, an increase of 81 percent from the previous year. Orkut’s audience was three times the size of its nearest competitor in the category. Facebook.com captured the #2 position with 4 million visitors, up 150 percent versus year ago, followed by local social networking site Bharatstudent.com with 3.3 million visitors (up 88 percent) and hi5.com with 2 million visitors (up 182 percent).

According to the ComScore report despite the strong growth in India during the past year, it showed below average penetration and engagement in the Asia-Pacific region as compared to countries like Singapore, Malaysia and South Korea.