There are news report that says Prime Minister, Manmohan Singh is on Facebook, while his former media advisor mentions that PM is too net ‘unsavvy’ to be on Facebook, but apparently he is.
Or maybe he is not – and this could be just another fanpage created by media house (or some individual?).
Search for Manmohan Singh results in 5 pages, with one garnering 10K+followers.
The point is not whether PM is on Facebook or not (how can he be on Facebook when Indian government has banned social networking and external email for diplomats) – the point here is that new entrants 
like Facebook/Twitter are being preferred over the popular social network, i.e. Orkut when it comes to conversation (i.e. celebrity –> mass/lesser mortals conversation).
And this is where Orkut is losing (or will lose). And no, we aren’t talking about traffic, but we are talking about super users of the systems who are probably moving away to Facebook or Twitter – infact, they are bypassing Orkut and are building connections at Facebook or Twitter.
Orkut is still about scraps, college buddies, and some amount of voyeurism, but is surely not the best place to engage with the community.
Social networks are all about intents and the intent for celebrity is to show-off, they need ego massage in a controlled format, which Orkut is probably not able to live upto.
Is Orkut going through incumbent syndrome and losing out to players who are in-vogue?
What’s your opinion? Is Orkut a ‘cool’ thing anymore?
Must Read:
Aside,
- Indian Govt. wants Google/Yahoo/Microsoft to Host Indian Email accounts ending with .in, servers in India
- Indian Army advises men to avoid sharing employment information on Orkut and Facebook
- Bollywood Celebrities on Twitter – What Brands can learn from Twilmy Tweets?
Survey
I doubt if PM himself is using facebook… Maybe PMO is doing that… But for credibility I think, Indian govt portal should tell out who are the real social network profiles of government officials (if anyone is on there)….
Orkut is surely losing its presence in India… People from Tier 1 cities are on Facebook already…. but I think, still small towns and not so computer savvy people are using Orkut because it looks simple for them to use compared to facebook… But if google won’t act fast, then orkut will lose out in India
Even though most of my friends are on both orkut and Facebook, I still prefer Orkut to connect with them.
Posting something on FB is just too public for me! I mean, even friends of friends get to know when you tag someone in a photo!!
And the FB timeline is filled with stupid quizzes and games by people, half of whom I don’t even know, and are just connected to me coz of the stupid friend finder application!
Yes, Google needs to work harder to build up Orkut’s brand image, or this awesome social network will lose out to FB!
Ahh.. sorry about the unleash.. but that felt good
Hate the way everyone is going ga-ga over fb these days!
And about the err.. story, its most probably some fake profile, since the PM can’t really be expected to use FB, when people from his party are ready to leash out on Shashi Tharoor for his twitter updates.
PS: Shashi Tharoor seems to be the only net savvy minister here. And damn good he is at that!