Both Facebook and Orkut are social media platforms but one of them became a rage and the later died.
People gave various reasons for Orkut's failure like poor design, lack of applications, no offerings for brands etc etc. But are these really true? I dont think so.
Facebook became big because they identified a big consumer behaviour very early and that was "explore and share". It is in the human nature to find/explore things and share it with near and dears. They also share because they want themselves to be seen by their friends and peer in a certain way that reflects their personality.
While version 1 of social network included finding and conversing with friends etc. This was the Orkut way. Version 2 gave more reasons to consumer to interact. Orkut failed here and was majorly was used to find lost friends and there was only so much that one could interact using 'scraps'. It was seen as a replacement to email. Personal message became public... People then started shying away from such a open platform.
Then came facebook.com. Same features but private. Social but interactive and advocated sharing in a big way... Sharing beyond personal lives... Sharing that reflect personality.
Soon fb became viral...and part of everyones life.
The best feature that I liked about Facebook was its feature "People you may know" just by fetching my contacts list from Google, Fecebook could do the check and gave me options to connect with them and also started showing there updates into my account, which enticed me and went add more n more contacts into my facebook friends circle. Later it became addiction and thats how Facebook played with peoples mindsets.
ReplyDeleteOrkut on the other hand had the first movers advantage in India and a huge market penetration, however, they badly failed to play with the human mindset and interests of the Indians and reason they flocked.
Nice observation Manav . . .