Thursday, October 1, 2009

Facebook Invades Orkut the Google Run Social Network

The Google run social network, Orkut is by far the most popular social network in India. It's where high school and college students, and young professionals hang out. According to Alexa Orkut is #4 top most visited site from India with Facebook at #5 trailing closely behind. Facebook gaining promenence in India is very recent. A lot of people did not want to get on Facebook, and there are still some who are not on Facebook. All this can change with the Orkut connect via Facebook.
I logged into my Facebook account to find that I can connect to my Orkut friends on Facebook with three easy steps. Here are the steps:

Facebook steps to add Orkut friends.There was a big message on top of my profile to connect with friends from Orkut and it seemed easy enough when I clicked on the link for the steps. The tools to connect to Orkut friends from Facebook has been there for a long time, like through the Friend Finder API as seen on the Lapnol blog. Now those friends who are in Orkut will also be a part of your Facebook as well, you just have to click!

It's only a matter of time before more Orkut users switch to Facebook. I'm pretty sure Facebook can take over the #4 seat from Orkut once more people from India use and get more of their friends to join and stay on Facebook. What's ironic though is it's a Facebook API that runs on Orkut site and matches those users on Facebook and connect friends together.