Google’s turn: Pakistan prepares for another migration
New social network may threaten country’s current favourite, Facebook.
KARACHI:
Reminiscent of the mass exodus from Orkut to Facebook, Pakistan’s internet population may again be shifting platforms following the birth of Google Plus.
A significant amount of people are making accounts on Google Plus, which is the giant search engine’s answer to Mark Zuckerberg’s social networking website.
Pakistan ranks among the top 10 countries on Google Plus even though the social networking site is in field test (beta) mode, according to findpeopleonplus.com. These statistics were released earlier this week on a sampling of 947,996 Google plus users.
Google’s country representative Badar Khusnood while talking to The Express Tribune said that it reminded him of the Orkut days. The main thing determining the success of a social network is its opening days, he added. “It’s all about the initial momentum, if your friends have already moved there, the incentive for you to do as well increases.”
It took Badar three years to get 4,500 people on his Facebook friend list, but only a few days to reach half of that number on Google Plus. “I already have almost 2,500 in the few days that Google Plus has been active,” said Badar.
Numbers from Experian Hitwise showed that Google Plus last week had about 1.8 million visits in the US while Facebook had over ten times that. Observers say that these numbers are more than what Facebook had when it was launched initially. Although, analysts point out that this may just be the case because people were not that fond of social networks back then.
According to the statistics available on findpeopleonplus.com, most of the international community that is joining Google Plus is IT professionals, writers or media marketing professionals. A survey carried out by The Express Tribune shows that the trend is very like to be the case in Pakistan as well.
Google is leveraging its search engine, Yahoo, Gmail and the rest of its ecosystem of webservices and making this social network as the focal point of them in a bold attempt to takeover Facebook’s throne as the largest social networking platform.
Published in The Express Tribune, July 22nd, 2011.
Reminiscent of the mass exodus from Orkut to Facebook, Pakistan’s internet population may again be shifting platforms following the birth of Google Plus.
A significant amount of people are making accounts on Google Plus, which is the giant search engine’s answer to Mark Zuckerberg’s social networking website.
Pakistan ranks among the top 10 countries on Google Plus even though the social networking site is in field test (beta) mode, according to findpeopleonplus.com. These statistics were released earlier this week on a sampling of 947,996 Google plus users.
Google’s country representative Badar Khusnood while talking to The Express Tribune said that it reminded him of the Orkut days. The main thing determining the success of a social network is its opening days, he added. “It’s all about the initial momentum, if your friends have already moved there, the incentive for you to do as well increases.”
It took Badar three years to get 4,500 people on his Facebook friend list, but only a few days to reach half of that number on Google Plus. “I already have almost 2,500 in the few days that Google Plus has been active,” said Badar.
Numbers from Experian Hitwise showed that Google Plus last week had about 1.8 million visits in the US while Facebook had over ten times that. Observers say that these numbers are more than what Facebook had when it was launched initially. Although, analysts point out that this may just be the case because people were not that fond of social networks back then.
According to the statistics available on findpeopleonplus.com, most of the international community that is joining Google Plus is IT professionals, writers or media marketing professionals. A survey carried out by The Express Tribune shows that the trend is very like to be the case in Pakistan as well.
Google is leveraging its search engine, Yahoo, Gmail and the rest of its ecosystem of webservices and making this social network as the focal point of them in a bold attempt to takeover Facebook’s throne as the largest social networking platform.
Published in The Express Tribune, July 22nd, 2011.