Facebook No.1 Social Networking Site in India

Orkut's dominance in India seems over, according to comScore's report, Facebook is now the most popular online social networking destination in India.

Facebook grabbed the top spot by attracting 20.9 million Indian visitors in July, while Orkut (owned by Google) came in second with 19.9 million visitors, read comScore's report on Indian social networking audience.

There's another trend that signalled Facebook's growing popularity among India's preferred social networking website. Between July 2009 and July 2010, Facebook showed a significant 179-percent rise in year-on-year visitors, while Orkut's growth spurt shrunk to 16-percent compared to a year ago, according to comScore's report. This shows more Indians are preferring Facebook over Orkut for social networking.

The total Indian social networking audience grew 43-percent in the past year. comScore also claims that 33 million Internet users visited social networking sites in July 2010, all aged 15 and above. India is now the seventh largest social networking market in the world after the U.S, China, Germany, Russia, Brazil and the UK.

Recently, Orkut tried to fight Facebook with a new Buzz-like tactic and just yesterday announced an update to simplify sharing data between different friends groups on Orkut. Only time will tell if it does the trick for Orkut. For now, despite Facebook's past privacy issues, Indians seem to have made their social networking choice between Facebook and Orkut. Google may yet have an ace up its hand soon, though. Watch this space for more.