One year ago this week, Facebook founder, Mark Zuckerberg, was traveling throughout India meeting with local technologists and vacationing. Reporters wanted to know, what was he doing there? Speculation that a Facebook India would soon launch was inevitable.
Apparently, earlier today Facebook users in India were greeted with a new message upon logging in: Facebook is now available in Hindi, Punjabi, Bengali, Telugu, Tamil and Malayalam. As of 2001, (the latest numbers available) those languages had a combined 770 million speakers. Facebook has just over 200 million users, so this could be a huge opportunity for growth if the company can pull off more than just interface translation. Facebook is growing fast all around the world. Last month, for example, we reported that the site"s number of active users in Africa and Asia grew over 70% in 12 weeks. Orkut is by far the dominant social network (and website in general) in India - but that could change in a big way if localization is pulled off effectively.
Facebook has announced that they are now supporting a couple of Indian languages on the popular social networking service. The network now has options for Hindi, Punjabi, Bengali, Telugu, Tamil and Malayalam for its user interface. Facebook spoke about this new feature addition: “Do you speak Hindi, Punjabi, Bengali, Telugu, Tamil or Malayalam? Now you can use Facebook in any of these languages to connect with your Indian friends all over the world.”
With this new development, they are now expecting to grow in the Indian market. Orkut is a competing network which is a dominating social networking player here in India. Facebook is also said to be considering launching an Indian specific edition of the service just like they have for China and other nations.
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1 comments:
This is a really calculated move by Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg. His insight on tapping India's more than 770 million speakers will definitely bring growth and solidify Facebook's social networking status. Thanks!
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