Orkut Most Popular Among Indians

What do Indians do when they are hooked on to the Net? Most of them are either busy writing or receiving emails, dating online or socializing on networking sites such as Orkut.

That’s the finding of India Online 2007, an Internet users’ behavior survey conducted by online research solutions consultancy firm JuxtConsult.

According to the survey, online matrimonial search has established itself as a 'mainline' online activity in India with almost half the online urban Indians (48 per cent) undertaking it. Over 12 million online urban Indians are using online matrimonial search, making it the 13th most popular online activity.
In comparison to matrimony, dating or friendship is a more popular online activity, keeping 51 per cent of Internet users occupied. It ranks 10th in terms of popularity.

The latest entrant, social networking sites such as Orkut and Facebook among others, has already rallied up 44 per cent of Internet time with over 11 million Indians getting hooked to it.

Giving a demographic profile of internet users in the country, the survey points out that South India leads in online activity.

The survey was conducted both online and offline covering more than 36,000 respondents from 31 cities spread across the country.

Another activity which is the second most preferred by online users is job search. Searching jobs online is no more limited to big cities; only four out of 10 online job seekers in urban India come from the top 10 metro cities, the survey adds.

The top three most preferred activities by online users as per the survey are emailing (95 per cent), job search (73 per cent) and instant messaging (62 per cent).