It's official: Facebook has 25 million users in India

David Fischer, vice-president, advertising and global operations of Facebook.com, revealed some traffic details of the social media site at a keynote session at ad:tech in Gurgaon.

Titled 'It's all about people', the first keynote session of the second day of ad:tech, the technology and advertising event, held at the Leela Kempinski Hotel in Gurgaon had David Fischer, vice-president of advertising and global operations of Facebook.com reveal some traffic details of Facebook.

According to Fischer, Facebook gets 25 million users every month in India. The average time spent by users on Facebook (in India) are three hours per month, which is pretty high as compared to other prominent internet destinations like Google (1 hour 50 minutes per month in India), Yahoo, YouTube (1 hour 20 minutes each), and MSN (40 minutes).

Fischer pointed out that the number of profiles (500 million, globally) that exist on Facebook are much more than number of websites (90 million) that are active in the world. There are 250 million people active on Facebook on any given day.

He further mentioned that Facebook is not just connecting people; it is also offering newer marketing opportunities to advertisers. He spoke about few brands like The Economic Times, Times of India.com and ESPNCricinfo.com, Pepsi (Change the Game), Tata Indicom and Aircel, which are leveraging Facebook for marketing in the country.

For the record, The Economic Times tied up with Facebook last year for the Union Budget (2010) and ran a campaign titled 'ET-Facebook: Talk to FM'. As part of it, a special online destination (microsite) was created inside Economictimes.com, which internet users could visit using their Facebook ID and share their ideas or suggestions with the Finance Minister. The ideas entered by users -- who logged in to the microsite through their Facebook account -- were posted on their Facebook wall. Later, the company officials of Economictimes.com collected ideas and shared it with the Finance Minister.

Similarly, the social media site tied up with TimesofIndia.com and ESPNCricinfo.com to integrate 'Like' and 'Share' button on these sites, last year.

Emphasising the people power of Facebook, Fischer claimed that traffic on websites on some of the leading brands is not at all comparable with the 'likes' or followership of the same brands on Facebook. For instance, Coca-Cola is liked or followed by more than 25 million users on Facebook, compared to 2.5 lakh visitors per month on Coca-Cola.com. Similarly the food and beverage brand Starbucks is liked by more than 21 million users on Facebook (15 lakh visitors per month on Starbucks.com) and Kraft Foods owned sandwich cookie brand called 'Oreo' is liked by 18.7 million users on Facebook (2.4 lakh visits Oreo.eu).

In another keynote session focussed on social commerce -- fusion of social media and shopping -- Pearl Uppal showcased an interesting video titled 'Is Social Media a fad? Or the biggest shift since the industrial revolution'. The video (available on Youtube.com,
Bit.ly/9NZuOh
), based on a book titled 'Socialnomics' by Erik Qualman, points out the growing prominence of social media by highlighting various facts. For instance, it showcases data like, "96 per cent of millennials have joined a social network, social media has overtaken porn as number one activity on the web, Facebook took a year to reach 200 million mark of users and if Facebook were a country, it would be the third largest/populated country in the world."

She also gave examples of few international brands or retail stores like Threadless.com, Amazon.com and Macy's, which have integrated social media.

Threadless.com is a community-centred online store of T-shirt designers and buyers (consumers). The site allows its users/designers to create and submit their T-shirt designs online (on the site). The submitted designs are then showcased to other users, who are enabled to vote the designs on Threadless.com. The site then selects few of the popular design (based on the public vote) and prints it on t-shirts, which are made available for sale on Threadless.com. The site rewards the designers or creators of the designs.

Uppal showcased a video (http://bit.ly/dvxOLq) on how Macy's, the US-based departmental store, used social retailing technology (offered by digital agency named LBi) to provide interactive and social experience of clothes buying. The company created a 'magic fitting room' inside their retail store (in Herald Square, New York City), which features a big (72-inch) mirror display powered with multi-touch technology integrated with a multi-touch tablet computer, which can be used to browse, select and try dresses, virtually. Once tried (the virtual dress), the mirror and tablet integrated system allow consumers to share it on their Facebook profile.

On Amazon.com, she pointed out that the retail site has embraced and integrated Facebook with their site in order to recommend books and DVDs to its users. Thus users who logged on to Amazon.com using their Facebook account (Connect feature), get to see books and DVDs purchased by their Facebook friends, as recommendations.

ad:tech has been brought to India by the New Delhi-based NetworkPlay Media in partnership with the UK-based DMG Events.