INDIAN INSTITUTE OF

MANAGEMENT
INDORE
INTEGRATED PROGRAMME IN
MANAGEMENT

IPM 2013-18
SECTION B
TERM-IX

SOCIAL MEDIA REPORT

Reasons for preference for certain social media
platforms by Indian users

PROF. P. Vigneswara Ilavarasan

Aakash Raisinghani (IPM2013131)

Sonit Agrawal (IPM2013094)

INTRODUCTION
Social media usage in India is highly skewed towards certain platforms. While platforms like
Facebook and WhatsApp are increasingly capturing more share of the market, newer platforms
are finding it increasingly difficult to capture market share. Why is it that the Indian users
prefers certain social media platform over others? There are other platforms like Reddit,
Foursquare etc. which fail to capture the attention of Indian users. The following image
captures the platform wise social media use in India. 1

As can be seen from the image, Facebook leads the way by capturing 53% of the user base in
India followed by WhatsApp and Google+ in close proximity. This survey basically captured
the number of internet users who claimed to have used the aforementioned platform in the past
month. The reasons for the dominance of Facebook and WhatsApp can be attributed roughly
to the growth of Instant Messaging and the recent smartphone revolution. Each of these points
have been discussed in greater detail in the following sections. However, the results have been
compiled using the Q2 data in 2015, and the report has been compiled in August 2015. Since
we are using these results in 2016, these should be taken with a pinch of salt because of the
dynamic nature of both the technology industry and the social media platform domain.
The obvious question that pops into anyones mind is the reason for this skewness. In this
report, we have tried to answer this question from two perspectives1. The reasons for Facebooks success
2. The reasons for other platforms not being able as popular as Facebook or basically why
do the users dont use them?

http://wearesocial.sg/wp-content/uploads/2015/08/Slide142-500x375.png

The answers for the first part are basically through secondary data research whereas the answer
to the second question is through the primary data research conducted by us using a survey.

REASONS FOR FACEBOOK BEING SUCCESSFUL 2

1. Facebook makes money as long as the user is within the app or the website and thus
Facebook is increasingly making efforts by bringing in Instant articles, auto play videos
so that the user does not leave for YouTube. To facilitate ecommerce transactions,
Facebook is including buy buttons so that the consumer does not leave its walled
garden. Now, Facebook is also eating away business from firms like craigslist by having
pages like Facebook for sale groups. This makes Facebook the most convenient for a
first time internet user.
2. In a country like India, people missed the PC revolution but we did catch up on the
smartphone revolution. Typically what happens in this scenario is that people who are
seeing the internet for the first time are faced with a plethora of information and they
dont know how to weed out the useless stuff while retaining the important parts. In
such a scenario, Facebook acts like a readymade internet of sorts with content that keeps
populating in an endless scroll feed. Depending upon what the user clicks while looking
at his or her feed, Facebooks algorithms kick in and serve more relevant content
depending upon the choices made. This results in a scenario where the user doesnt
bother much to learn the nuances of the wider internet such as how to search Google
for a particular topic and read more about it by clicking at a link from the search results.
Rather the user opens the Facebook app and relies upon Facebook to surface the most
relevant Instant article, clicking which lets the user read the content with almost zero
effort from his side.
3. The second point is also related to the growth of instant messaging industry. This meant
that people wanted to share things and videos and ideas with a smaller, more specific
group rather than the mainstream group which are currently existing on Facebook. With
the growth of instant messaging, WhatsApp and WeChat started gaining market with
Facebook Messenger also competing. Finally, Facebook realized the growth potential
of this market and it made the decision of acquiring WhatsApp.
4. Facebook serves as the internet for the average Indian. Many people have compared
Twitter and Facebook in their capabilities of making the user feel valuable. The
problem with Twitter is that it is an increasingly skewed platform with 99% of the
attention being captured by top 1% of the users. Unless and until someone is deeply
interested in a particular topic or has a great sense of humour, getting attention on
Twitter is almost impossible. On the other hand, in case of Facebook, even something
as simple as the first profile picture of yourself is bound to get you quite a few likes due
to its personalised nature.

http://techpp.com/2016/01/28/facebook-poised-to-dominate-india/

REASONS FOR LESS USAGE OF OTHER PLATFORMS

To answer this part, we conducted a survey on campus which focussed on the types of social
media platforms being used by the participants. The survey was shared amongst faculty and
the IPM community of 330 students. We received 45 responses. The survey contained the
following questions
1.
2.
3.
4.
5.

Which social media platforms do you know about?

Which of the given below social media platforms do you use?
Any reasons for not using certain platforms?
Do you use Reddit?
What are your reasons for doing so?

The last two questions were asked because our initial presentation was on Reddit and it
provided a good opportunity to link the two projects and also Reddit acts as a specific example
in this report.

1. Which social media platforms do you know about?

As is evident from the image, most of the platforms are relatively known to the participants
other than Mendeley and Periscope. We have not included Facebook and WhatsApp and other
popular platforms in the list because it has been assumed that almost all participants are aware
of them. The ones surveyed are newer platforms and the highest percentage for any platform
is 55.6% which we feel is very low for a sample which is largely comprised of the youth of
Digital India. Considering that these platforms are not of Indian origin, we have come to the
conclusion that the low numbers of knowledge about social platforms is probably because of
the fact that these platforms have not adapted themselves to the Indian populace.

2. Which of the given below social media platforms do you use?

The results of the above graph show that the platforms which are well known like Couchsurfing
(24.4%) is used by only 4.4% of the people. This again reinforces the point emphasised in
Question 1. These platforms are not suited to the utility needs of the Indian consumers.
Couchsurfing involves inviting over strangers as guests into ones home and requires a high
degree of trust which is largely absent in the Indian environment. Platforms such as Facebook
and Twitter have adapted themselves to tap the growing Indian market. For instance, Twitter
largely found popularity in India as it provided a platform where people could get a chance to
interact with their favourite personalities.

3. Any reasons for not using certain platforms?

The reasons for the non-usage of social media platforms are basically concentrated around
three reasons. The first one is never heard of it and they have not heard of it because nobody
in their family/friend circle uses it. So both the reasons form a loop. The third major reason is
that these platforms are not tuned to the personality traits which essentially means that these
platforms are not working towards including services and options which using these platforms
not only essential but also interesting for these users. Also, competition is a major issue, for
example- Facebook recently included the check in functionality which was the functionality
provided by Foursquare and thus it was driven out of the market by Facebook.

4. Do you use Reddit?

As is evident from the above image, the percentage of people who use Reddit is very low. The
reasons for this are given in the next answer.
5. What are your reasons for doing so?

As is evident from the image, the major reason for not using Reddit is the fact that people have
either not heard of it or they are not really interested because it is not useful to them. It is
important to note here that platforms like Facebook and Twitter have really forayed into
different areas which are of interest and use to the Indian user. Reddit also has the disadvantage
of bad UI. Most of the people have not heard of Reddit because nobody around them uses
Reddit and thus the strength of weak ties ends before starting, and the people who have heard
of it do not use it because its not suited to the needs of Indians and Reddit hasnt made any
efforts to amend this.

Conclusion
Through the results of the survey, we have come to the conclusion that the social media industry
in India is currently being dominated by Facebook, more so with its acquisition of WhatsApp.
The reasons for other platforms not being able to do the same are given below

The people have never heard of them because nobody in their family/friend circle uses
it and this could be because they are of no use to people presently. For them, almost all
their social media needs are fulfilled by Facebook.
Platforms like Facebook had the advantage of being luckily attuned to the Indian users
mentality but same is not the case with other platforms, until and unless they are able
to connect with Indian audiences, they will be ignored.
There are some platform specific reasons as well, for example Reddit faces the problem
of bad UI and we feel Indian users prefer platforms prefer platforms which have better
UI and are easier to use.
Though we have no data to prove this, we believe that the level of internet penetration
and data speeds are not advanced enough to allow certain social media networks to
function. For instance Periscope and Second Life require a dedicated high speed
internet link which is not possible even in many major cities of the country.

In near future, two things are likely to happen, people will become more tech savvy3 and
internet connectivity in India will improve dramatically. Therefore, more and more different
social media platforms will be adopted especially if they are mobile based.4

http://www.mckinsey.com/business-functions/marketing-and-sales/our-insights/can-india-lead-the-mobileinternet-revolution
4
http://wearesocial.com/uk/special-reports/digital-social-mobile-india-2015