Abstract :
|
Social Networking sites are the fastest growing media
for all the corporate as well as users to interact with each other.
The popularity of Social Networking sites in India spread with
popularity of Orkut. Recently Facebook emerged as the most
popular networking site in India with 50 million users. There are
also Indian social networking sites like Bharatstudent, Indyarock,
and Bigadda etc. A look at the Indian social networking space
clearly shows that the most popular sites are all established global
players. It would not be an overstatement if we say that the Indian
counterparts have failed to make an impact comparatively. Across
the globe, social networking sites operate under different revenue
models. Most of them rely on advertising as their major source of
revenue. But the Indian users have different psychology which
makes it difficult for social networking sites to earn added
revenues. This research is to identify the gaps in the current social
networking sites and the prospective segments of users which can
be targeted to gain more visibility. The effectiveness is determined
with the help of survey from people who use these sites, and the
content of three social networking sites is analyzed. It is observed
that Indian users are noticing the in-site advertisements but are
not motivated to click it, the other models like Value Added
Services, special paid In-Games items and features, to design
applications and sell based on shared revenue basis on social
networking sites are also not effective. Proposed revenue models
were highly accepted. Hence these models are would be highly
effective if implemented in the revenue model for the social
networking sites.
|