Research Methodology Project

How Facebook overpowered Orkut? – The gaming way!

Eastern Institute of Management MBA 2009-2011

Prepared by: Mohul Mukherjee Pratim Banerjee Mou Biswas Sukhdeep Kaur

How Facebook overpowered Orkut? – The gaming way!2

1. Executive Summary

The web based social networking platform in India was always ruled by the giant from the house of Google called Orkut. Launched in 2004, within 5 years of its time Orkut grabbed a whopping 17.5 million visitors in India alone. But since the year 2008 Facebook is experiencing a boom in its user base throughout the world with India being no exception. Facebook (as per data collected till July 2009) saw an amazing growth (YOY) of 342.5% in its user base in India. Of late it has been seen that Facebook has grabbed all the limelight in the social networking website arena. One of the main factors which propelled Facebook to a formidable position in the competition among social networking sites is the introduction of free online games. Games like Farmville, Mafia wars, Cafe world etc has worked extremely well to increase the user base of Facebook. This report is aimed at analysing the attributes of Facebook which has won over Orkut from a user’s perspective. A survey was conducted among 50 respondents mostly of the age group of 18 to 25.For the comparative analysis a semantic differential scale is used. Also a test of hypothesis is done to understand whether playing free online games on social networking websites has a significant effect on the logging in pattern of the users on the respective website. Facebook scored highly over Orkut in most of the cases. The user’s attitude about free online gaming on social networking websites was found extremely positive which explained the reason for Facebook’s recent success. The overall analysis reflects the fact that availability of free online gaming