India: Facebook's 2nd biggest market

IIPM Mumbai Campus

In a two-room shanty with no running water in northern Mumbai, Darshana Verma makes tea on a small stove. On a bench nearby, her 18-year-old son, Vishal, messages Facebook friends on the keypad of his Nokia smartphone.

"This is the Internet age," said the 36-year-old domestic helper, who spent more than half her $300 monthly income on Samsung Electronics Co and Nokia Oyj mobile phones for her children. "Facebook is there, all these things happen there now -- they make friends, maybe they can even find jobs there."

Cheaper Internet-ready phones may make India Facebook Inc's biggest market after the US next year with more than 50 million users, according to Nielsen Co. As Google Inc's rival social network also gains in popularity, companies including Pepsi Co are boosting Internet advertising to reach the 352 million children under age 15 who are coming online.

"There's a mob out there," said Tarun Abhichandani, group business director at IMRB International, part of WPP Group, the world's biggest ad agency. "India has a young demographic, and it's social networking that brings them online."

The number of active accounts in India jumped 85 per cent to 32 million this year, according to socialbakers.com, which tracks user data at the Palo Alto, California-based company. That's the world's third-biggest behind the 153 million in the US and 39.2 million in Indonesia.

Mobile handset sales in the world's second-fastest growing major economy will surpass 206 million units annually in 2014 from 175.9 million last year, Gartner Inc forecasts.

Liking MTV

Pepsi and Viacom Inc's MTV have been quick to tap the popularity of Facebook in the South Asian nation through promotions and contests. Their Indian pages have garnered 1.4 million and 2.9 million "likes," respectively.

"Indians want brands to communicate with them using social media," said a Nielsen report, adding that 60 per cent of Indian social-media users are "open" to being approached by brands.

Online advertising in India rose 26 per cent to $223 million in the year ended March, according to IMRB. Advertising on social networking sites grew as much as 65 per cent from the year before.

"The shift to online advertising is just starting to happen," Abhichandani said. "The number of Internet users here is on the rise and is going to keep rising for some time. Advertisers are realizing that."

Facebook opened an office in Hyderabad in southern India in September to serve users, advertisers and developers in the country and around the world, spokeswoman Kumiko Hidaka wrote in an e-mail. The company is trying to improve service by working with mobile partners and "building relationships with India's strong network of developers and entrepreneurs," she said.

China block

Facebook is blocked in China, the world's most-populous nation. The social-networking company has held talks with potential partners about how to gain a foothold in the country, a person familiar with the matter told Bloomberg in April.

China, the world's largest Internet market with more than 450 million Web users, bans pornography, gambling and content critical of the ruling Communist Party.

"Facebook has chosen to focus on open markets, rather than markets like China where there's censorship and control," said Foong King Yew, vice president of research at Gartner in Singapore. "India's the biggest of those. It's rapidly growing. It's an untapped market."

A mobile phone allows 22-year-old student Rachel Thomas to log on when she's at school.

"Facebook is the first thing I do each day," said Thomas, who is studying for a master's degree at the Delhi School of Social Work and counts about 1,000 friends on the social- networking site. "I don't know anybody who's not on Facebook. My mom's on Facebook. My whole class is on Facebook."

Bollywood tweets

Twitter Inc is also gaining in India, helped by iconic users like Bollywood star Shah Rukh Khan, business tycoon Anand Mahindra and former minister Shashi Tharoor. Tata Consultancy Services Ltd. (TCS), India's largest software exporter, posts its earnings in 140-character messages on the micro-blogging website.

LinkedIn Corp has 10 million members in India, its second- largest market after the US, according to the Mountain View, California-based company's website.

Facebook faces new competition from Google+, which started June 29. The service had 6.44 million visitors in the US through July 24 and 3.62 million in India, not including mobile usage, said Andrew Lipsman, ComScore Inc's vice president for industry analysis.

Google is testing a mobile application in the US and India that allows users to send status updates via SMS without an Internet connection. Most phone users in India don't have Internet browsing. Facebook has a similar service in India.

'Facebook button'

Research In Motion Ltd said its growth in emerging markets such as India and Indonesia has largely been driven by social networking applications like Facebook for BlackBerry 2.0. Rival Huawei Technologies Co sells phones with a "Facebook button."

"You press it once and all your social networks are integrated in one -- you don't have to log in everywhere," said Paul Scanlan, vice president of solution and marketing for the South Pacific region at Huawei. "If a phone doesn't have a Facebook button, you're not going to sell 10 million handsets."

A big draw for many Indians is the falling cost. Phones with Internet browsing capability sell for as little as $23. For Verma, who never learned to use a computer and saved for 10 months to buy her elder daughter's phone, that gives her children an opportunity she didn't have.

"What I don't know about -- Facebook, Internet -- they need to know about," she said. "It is worth the expense."

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Internet Scams and Frauds: Internet scammers want your money

Internet scammers generally want one thing: your money. To get it, they'll try to scare you into divulging account information, trick you into opening a harmful attachment, or dupe you into sending personal information. In short, scammers trade on the hope that you're gullible enough to fall victim to their deceptions, which are constantly changing.

Here's a rundown of some of the latest types of internet fraud schemes and advice on how to protect yourself.


Deactivation messages

From the 'scare you to act' department come email messages that threaten to deactivate your account if you do not click an embedded link to verify account details. Often, these messages claim that some kind of suspicious activity has occurred with your account, and the only way that you have to keep your account from being shut down is to click the embedded link immediately or within a certain amount of time.

Facebook users have recently been hit with such a scam. A message purporting to be from the 'Facebook Security Team' tells recipients that their accounts have been compromised and they have 12 hours to follow a link or they risk de-activation. Bottom line: Never click links in messages that claim that your account will be de-activated if you don't. If your account with a reputable organisation is ever actually compromised, the company will be smart enough to provide information about the situation in a way that does not require you to click any link, either to confirm any information or to re-activate your account.


Requested attachment messages

Email attachments, especially in messages from people you don't know, are common carriers of malware, spyware, or viruses. Scammers know that, by now, most people either do not open attachments sent by strangers or set up spam filters to remove such messages from their inbox automatically.

But senders of harmful attachments have become smarter, targeting users who may be expecting to receive attachments by email or who can be tricked into thinking they may have requested an email attachment. The US Federal Bureau of Investigation recently uncovered a scheme in which cyber criminals sent email attachments disguised as resumes to businesses who had posted jobs online. The attachments, once opened, unleashed malicious software that allowed the scammers to gain access to online banking credentials and ultimately to initiate wire transfers of money.

Bottom line: Always be suspicious of attachments, and be sure you use security software that scans email attachments before you open them.


'Facebook team' messages

It's no surprise that with over half a billion users, Facebook garners its own category of scam alert. Messages claiming to be from the ‘Facebook team’ are on the rise, and most of these prompt recipients to divulge account logon credentials.

One prevalent scam, for example, instructs recipients that Facebook is implementing a new login system that offers increased account security. To use the new system, the message says you must click a link to update your account. If you do, your login information will be stolen once you enter it.

Bottom line: Never 'update your account' via a link provided in a message. If you suspect that such a message is valid, visit your account by opening a web browser yourself and accessing it the usual way.


Prize collection messages

Who wouldn't like to wake up one day to find that they had won a prize, a sweepstakes, or some money that they weren't expecting? Fraudsters know that the answer is 'almost no one,' which is why email messages claiming that 'you won' continue to flow. The latest twist on this tactic, however, is for the email scammer to claim that in order to receive the prize or monetary award, you must first provide a host of information by email.

A '2011 Rugby World Cup Lotto Promotion' email message is just the latest example of this type of fraud. The message, which purports to be from the 'International Rugby Board (IRB),' claims that the recipient has won one million dollars by having one of the lucky email addresses drawn in a lottery that allegedly involved 'all the email addresses of people that are active online.'

Scammers know that people are suspicious of embedded links these days, however, so instead of having the recipients click a link, this scam asks the recipient to send a great deal of personal information to the email address of a 'claims administrator.' While no account information is solicited, enough personal information to facilitate identity theft is.

Bottom line: Never send personal information -- including name, address, age, and date of birth - to any stranger or supposed organisation by email.

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Nawab Wajid Ali Shah makes it to Facebook

IIPM Prof. Arindam Chaudhuri on Internet Hooliganism

Around Lucknow, his face is as difficult to miss as tales about his alleged waywardness. But now, Nawab Wajid Ali Shah, the tenth and last nawab of erstwhile Oudh is getting an image makeover, courtesy Facebook.

Besides having a dedicated page, the Nawab also has a Facebook group with 66 members. His introduction in the latter reads: “Contrary to popular notions, Wajid Ali Shah was a man of the highest moral character. He did never (sic) taste alcohol, nor indulge in any other sinful activity. He is not known to have missed a single day's prayer.” The Nawab is lauded for having taken on female servants as wives, only for purposes of offering them financial security while abstaining from any intimate relations with them. It also points out that critics who count his wives would do well to also look at the 1,700 men of letters and 500 physicians and scientists employed by the Nawab. His dedication to art and culture and his role in the revival of kathak is also highlighted.

Further down, the page draws comparisons with men of note elsewhere, with similar images, but to whom history has been kinder. The list includes Ataturk Mustapha Kemal, the father of modern Turkey and British Prime Minister Lloyd George.

Tales of the Nawab’s fondness for wine and women have long drawn derision. But as argued by Kaukab Qadr Sajjad Ali Mirza (great grandson of the Nawab) in Iqleem: Sakun Kai Tajdar such stories were circulated by the British to justify the annexation of Oudh, for had the Nawab’s debauchery and consequent indifference to administrative affairs been the reason behind the takeover, a better solution could have been found by replacing the ruler.

Meerza Zaigham Uddin Haider, retired principal of Lucknow's Shia Degree College holds forth that the Nawabs, for all their human failings, were, “benevolent and munificent”.

Another Nawab in desperate need of an image correction, Nasir-ud-din Haidar (the second nawab of the province) has also found refuge in a Facebook page which lauds him for his strong belief in Astrology and Astronomy and for setting up an observatory “bedecked with exceptionally good astronomical instruments".

British observations on Nawab Nasir-ud-din Haidar have been routinely ugly with Governor General of British India from 1793 to 1798, John Shore describing him as “a profligate and a sod devoid of sense who thinks of nothing but his own licentious pleasures”. Similarly Sir Henry Lawrence, British chief Commissioner to the Oudh wrote of the Nawab being “. …Engaged in every species of debauchery and surrounded by wretches ... of the lowest description, his whole reign was one continued satire…”

Centuries after such loathing, Facebook might just offer the chance for a reasoned and balanced take on the Nawabs.

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