We earlier published data from Google trends depicting the fall of Orkut in India [against the rise of Facebook] and while the blip seemed like a momentary lapse of traffic for Orkut, the truth is that it is not.
A month later, Facebook is still going strong, while Orkut is heading southwards.
Look at the search trends(*) data for the last 12 months. Orkut, Twitter and Facebook received pretty much the same level of news reference, but the search trend for Facebook is steady and stronger [note the southward trend for Orkut].
What Next? FB Enabled Mobile Phones
Have you ever seen a mobile phone promoting the Orkut app? Very few of them take that route, while the new companies even have inbuilt Facebook buttons on the mobile phones.
The new new mobile phones that are being shipped to India [like INQ, Micromax etc] prefer to bundle Facebook and Twitter over Orkut.
For Orkut, its time to do beyond Google [i.e launch its app beyond Android], control spam and most importantly, stop copying Facebook features.
Maybe its high time that Orkut opens up its content for search engines?
What’s your opinion?
Also see: What else should Google do to Save Orkut?
* Note On Google Trends
It’s not that Facebook has beaten Orkut in absolute traffic – there still is a long way to go. But, Google Trends gives you an idea about the ‘trend‘, the intent of users and it’s surely oscillating towards FB.