Facebook has serious designs on India, but “for years [Google’s] Orkut has dominated the Indian social-networking scene,” Business Week reports. Facebook added Hindi and five other Indian languages last month, bringing the total number of languages it supports to 57, “with several dozen more in the works.” Some question why, though, since such a high percentage of India’s Net-using population speak English, especially connected young urbanites. The real draw for Facebook, probably, is English-speaking friends overseas who already use Facebook. A New Delhi-based source told Business Week that none of her US friends use Orkut, so she had to join Facebook. On the other hand, globally, linguistic diversity and issues may not be the issue so much as differences in how digital media and technologies are used from country to country, an interesting piece in Ad Age suggests, also using India as an example.
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