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Facebook not hit by social media fatigue

Shrutika Valecha, a first-year student of Narsee Monjee Institute of Management Studies in Mumbai, has a Twitter profile, a Facebook page, and uses Foursquare (a location-based social networking website) on her mobile device.

She recently signed up on professional networking site LinkedIn, too. "We (Valecha and her friends) connect on these social networking sites, especially with friends who are in different colleges across the city."

She says she ends up using Facebook frequently, though of late, the 21-year-old has started using the mobile version of Facebook.

Valecha is just one of the 33 million registered users of Facebook in India. Yet, according to a recent Gartner report, the social media market has started showing signs of 'social media fatigue'.

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Facebook not hit by social media fatigue

Gartner surveyed 6,295 respondents between the ages of 13 and 74, in 11 developed and developing markets between December 2010 and January 2011.

Brian Blau, research director, Gartner, says: "The trend shows some social media fatigue among early adopters, and the fact that 31 per cent of aspirers (younger, more mobile, brand-conscious consumers) indicated they were bored with their social network, is a situation social media providers should monitor, since they would need to innovate and diversify to maintain consumer attention."

However, Gartner acknowledges global brands such as Facebook are making headway in countries where they have not historically been strong. India seems to be one of these countries.

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Facebook not hit by social media fatigue

Data from Socialbakers.com, an online analytics firm that tracks social media trends, indicates Facebook, with more than 33 million registered users, is the top social network in India, and the user base grew 50 per cent in the last six months.

Although the average Internet usage per person in India is 12.5 hours, Kedar Gavane, director (India), comScore, says it is people in the age groups of 15-34 years who are the most active and engaging users online.

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Facebook not hit by social media fatigue

The social networking party continues for the younger web audience. Charlotte Patrick, principal research analyst, Gartner, says: "Teenagers and those in their 20s are significantly more likely to say they had increased their usage, while at the other end of the 'enthusiasm spectrum', the age-related differences were much less marked, with fairly consistent percentages saying they were using social media less."

The Gartner findings seem to resonate well with the social networking patterns of the likes of 36-year-old Subodh Kulkarni, an organic farm produce exporter, who claims he reduced the time spent networking online.

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Facebook not hit by social media fatigue

"I used Facebook to be in touch with my business contacts and a few organic farming enthusiasts. However, with most of my buyers and friends using multiple social networks, it became hard to keep each other updated on Facebook," says Kulkarni, who now uses emails and Blackberry's messenger service to keep up with his contacts.

ComScore suggests 87 per cent of young Indian web users use search engines, 85 per cent log on to social networking portals, about 80 per cent access e-mail and 58 per cent read news online.

New entrants in social media like Google + have also seen a fair amount user interest, with over three million Indians signing up for Google + accounts.

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Facebook not hit by social media fatigue

However, social media users like Sailee Bakre, a second-year student at New Delhi's Gargi College, believes Google's attempt to take the social path does not come close to Facebook.

"I have been using Facebook, both online and more recently, on my mobile, too. It's not only better looking than Google +, it is also more interactive, since we can interact with students across the globe and find details about other colleges on Facebook," Bakre says, adding she is not keen to move to Google + in the near future.

As Google tries to boost its social market share with Google + and Facebook tries to become the ruling network, social media fatigue seems to be an increasingly likely outcome.