Chennai: Chennai leads the country in Information Technology, but shares fifth position with Pune in the number of active Facebook users (42 lakh) whereas New Delhi tops with 92 lakh netizens.
An analysis of active Facebook users in India also throws a startling revelation— for every Indian woman on the social networking website, there are three Indian men.
According to scroll.in, a popular digital daily, Facebook has over 1.32 billion active users, most of whom originate from the United States.
India turned out to be the second largest base for the social networking site. About 11.1 crore Indians are active on the website, of which only 2.7 crore are women.
Experts feel that despite penetration of smart phones in the Indian cellular market, reliable and faster connectivity remained one of the most important concerns of mobile phone users, limiting their staying hooked on to social networking sites.
Pointing to Chennai’s uneven broadband connectivity, Viral Thaker, founder and CEO of a Chennai-based digital marketing and social media analytics company, said that most of the fibre optic cables laid by telecom companies in the city had become old. “These cables don’t provide much speed, calling reliability into question,” he said.
K. Srikanth, a B.Tech student, who is constantly on the move, found that 3G connectivity on his mobile phone often let him down. “In cities like Mumbai, Delhi and Bengaluru there is seamless 3G coverage: these cities will naturally lead with most Facebook users.”
As for fewer women users on Facebook, women rights activist U. Vasuki attributed lack of time as the main reason.
“Even after retirement, most men continue to be online daily through Facebook, but women do the domestic chores, like cooking and taking care of the grandchildren; they don’t have time to use cyber space,” she said. In the rural areas, lack of Internet connectivity and fulfilling family commitments kept women offline.
“Urban women’s usage of Internet may vary from 15 to 30 minutes: how can the number of women on social networking websites increase in India?” said S. Sumathi, finance advisor in a corporate company.
