Bangalore: The Indian users not only use the social networking sites to keep in touch with friends and peers, but also to pursue community-driven offline activities in their towns and cities. There are over 25 million Indian users who are visiting social networking sites such as Orkut, Facebook and Twitter.

For instance, Bhor, a small town near Pune in Maharashtra, has around 20 communities registered on social networking site Orkut, each having 200-400 members, including alumni from local schools, colleges and even an overall town community. "It's like a microcosm of the real world, and we were really surprised to learn that this village actually has around 20 communities," said Rahul Kulkarni, Orkut Product Manager, Google India. "One of the communities was involved in garbage cleaning mission at an old fort situated nearby," he added.

Indeed, according to Kulkarni, Indian Orkut users have around 10-15 friends on any given day, but that list keeps changing. "There is an opportunity for us to apply search applications on Orkut. For instance, we plan to rank friends for photo sharing by guessing whom a user would like to share his or her photos with," he said.

Also, many social organisations, including Greenpeace, have been using Facebook for garnering support and educating users about environmental issues. "I learnt about Greenpeace's 'Save the Turtles' campaign on Facebook, and joined the campaign along with several of my friends last year," said Rishi Bhardwaj, Software Engineer with a Bangalore-based tech firm.

However, Orkut is not only the site attempting to win the Indian social networking battle, but also rivals Yahoo! with Meme and Facebook are equally active in the country. Yahoo's Meme is going to be officially launched in India someday, said a senior company official to the Economic Times.

"Social networking continued to grow strongly in India in the past year, with several of the top global brands carving out a more prominent position," Will Hodgman, Executive Vice-President of Internet research firm comScore said earlier this year. "While there is certainly room for several players in the social networking space in India, the sites that have the right blend of having both a strong brand and cultural relevance will be best positioned for future growth," he added.

According to comScore, Orkut is considered as the most visited social networking site in the country with more than 15 million visitors. Facebook has captured the number two position with around eight million visitors, up 150 percent versus year ago, followed by local social networking site Bharatstudent.com with over three million visitors.