Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter form the three behemoths in social media currently in India. But there are other avenues that are slowly gathering followers. Though in many western countries they already have their own die-hard supporters, in India they still have long strides to make. Let us look at some of these other social mediums that are creating a steady buzz.

MAHATHI R. ARJUN

SLIDESHARE

SlideShare presents a community for sharing presentations, documents and videos in PowerPoint, PDF or OpenOffice. Content can be uploaded by individuals or companies and downloaded or embedded on their websites or blogs.

Number game:

Alexa Traffic Rank – Global: 177; India: 76

Did you know? 

In May this year, LinkedIn acquired SlideShare for US $119 million considering the huge enterprise users the latter has in clients like HP, IBM, Dell, NASA, The White House etc.

In 2008, its CEO, Indian American Rashmi Sinha was named amongst the world’s Top 10 Women Influencers in Web 2.0 by the magazine, FastCompany

On a monthly basis, the website has approximately 60 million unique visitors and 140 million page views

PINTEREST

A picture is worth a thousand words. Pinterest lets you share your favourite images, pin it and form a pin board, which your friends can browse through – allowing you to connect with others through common interests.

Number game:

Alexa Traffic Rank – Global: 38; India: 31

Did you know?

A majority of its users are women in the age group of 25 – 34

Pinterest made its debut appearance on the list of ComScore’s Top 50 most visited websites in the U.S. for September 2012 with over 25 million visitors for the month

Some of the noted brands using Pinterest to reach its audience are Pillsbury, Gap, Unicef, People magazine, Honda, Nordstrom etc.

INSTAGRAM

Instagram is a free photo-sharing tool. Download it onto your smart phone, take a picture, add digital filters to make it look better and upload it onto the app to instantly share pictures with your friends.

Number game:

Alexa Traffic Rank – Global: 102; India – 448

Did you know?

According to AppData, Instagram’s monthly active users are more than 35 million and growing

Contrary to US $1 billion acquisition of the company by Facebook, according to the latter’s quarterly report this year, the deal is worth only about US $715 million currently

By May 2012, the total number of photos uploaded (since inception) was more than one billion

REDDIT

Reddit is a social news website that displays news based on the user’s preferences. Users can submit content either as a link or post, with entries organised into interest areas called reddit.

Number game:

Alexa Traffic Rank – Global: 136; India – 83

Did you know?

Its founders, Alexis Ohanian and Steve Huffman were rejected by the well-known incubator, Y Combinator, for their original idea: a way to order food from your mobile phone

In August this year, U.S President Barack Obama joined Reddit to host an AMA (ask me anything) session for its users thus, getting the website more mainstream exposure

Popular image hosting tool Imgur became a sensation after being used by social news websites like Reddit and Digg. Reddit is currently the biggest source of Imgur’s traffic

NING

It’s an online platform that allows people and companies to create their very own social networking websites. Once it is set up, you can decide whether you want it to be public or private, include features such as pictures and videos, and form groups within the network. With no coding skills required by the user.

Number game:

Alexa Traffic Rank – Global: 464; India – 596

Did you know? 

Ning’s audience tends to be African American. It also appeals more to higher-income, childless men between the ages of 35 and 65

In July 2012, it was reported that Ning’s communities were seeing more than 50 million unique active users per month, and that more than 2,000 new social networks are created monthly

With the help of Ning, American rock band Linkin Park has been able to build one of the biggest fan communities on the Internet