The use of social media in rural India has grown 100 per cent in the past year with 25 million people using the Internet to access Twitter and Facebook, according to a report.
“Accessing social media is one of the key reasons for people to access the Internet. In fact, for many people accessing the Internet for the first time, social media was the reason they embraced Internet,” said the IAMAI-IMRB report on social media.
Across India, there are 143 million users of social media. Urban areas witnessed a growth of 35 per cent with 118 million users as of April 2015. On the other hand, the number for rural India stood at 25 million, up from close to 12 million last year, showing a growth of 100 per cent.
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Facebook emerged the leading social media website with 96 per cent of urban users accessing it, followed by Google Plus (61 per cent), Twitter (43 per cent) and LinkedIn (24 per cent). The largest segment of users was college-going students (34 per cent), followed by young men (27 per cent), the report said. Schoolchildren constitute 12 per cent.
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‘Half of urban users from top four metros’
The report on social media in India said “almost half the urban social media users hail from the top four metros.”
“College students and young men still form 60 per cent of social media users in urban India,” the report said.
The trend, the report said, is moving towards accessing social media on the go through phones (smartphones as well as feature phones) and tablets.
“The fact that almost two thirds of the users are already accessing social media through their mobile is a promising sign. With the expected increase in mobile traffic the number of users accessing social media on the mobile is only bound to increase,” it added.
Over half the users are really active on social media sites.