Indians are high on digital consumption and as per a recent study, Indians are more active digitally than North Americans are and are quite active in blogging and social networking.
Online consumers in rapid growth markets have overtaken mature markets in terms of engaging with digital activities.
When looking at behaviour online, rapid growth markets such as Egypt (56%) and China (54%) have much higher levels of digital engagement than mature markets such as Japan (20%), Denmark (25%) or Finland (26%). This is despite mature markets usually having a more advanced internet infrastructure.
India has a higher proportion of ‘engaged’ online users (43%), than emerging Asian countries though China leads in Asia on this front with more than half the respondents highly engaged. Incidentally, India has a slightly higher proportion of highly engaged users than North America and that is despite the huge infrastructure gap & costs of accessing internet.
Activities such as blogging and social networking are gaining momentum at huge speed in rapid growth markets.
The research shows four out of five online users in China (88%) and over half of those in Brazil (51%) have written their own blog or forum entry, compared to only 32% in the US.
More than one fourth of the respondents in India update their blog / forum at least several times a day which is higher than a lot of developed countries. It is more than double the percentage of users doing that in North America. The Internet has also become the default option for photo sharing among online users in rapid growth markets, particularly in Asia.
The number of online consumers who have ever uploaded photos to social networks or photo sharing sites is 92% in Thailand, 88% in Malaysia and 87% in Vietnam, whilst developed markets are more conservative. Less than a third of online consumers in Japan (28%) and under half of those in Germany (48%) have uploaded photos to such sites. India is in the top 5 countries in the world when we see how many users upload photographs at least several times a week. Turkey leads with every second person doing it with India having around 35% people uploading photographs several times a week.
As far as social networking is concerned, Indians have around 72 friends on an average, the list being dominated by Malayasians (233 friends). The least social are the Japanese with just 29 friends and Tanzanians have, on average, 38 in their circle of friends.
The report, claimed to be one of the largest study into consumers’ digital behaviours was conducted across 46 countries (across 48,804 people).