Abstract

In May 2009, Facebook, the world’s leading social networking site, launched an Indian language interface that would enable members to navigate Facebook in Hindi, Bengali, Tamil, Telugu, Punjabi, and Malayalam. Experts felt that by increasing the site’s relevance to local markets through local language interface translation, Facebook had been able to grow rapidly in the international market. However, some analysts wondered whether Facebook’s localization strategy through the introduction of the Indian language interface would lead to any dramatic increase in its user base in the country.

Learning Objectives

The case is structured to achieve the following Learning Objectives:

• Globalization
• Growth strategy
• and Localization strategy

Keywords

Localization strategy, localization, strategy, market leadership, social networking, unique visitors, reach, local language interface, transliteration, India, Facebook, MySpace, Orkut, Bharatstudent, hi5, ibibo, LinkedIn, PerfSpot, Bigadda, Fropper, comScore