MUMBAI, INDIA: Orkut, the social networking site from Google, is used by twice as many software developers in India than either MySpace or Facebook according to an Evans Data survey of over 300 software developers in India.

Indian developers showed much more interest in social networking sites in general than do developers in other parts of the world, and 73 percent of them said they had used Orkut, as compared to 35 percent for Facebook and 32 percent for MySpace.

"While Facebook has been heavily promoting its platform to developers, Google's Orkut has quietly taken the largest share of developers in India," said John Andrews, President and CEO of Evans Data Corp. "Capturing mindshare with developers in fast growing emerging development markets like India and Brazil gives them a strategic advantage going forward in further cultivating this very important community."

Google's Orkut has become so popular with developers in both Brazil and India that they have recently released new domains specific to those countries.

Other highlights from this in-depth tactical marketing survey of over 300 software developers in India include:

* Technology or platform vendors are considered the most credible source of information on emerging technologies by Indian developers.
* Almost half of all Indian developers, 47 percent, get involved with coding contests.
* Over half of Indian software developers are single, and are much younger than their counterparts in North America or Europe.