PTI
 
New Delhi, Sep 22: Though Indians continue to use internet primarily for emailing, online dating, and matrimonials along with social networking are gaining prominence, says a survey.

"With almost half the online urban Indians (48 per cent) undertaking it, online matrimonial search has established itself as a 'mainline' online activity. Twelve million online urban Indians are using online matrimonial search, making it the 13th most popular online activity. It has also been one of the biggest 'gainers' in users among the online activities in last one year," says India Online 2007, a survey conducted by JuxtConsult, an online research solutions consultancy firm.

The survey conducted to understand the internet users in the country adds, " Almost 60 per cent of users of both the online activities are common, i.E. 37 per cent of all internet users undertake both online matrimony and online dating/friendship.

"This is significantly higher than last year when only 9 per cent of all internet users undertook both the activities. In comparison to matrimony, dating/friendship is a more popular online activity with 51 per cent net users undertaking it and it ranks 10th in terms of popularity." The latest entrant, social networking sites like Orkut, Facebook among others have already rallied up 44 per cent of the internet time with over 11 million Indians getting hooked to it.

Giving a demographic profile of internet users in the counrty, the survey points out that South India leads the online activity with 39 per cent of all net users coming from South.

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