The battle for global social media markets is heating up as Google’s Orkut social network, popular in Brazil and India, gets a revamp that allows users to pick which friends can see which saucy updates, and which ones get the generic off-to-the-gym salvo. This move may highlight what’s to come for Google’s new Facebook killer, Google Me. But with recent reports showing that Facebook is now beating Orkut in India, could these latest changes be Orkut’s last stand?

The Google announcement of the change on Orkut, the first significant features update in years, went like this:

You love your grandma and you’re friends with your boss, but that doesn’t mean you want them both seeing the conversation you’re having with your friends the day after a party. With Orkut, you can now build separate groups of your friends reflecting how you interact with them in real life. Keep it polite with some, let your hair down with others. It’s never been easier.

But the market has already spoken. A comScore report showed that Orkut lost the top spot to Facebook in India over the past year. Most astonishing of all is their relative growth rates in the country: Orkut grew 16% in the past year and Facebook grew 179%. This means the only place where Google still holds social network dominance is Brazil, where Orkut had 29 million unique visitors in July compared to Facebook’s 8 million.

We can be sure, though, that the developments on the front line won’t be letting-up anytime soon. The same comScore report also noted that social media in general has grown 47% in Brazil. This rate of growth is third to South Korea’s 57%, where the dominant network is Cyworld, and to Russia’s 74%, where Facebook clone Vkontakte holds top spot. With the news of Facebook’s 500 million users, Mark Zuckerberg announced expansionary plans into these markets, and Google doesn’t seem like its going to give them up without a fight.