Orkut is Google’s social networking service. It was named after the Google employee who created it, Turkish software engineer Orkut Buyukkokten. As of May 2009, almost 50% of Orkut users are from Brazil, with 17% from India. Facebook and MySpace continue to be the most popular social networking sites in the Unites States.

The service was launched in January 2004 by invitation only. During its first year, the largest user base was in the United States. After a viral Brazilian blogosphere word-of-mouth campaign, Brazil outnumbered the U.S. in users and many Americans left the service in favor of Friendster and MySpace. It became the most popular website in Brazil.

Users can create profiles with specified “Professional”, “Social” and “Personal” details. Captioned photos can be included in the profiles as well as videos from YouTube or Google Video. There is the added option for polling a community of users with either unrestricted or restricted polls.

Communites on any topic can be created by anyone with an Orkut account. There are over a million communities, with the first 5 of them created within 24 hours of Orkut’s launch. They encompass a vast array of topics. With the option of integrating Gtalk, Google’s instant messenger, Orkut enables file sharing and chatting directly from the Orkut page.

Unlike Facebook, Orkut users can view any profiles for users who select to have their profiles available to all networks. Users can choose to have their profiles viewable on only specified networks. Profiles can be customized with information restricted to friends or others not on the friends list. Friends are listed on a users page in the order they log in, with the top listed friend being the most recent.

Categories: Glossary
Tags: Google Orkut, Gtalk, social networking