What is Orkut?

Orkut is an Internet social network service which is run by Google and named after its creator, Google employee Orkut Büyükkökten. It claims to be designed to help users meet new friends and maintain existing relationships. Similar to Facebook, Friendster and MySpace, Orkut goes a step further by permitting the creation of easy-to-set-up simple forums (called "communities") of users. Since October 2006, Orkut has permitted users to create accounts without an invitation. However, one notable controversy surrounding Orkut is that it requests users enter their race, religion and sexual orientation, which has been source of great concern among users. It has been observed that there are children under 12 using Orkut by entering false date-of-birth information. Orkut is the most visited website in Brazil [1], being more visited than Google Brazil, number 2 on the list. In total visits, Google is probably still more popular since it appears as the second (the Brazilian version) and seventh most visited site (the international version). The initial target market for orkut was the United States, but the majority of its users are in Brazil.[2] In fact, as of January 2008, 55.32% of the traffic come from Brazil, followed by 16.53% from India.[3] In December 2007, Google dropped orkut from the drop-down menu of its international homepage.