I don’t exactly remember that when and how I was introduced to Orkut. But I can tell it for sure that, it has made my life easy. Getting connected with friends and family was never this easy. Of course, we can send SMS, email to our friends, but Orkut Scraps is the the perfect communication system.

Orkut basically is a social networking site. It was named after its creator Orkut Büyükkökten. He has got this strange (for us) surname, which made my tongue to do few exercises before coming to right pronunciation.

Anyway, Google has acquired it now. Google is really good in acquiring such famous sites. Google has also acquired Youtube, world’s no. 1 video sharing site. In the initial stage of Orkut, people were allowed to join it only through invitations, but since October 2006, users are allowed to create an account with an invitation too.

This has helped Orkut receive such a huge popularity.

You would be surprised to know that maximum number of users in Orkut are from Brazil. Second most visited country is India. If we look at percentage wise, as of May 2008, Orkut’s users from Brazil were 53.86% which is over half of total users in Orkut. From India, 16.97% users existed on Orkut. But these figures might have changed in 2009 for India, as Indian college students have joined in large number.

I had this recent check on March 5, 2009 at Orkut’s status from Alexa and what I found is below.

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Orkut.com – Orkut

orkut.com

Social networking and discussion site operated by Google.
Orkut.com has a traffic rank of: 96

Traffic History Graph for orkut.com

Reach for Orkut.com:

Percent of global Internet users who visit this site

Traffic Rank for Orkut.com:

Alexa traffic rank based on a combined measure of page views and users (reach)

Page Views per user for Orkut.com:

The number of unique pages viewed per user per day for this site

Orkut.com users come from these countries:

Orkut.com traffic rank in other countries:

Where people go on Orkut.com:

• orkut.com – 98.1%
• u1.orkut.com – 0.9%
• images.orkut.com – 0.6%
• help.orkut.com – 0.2%
• blog.orkut.com – 0.1%
• m.orkut.com – 0.0%
• sandbox.orkut.com – 0.0%
• img1.orkut.com – 0.0%
• ww.orkut.com – 0.0%
• img2.orkut.com – 0.0%

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Orkut History

Very few people know that Orkut Büyükkökten is an employee of Google. On January 22, 2004 Google had launched Orkut as an independent project developed by Orkut Büyükkökten who is a Turkish software engineer. Because it was launched in USA, in the initial stage Orkut had maximum number of users from USA only. In the initial stage, Orkut was based on invitation only.

But then Brazilians started jumping into Orkut. Marketing was done by word of mouth only, which was driven by the blogosphere. And interestingly, users from Brazilians exceeded the users from USA. Later on, users from USA started moving to other social networking sites such as Myspace, Facebook and Friendster.

Orkut Büyükkökten visited Brazil in 2007 to understand the success story of Orkut in Brazil. And in the same year, Orkut started becoming popular in India.

Catchy and Funky Features of Orkut

Videos : As Google owns Youtube, they have allowed embedding videos from Youtube to Video section of our Orkut account just by providing URL of video hosted on Youtube.

Testimonials : This is a very creative and innovative feature. This is to share our testimonial about someone. We can write down the same and the receiver gets a chance to approve / reject the same. Here we can shed more light on anyone, who is an Orkut member. But unfortunately, some people sometimes use this feature for nonsense things. The name itself tells it is a ‘testimonial’, but some stupid people put some inspiring stories, stolen quotes and poems!

Applets : Aah! this has made Orkut a better place to stay inside. Various applets such as Stylish Fonts and Scraps, Whos online? Find New Friends, IQ Test, MindJolt Games, Stylish Themes, ICL, Pencil Sketch, Crazy Themes, Buy your friends, Chess, Superscrap, BuddyPoke!, does your name fit you?, Crapster, Music iLike, Chat!, Donate 2 seconds, Serial Kisser, Love Calculator, Profile Posters, Emote!, MICOIA GAMES ONLINE, Send Message, ACTION DRIVING GAMES ONLINE, Want to meet me?, Gtalk Chat, BuddyToss!, Style Me – Stylish and Private Scraps, Is Your Name Sexy, Carrom, Orkut Tools, Sneak-O-Scope, My Music, Katrina Kaif Gallery, Are You In Love?, MTV Roadies, Music Mazaa, Namez, Poker Texas Holdem,  Lucky 7, Scrap Masti – Create Amazing scraps, GTA Vice City Jigsaw Games, Graffiti, Call Greeting – play music on your friend’s phone, 3D Music Spectrum Analyser(Beta) , The Sex Test, Truth Box, MyHeritage Celebrity Look-alikes, SUPER CHAT ONLINE, GAMES & CHAT!  and the list goes on and on, as these are just the few of applets facilitated by Orkut.

Communities : Here we can create our community for our desires and of interest subject / topic. As well as, we can join communities created by others. Orkut gives an opportunity to create a community which suits to the following categories.

Activities, Alumni & Schools, Arts & Entertainment, Automotive, Business, Cities & Neighborhoods, Company, Computers & Internet, Countries & Regional, Cultures & Community, Family & Home, Fashion & Beauty, Food, Drink & Wine, Games, Gay, Lesbian & Bi, Government & Politics, Health, Wellness & Fitness, Hobbies & Crafts,
Individuals, Music, Pets & Animals, Recreation & Sports, Religion & Beliefs, Romance & Relationships, Schools & Education, Science & History, and Travel.

And still if you think, your desire community doesn’t fit in any of above categories, Orkut has this ‘Other’ option too, where you can specify your own category.

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There are various other Social Networking sites too, like Myspace, Friendster, Hi5, Facebook, Desimartini, Bigadda, Indyarocks, Ibibo, Metrojoint and etc. But Orkut rocks, doesn’t it?

A good friend of mine Meetul Jain runs this site – www.orkutting.com. He has codes some goodies for Orkut such as Scrapbook Tricks, Orkut Tricks, Orkut Scripts, MEETUL ROBOT: PROFILE MAKER, MEETUL ROBOT: SCRAP ALL, ORKUT BUDDY, MEETUL ROBOT: COMMUNITY JOINER, MEETUL ROBOT: FAN FLOODER, MEETUL ROBOT: SCRAPBOOK FLOODER, MEETUL ROBOT: ABUSER, MEETUL ROBOT: FRIEND ACCEPTOR, MEETUL ROBOT: MARKETING TOOL, MEETUL PROFILE BACKUP, ORKUT CUTE, SCRAPBOY, ORKUTING CONTROL PANEL – and the list goes on.