Orkut - Definition and Overview

The title given to this article is incorrect due to technical limitations. The correct title is orkut.

orkut is a virtual community designed to help users meet new friends and maintain existing relationships. Similar to Friendster, orkut goes a step further by permitting "communities" of users. It is also invitation-only: Users must be invited to join the community by someone already there.

orkut was quietly launched on January 22, 2004 by Google, the search engine company. The service was created by Google employee Orkut Büyükkökten, who had developed a similar system, "InCircle," for his previous employer, Affinity Engines. InCircle was intended for use by university alumni groups.

With regard to copyrights, their terms of service state:

By submitting, posting or displaying any Materials on or through the orkut.com service, you automatically grant to us a worldwide, non-exclusive, sublicenseable, transferable, royalty-free, perpetual, irrevocable right to copy, distribute, create derivative works of, publicly perform and display such Materials.

Users of orkut can maintain profiles, keep in touch with friends online and participate in communities, as this screenshot shows.

Some discomfort with this exists among users and potential users of orkut, especially since Google's other noteworthy product of 2004, the Web-based email client Gmail, allows the company to automatically scan the text of users' private emails in order to target ads toward them.

In late June 2004, Affinity Engines filed suit against Google, claiming that Büyükkökten and Google based orkut on the inCircle code. The allegation is based on the presence of bugs in orkut that also exist in inCircle.

Originally, the orkut community was felt to be elite, because its membership is by invitation only. However, at the end of July 2004 orkut surpassed the 1,000,000 member mark, and at the end of September it surpassed the 2,000,000 mark. As of February 2005, 63% of orkut's members were from Brazil, followed by 11% from the United States and 7.6% from Iran. Brazilians were below 50% from August 9 to August 20, 2004. It is believed that this happened because a lot of them changed their nationality to something else due to a rumor that users with their countries set to Brazil got slower speeds and a greater chance of getting an error page.

Invitations to orkut are obtainable, with a few minutes' (or days) worth of diligence, via the web.

External links

• orkut.com (http://www.orkut.com/)
• orkut demographics (http://www.orkut.com/Membersall.aspx) (This page sometimes requires a password. Try again)
• orkut.com Terms of Service (http://www.orkut.com/terms.html)
• Orkut Büyükkökten's Personal Home Page (http://www.stanford.edu/~orkut/)
• Google revives discredited Microsoft privacy policy for Friendster clone (http://www.theregister.co.uk/content/6/35375.html) - Article at The Register
• Orkut Fight Club (http://www.juliob.com/me/archives/cat_orkut_fight_club.html) - Section on the Blog of a popular orkut personality who was removed from the orkut service without explanation

Research Papers

• Meneses, J. (2004). The Orkut.com case: a reflection on the exploration of new ways to online sociability in the tradition of the study of virtual communities (http://www.cibersociedad.net/congres2004/grups/fitxacom_publica.php?grup=65&id=516&idioma=en)