Learn about how Orkut functions and its key features.

Orkut Buyukkokten, a Google user interface developer, was encouraged to dedicate 20 percent of his workweek to personal projects. Using this time, he developed Orkut, a social networking website that initially served as a community for Google employees. When Google launched Orkut publicly in 2004, it swiftly gained immense popularity, particularly in Brazil and India [sources: Nielsen, CyberMedia India Online].

Orkut is a free social networking platform where users can create profiles, connect with friends, maintain digital scrapbooks, and share interests through various site features and applications. Users must confirm they are 18 or older to register. Initially, Orkut was by invitation only, but now it's open to all, requiring only a Google account—which many people already have if they use other Google services like Gmail.

Orkut's official release came after rumors that Google was considering acquiring the social network site Friendster. Despite no formal commitment to the platform, Google launched orkut as beta software. However, Google did commit to its development, moving the team to Brazil in July 2008. Brazil, with its high social networking usage, became the central hub for Google's Latin American operations, influencing their decision [sources: Nielsen, Hendrickson].

Currently, over half of Orkut users are between the ages of 18 and 25, with almost half of them from Brazil. The number of users in India now rivals that of the United States, Orkut's original base [source: orkut]. However, in the United States, Orkut is not ranked among the top ten social networking sites, where Facebook and MySpace dominate [source: Nielsen]. Google has launched country-specific domains for India (www.google.co.in) and Brazil (www.google.com.br), both of which feature Orkut links at the top of their main pages.

How to Use Orkut

To begin using orkut, including searching for users and reading community forums, you must create an account and sign in. Orkut requires a Google user account, utilizing the same cookies as other Google services for your login session. This means that if you're logged into Gmail or Google Reader, you're automatically logged into orkut as well. If you don't have a Google account, orkut will prompt you to create one. Once logged in, orkut will ask you to complete a form to set up an orkut account linked to your Google account, and you'll need to confirm that you're 18 years old or older.

When logged into orkut, your homepage gives you access to all the site's features. You can modify your profile to add personal details and decide who can view them—whether just you, your friends, or everyone on orkut. Additionally, you can adjust settings for what you share, customize other features, or even delete your orkut account (note that this will not affect your Google account).

Orkut offers typical social networking features, enabling you to share your hobbies and activities with others:

To connect with others on orkut, you can add friends and join communities. The orkut search bar at the top right lets you search for other users or specific topics. You can then access any community, viewing its forum, polls, member list, and related groups. You can even start a new community and set permissions for how members join and interact there.

Adding friends on orkut allows for more direct interaction with other users. Like many other social networking sites, the "friends" feature on orkut gives you control over who can view the things you share. When you add someone as a friend, orkut sends a request that the other user must approve in order to establish the connection. You can find potential friends through suggestions on your homepage or from members of orkut communities you belong to.

There are various ways to interact with your friends on orkut:

OpenSocial Technology and Orkut

OpenSocial is the underlying technology that powers orkut. OpenSocial is an initiative aimed at developing social networking platforms that share a central user account system. With OpenSocial, organizations like Google enable users to create one account that works across multiple applications, such as email, calendars, and messaging services. While single sign-on (SSO) lets you log in to various apps with one set of credentials, OpenSocial takes this a step further by allowing your entire user profile to be shared across those apps, often within a unified interface.

OpenSocial refers to each interactive element you add to your social network as a social gadget. When logged into a social network, a user might see the social gadget as a regular site feature, such as managing photos, or as an additional feature (often known as an application or widget), like music or games. Social gadget developers create these gadgets using XML files known as gadget specifications, then they incorporate the gadget's functions through JavaScript code within these files.

As an OpenSocial developer, you don't need to start from scratch when creating social gadgets. OpenSocial already offers an application programming interface (API) with prewritten code for many common functions used in social networks. For instance, you can include a single line of code to request extended profile information for a particular user. You can then use that information within your social gadget to perform other actions, like displaying the user's favorite books or showing their location on a map. OpenSocial.org offers various tutorials and articles to help you begin building your social gadgets, including examples featuring Google.

On orkut, you have access to thousands of applications that you can add to the Apps section of your homepage. If you're interested in developing your own application for orkut, the orkut Developer Website provides all the necessary resources to get you started. These resources cover orkut's terminology, requirements, best development practices, and links to OpenSocial documentation. You can follow the OpenSocial Tutorial for orkut, where you'll also learn how to request profile information specific to orkut users. These resources assume you have basic knowledge of programming concepts, and may require some experience with JavaScript.

Benefits of Orkut

The advantages of orkut are similar to those found on other social networking websites. It provides tools to stay connected with friends, share personal information, and meet like-minded individuals. Additionally, it promotes a sense of security by requiring membership, limiting access to users aged 18 and above, and allowing you to control what information is visible to others. With its strong presence in Brazil and India, orkut encourages growth among users who share the cultural backgrounds and languages of those regions.

One additional advantage of orkut is the absence of banner ads that often clutter other social networking sites. Instead of displaying banner ads on every page, Google strategically places ads within the search results when you search for specific topics. These ads are chosen by combining your current location and the search terms you used. For example, a search for "Volkswagen" will show not only related users, communities, and topics but also advertisements for local Volkswagen dealerships and websites offering discounted Volkswagen parts.

Orkut's main competitors are other social networking platforms offering similar features and extendability via applications. This includes Facebook and MySpace, which dominate the market in the United States and are rapidly growing in popularity worldwide [source: Nielsen]. While orkut is significantly more popular in Brazil and India, it still has considerable ground to cover in the U.S., despite Google being the leading internet brand in the country [source: Nielsen].

Challenges of Orkut

Much like other social networks, orkut faces its own set of challenges. One of the primary issues it tackled early on was user authenticity, and it did so by introducing the testimonials feature. These testimonials are posts made by your friends, explaining what they think of you. Other users can read these testimonials to help determine whether or not they trust you enough to accept your friend request. This feature helps reduce the possibility of users misleading others with inaccurate profile details, minimizing the risk of stalkers and cyber predators.

Despite the testimonials feature, questions regarding user authenticity on orkut persisted, especially when invitations became highly sought after. Prior to orkut eliminating the invitation-only registration system, some users auctioned invitations on eBay, while others scoured the internet hoping to obtain one. In July 2005, blogger Alvaro Antunes shared his experience of receiving an invitation from a stranger, and described how it felt as though people were adding him as a friend without any real desire for genuine friendship [source: Antunes].

Orkut's most significant hurdle has likely been the legal issues the site has faced in both Brazil and India. In 2005, Brazilian authorities used phone taps to uncover a drug ring and discovered they were using orkut communities to arrange drug deals. The following year, Brazilian officials linked illegal pornographic and racist content to orkut communities, prompting a judge to order Google to hand over user data related to suspected offenders [source: Nicaretta]. In 2006, Google faced criticism for anti-India content posted on orkut, and worked to resolve the situation before receiving a formal request from Indian authorities [source: Mills].

In response to these legal challenges, Google has handled each subpoena for private user information with care. The company has removed orkut communities and users who violated its terms of service, and launched a "Keep orkut Beautiful" campaign to highlight its commitment to cooperating with legal authorities while maintaining the site's enjoyment and cleanliness. However, there have been challenges, such as when a 19-year-old blogger in India created a community protesting the political party Shiv Sena, and orkut was implicated as the platform. Ultimately, the blogger, not Google, was held accountable in the case [source: Mahapatra].

Google has continued to improve orkut, ensuring that it remains competitive, secure, and enjoyable for users. Today, it is a trusted, well-established platform backed by a respected company. If Google stays committed to enhancing the site and expanding it in emerging online markets, orkut is likely to continue thriving globally.

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