WHAT IS ORKUT?

Orkut is a social networking service which is run by Google and named after its creator, an employee of Google - Orkut Büyükkökten. The service states that it was designed to help users meet new friends and maintain existing relationships. Orkut is similar to other networking sites. Since October 2006, Orkut has permitted users to create accounts without an invitation.

A user first creates a "Profile", in which the user provides "Social", "Professional" and "Personal" details. Users can upload photos into their Orkut profile with a caption. Users can also add videos to their profile from either YouTube or Google Video with the additional option of creating either restricted or unrestricted polls for polling a community of users. There is an option to integrate GTalk (An instant messenger from Google) with Orkut enabling chatting and file sharing. currently gtalk has been integrated in orkut. Users can directly chat from orkut page.

Orkut is the most visited website in Brazil and India . A large percentage of users in India are high school and college students. The initial target market for Orkut was the United States, but the majority of its users are in Brazil and India.In fact, as of May 2008, 53.86% of Orkut's users are from Brazil, followed by India with 16.97%. In regards to traffic, 23.4% comes from Brazil, followed by India with 18.0%. In 2008, more than 23 million of Brazilians had an account on orkut.