Orkut

Orkut (own spelling: orkut ) is a mainly popular in Brazil and India social network. It should allow the user to make new acquaintances and renew old. Particular user should be able to find it with the same interests through precise as possible about themselves.

Orkut was developed by Orkut Büyükkökten, an employee of Google, Inc. in his spare time and named after him. The project was put into operation on 22 January 2004 and is maintained by Google.

Dissemination

Orkut has spread rapidly, especially in Brazil. In August 2004, the Brazilian weekly magazine P.Temporada reported in an editorial on Orkut, then the number of users exploded on. The number of users amounted at that time to about one million, with a share of 50 percent of Brazilians.

In June 2006, the number of users is 21.2 million, and the share of Brazilian users, meanwhile, fell in January 2006 from about 73 percent to 68.5 percent. In second place is the U.S. user group with only 12 percent. In Germany Orkut is not widespread, however, the number of German users continues to rise.

Even in Iran and among Iranian exiles, Orkut is very popular. For exact details, there is not, however, access to Orkut early 2005 by the Iranian government has been blocked, so as to make it difficult for users to use and contact with the outside world.

Conjunction with Google

Since the launch of Google , it is possible to activate the data exchange with Google in the profile settings. This land contributions that were posted in Orkut to Google and vice versa. Furthermore, let popular posts from Google in Orkut Show, as well as play games on Google provided. In addition, the Google profile information on Orkut are displayed.

Whether this is a preparation for the merger of the two networks is still unclear.

Criticism

There are concerns that providers of virtual social networks like Orkut collect extensive data and associate it with the data of other services (such as in this case Gmail) could. Google specifies not to redistribute the existing data in Orkut ( excluded are court orders ), or resell.