The new drug for the youth - Orkut.com
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If you are into online social networking then you must have come across or already are a member of the hugely popular social networking site Orkut.com. Orkut is an Internet social network service named after its creator, Google employee Orkut Büyükkökten and like its parent company’s mail service gmail.com orkut also works on an invite only model i.e. inorder to regiter on orkut you need to know someone who has already registered and can send you an invite something like multilevel marketing in online world. Now recently a speculative article in Hindustan Times claimed that orkut is addictive giving examples of Indian users now before you brush this article as rubbish lets just investigate the claim a little bit from India’s perspective. According to alexa rankings orkut is the fourth most popular site in India (ahead of rediff.com) and just behind yahoo and google. Also out of the 23.8 million users across the world that orkut has 6.7% are Indians. That mean 1.3 million Indian users approximately. Now compare this to the fact that naukri.com has 5.5 million users and it is ranked 8th in the alexa rankings! Naukri.com user base spans from freshers to very experienced hence catering across the entire online audience in India. This only mean that the 1.3 million users are logging on and visiting orkut more number of times than they are on naukri.com but still 1.3 million users compared to 5.5 million users and crores of rupees in advertising! (Orkut doesn’t advertise!) seems very off balance doesn’t it?? Well all i can say is that the young generation me included 
seems to have more time to find friends then find a job.. or maybe the Hindustan Times article may not be rubbish afterall!
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Hi Rajiv,
Point well taken. Everyone is logging onto orkut to meet friends. But these too have its ill effects. Let us not forget them. Its a fad that we Indians have taken onto and will die down soon. Our offline social networking is much too strong for such a thing to last too long.
u r rite in ur point, but havnt u noticed google has started giving ad in the communities of orkut. afterall we cant get anything free to that extent.
garygarfield@gmail.com
I checked latest Alexa rankings and Orkut is now on #2 just after Yahoo.
It seems Orkut will overtake Yahoo in coming couple of months.
Awesome !!