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81 responses so far ↓

• Mateus Caruccio on Mar 9, 2006 at 11:16 am

  In fact, every one associates Orkut to “iorgut”, which is a word playing of “iogurte” (yogurt).

  I, beeing brazilian, never thinked about orkut/yakult ;)

• Loren Baker, Editor on Mar 9, 2006 at 11:20 am

  Ha! I knew there was something there. Thanks Mateus. Em tao, muito obligado cara por seu ajudar.

  Maybe it’s mostly the Nik-kei Brasilieros associating Orkut with Yakult :)

  Who’d of thought? Google conquers the most powerful and technologically advanced South American country because the name of one of their engineers sounds like yogurt.

• Mateus Caruccio on Mar 9, 2006 at 12:02 pm

  And every one, every single time, when you say “orkut”, repeats like “iorgute”. It’s annoying !

• LuckyMan on Mar 9, 2006 at 2:57 pm

  Are you stupid? :P

  Nothing to do with pronounce in Portuguese, its just cause or Yakult, yogurt, wathever

  Thats is the dummiest thing I ever read in my life

• Edgard on Mar 9, 2006 at 3:31 pm

  Pure non-sense!

• Luciano on Mar 9, 2006 at 7:55 pm

  Is this a joke or are you really stupid?!

• Hiro on Mar 9, 2006 at 8:20 pm

  “razilians with money would rather spend their evenings hanging out with other well-to-do Brazilians than getting robbed or shot by someone they don’t know well.”

  it sounds very funny.

• Loren Baker, Editor on Mar 9, 2006 at 8:54 pm

  LuckyMan, Are you saying that Orkut is not easier to roll off the tongue in Portuguese than Friendster?

  The social networking popularity in Brazil is easy to figure out. But the theme of this post, and the info I’ve gotten back from Orkut loving Brazilians, is intended to answer the question “Why did Orkut get SO popular in Brazil?”

  And why not other US or European services.

  Instead of calling the results of the ’study’ stupid, maybe you could lend your explanation.

• Loren Baker, Editor on Mar 9, 2006 at 9:05 pm

  Funny, after posting this I got an Orkut mail from Gisele Bündchen asking to be her friend.

  I first saw Gisele Bündchen at Carnaval in Rio two years ago. Amazing to meet a Victoria’s Secret model in the flesh.

  Gisele, I’ve added you. Next time I’m in Floripa or NY I’ll look you up ;)

  (yes, I’m aware this is probably not Gisele, but I can dream)

• Marcos on Mar 9, 2006 at 9:13 pm

  Just correcting: in Brazil is Yakult, too. But yes, people here are calling the service “yakult” and even “Iogurte (portuguese for iogurt, but the pronunciation here is almost the same).

  Nobody knows for sure why this service is so popular, but Friendster was very popular here and so is Fotolog. I think that brazilians love to see and to be seen, and everybody here knows lots of people, and say that they are all “good friends”. People are very open to new friendships and is very common to have three or four social circles with lots of people in.

• Andre Manoel on Mar 9, 2006 at 10:27 pm

  I think you are wrong on many counts here, and correct in some aspects.

  You missed the most important one about why Orkut is popular in Brazil and not elsewhere. The reason is the same: it is because there are Brazilians there. A connected Brazilian almost cannot not be on orkut, because all your friends are, and that is how your junior high buddies reconnect with you. Also, Brazilians scared everyone else away because of volume and the others gave up since they didn’t feel very comfortable (Brazilians didn’t feel the need to make anyone else comfortable).

  Here is my analysis of your post:
  Item 1. “Tribalistas” is the name of a band. As fair as I know, Brazilian anthropologists use the term “tribo” just as american ones use “tribe”.

  Item 2. Yakut… I don’t think so. The drink is that same Yakult, and what I hear people calling it is “iogurte”, or as someone mentioned, it is just a play with words, the sillier the better, and not really a factor in popularity. People didn’t get to it because it has a funny name. And nikkei Brazilians are as likely to drink yakult as non-nikkei. Also not a factor.

  Orkut is indeed easy to pronounce… but with a Portuguese pronunciation which is different from what an american would say and, I guess, what Orkut calls himself. Friendster and Myspace are the same: not really pronunciable in Portuguese, but people would adapt to the point an American wouldn’t understand. Also, people are invited by mail, not in person, and they probably kept their invitation e-mails.

  Item 4, class differentiation seems not to be much of a factor, AFAIK. But I don’t hang with people who don’t use computers, so I wouldn’t be able to tell . For most people, Orkut is not exclusive as it was at first. Orkut is very inclusive, because the hardest is actually not getting invited.

  Item 5, national pride. Agreed.

  Item 6, mobility. It is not something going on for the last 2 years. It has always happened. But it is also useful for those who want to keep in touch with people from another part of the city.

  Item 7, machine independence. What other social service you know is not web-based?

  Item 8, competitiveness. I think it varies from place to place. It happens with some people. When you are talking about a few million people it is not a very useful generalization.

  Item 9, come again? I don’t think a lot of people got into orkut because of google. And what is “goo-gly”?

  Item 10, I really recommend you replace your monitor with another one, or have your eyes checked for color-blindness. yellow-green is not the same as light blue-magenta.

  But actually, Brazilians got into orkut because their friends where there. A good backbone of early adopters in the technology sector spread it throughout the country. Those who didn’t want to get in were invited so many times by so many different friends, that they gave in. But look at other social networks, you will see that they are frequently country-specific.

• Loren Baker, Editor on Mar 9, 2006 at 10:40 pm

  Andre,

  “The reason is the same: it is because there are Brazilians there. A connected Brazilian almost cannot not be on orkut, because all your friends are, and that is how your junior high buddies reconnect with you. Also, Brazilians scared everyone else away because of volume and the others gave up since they didn’t feel very comfortable (Brazilians didn’t feel the need to make anyone else comfortable).”

  I love this quote!

• Loren Baker, Editor on Mar 9, 2006 at 11:09 pm

  Andre,

  “I really recommend you replace your monitor with another one, or have your eyes checked for color-blindness. yellow-green is not the same as light blue-magenta.”

  I’m referring to the alternate World Cup jersey (yes, I’m fully aware of the Yellow/Green/Blue colors, I’m looking at various things around my apartment right now):

  

• karen on Mar 10, 2006 at 1:50 am

  Brilliant! When will some clever North American type outdo the cutesy Friendster and MySpace and give us what we really want (Bud)?

• Mateus Caruccio on Mar 10, 2006 at 10:47 am

  “The reason is the same: it is because there are Brazilians there.”

  Sorry, but this explains nothing. THIS is the question: “why there are so many brazilians in orkut ?”

  My opinion is that because it’s funny, new (well, not really new concept) and easy to access.

• Mateus Caruccio on Mar 10, 2006 at 10:50 am

  LuckyMan, can’t ou figure ? OF CORSE it’s a joke (the yakult thing) !

• Marcelo Sant'Iago on Mar 10, 2006 at 11:13 am

  Hi, Very interesting discussion, I followed-up to my friends at Google.
  There is also another unexplicable buzz around MSN Messenger: there is a huge number of people using it, instead of Yahoo Messenger or AOL. As far as I know Brazil is already the seconds largest user of MSN Messenger in the whole world. In the past ICQ was the leader on IM arena, but for 2 years now MSN reigns alone. And there is only one explanation for that: all your friends are there, just like Orkut.Thanks, marcelo

• Loren Baker, Editor on Mar 10, 2006 at 11:20 am

  If all of your friends are on Orkut, I wonder if Google will make a Google Talk and GMail push in Brazil via Orkut to convert the MSN users to fully integrated communications network.

  Seems that if they can accomplish that, building awareness of search and expanding their market in Brazilian search advertising would be quite easy.

• Luis de la Orden Morais on Mar 13, 2006 at 3:58 pm

  Dear Loren,

  I am just back from an extended weekend holiday on the British seaside, after almost losing my hearing to the cold (I swear it was frostbite) whilst contemplating the waves in the five minutes I ventured outside the family hut in search of that little taste of Brazil I miss so much.

  Back home, I was very pleased to read your response clarifying the poverty-crime theme and much happier to hear of how much you really know about us and our Country, contrary to what I thought initially.

  What I know of Brazil is Bahia, where I was born, as well as Pará, Sergipe and Minas Gerais. I have never been to São Paulo or Rio (yeah I am a real tabaréu (country bumpkin, for those not familiar with the lingo) ). I think you are right about Brazilians being precautious but if you permit me to repeat something that you already have clarified and proved to know very well, this is a behaviour found in all social classes.

  I think it is very good that you started researching the Orkut phenomenon in Brazil, I even think that if you dig up a little bit more, you may have a study in your hands which may be worth quite a few bucks and help foreign companies such as Google to understand what our needs are. Who knows, but you might even be on the way to write the book to topple Freakonomics.

  An English friend of mine once told me that Brazilians are one of the biggest communities in Adult Friend Finder, a paid social circle network for those wanting something more than friendship (that friend is not me ok ? No, serious. I was just teaching him the chat-up lines). I think it is valid to analyse all these sources as well in order to see whether there are other underlying stimuli working in the Brazilian psyche when something like Orkut is on offer.

  Many thanks for your kind care and attention to my comment.
  Best regards to you and the family! Keep up the good work!

  Um abraço!

  Luis
  Webalorixá Magazine
  www.webalorixa.net

• Loren Baker, Editor on Mar 14, 2006 at 12:46 am

  Prof. Carlos Ramalhete,

  Thank you for the suggestion. I think that the book by DaMatta will not only help me understand Orkut’s popularity a bit more, but also help me understand my in-law’s :)

  Best, Loren

• Maria da Silva on Mar 21, 2006 at 10:08 am

  Are you in sick?
  Atamaa senn hipateru, yokunai!
  I’M BRAZILIAN BUT, DO-NOT-USE ORKUT.
  OOOPS! You get wrong!
  Anatá MATIGATETA! M A Z U I !!!!!

• Fabricio on Mar 23, 2006 at 7:17 am

  Hi, Loren,
  It was a great pleasure to read something about BraSil written by someone living somewhere around the world. But I must (being brazilian, living in são paulo and joining orkut since it was created) argue about some topics:
  - Yakult/Orkut pronounce association isn’t so relevant here. Believe me.
  - Competitivity is not the point.
  - Orkut theme colors aren’t similar to the ones in the picture ahead. Really.

  Orkut popularity in Brasil, in my opinion, was granted by the natural sociability of brasileiros. People in here are really talkative, outgoing, comunicative, and cares about closer relationships. We are really proud of acting this way and of being born here, and orkut association with Brasil contributed a lot to the site.

  Congratulations for your studies and posts. Altough it’s the first time i comment one of them, reading them has become a routine for me =)

  See ya!

• Loren Baker, Editor on Mar 31, 2006 at 12:17 am

  Thanks Fabrico,

  “Orkut popularity in Brasil, in my opinion, was granted by the natural sociability of brasileiros. People in here are really talkative, outgoing, comunicative, and cares about closer relationships.”

  All understood. But the question is… Why Orkut?

• Generators on Apr 17, 2006 at 9:50 pm

  It is funny that so many sites make it huge by word of mouth over regular advertising. It is just so much more effective and of course free if you are lucky enough to get it. Then everyone is impressed with the story and you get free advertising in articles and on TV. It seems that you just have to take one college campus by storm and you have a 50/50 chance of pulling something huge off…

• martijn on Aug 24, 2006 at 2:49 pm

  I’m not a brazilian… nor do I speak portuguese..
  Social Community sites are huge everywhere! Why Orkut became especially huge in brasil, that’s the question. I enjoyed reading the above analysis. But on the other hand… I think that the solution to our queste lies in this: The main differentiator between Orkut and other communities is that Orkut is by invite only… As has been said above: It seems to be harder not to get invited than to get invited FOR BRASILIANS. I, for one, was invited to orkut one time only (I’m dutch) and the invitation was sent out by a.. brasilian friend.

  So maybe it’s ‘coincedence’ added to some cultural differences (the brasilians being more ’social’ than the average european.

  One drawback (or is it an advantage?) of any system of invite-only is that it potentially stays within a circle, granted, it is a fairly huge circle.but it does stay within the circle

  So to conclude;
  - Orkut is by invite only therefore giving the first members the opportunity to ‘direct’ the circle.
  - Maybe that brasilians, because of there more socially and tribal oriented culture, were quick(er) to understand the system and use it to their advantage..
  - once the tipping point has been reached…
  - Maybe Orkut did had a stronger appeal at first sight because the name sounded more friendly (iogurte, no-one dislike yoghurt right?) or had a childhod association with it, then friendster did.

  to be honest, I think it would make an interesting case study for antropologists or mathematics, economists and the likes…. damn why did I study design :)

• Ze da Silva on Aug 24, 2006 at 9:57 pm

  I completely and utterly agree with the lack of depth in these numerous friend counts people sport in Orkut.

  Speaking for myself, I’ve got about 4 good friends in real_life_(tm), about 20 which I interact every once in a while, but 300+ friends in my orkut profile.

  Every other person you stumble upon sends you a friendship request. Sometimes people add me just because they found my profile “cute”. WTF?! And it’s sort of impolite to reject a friendship request.

  Open conversation I’ve had about orkut with close friends turned up the same general feelings of emptyness and shallowness.

  There’s also “orkuticides” - people killing their own profile in orkut after finding the lack of gratification in the “orkut experience” too frustrating. Most of the notes are like this “My true friends know how and where to find me. Bye”. See a pattern here ? I do.

  So, hey, dont be fooled with “people here care sooo much about relationships, aint it cutey?”. It’s more about looks, power, status. Just like everybody else :) . Same sh*t, same sh*t. Good old social anxiety disorder.

  Were we soo gregarious, we’d be all over meetup.com instead.

  Oh BTW I’m Brazilian, 24 yr old, using Internet since ~10 yr old, and Orkut since it all started. What do I call Orkut ? My distributed, self-updating, contacts list. And thats all.

• Crespo on Oct 30, 2006 at 2:52 am

  Man, u r totally crazy !!!!! What do u think ’bout brazilians? I’m from Brazil and I think MySpace so easy to say. Orkut is harder to say than MySpace, the word “Orkut” sounds like something arabic…. Well, probabilly ur wife didn’t live here for a long time. Brazil is changing, is growing. Everyone speaks english.

• Ameya on Nov 22, 2006 at 3:26 am

  Hi,
  Good observations.
  I am Ameya.. an Orkuter from India. Now I am waiting for your next research on “Why India loves Orkut” ;-)

  Orkut is at rank two. And very soon it will overtake yahoo in India.
  To help you in reasoning for your next research..
  I think the reasons are
  1. Popularity of Gmail and Google
  2. Popularity of Google talk (very small fraction of Indians might use msn)
  3. No Ads on Orkut
  4. Speed of loading (network bandwith is pathetic sometimes.. who has time and money to wait for lot of unnecessary stuff.. like images and videos to load..)
  5. And similar to Brazil.. I joined because of my friend.. ………

  Regards,
  Ameya

• Bruno Carvalho on Dec 6, 2006 at 11:33 pm

  INSANE, INSANE, INSANE. This is one of the most ridiculous things i’ve ever read. Just to quote a stupid thing: “Tribalistas” is a musical group from 2002 that doesn’t exist anymore and has nothing to do with Orkut’s “tribos”. Only the ethimology of the word is the same.

  MY F******NG GOD!!!

  Oh, there’s no city in Brazil called Floripa.The name is Florianópolis; we don’t pronounce it “goo-gly”, unless you think WE are retarded. And hey:

  Yakult is not Yogurt!

• Bruno Carvalho on Dec 6, 2006 at 11:44 pm

  OH MY!!! SELLING TELE SENA DOOR-TO-DOOR IS NOT “poluição visual” !!!!!!! This term means visual pollution! Unless the Tele Sena sellers are smoking in our homes!!!!!

  Man, seriously, stop doing this. It’s not for you…

• Vijay on Dec 9, 2006 at 1:14 pm

  Very interesting discussion indeed..

  I see two big communities in Orkut, Brazillians and Indians although there is that mention that Americans are the second biggest community (my personal take is that it is the Indian, Brazillian community in USA that is boosting up the numbers)..the only common thing thread binding these countries is their sense of belonging to a community, their thirst for social gatherings, groupings etc. I am an Indian and I know the number of festivals, get-togethers we have far surpasses what I have seen in other countries. A sense of sharing and show-off is also a part of our culture :). Maybe orkut invitations were distributed equally amongst people from different nations, but Indians and Brazillians just grew it out of bounds virally!! Once you reach a critical mass, the whole process is self-sustaining, growing and feeding itself :). IMHO, India being the second most populous country with a vibrant “young generation” will soon come very near to Brazillian dominance on Orkut and probably even cross it.

• Vijay on Dec 9, 2006 at 1:19 pm

  Oops..forgot to mention above that Orkut’s “by invitation only” policy was the reason why other communities couldn’t grow it as good as the Brazil/Indians….All other social networking websites were not by invitation (in fact, Orkut is no longer that way too)…We Indians really believe in networking, networking to find jobs, networking to find solutions to problems, networking for matrimony etc etc

• Guilherme on Dec 12, 2006 at 8:18 am

  This is the most repulsive and ridiculous thing I ever read.
  You could do some research before start writing.

  No, no. You could die and born again!

• gabriel on Dec 12, 2006 at 11:51 am

  Hi,

  Please allow me do some referrals:

  . Orkut is popular in brazil because it´s simple and easy to anvigate. It allows liberty of thought, expressions and networking.

  . But the most important reason for all that is that brazilians are leading a technology revolution: internet home banking solutions, gamming programming, and others. We have the best outsourcing technologies companies.

  . Not only that: we spend more time on internet than any other country.

  . The mainstream of my idea/argument is that brazilians are acepting very well new technologies, from computer to mobile platform.

  . Yeat, we are needy of “popularity” and “identification” and orkut communities permits the user to identify itself with lots of behavior and/or ideas.

  I work at an online viral marketing agency and I do agree in part of what was told. Really, bringing up the topic “naming” as one of the reason for the sucess of Orkut in Brazil is not the reason.

  The first time I used Orkut in Brazil was to find my old schoolmates which I lost contact since I left Brazil in 1995. In Brazil, we do not have the custom/tradition to do “old schoolmates reunion - type: class of 98 reunion. So, Orkut came to fill up this gap.

  Well, I would really love to see the result of this conversation since I use orkut´s comunnities to advertise products, brands and promotions; such as: TIM, BrasilTelecom, Caixa Econômica Federal, Sagatiba, Microsoft and others.

  Lauren, I would love to keep in touch with you. Please, let´s keep this conversation on e-mail. And Marcelo Sant´Iago, please let´s talk about this topic which might enrich our skills and principally ours results.

  Best regards,

• Janille on Dec 16, 2006 at 8:19 pm

  The most retarded thing I’ve ever read.
  Have you completely lost your mind?

• Regiane Parker on Dec 17, 2006 at 6:01 pm

  Hi Gabriel,
  I agree with all you said… yes Brazilians are very into technologies and a lot of people outside of Brazil don’t know that…
  Brazilians love to be around friends and family and they love to share their thoughts and be passionated about it… They like to be up to date with new technologies aroud the world…

  Sincerely,

  Regiane Parker
  For you success
  http://monavie2006.payitforward4profits.com

• Vitor on Dec 19, 2006 at 1:09 pm

  You seem to know nothing about Brazil, really, believe in this brazilian… The fact is that orkut is much more user friendly than that ugly myspace you love… Yakult? Yogurte? Soccer? Fala sério!!!

• Johannah Dias on Jan 3, 2007 at 8:44 am

  Tribalistas?

  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tribalistas

  Goo-gly?

  Never ever heard!!!

  Research dude don’t make a fool of yourself!!!

• Karen Oliveira on Jan 5, 2007 at 1:53 am

  Hey..i’m BRAZILIAN and i think your explanations are AMAZING, you’re very creative and thought bout every single possibility…[ sometimes it was even too much (honestly)].
  Everybody here is trying to evaluate our nation what is kind of nice couse i’d not lose my time trying to evaluate U.S.
  This unintentional association between the words Orkut and Iogurte is really true, it’s exactly how it goes down (to me), but google and yahoo are hard couse the sound of the double “o” is “u”, the “h” have sound of “rr” and there’s no “y” on brazilian words just “i”… so sounds like gugle and iarru.However the color, the advertises and the pronounce are not truly relevant.
  We also don’t judge others for the ability to access the Internet, write and read correctly, brazilians abbreviate almost all the words on internet and we also are not proud of our culture or economic position in South America we just try to don’t forget our culture after this u.s./europe “worldwide domination” , we’re nacionalits just on the world cup (seriously) and almost all brazilians complain about their country every 10 minuntes (i do)
  The part of competitiveness between women was reeeeally funny….and the crazy pieced off brazilians that posted here too…
  .
  HONESTLY I LOVED YOUR POST…besides that parts i said i don’t agree the things you posted are true especially when you said we’re community oriented…brazilian people are very friendly and nice and it’s part of the culture…when u’re a reserved person they think u are a snob and you’re picked on (like i am)…

• Karen Oliveira on Jan 5, 2007 at 2:18 am

  And, by the way, we chose orkut becouse was the first to come to Brazil… the fisrt brazilians joined for curiosity…and the rest of us joined becouse we had friends there (and we give so much importance to our friends that after some years millions of brazilians joined).we adapted ourselfs to the clean, simple and easy way that orkut works and we got used to it (we don’t need to understand HTML to have a beautiful attractive orkut)….and now it’s hard to the most of brazilians to adapt theirselves to the new colorful sites……

• Alan on Jan 6, 2007 at 2:24 pm

  what you’ve been posted on here makes no sense,i think you got to think again and considerate all the things you post.Brazilians dont adapt themselves to other sites for a simple reason, most of the new sites that have been created are in english and as everyone knows most of brazilians citizens dont speak english. I can tell that because i’m a brazilian and i’ve been living here my entire life. I really dont think non portuguese-speakers have problems to pronounce the word Orkut it’s really easy. Of course there’s different between an english and a brazilian pronounciation. Another thing that i should stand up it’s myspace it’s a blog not a web site while orkut it’s definetely a profile. I’m not here only to criticise your posting but i think you’ve missed out a bit of your life writing such a thing “straight up”. I really dislike Orkut alot it’s been becoming an ancient site which it has no resources to allow the uploading of songs and video, analyzing by this point i’d actually rather bebo than myspace or Orkut. To Rebound one of your remarks that you cited Orkut’s become famous because of most of brazilians access internet from cyber cafes and so on…….it’s worth while standing up that the factor that involve Orkut becomin’ famous is that brazilians rather talk to other brazilians instead talking to foreigners you may keep thinking why they do act like that i think it’s because they love rate their own culture and their language portuguese which i think it’s hateful once Brazil’s a country with no hope of rising up. We no longer may increase this country but people always think up someday we will save this large “stranded” country.

• Bruno Lobo on Jan 10, 2007 at 9:02 am

  Orkut is the best thing.
  Myspace is sux.
  there is no communication!

• Teo on Jan 11, 2007 at 5:39 am

  Gosh, you’ve got some really anoying readers who just want to show off! (just like many Orkut users)

  Great article, I agree with most points (except the one about the colours), and for me, Yakult = Orkut, they both bring childhood memories.

• Saleesh on Jan 11, 2007 at 1:11 pm

  Not only Brazilians..INDIANS are also community oriented…:)

  Any way I agree with your argument..

  Cheers
  Saleesh

• Gabriel velloso on Jan 26, 2007 at 6:16 am

  Very nice, the thing about pronuciation, I am brazilian and I know how to spell any world in english. But i know too much people here that probable wont do that.
  I liked it, anything that you need for here just mail me.

• Peter (Cadastro de Sites) on Jan 28, 2007 at 6:59 pm

  I think one of the most important points hasn’t been mentioned yet. Orkut belongs to Google, which was already a trusted site in Brazil. Maybe in Brazil more than the average, trust is gained especially through being referred to by a trusted source. In this case, Google.

  No other networking site has this advantage in Brazil.

• Marco on Feb 7, 2007 at 7:23 pm

  Vc Pergunta:
  “Por Q Justo O Orkut?”
  Acredito Q Foi Pelo Simples Fato Dele Ter Sido O 1º A Fazer Sucesso!!!!
  Como Somos Um Povo Amigo ( Apesar Das Diferenças Gigantes D Cada Região Do País), Gostamos D Firmar Amizades Bem Como Fazer Novas.
  Assim, Vamos Procurando Adicionar Os Amigos Em Um Só Núcleo!!!
  Não Há Essa Teoria D Cor, Pronúncia Ou O Q Quer Q Seja…Trata-se Apenas Do Caminho Natural D Amigos Q Convidam Amigos & Assim Segue…
  Voltando:
  Como Os Brasileiros Têm Fortes Relações D Amizade, & Tb Uma Incrível Vocação Para A Novidade, É Óbvio Q Encontraram No Orkut Um Amplo & Diversificado Espaço D “Encontros”!
  Temos Tb Sites D Amizades Nacionais Q Não Chegam Nem Perto Da Abrangência Do Orkut, & Olha Q Seus Nomes São Em Português Mesmo & Tb Usam Cores “Nacionais”!!!!
  Em Síntese:
  Trata-se D Uma Progressão Geométrica!
  Um Abraço & Espero Ter Contribuído!!!
  P.S.: Sim, Sou Brasileiro!

• Caio Maurano on Mar 4, 2007 at 4:06 pm

  I think there are many Brazilians in Orkut because a big part of Brazilian people is very vain,and because Orkut is a kind of tribune.We have a communist goverment,a gang in the goverment,and the situation here is very dangerous,the crime is out of control and the Brazilian democrace is a fiction.
  Then,Orkut is being used by many Brazilian that want to write about this destroction in Brazil,specialy because the Brazilian media(newspaper,news tv show,magazines,etc.)is not honesty;and Orkut is a free area for Brazilian people say what their think and to show informations.
  Of course,there are bad people too.The communists in Brazil are teaching the hate against USA,agaisnt the democrace in Brazil and against our free institucions.So,there are many comunists rats in Orkut,using an American site,to teach the hate against USA and against the freedom.
  That’s why there are many Brazilians in Orkut.
  P.S.:Of course,Orkut is also good to have friends,from Brazil,USA and others parts of the world.

  Good Bye…

• Fábio Caparica de Luna on Apr 18, 2007 at 5:01 pm

  Hi Folks…

  Why Orkut?

  a) Errr… Why not?
  b) Or… Who Cares?

• Stella Roy on Apr 20, 2007 at 7:23 am

  Wow! What a study you have done! Wonderful to read it. BTW did you know that orkut is bigger then google in India? The whole of young India is addicted to Orkut. I guess I know several reasons for it. Maybe sometime I will write it on my blog http://rahul-stella.blogspot.com

  Regards

  -Stella Roy

• Fernando Dantas on Apr 24, 2007 at 3:14 pm

  What would you fell if Id say:
  “All americans thinks they own the planet”
  “The americans are the cause of 25% of the global warming and dont give a fu*k for anyone else”
  “All americans are FAT, healthless, and all they eat is junk shit fast food”
  !??!!?!?!??!?!?
  DUDE…try typing at “goo-gly”: “BRAZIL”, before saying things you dont know…
  better yet: dont…EVER…..try typing anything again(in your life!)

• Anelise on Apr 25, 2007 at 10:49 am

  Spot on your article was! I am Brazilian, and a member of Orkut, and the reasons you gave for Brazilians LOVING Orkut are on the spot! Great article, and do not listen to the “uncultured” people trying to make fun of it.

• Ryan NYC on Apr 30, 2007 at 12:32 am

  The Portuguese pronunciation of Orkut is
  or-KOO-chee and of yogurt is yo-goor-chee.
  If you say Orkut or yogurt in Brazil, nobody knows what you’re talking about. When I was invited to join , by a Brazilian relative, I didn’t know anything about it. I speak mostly English because I have lived in NYC for the past 20 years. I found interesting the way it sounded when I first heard from a Brazilian , and because I had seen the name first in print and pronouced it in my head in English, when I first heard it spoken in Portuguese, I had to ask what Or-koo-chee meant. Brazilians , as well as Indians (the second largest number of Orkut members) , cultures are very family oriented and have much stronger community values than in more industrialized and individualistic cultures in countries like the US. That’s why blogs, and individual account based interactive sites do better in the US. The cult of personality mentality of individualism over family and community has fragmented the society, and in major metropolitan areas like NYC and LA millions live alone and lonely lives. People are also warmer and melow in Brazil because of climate and a slower pace of life. In Brazil people have colective activitities for everything. Soccer games , the national and world cups, carnaval nationwide , christmas, summer vacations for a month at the beaches , after work drinks with friends and so on. No wonder Orkut spreads like wild fire there. It is a good way for those outside the country to stay in touch with family and friends too, in a group setting as opposed to email and chatrooms.

• Prabhat kiran on Apr 30, 2007 at 3:47 pm

  Orkut is equally famous in India…Infact it is more popular and has more users in India than Brazil.
  Some points that has been mentioned does make sense in India too.. Like communities, there are many language, state, college and even caste based communities in Orkut.
  But still…wonder what could be the USP that kicked orkut more famous than my space here?

• Merabuddy on May 5, 2007 at 7:47 am

  Merabuddy is coming soon. This community will be 100% Indian community!!

• nick on May 10, 2007 at 8:25 am

  ORKUT MAIL GROUP AND FRIENDS

• Victor on May 17, 2007 at 11:30 am

  i’ve never read such stupid thing like that before.

• Bihar on May 21, 2007 at 10:11 am

  yes that is correct. even indians are community orientated and all sorts of communities are there, love this-hate that.

• Tofusensei on May 25, 2007 at 11:04 am

  People often forget to mention that Orkut was becoming EXTREMELY popular in America in its early days before Brazilians invaded and took it over. They utilized so much bandwidth that it became almost unusable during certain hours of the day (page errors, very slow), not to mention the general annoyingness of Brazilians who lack any amount of netiquette.

  To say it didn’t catch on in America is not telling the whole story. It was well on its way to being one of the best, if not the best, social networking site in the USA before it was sidelined by the Brazilian invasion.

  I wish you could +b *.br on some websites sometimes. :X

• Ryan NYC on May 26, 2007 at 2:42 pm

  Oh Well, I take issue with your xenophobic approach to what you call a “Brazilian invasion”, Indian or Martian. Why would there be a need to place a B or “X” to identify any given community in the Orkut network? The language used at any given forum should be a sufficient clue to you as to its origin. How about a yellow star of David to identify the Brazilian manace?

  Labeling Brazilians less ethical than any other particular group of Orkut users, it’s just a gross generalization. Stupidity knows no bounds and there’s plenty of evidence for that argument.

  Like it or not, Brazilians and Indians dominate the site, which may suggest many things. I see it as an indicator of the cultural nature of India/Brazil’s communal characteristics in contrast with American individualistic culture, however oversimplifying that may appear to be.

• Edney Matos on Jun 1, 2007 at 1:06 pm

  I am Brazilian
  I Like Orkut, It´s Cool!!

• Praveen Lohani on Jun 7, 2007 at 6:46 am

  I am from India and Orkut rocks in India too.
  http://www.orkut.com/Profile.aspx?uid=9254439081700188350

  In our case however (as in the case of Brazil too, I feel) it has nothing to do with speech.
  Social networking online is nothing but a replication of a person’s, offline social behaviour, online.
  In real life, I like to be at a place where I have my firends, to chat with them, to flirt, romance, criticise, politicise and to be part of groups. The main motivator is “My Friends”.

  Wanna know Orkuch! (the Hindi word for Anything More?)

• Rishil on Aug 24, 2007 at 10:58 pm

  With growing popularity of Orkut in the world, the developers is all set to release a new version/avatar of orkut… for an sneek preview check out http://askwiki.blogspot.com/2007/08/orkut-will-soon-have-new-look.html Orkut Rocks!!

• Adrian Livio on Sep 20, 2007 at 4:32 pm

  Hi all,

  All aspects cited in the are valid, the lees valid in my opinion is the colour theme (the Brazilians do not love Orkut because the soccer team)

  The name really sound likes “iogurte” my younger brother call it “iorkut” :p

  But in my opinion the most influence fact on orkut popularity is the TV influence.

  The orkut has presented in a TV program called Fantástico” from TV Globo” the most influent TV channel in Brazil.

  After that many people created orkut accounts and the think grows exponentially.

  The TV Globo really influences the Brazilian pleople :(

• Adrian Livio on Sep 20, 2007 at 4:36 pm

  Just search for the documentary “Beyond Citizen Kane”
  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Beyond_Citizen_Kane

• Lucio Jadao on Oct 28, 2007 at 2:59 am

  Well, after reading all this comments about Orkut popularity in Brazil I have a moment of self discovering ” We Brazilians are doing great” .. it’s a proof that Orkut is really successfully working in Brazil and this success is totally buthering people around the world. Some others kinds of networking services over the internet have not developed as Orkut has and I wonder why?, maybe because those networking services are not filled out with people that make them better..It really makes me feel happier to know throughout Orkut we can show all over the world how Brazilians are able to make something work out when they really want to.

  We can enjoy as much as we want!

• Grespan on Dec 31, 2007 at 10:29 pm

  Well I must say why I think brazilians choose Orkut. 1st there are different kinds of brazilians: brazilians who don’t know other social networking sites and brazilians who Do know. I know Gazzag and MySpace. About Gazzag…it’s like Orkut but there is fewer people…so why would we try it? MySpace? WTF is that site? I made a profile there sometime ago because I wanted a Gobal network and not a ‘brazilian’ one. MySpace has lack of support..a bunch of online sellers and spams…what is that? WTF is that ? rsrssr…that site is a joke. So we go to Orkut and there is…our best friends, a lot of funny people to know, communities where we can laugh, play crazy silly games and meet people. We were invited by friends, it’s not easy for some idiot spammer or seller to enter. Most communitie’s owner controls the invading spams. It’s easy to use. I think brazilians love photos and landscapes and it’s funny to see other people’s album. And to make our own.
  I think the question is how Orkut have beggining in Brazil because at this point brazilians join Orkut because their friends are already there. And I think the answer is this: why would a brazilian want to join a site like MySpace when Orkut is far better? And the answer is this too: Other countries aren’t having that much fun with Orkut. Simple like that.

• Grespan on Dec 31, 2007 at 10:57 pm

  I also must say: There are few big countries around the world. Brazil is one of them, India is another one. One interesting question would be why USA and China aren’t using Orkut?
  In China maybe it’s forbidden…
  But in USA I can’t understand. And I can’t believe they like MyJunk.

• Nico on Mar 1, 2008 at 5:04 pm

  It’s just a bandwith issue, guys. Of course, the wave or rumours did its part, but after the intial reasons. The early adopters in Brazil from the technology sector chose orkut because it loaded faster than others, you know, like gmail versus hotmail. That’s it.
  Affordable bandwith in India and Brazil were, and still are, slower than in Europe or the U.S.
  And orkut was not multimedia filled at all, unlike myspace. It was simple, fast and, yeah, homogeneous: easy to figure out.

  Time. Time will always be the main reason.

• にゃん on Mar 15, 2008 at 11:11 pm

  “differencia social” ?
  differencia Ｘ
  diferença　〇

• Salil on Mar 22, 2008 at 5:48 am

  I am lucky to have some friends from Brazil in Orkut. I am a true lover of Brasil for their culture, friendly people, football, beaches and babes.
  Brazil Rocks!!!

• Toboc on Mar 22, 2008 at 5:50 am

  I think Brasilians are very friendly. I have some good friends in orkut from there.

• Fabio on Apr 2, 2008 at 8:34 am

  The reason is simple: Orkut was the first one to appear around here….

• xD on Apr 2, 2008 at 5:59 pm

  I’m brazilian………and sincerelly, the collor and pronounce things was the most stuped of this post!

• Ádrian Livio on Apr 2, 2008 at 7:57 pm

  xD and Fabio,
  Do you agree with my opinion about Fantastico TV Show influence?

• xD on Apr 3, 2008 at 7:11 pm

  Yeh Ádrian……infortunetly Tv Globo have a lot of influence here!Globo it’s the moste famous tv Here!

• Robin on Apr 7, 2008 at 1:53 pm

  Football..Brasil..Football…Brasil!!!
  Football…my passion

• vitor ogawa on Apr 11, 2008 at 6:13 pm

  Hi, my name is Vitor and I’m in Orkut since 2004. The first time someone told me about orkut was in a journalism discussion group, and I asked for an invitation to join the service as a Beta tester. I remember that, in the beginning, there were so many north americans as brazilians. There were a lot of argues because of the languages. The americans started to complain against the users that have written in portuguese. So, the americans created some communities or foruns against brazilians. That made some brazilians reply writing emails to their friends and inviting everyone they knew to join Orkut to protest against xenophobia. Then a campaign started to overcome the number of american users and to assure the right to use portuguese language in foruns. I remember I used to receive emails saying that the brazilians users were close to overcome the number of american users. Suddenly, everybody was there. Your neighbor, your ex-classmate, your co-worker, the girl you like. Then started another level. When they realize that they won that “battle” and they could talk in Portuguese, they started to ask: “And Now? What does that mean? What can I do?” Orkut was a good tool without ANY ad. Then brazilians started to create games, communities of their former school, use that to chat and find another uses to that social network. That’s why it became so popular in Brazil. But, suddenly, spammers start to post scraps and “love messages”. Another guys started to stole photos to use in a fake profile. Since then started a move to “orkuticide”, an expression to define someone who comitted suicide in Orkut. Now orkut have some tools to lock the access to that photos. I know a lot of people who did that. Some of them created another profile with another identity to avoid any danger. Some migrated to another social networks services. And some still have their Orkut profile and joined MySpace, Friendster, V6, Tagged, Facebook, UOL, and others.

• lucaugusto on May 1, 2008 at 12:35 am

  Google (and orkut) is very popular in Brazil, because google is simple, clear, and fast. No big ads. No junk mail. I simply trust Google. Now, I trust Orkut.

• Ricardo Nonomura on Jun 19, 2008 at 9:59 am

  I’m a brazilian nikkey, and I also associate the word with yogurt, and not with yakult ;-)

• handsomehaider2008 on Jul 17, 2008 at 1:22 pm

  i like & i neeed sexy girls

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