Why I Have an Orkut Account

As many of you know (because that's how you were directed to this post), I have a Facebook account. You can search for me over there. I actively update my status. I play the games. (That's right. I have a farm AND a Mafia!) I also have a Twitter account, and I tweet a lot. Sure, a lot of my tweets are retweets (and I will discuss ReTweet, the Android app, at a later date), but it's fun.

What many of you don't know is that I also have an account on Orkut. Wait.... do you even know what Orkut is? Well, let's go to the "official" Google description of their social network:

"orkut is an online community designed to make your social life more active and stimulating"

(source, http://www.orkut.com/Main#about.aspx)

Nice theory. But I only have four friends, so I am just not getting far there. Incidentally, all four of those friends are also my friends on Facebook. So that's not the reason.

A look at the demographics (http://www.orkut.com/Main#MembersAll) shows something different about Orkut. The largest populations of members are from Brazil and India. The United States rates a distant 3rd. So, perhaps a way to find a new audience for my ramblings (even though I only have four friends!)?

No, that's not it, either - although it is kind of interesting to see so many posts in Portuguese.

As I alluded to earlier in this post, Orkut is owned by that #2 site on the Internet, Google. Love them or hate that, you are foolish to ignore them. I don't know if Orkut is going to become the basis for the long-rumored GoogleMe "Facebook-killer" social network - in fact, I kind of doubt that it will - but I do suspect that Google will test some of their concepts there.

At least one Google Chrome extension that I use a lot - Social Translate (https://chrome.google.com/extensions/detail/giljlmclogpacbccpelmggfcjnickhhf) - was built so fools like me, who don't really speak Portuguese all that well, could read those Brazilian posts on Orkut. That extension works with Facebook and Twitter as well; it works with languages other than Portuguese, too (which is good for someone who has a LOT of Norwegian friends).

Google is also all about integration and single sign-in. Orkut was one of the first social networks to have a native app available in Android Market. Anyone who has ever gotten an Android-based phone know that, in order to activate the phone, a GMail account is required. Now, I already had a GMail account, so no worries. Many people signed up for GMail solely because they chose an Android phone. But now, you have a Google account. And that same Google account.... works with Orkut. And, I suspect it will also work with GoogleMe if and when it comes.

Incidentally, that same Google account also works with several other Google services, that I will write about in future postings.

My final reason for wanting Orkut - besides wanting to be ahead of the curve on GoogleMe, loving the single sign-on, not being able to ignore anything Google does - is that I am a social network junkie. I joined because I wanted to see why it had more than 100 million members - sure, that's 20% of Facebook, but itis more than Twitter, it's more than Friendster, it's more than LinkedIn - that is a huge critical mass. And I just couldn't ignore that.

Now, I will be adding a link to my Orkut profile to Blogger profile (another service that uses the Google account, by the way) soon after I post this article. Please, feel free to be my friend there, too!