Orkut is Google’s popular social networking service. I recently looked over the orkut demographics (requires login) and was surprised to see that over 60% users are from Brazil. There must be a reason why Orkut is so popular among Brazilians… so I went looking.
In 2004, Orkut agreed to the fact that Brazilians are the largest community in orkut and explained some reasons for the phenomenon. Another article in 2004, Orkut vs. the Brazilians confirms this older well noted fact.
“The United States has at least 153 million Internet users, compared with Brazil’s 20 million. Still, Orkut said Brazilians dominated its membership roster in June, outnumbering Americans for the first time.
The site says it has more than 769,000 members, making it one of the largest and most popular of its type on the Internet. About 23.5 percent of the users are from the United States, while another 41.2 percent are Brazilians.”
Mercurial explains that Brazil is the sixth largest country in the world, and presented some demographic data to support the explanation. But the Brazil dominance is increasing in Orkut over these years from over 40% then to over 60% now.
Recently the phenomenon was noted by Loren Baker of Search Engine Journal and he enlists 11 points why Brazil loves Orkut. He reveals some interesting points like Brazilians are incredibly community oriented, Orkut is very easy to pronounce in Portuguese and how Orkut sounds like Yakult or iogurte (yogurt), the Brazilian version of the popular Japanese Yakult yogurt drink.
Whatever the case, Brazilians dominate Orkut by a substantial margin and the lead is progressively increasing…