For A Social Site, Orkut Is Good At Making Enemies
from the trouble-everywhere-it-goes dept
As social-networking sites go, Google's Orkut is definitely something of an also-ran. It hasn't come close to capturing people's attention the way many of its rivals have, and the only significant activity it does see seems to come out of Brazil. And even in that market, much of the news is bad, as the site is seen as haven for drug dealers. This has lead to some unpleasant legal conflicts with Brazil's government. Even outside of Brazil, the site seems to be a magnet for trouble. A court in India has now deemed the site to be a breeding ground of anti-India hate, due to the presence of an anti-India user group, and an image of a burned Indian flag. Now we can understand the fact that MySpace is at the heart of many legal issues these days because it's wildly popular. But for how little Orkut means to Google, it seems to bring a disproportionate amount of trouble.Thank you for reading this Techdirt post. With so many things competing for everyone’s attention these days, we really appreciate you giving us your time. We work hard every day to put quality content out there for our community.
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Bigger trouble than they might imagine...
Having long considered myself a rabid fan of anything coming from under Google's roof, this was quite a surprise to me. But I see that they are using the same 'invitation only' scheme that they used to slowly grow GMail.com; that could have something to do with it as well:
"orkut is unique, because it's an organically growing network of trusted friends. That way we won't grow too large, too quickly and everyone will have at least one person to vouch for them."
"If you know someone who is a member of orkut, that person can invite you to join as well. If you don't know an orkut member, wait a bit and most likely you soon will."
"We look forward to having you as part of the orkut community."
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About orkut
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About orkut
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Re: Brazil
I get a lot of "invite to be my friend" from Brazilian users from out of the blue. Is getting as many "friends" as you can part of the fun? I must be out of touch with this whole social networking thing.
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Re:
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Nice post, but...
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Orkut Buyukkokten's janky app
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doctor
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