What Can Orkut Do For Your Love Life?

OrkutWhen I was India in January 2007, my friend Akshay Chikodi asked me if was on Orkut. Frankly, he said, if you’re not on Orkut you don’t exist! So I created a profile on Orkut.

Couple things I don’t get about Orkut:

  • What is it trying to be - a social networking tool? dating site? First thing you create a profile, you see this message - Next steps: Are you single? Tell everyone what you are looking for to get orkut working for you!
  • It looks like a developer’s prototype when compared to Facebook.

But obviously, it is definitely doing a few things right. Read Gautam’s post here, Alexa ranks Orkut second in India followed by Yahoo. Orkut on last count had over 57.4M users, 15% = 8.6M Indians on Orkut. Even though it seems a bit on the higher side, it nevertheless is a great tool for people search. People search online is catching on and I don’t think there exists a better database of Indians in India and abroad - profiles with real names, pictures, bios & interests, life/event updates and a listing of every other friend on Orkut.

Some Orkut demographics from here:

  • Over 15% of Orkut profiles are Indians (Brazil on top with 55%, followed by US with 19% users).

  • 70% users are between ages 18-30.

  • less than 20% are either married or committed (42% no answer, 36% single)

  • 65% are on Orkut for friends, 18% for dating

The last bit of info is very interesting. Given that a majority of users are between ages 18-30 and single, is Orkut big enough to challenge the hugely successful martrimonial and dating websites? Same for Facebook, can it be the end of Match.com and the likes? Why pay a premium for meeting other singles if you can “poke” or “send teasers” for no charge? Or is that too creepy for some users?

Orkut’s help section on “What can Orkut do for your love life?” here. If you’re on Orkut, I’d love to hear from you.

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