What is Digg?81 Comments
- HaltingPoint, on 10/12/2007, -1/+17I am the community owner of one of the largest Orkut Communities currently in existence. The Japanese Food & Sushi Lovers community. So when I say this, I speak with some authority...
Orkut was great when it first came out, and had a lot of international use, however it had a LOT of bugs and was slow as hell. Then there were two "plagues" if you will. The first was places that were overrun with Indian language speakers, the other was the Portugese language speakers.
Now, I personally didn't have a problem if they kept it to their own communities or communities without a language preference...but the general trend was for them to invade an existing popular ENGLISH ONLY community, then start talking in their language, and get REALLY pissed when people fought back, deleted their posts, banned them, etc.
The flame war in my community that occurred when I began enforcing the English Only rule was insane. I got scrapbook spammed, message spammed, bitched out on non-Orkut Portugese Japanese Food & Sushi lover sites, etc. Had people keep creating new names to come back and cause trouble once I had banned them, etc.
I even offered to let them speak in Portugese provided that they gave an english translation...which spoke to my true issue of making sure that everybody in the community could be included. English is the de facto international language, not Portugese, especially when you have native Japanese members who learn english growing up in school.
I have to say though...while I don't like to make blanket cultural judgements...those Brazilians have some of the dumbest comments ever, and their justifications for why it was alright to go against the rules and do whatever they wanted in the community really made me want to punch some of them. That being said there were also some very reasonable Brazilians who tried to keep the other ones in check.
All I can say is...let them have Orkut. As long as it keeps them the hell out of our other community sites! - NerdKing, on 10/12/2007, -0/+14Since I am a Brazilian myself I can give my 2 cents on the story. The NYT story is 100% acurate. But being a businessman I can tell you what. With over 80% Brazilian users in Orkut, Google will find it very difficult to pay Orkut expenses. Which big company would consider advertising on a website with such demographics? Only local companies, but just a few Brazilian companies advertise on the net. If I were Orkut's owner, I would be crying in dispair.
- gandre, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1215 million users and I still haven't gotten an invite :(
- Otto, on 10/12/2007, -0/+10I got one a couple years ago. I checked it out for about 15 minutes, decided it was stupid, never looked at it again.
Same as with MySpace, except it only took 3 minutes with MySpace. :) - dclowd9901, on 10/12/2007, -0/+9For the Brazilian women, man. The Brazilian women...
- WanderLustMan, on 10/12/2007, -0/+9otimo comentario....I agree, although Orkut is a great site and filled with people. The demographics are tough to advertise outside of a local media play. The amount of bandwidth the site must be sucking up is probably far larger than any ad revenue they can expect from local advertisers. I'm surprised Google has not yet decided to dump the asset or try and get someone to buy it.
- gooru, on 10/12/2007, -0/+8I've been on Orkut since soon after it was launched due to knowing someone at Google. It was exciting for the first month or so. Then, it completely fizzled out in the US. Not sure what happened there. It seems mostly useless for American users now, and groups that are marked clearly as English only are commonly overrun by posts in Portuguese. Google should really just change the site, so that it's completely targeted at Brazilian users, and run the site in Portuguese.
- pgouy, on 10/12/2007, -0/+7Actually, its quite bizarre! As a Brazilian myself i can't quite understand - yet - why orkut is so popular here.
The service pretty much sucks (bad, bad server no donuts for you), the interface is ugly and counter-intuitive, you can't add videos, blog, etc..
Everybody has an account there. I had mine for 1 year, but couldn't get pass the constant lack of donuts! :) - nefarious, on 10/12/2007, -0/+7Im on Orkut. If anyone wants an invite just to check it out, send me a message with your email and Ill send an invite out.
Nef - ericab, on 10/12/2007, -0/+6Need an invite? I got em.
- ThatsUnpossible, on 10/12/2007, -0/+6This is about as amazing as there being basically no portuguese users on MySpace.
- cheapo, on 10/12/2007, -0/+6Just wanna say that I'm brazilian, and I totally agree with you. Ppl here tend to think that they are the center of the world.
- Wamzlee, on 10/12/2007, -0/+5How do we send you a message?
- JustJon, on 10/12/2007, -0/+5I worked for a large website that was popular in Brazil (more popular there than in the US, where it was based) and everything had to cater to the Brazillian users or they would bitch and complain and spam until we did something about it.
Alternatively, they would always be adding things and posting to the site and always in Portugese, to the point of being rude to anyone who wasn't Brazillian or didn't speak/read Portugese. - cebailey, on 10/12/2007, -0/+5I paid $3 on eBay to get my name @gmail.com, with no numbers or hyphens or anything stupid. Totally worth it to me.
- JeremyVaught, on 10/12/2007, -1/+6gmail was totally worth it
- Wamzlee, on 10/12/2007, -1/+6Say friend, can I have an invite? haha
- geminitojanus, on 10/12/2007, -2/+7Uhh, there are invites _everywhere_. If you asked, you would get invited in a heartbeat.
They're at least as easy to get as Gmail invites. - beejay, on 10/12/2007, -0/+5I can confirm this. I tried Orkut when it was maybe one year old, and I hated it because it seemed everyone on there was Brazilian. Not anything against them, I just don't speak Portuguese.
- deej5871, on 10/12/2007, -0/+4"the more people that get on it the more popular it becomes"
That's usually how popularity works... - inactive, on 10/12/2007, -0/+4I would like an invite to what it's all about. arkestra a+ gmail.com. Thanks :)
- twollamalove, on 10/12/2007, -0/+4for getting that brazilian or-coochie as they say in Brazil
- tacom8, on 10/12/2007, -0/+4why would anyone charge for invites? do you as an okrut users lose anything by signing up people? why not just make a dummy account sorta thing and just whore out that account to everyone and their dog?
then again people payed for gmail accounts.... - cquilliam, on 10/12/2007, -0/+4I've been on Orkut for a while, but similar to other social networking sites like myspace, I find them quite boring and useless. Besides that, the Orkut servers are very tempormental, as a previous comment stated, error messages are quite common from the server
- petewall, on 10/12/2007, -1/+5I wonder how the introduction of Google Romance (http://www.google.com/romance/) will affect this?
- Osjpr, on 10/12/2007, -0/+4how much is a brazillion?
- Daniel591992, on 10/12/2007, -0/+4I go to Brazil every Summer for 3 Months. I didn't hear anything about it last year (i'm not quite sure when it was released), but I can expect to hear something this summer. I don't mind...as long as it isn't myspace!
- cheapo, on 10/12/2007, -1/+5well, I live in Brazil, and Orkut is everywhere here, people love it. You talk to some random girl in a club, tell her your name, and next day she'll probably be stalking you via Orkut, sending scrapbooks and asking to be your friend. It's so mainstream that the hype among the teens now is to commit suicide in Orkut and kill your profile. Go figure.
- shooks, on 10/12/2007, -0/+4two words: Brazillian Cockfest
Seriously...I have an account and I've looked around. All I see is Brazillian amature porn. I figured it was just over run with SPAM accounts, but maybe I'm wrong.
Off to book my Brazillian vacation :-) - Daniel591992, on 10/12/2007, -1/+4Tips for becomming an Orkut member: (From http://scott.yang.id.au/2004/05/getting-orkut-invites/)
* Go and bother with other Orkut users! Go to Feedster (the blog search engine I usually use) and search for “orkut”, you will probably find plenty of bloggers talking on this subject. Maybe one of them will be generous…
* Try eBay, because there are always people there willing to make friends with you! At a price of course :) If you search for “orkut” there, there are people willing to invite you for merely $0.99!
* There are also free Orkut invites there, posted everywhere on the Internet by “friend-loving” individuals. Google would be your friend to find these friends.
* Or maybe try to be my friend first so that when you ask I would be able to invite :) - mrASSMAN, on 10/12/2007, -0/+3obviously they are all using orkut instead of myspace. from what i'm hearing from the comments, orkut isn't much better than myspace.
but seriously, can you get any worse than myspace? - nefarious, on 10/12/2007, -1/+4@Wamzlee
If you want an invite, send me an email at nef@30gigs.com - elroy, on 10/12/2007, -0/+3I signed up and I liked the "communities" aspect of it. I wanted to chat it up about old BMW's, maybe get some help and such. Instead, I got a bunch of Brazillians slingin portuguese at me. Haven't been back in a whiiiiile.
- coheedcollapse, on 10/12/2007, -0/+3I had a feeling this is what it'd be about. I've been trying to become a member for quite some time and someone said as of now i'm not missing much because it's mainly Portugese speakers. I still want to try it though.
There used to be a public login you could use to invite yourself, but I think Google shut it down.
On another note, I'd never pay for it. Not even 99 cents. - tm8747a, on 10/12/2007, -0/+3I'm half Brazilian, and luckily I can speak the language, but the behavior of some people on Orkut is shameful. The taking over of English communities by speaking portuguese is truly pathetic... If you want to keep a community in english making it moderated is a must...
- arthursoares, on 10/12/2007, -0/+3Seen that happen a few times already.
lol - ElGuano, on 10/12/2007, -0/+3What's with the "You'd never guess?" Brazil? Website? With those two words (or hell, just naming Brazil on a webiste like Digg), how the hell could it possible be anything BUT Orkut? Maybe 2 years ago this would have been surprising.
- inactive, on 10/12/2007, -1/+4anybody want an orkut account email brianchoffman@gmail.com
___
http://www.shoutcentral.com - Iriel, on 10/12/2007, -3/+6So in other words, Orkut is to Brazil what MySpace is the US?
- unitedstatians, on 10/12/2007, -1/+4but orkut is by Americans for brazilians ______ where is the Brazilian site for Americans 'send me link'
- j0dnet, on 10/12/2007, -1/+3mind if i have one too, i have a feeling this wont be like myspace, becasue it's been taken over by google and will stay in BETA ststus forever
- fillllll, on 10/12/2007, -1/+3Im Brasillian therefore this is old news... its like myspace for Americans..
- Wamzlee, on 10/12/2007, -4/+6"Orkut... never really caught on in the United States"
Hmm...haha...funny story...U.S. kids can't get on Orkut because...we're not invited.
No wonder it didn't catch on. - rvidal, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2I started using it right from it's start but the servers were just not handling all the traffic and the whole of Brazil was swamping it. So I gave up on it.
Short after, Hi5 popped up and EVERYBODY here in Portugal started using it and now it's probably used as much as MSN messenger is, here in Portugal. Crazy. It's like everybody wants to see everybody else and later forgets about loosing privacy online... whatever.
Tha bad part about Orkut is all the spam. It's just a spammers nest... - donj, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2Like orkut in Brazil... in europe we use HI5, he started to use orkut but the system had a lot of Bugs, and was too slow, so Hi5 its winning the battle.When i want to talk with some girl i see.. i see their friends and HI5 the friends... because they are always fiends of a friend of a friend of mine :)... so its easy to get in touch.
- twollamalove, on 10/12/2007, -2/+4If he asked, it wouldn't be much of an invite then, would it?
- antigoogle, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2BECAUSE orkut is the worst service of Google! nothing special
- nefarious, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2I have an acct with myspace, orkut, and Hi5. Truthfully, I prefer MySpace. Orkut is user friendly but its thru that the marjority of the users are from Brazil. The only reason I got an invite is cuz a brazilian friend of mine sent it to me. I dont really like Hi5 (no offense donj). If you use firefox and Hi5, it tries to download every link with a .Do extension. I dont have any scripts to dl anything it just a bug I found with firefox. But Hi5 has also died out for most american users. It all been saturated with MySpace.
Nef - tadeu, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2Brazilian 'invaded' Orkut just because they love social networking (i.e, just like they 'invaded' fotolog -- see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brazilian_Internet_Phenomenon ), and Orkut was the first social network site with mass publicity on Brazil. As soon as a brazilian would get a profile there, he would invite *all* of his real life friends... and the friends would invite their friends and so on... then, when almost everybody got a profile on there, and people talked about it in classroom, about how they got a new girlfriend there, etc, the people who were out of it also asked for invitations, and now everybody is on.
- ptknight, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2The power of 180 Million!
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