Orkut currently ranks 4th in terms of Popularity (determined by Search Volume Index) in comparision to all Web Social Networks. It currently ranks below FaceBook, MySpace and Hi5.
You can see a declining trend from late 2007 to early 2008 for Orkut. FaceBook 's popularity has increased exponentially during this time inspite of it being rated as The Slowest Social Networking Website & MySpace has been redesigned this week. Orkut had the highest average user engagement (181 minutes per visitor) which means Orkuter's are more addicted to Orkut than Facbookers to Facebook.
What can be the reasons?Firstly, Orkut has made several attempts to catch up like introducing OpenSocial and Orkut Apps which didn't quite work as well. Majority of the apps are buggy/don't work, don't look good and often take forever to load.
Secondly, Orkut is considerably slow in releasing new features in comparision for the demand for new features causing inconvenience to the members.
Finally, Orkut has closed access to members using GeoLocks for increasing the security and privacy of Profiles. This was done because past few years there was a nuisance of people using javascript codes to open locked albums, and Flooding, Fake Profiles, Harassment, stealing cookies , Spamming Communities and Phishing. Currently they are Suspending Accounts and Deleting Communties. Well they took care of the nuisance but restricted many users freedom who were not involved in such activity, or they were victims.
This may have resulted to many users giving up on Orkut and changing to other networks.
Now the question comes, what's Google's next move?
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