Myspace and other social networking sites are much older than orkut but 95% social networking market in India is occupied by orkut. I was just curious to know what were the reasons which brought orkut to Top in India. When i thought about it for few minutes i got to the following conclusion 1.It was simple- Most of the users in India use internet from a cafe so giving them features like video uploads, music sharing will not work due to slow internet speeds. When orkut was launched it had none of these features it was just a new version of Yahoo chatrooms with more girls 2.It was invitation only- People always want more of what they can not have. Google made orkut an invitation only site, which means if you are on orkut you are an internet celebrity and hence everyone wanted to be on orkut. 3.It was the first one- Myspace and other sites never paid attention to promoting their sites in the asian markets specially in India. And hence when google thought of doing so they were successfull. 4.It had a stupid name- Yes i have seen this world over that people visit sites with stupid names more often then sites which have meaningful names.So if you are planing a social network don't think hard and give it some stupid name like GOOGLE any more reasons you think were there plz post them.
It not only rocked in India but the whole of South Asian and South America as well. Brazil has one of the largest communities on orkut.
It doesn't have a "stupid" name... Orkut is the name of the guy who developed the specific networking system which Google later named after him. And I don't know why Orkut's so famous in India but it sucks serious ass.