Orkut is a social networking site where you can make new friends and catch up with old ones. The success of this site is so great it can be judged by a Brazilian song composed by an Orkut user where the lyrics go like this- I will delete you from my Orkut, a song of betrayal and love lost. It has become so popular that many people are doing their own videos of this song on youtube!

Orkut is run by Google, and was created by one of its employees Orkut B'y'kk?kten after whom it has been named. It was launched in 2004 and has experienced exponential growth, especially in the two Americas and Southeast Asia. It has grown so much that the owners are also surprised from where all the users have come, and how to cope with them.

Currently, there are about twenty two million users on Orkut, and growing every day. Initially membership could be obtained only by invitation from a person who already had an account in Orkut, though from October 2006 Orkut has allowed users to open an account even without invitation.

When one creates a profile on Orkut, the profile has different categories like personal, professional and social. It is up to you to give how much information you want. You can specify if you want your information to be seen by all, or to a selected few. You can also preview your profile as a friend, friend of friend, or stranger, thus allowing you total control over how your profile works.

Since the main aim of this site is social networking, the whole idea is to make new friends besides being in touch with old friends. There are so many friends who have been reunited due to this site after many years of being out of touch. You can even rate your friends by giving them symbols if they are intimate, close or casual, and interesting add-ons like hearts and becoming fans add to the overall charm. You can get a lot of information about your friends on this site; it is also very useful for forgetful people who forget important days as it automatically lists the upcoming birthday of anyone on your friend's list. It also has a scrap book for messages, and an album to paste photos you want to share with your friends.

This site is most popular in Brazil, next comes the U.S and India follows at the third place, where it has been the topic of political debates as it is being considered as immoral. Whatever the controversy, it is still very successful and is the second most popular site in India after Yahoo, pushing even Google to the third place.

However, one controversy surrounding Orkut is that it asks the users to enter their religion and sexual orientation, which has been of a great objection among the people. It has also been seen that this site is also being misused by some unscrupulous people to further their nefarious activities, some even using it trick people and earn extra money . Young children at an impressionable age also have an access to this site, and they do so by entering false information about their date of birth.

Overall the success of orkut has been phenomenal, to say the least. Now, of course, the owners have come to terms with their success and learnt how to deal with the increased website traffic thanks due to the phenomenal success of Orkut.