Sunday, July 18, 2004
Orkut Speaks Portuguese
I have an Orkut account but haven't visited the site in a long time. It's an interesting social experiment but after collecting a set of Orkut friends I never felt compelled to go back. Apparently it's been taken taken over by Brazilians users. Brazilians on Orkut now outnumber Americans by 2-1. Pretty amazing, especially given the relative number of Internet users in the two countries.
It's funny how online communities can evolve. Orkut membership is by "invitation only" but it only takes one person to launch a whole new set of users. Back in 1995 we set up a web site that included a forum for feedback on Lotus InterNotes Web Publisher. It was pretty much wide-open and allowed anonymous posts. Even after we stopped actively monitoring the content and answering questions, the forum kept getting traffic. Some people discovered it and started to use it as their own discussion forum. The content started getting pretty weird. Definitely not discussing Web Publisher any longer. And since the site got indexed by search engines, other folks discovered it as well. The site was eventually taken down but it turned into quite an Internet Petri dish while it lasted.
It's funny how online communities can evolve. Orkut membership is by "invitation only" but it only takes one person to launch a whole new set of users. Back in 1995 we set up a web site that included a forum for feedback on Lotus InterNotes Web Publisher. It was pretty much wide-open and allowed anonymous posts. Even after we stopped actively monitoring the content and answering questions, the forum kept getting traffic. Some people discovered it and started to use it as their own discussion forum. The content started getting pretty weird. Definitely not discussing Web Publisher any longer. And since the site got indexed by search engines, other folks discovered it as well. The site was eventually taken down but it turned into quite an Internet Petri dish while it lasted.
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