The upcoming Orkut redesign prompted us to check out Orkut’s page view numbers according to Comscore.
U.S. Comscore data shows, as expected, barely a blip from Orkut (Facebook shown for comparison). Orkut has 425 million monthly page views compared to 15 billion for Facebook:
But, wow, take a look at the worldwide Comscore numbers - Facebook doubles to 31 billion monthly page views, but Orkut jumps all the way up to 38 billion (we’ve also included some of the other big social networks for comparison in this chart):
Not that it adds much to the conversation, but Alexa agrees Orkut is bigger than Facebook in terms of page views.
Is this accurate? I don’t know. Compete barely shows Orkut as existing, let alone anywhere near Facebook’s traffic. But Orkut is famously popular in Brazil and other Non-U.S. countries. Perhaps, somehow, it is actually a social networking heavyweight.
I bet Google has the most accurate data on traffic of most sites. Knowing how they like to collect and aggregate things, I know for a fact they are merging their data from SE + analytics + google toolbar.
But, there isn’t much benefit in sharing or selling this info.
I’m surprised comScores worldwide scope was that strong v Alexa. Just goes to show: the world doesn’t stop at the US border
Well, Orkut is THE social network in Brazil. There’s no competition. That’s it. Either you’re in or you’re in.
Facebook is the most talked social network in the US today, but it’s not the largest (yet) and besides MySpace, there are many others sharing their piece of the pie. If a social network in the US had the impact and market share in the US, that Orkut enjoys in Brazil, that’d be like forget there’s anyone else out there, mission accomplished, everyone else can can turn off the lights and go home.
If you add that Brazil is not a small country, well, if that’s not the definition of a social networking heavyweight, I don’t know what is. It’s just that, well, for many of us in the US, if it doesn’t matter here, it doesn’t seem to matter. In fact, if we talk about Bebo is probably because it’s big in a country that the US can relate and where people also speak English. If Bebo was a Russian social network, people in the US probably wouldn’t care… Can someone here name the largest social network in, say, China?
Right on Duncan.
Once we learn how to monetize Asian traffic, forget the U.S.
Can someone send some pre-approved credit card offers to China!
for ur info : hear in India most of the people hav not even heard of applications like facebook | Myspace | Friendester | Hi5 etc ( exept tht we occasionally get invites from these sites , and people just ignore it ) ….. but all the population love and participate is ORKUT ….. ( u must not forget once Mike said “India has the biggest ENGLISH speaking population in de world”
) ….. people hav becom addicted to ORKUT .. .. now only slowly MINGLEBOX ( home grown site by a couple of IIT students ) is coming up ( its a clone of FACEBOOK 
0 …. And ..and …. am shocked to that 1 very important news is not yet covered in Techcrunch .. 
| Minglebox has got its first round of funding from Sequoia - 7 million $ | …..
Great point RBA,
“Can someone here name the largest social network in, say, China?”
I always get amazed at the sites that end up in top 100 Alexa with domains that consist of only numbers (eg.: 163.com)
Forumer (comment 4)
totally: if I could only Monetize that traffic
Orkut is big and very big in India.
In a recent announcement, orkut was voted as the MTV Youth Icon of India.
I am not surprised if Orkut beats Facebook in world wide stats.
yes but WHY is it big in these countries? It’s awful.
orkut is the most popular in india! Reason being that orkut was the first decent network that caught up in india. It was referal based and therefore people were ready to trust it!
And india cant have a network in its national language,like china or japan because in INDIA there is a different language in every state! And Hindi, the national language is hated on many parts of india itself .. NOrth east , tamil nadu for instance ..
So there you go .. Thats why Orkut picked up!
Maybe this post will at least wake some of the readers up for that fact that Duncan mentioned in the comment #2.
The whole world is watching too. That’s why it would be a big mistake for Google to simply shutdown orkut.
Hell, maybe we (the “outsiders”) could use this stealth-mode to bite some startups in the rear.
(kidding.. or.. am i?) hahaha
Michael, I’ll take a stab at it WHY.
1. Google is highly respected internationally
2. the name. MySpace, Facebook — they just smack as being US brands, but Orkut doesn’t.
because it was first of its kind in India
Orkut is MASSIVELY popular in asian countries. I’m from India and i’ve seen people behaving crazy for orkut. Also, young people from India chose Orkut as their youth icon and so Orkut was crowned MTV India’s Youth Icon of 2007, leaving big celebrities and politicians biting dirt! Check it out here - http://www.nutsandmilk.com/200.....-2007.html
Orkut is pretty awful, as Michael writes, but so is MySpace to a lot of people.
On the other hand, Orkut is very easy to use, so when it started picking up in Brazil, it was very easy for everyone to jump on board.
And as in most markets, once you have a dominant social network, it usually is pretty hard for competitors to take its place (that’s the value of the network :-)).
I think it is pretty similar to auction sites: once you have a dominant website in one market, basically no one will take its lead away. eBay is no threatened by any string competitors in the US in the auction business, same with Mercado Libre in Brazil and the rest of LA.
Last note: Orkut is supposed to be number 1 in Turkey as well
People go to the social network their friends are in. I was one of the first orkut users in my social circle, here in Brazil, a couple of years ago. I cannot really tell how it started in the very beginning, but that was a time when none of the networks were really popular around here.
I guess there were three reasons for quick orkut growth back then.
1) Some luck to be found and adopted by users.
2) Not fancy interface. English is not widely spoken or understood in Brazil. Facebook is more sophisticated, with more functions and a lot of buttons and terms to be read and understood. orkut was not a big challenge for those who speak zero English. Nowadays orkut is already translated into Portuguese (that was the first translation launched by them), so language is not an issue anymore. On the other hand, Facebook is not yet available in our native language as far as I know.
3) Photos! People like photos. Orkut browsing is more “photo driven” than “text driven” (like Facebook). People like to see how their old friends are looking like. People like to know more about that cute girl who appears as a friend in Fernando’s profile.
Well take a look at this: http://www.alexa.com/data/deta.....rfspot.com
I don’t understand why Live Spaces isn’t talked about. At the moment it shows higher page views than orkut or facebook. While Orkut is strong in India and Brazil and Facebook is coming up in Europe and US. Live Spaces has been around for a while and is pretty much everywhere thanks to it’s integration with WL messenger.
Correct link: http://www.alexa.com/data/deta.....rfspot.com
test
Dev, Alexa does not seem to differentiate subdomains (the results for spaces.live.com look the same as http://www.live.com) so it’s including all the search traffic as well. Try it for yourself and you’ll see what i mean.
Use Alexa, but use it more carefully please.
Orkut is “the” social network in India. Internet is growing very fast in India in terms of number of connections or people using it. So Orkut has a big market already in its hands.
There have been rumors and facts about both Y and MS trying to get Facebook, what about G? Orkut and benefit hugely with a facebook acquisition - better yet, G could simply make orkut an open platform like FB and get things right to remain the world’s number 2 Social networking player. I mean the comscore graph speaks for itself, see the HUGE jump facebook gets as soon as it’s network opens up in mid 2007.
Google has an API for everything, why not for orkut? something they should be (or probably already are?) considering very seriously.
Orkut is “the” social network in India. Internet is growing very fast in India in terms of number of connections or people using it. So Orkut has a big market already in its hands. Will wait and see how the redesign of Orkut impact markets.
I know, that Estonia is too small to matter in any stats, but Orkut is THE social network in Estonia also. Everyone is on Orkut and most people have never ever heard of facebook nor myspace.
And about being awful. I don’t know. Ok, it’s ugly, but in terms of connecting with friends and getting an impression of someone you might be interested in connecting with, it works pretty fine.
Hope the redesign makes things better
And of course, if something like this takes off and all of your friends are already there, it’s really difficult to make them all shift to something else.
Orkut is aimed at simplicity. It’s very very simple for people who never used internet before. Hence, it’s popular in developing countries, where number of internet users keep increasing.
However, if orkut is going to introduce crappy stuff like facebook apps, I’m pretty sure its monopoly in developing countries will start to fall.
Like many people have said before, Orkut rules in India. There is nothing that can come close i believe and i dont think it matters a lot if facebook is much better than Orkut or otherwise. Its quite difficult for people to move from one social network to another. I have created a facebook account and send invite to all my orkut contacts but hardly 5% accepted it. I guess thats how social networking works, you tend to stay where all your friends are.
Mr. Arrington, I cannot believe this is the first time you stumble upon the stats of Orkut. Aren’t you supposed to be on top of things? I saw this last year and joined Orkut just to find out what was great about it. Do you usually only look at US stats? Why? Would an investor not find world domination a little more interesting?
Why do we continue to rely on Alexa for traffic stats when it is blatantly inaccurate. Everyone knows that Alexa is unreliable when in comes to displaying traffic stats.
Recently, orkut adopted that awful strategy to let users put html on their friend’s scrapbook. Orkut was less ugly than myspace, now it’s becoming ugly as myspace. Bad, bad move Google! Now, scrapbooks are full of that flash animated crap.
Its plain and simple. The traffic keeps on growing because people have best chance of finding their friends online (in India), is on orkut. so why they will touch facebook. Its popular because it is linked with Google. I won’t say its awful but it lacks basic features. like you can upload 12 photos only (biggest joke). Yeah now they have feeds (upto 5) and u can link your flickr feed. Apart from scrapbook, there is hardly any other feature that is good. I am surprised that Google has not overhauled orkut for so many years. All their energy is local to buying crap companies in US and Europe.
Compete only tracks U.S. traffic right? That’s why its barely a blip. However, travel to India or Brasil and it’s the equivalent of a start-page for the entire country. Many people use the scrap system as a replacement for email.
The very simple reason its BIG in these countries is it SIMPLICITY & ease of usage. I have been testing other social networking sites as well, when it comes to simplicity its Orkut! Facebook takes a while for someone to learn to use it but not with Orkut!
Second things is that, the page views includes so called SPAMMERS! There are hell lot of spams around every profile scraps, communities and everywhere. And the other reason why it receives more traffic than Facebook because of its Adult Contents and huge crowd of female presence.
There are many reasons, Facebook uses the latest technology to make sure users aren’t kept moving to different page for viewing contents and getting contents but this ain’t the case with Orkut, you have to goto each page to view each content and thereby the page views doubles!
Michael, I would suggest you spend some time on Orkut, you will know Orkut is BIGGGGGGGG! Sent in a friends request, behind your second friend @ Orkut
Hope to see you moving around in Orkut!
Cheers,
Vinay
Orkut is a big one here in India… school students and college entrants are a big fan of it
I use orkut and facebook.com
>yes but WHY is it big in these countries? It’s awful.
Curious…Do you actually think MySpace isn’t awful?
yes, it’s “awful”, but let’s not forget orkut (and friendster and myspace, for that matter) are simply older designs than facebook. they feel dated because they are.
but when orkut first appeared, in contrast to friendster, the dominant U.S. network at the time, it had some revolutionary features — separate tabs for personal, work, dating, ability to assign different levels of connection. these are important components of social behavior that are still lacking in the much-vaunted “evolution” of facebook. an open API might get developers and investors hard, but it isn’t necessarily what users want.
orkut’s basic structure has the potential to address the fragmentation of social networks, and it will be interesting to see what the redesign brings.
also worth noting that friendster is also quite popular in asia, and has quietly been adding features…
Orkut is the network du jour back in India. I got an invite a few years ago, joined and haven’t bothered using it since as opposed to Facebook which I started using this year and can’t stop using. I can understand the simplicity communication aspects. Also note that in the absence of broadband, Facebook would not be quite as useful with the apps (a big reason I use it).
I didn’t even realize this until I heard someone say this to my bro-in-law .. “hey you should have scrapped me that you were coming to Seattle”. Then it dawned … they were talking about scraps in Orkut.
Facebook is quite young in the social networking world, having only reached outside its core US College audience in the past year and really only the last six months. Maybe the next generation back in other countries will gravitate to Facebook or some other network.
Orkut is a juggernaut in India, the second most populous country in the World.
Take a look at this story from India where Orkut beat out one of the biggest bolllywood star as the youth icon in an MTV survey:
http://www.mid-day.com/news/ci.....162875.htm
太酷了，喜欢。
i’m so ignorant. i’ve heard of everything else mentioned on this page of techcrunch BUT orkut. talk about selective knowledge tsk tsk. ORKUT WHO?
福泉〉使用facebook好了;) 刚刚去orkut注册并且浏览下-没acebook那么简单又有趣哈哈
Imagine, Microsoft buys Facebook. Of course, they will… They liked Facebook UI.
Someday I will see something like this. MS Facebook
Google Facebook
MS Facebook
Which one do you it sounds better?
MS Facebook.
With the help of Internet growth in India, Orkut will become No.1 in World’s social networking space.
the next time people talk about global social networks, it might make sense to include hi5 and Friendster. I am surprised that you have the comscore charts that dont mention these sites.
With India beating the US with broadband penetration within next 20 years. Orkut is bound to become THE biggest social network. 66% of population of India is under 30 and pretty much 99% of people in this range are/or going to join Orkut.
If there is anything to beat Facebook its Orkut. Hopefully Google knows this and is working towards its API and stuff. Facebook is just US based. Orkut has global reach. Nobody seems to figure this fact out!
I’m with Gustavo Bonato - Orkut succeeds in Brazil because it’s visual and intuative, and a bit later it was in language.
It doesn’t do much, but what it does, it does very easily - many Brazilians prefer it over email because it’s so quick. Everyone is on it, all ages. Brazil is a very open social culture, so people like to share pictures across large families.
They have this user video highlighted on their blog which really gets to the point that this is a visual tool: http://br.youtube.com/watch?v=-gqLf2JaeE0
@Duncan
The U.S. has borders? nah
Thats such a typical american attitude! They think that the USA is the entire world and forget to see whats going on in other countries.
Is valley blindness contagious? Maybe I shouldn’t hang out here so much anymore.
Orkut seems to be suffering a fascinating case of “not successful here”-itis. What do you do when the product you build is phenomenally successful in a culture you don’t understand? Ignore it and let it rot of course. I’m glad Google’s maybe kinda sorta waking up to orkut’s potential. Maybe you should too.
remove your heads from your ethnocentric asses. Compete clearly lists that its results are restricted to American traffic, and the Comscore ratings are worldwide. I’m much more strongly inclined to conclude that Orkut is, indeed, more popular than you think than any other explanation (like the ratings being inaccurate).