Orkut Turns Four

Orkut, Google’s social networking service, turned four years old last week, proving that it is indeed a fighter and a survivor in a tough market.
While Orkut is not all that popular in the United States, it enjoys millions of international users and is ranked in some places among the ten most popular websites in the world and the number one most popular site in Brazil. As of last August, Orkut had grown to a community of over 67 million users. Three years ago, idiots like me were saying Orkut was a failure and should be scrapped, and it has proven itself and won the test of time.
How many long-running websites became successes this “late” in their run? Keeping in mind that 3 or 4 years is an eternity on the internet, it’s hard to picture anyone succeeding by growing slowly and smartly, but Orkut did it. […]

See original post by Nathan Weinberg