October 22nd, 2008
Social Network World Map: Why Do Indians & Brazilians Love Orkut?
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(Cross-posted on my fellowship blog - How International Values Shape Communications Technologies)
Here’s the latest world map of social networks based on Alexa data (via Oxyweb) –
– and Indian and Brazil are the only two countries in the world where Orkut is the most popular social network.
I have often wondered what joins Brazilians and Indians in their love for Orkut. The answer is a combination of serendipity, first mover advantage, faster loading time, simplicity of the name, similarity of the name to Hindi/ Portuguese sounds, simplicity of the user interface, and association with the Google brand name, but the most powerful reason is the lax attitude towards privacy common to Indians and Brazilians.
In spite of the contrary results on the Synovate survey on online privacy, both Brazilians and Indians share generally lax attitudes about online privacy.
This is reflected in the much less fine-grained privacy controls (only friends and friend-of-friends), the excessively open, almost exhibitionist profiles (especially by Brazilian women), the very voyeuristic and totally transparent browsing behavior of Brazilian and Indian men (and their tendency to ask strange women to be friends), the general tendency to add strangers as friends, the open “crush” and “favorite” features, and, finally, the open and often spammy scrapbooks.
