Social Networking Issues and Orkut.com

Orkut was an independent project of one of the Google's engineers, Orkut Buyukkokten (Buyukkokten) and was named after him.

Almost immediately after its launch, Orkut found immense popularity in countries such as Brazil and India.

Although it was not as popular in the North American region from where it actually originated, its popularity in other countries made it one of the leading social networking sites in the world, after MySpace⁵ and MSN Spaces⁶ (Refer to Exhibit III for information on other social networking sites).

When Orkut was formed, membership on the site was only by invitation. This meant that people who were already members of Orkut could invite their friends, who could then become members by accepting that invitation.

However, in October 2006, Orkut changed this policy, and people could become members simply by creating an account with Google.

Users had to first create their profile by mentioning their name, profession, age, country, and other personal details. They could also upload their photos and add videos to their profiles...