Orkut

I was introduced to Orkut only a couple of weeks before. From the day I registered, it’s been loads of fun. I found quite a lot of friends with whom I have lost touch over time. So each time I found an old friend through the search or thru someone else’s friend’s list, its very exciting and lots of memories come rushing to my mind. Overall, it’s a fun-filled ride so far and I think I am gonna have an interesting time with it until the excitement dies down.

While on the subject, I also came across some interesting information about Orkut. According to Wiki, Orkut was developed by Orkut Büyükkökten, a Turkish software engineer working at Google. This was an independent project. Though it was designed to be based on invitation only between two people, it looks like the invitations can be bought on eBay. Surprisingly, Orkut is more popular in Brazil than in US. And of course, India is third on the list. Also, in Turkish, Orkut means "the holy meeting place".

While the above were some known facts, there are also some “unknown facts” about Orkut. I am not sure how far they are true, but some of them were really interesting to know. So here they are:

1) Orkut Buyukkokten gets $12 when every person registers to this website.
2) He also gets $10 when you add somebody as a friend.
3) He gets $8 when your friend’s friend adds you as a friend, $6 if anybody adds you as a friend in the resulting chain.
4) He gets $5 when you scrap somebody, $4 when somebody scraps you.
5) He also gets $200 for each photograph you upload on Orkut.
6) He gets $2.5 when you add your friend in the crush-list or in the hot-list.
7) He gets $2 when you become somebody’s fan.
8) He gets $1.5 when somebody else becomes your fan.
9) He even gets $1 every time you logout of Orkut.
10) He gets $0.5 every time you just change your profile-photograph.
11) He also gets $0.5 every time you read your friend’s scrap-book, $0.5 every time you view your friend’s friend-list.
12) Many Global Financial Consultants think this person might become the richest-person in the world by the end of 2009.

Well, assuming the above stats are true, point 12 is definitely possible considering the fact that there are 20,658,025 members currently registered in Orkut.