The Usability and Popularity of Orkut

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Why Users Love Orkut
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Orkut, the social networking service created in 2004 by Google’s engineer Orkut Büyükkökten, is the most accessed website in Brazil and the 8th most visited website in the world (fairly close toMySpace) according to Alexa.
Popularity in Brazil
The project wasn’t designed for the Brazilian market, it just happened to gain an outstanding popularity there. This type of surprise audience can be a usability challenge user dependent products face. The first users will define the product’s future. Why did Orkut see such a success in South America?
Brazil is a social network paradise, where almost every social media product is welcome. Today, Brazilians account for more than 55% of Orkut users. And the numbers may be even higher as some Brazilians list other nationalities when they register. While Orkut has seen great success, it has done so without perfect usability. How?
There was a social push for many to become involved with Orkut that initially overcame the usability flaws of the website. Brazilians started taking over Orkut during war in Iraq that began in March 2003. In 2004 and 2005 many Brazilians were encouraged by other Brazilians to join with messages like: “Let’s invade Orkut! Invite your friends and let’s put Brazil in first place”. It was similar to a marketing campaign against the United States because of the war. It began as a type of protest, and built a huge audience within Brazil.
Usability matters?
As I mentioned, the site gained users despite the design problems. At the time that Orkut’s popularity was growing among Brazilians, the technology was poor, and the “bad bad server” error page seemed to appear all the time. The site was extremely slow, not very intuitive, norvisually appealing. So, why did people continue to use Orkut in spite of the design problems?
With so many members, the temptation of meeting old and new friends was stronger than the frustration users felt due to the site’s bad performance. The visual aspect was almost irrelevant in this case. The reality was that in spite of being not so easy to use, people learned how to use it because they gained familiarity with it as they repeatedly returned. The interface became more transparent and was not an issue anymore. Similarly to a new software: once people learned how to use it, it became almost an extension of the hand.
For the countries where Orkut has already gained popularity, it doesn’t matter ifFacebook, MySpace orFriendster are more usable applications. The people in Brazil will continue to use Orkut because they are now familiar and comfortable with its navigation. They know how to send messages and follow the lives of all those people in the network that they already know and the many that they hope to know one day.
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