Launching in 2004, Orkut was a popular social networking site, especially in Brazil where 90% of its page views came from. It allowed users to find communities through keyword searches such as titles, descriptions and browsing through other users memberships (Mahoney & Tang, 2016). In quick time, Orkut surged in popularity with over 1.5 million communities within its first year and reached a peak of 30 million users in 2012, becoming a leader in the industry (Mahoney & Tang, 2016). One of the most interesting things about Orkut was that it was an invite-only membership to use it. This added a feeling of importance to the users who were able to get on the list and become a member because they were one of the well enough connected people in the technology realm to be chosen. In addition to this, Orkut gave users the ability to rate each other and competition was created based on the number of friends you had and the largest communities on the site (Mahoney & Tang, 2016).
As mentioned before, Brazil was Orkut’s strongest market and is a generally strong online retail market in the world. In a country that has more cellphones than people and outdoor advertising in banned, the power of online marketing is limitless (Mahoney & Tang, 2016). With so many of Brazilians connected on social media and using it as a tool for a number of things like shopping and staying connected with friends, Orkut was able to be the number one choice for them. However, Orkut began to fail and lose the interest of users because of functionality problems such as blockages, limiting the number of friends, and difficulties loading and sharing photos (Mahoney & Tang, 2016). By not solving these issues, Orkut stopped meeting the needs of their consumers and lost them to other social media services who did.
References
Mahoney, L. M., Tang, T. (2016). Strategic Social Media: From Marketing to Social Change, 1st Edition. [MBS Direct]. Retrieved from https://mbsdirect.vitalsource.com/#/books/9781118556900/
Billy's MKT-555 Blog 