Orkuting in Pakistan

There is little doubt that Pakistanis simply love to Orkut and I would not be wrong to state that Orkut.com is probably one of the most visited sites from Pakistan second only to search engines like Google and Yahoo. I personally have been orkuteering since 2004 when there was not much awareness in Pakistan about this invitation only community. To sneak a foot into this social network I had to wrangle and invite from a friendly Brazilian who offered the invite in exchange for a postcard from Pakistan. Sweet deal and I obliged him with not one but seven such postcards mailed to him in Brazil

Orkut was quietly launched on January 19, 2004 by the search company Google. Orkut Büyükkökten, a Turkish software engineer, developed Orkut as an independent project while working at Google, who probably had no idea how popular it may eventually become

I personally saw the popularity of Orkut take to the skies in Pakistan in late 2005 and early 2006 when scraping became a household word interspersed in many conversations to eventually become an Urdu word. Generally the conversations revolved around ‘who scraped who’ and ‘who is on whose friends list’ it was literally a gossip column where the creative clickers could easily figure out some upcoming affairs and flings in progress. Despite its popularity it is strange to note that in this age of information overload where IM’s and emails are the hallmark of modern communication scraping was one of the slowest way to communicate yet it was surprising to see people to carry conversations for days if not weeks by scraping each other bank and forth.

Profile views was a concept which was included in the initial design back in 2004 but was discontinued for the better half of 2005 but has recently been reintroduced where members can see who has been visiting their profile, the option of anonymity can also be used which then permits gossipers / snoops to take a drive around town without even raising any suspicion.

Orkut stats 1st Jan 2007

A look at the demographics on orkut shows a very interesting picture, there are over 58% Brazilians followed by 16% Americans, Indians coming in at 12% while Pakistan lands fourth at 1.6% (Duh!!!). Though a number of reliable sources within Google indicate that the usage statistics show Pakistan at #2 in terms of pageviews after Brazil. Brazilians seem to be in full domination of the orkut sphere which according to the creator could be a reason why the North American users avoid flocking this South American networks and instead turn towards Facebook and MySpace.

Over the many years the orkut sphere has been a witness to a great deal of competition, there remains an undeclared competition for the user with the most scraps, the user with most friends, the group with the highest members, the post with the highest number of messages and this competition did spill over into a bull blown India-Pakistan battle where two groups competed to rally the highest numbers in each category. People simply had a lot of time to waste on their hands and orkut provided them an even more excuse to waste their time in the name of social networking.

Since the recent change in registration policy of Facebook which has opened non-US registrations I suspect the socialite class is slowly migrating to the Facebook network. Facebook apparently seems to be a little more socially intriguing as compared to orkut and I feel could be slowly capturing the Pakistani crowd. Time will only tell how the competition boils out. I personally have jumped the bandwagon towards facebook and rarely check Orkut and have heard many make the switch, could this be just a small minority looking for a change or is this a more rampant issue throughout the country?

With the overgrowing popularity of orkut and facebook there are a number of upcoming designers who strive to conjour up a localized social networks geared a community like the Pakistani and Indian communities for example Fropper, Naseeb and ApnaSpace they all seem to have a decent viewership but pale against the popularity of Orkut and Facebook.

How do you socialize online?


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9 responses to “Orkuting in Pakistan”

  1. Asma Avatar

    Aware of Lounge.Pk a pakistani orkut like community ?

  2. shobz Avatar

    i agree with u over here doc. orkut used to be really good in its hey days when there werent so many pakistanis there. i still remember getting my invite in 2004. nowadays there are like a million losers on orkut who scrap each other for no reason at all just so that their scrap tally is really high. i seem to have only generated like 580 scraps in 3 years and only from people i know. facebook is a much better social networking website as it gives you more privacy than orkut and it seems to have better features. however i am afraid that facebook will soon be overrun by countless pakistanis who want to “be cool” coz everyone else is on it.

  3. Unblock bebo Avatar

    Never knew about these three sites fropper and apnaspace, thanks for sharing but if you cant access them through your pc you might want to try out orkut.pk to Unblock Orkut.

  4. dontrelyme Avatar
    dontrelyme

    kindly send me the invitation of lounge.pk
    I really need that

  5. Faisal Avatar
    Faisal

    Infact orkut has become far more popular than the stats listed above. Almost all the teen internet users have their profiles on orkut in Pakistan. But I disagree that Facebook is anyway better than orkut. It is way too complex to understand and use. Orkut offers far more user friendly environment than Facebook or other social networking sites !

  6. Riaz Haq Avatar

    I use Facebook and Orkut but I spend far more time on PakAlumni site, a social networking site designed specifically for Pakistanis with culturally appropriate setting and content. Check it out a http://www.pakalumni.com

  7. Babar Bhatti Avatar

    Are there any stats available for Pakistani users on major social networking sites?

  8. Farhan Avatar
    Farhan

    Have you guys seen this yet http://www.aarpix.com/ ? Its Pakistani

  9. tania Avatar

    hi… there's a new site for you all…with it's unique features….i just came actoss it a few days back…

    Registration is simple: 1. Go to beautifulcircle.com and click on register. 2. Here you tell us about yourself by filling up your profile and uploading the best pic of yours. 3. Give us 48 hours and let us i.e the existing members decide whether you can be a part of us or not!