Review of orkut .com

WHAT THEY SAY: orkut is an online community website designed for friends. The main goal of our service is to make your social life, and that of your friends, more active and stimulating. orkut's social network can help you both maintain existing relationships and establish new ones by reaching out to people you've never met before. Who you interact with is entirely up to you. Before getting to know an orkut member, you can even see how they're connecting to you through the friends network.

WHAT WE FOUND: orkut.com is a community consisting solely of invited members. You can't simply click to the front door and join, you have to know someone that's already a member and get them to invite you. The growth of orkut has been extremely fast and it's noted on the web site that soon enough everyone that wants to be a member will have received an invitation. Once you are invited, it's free to join and participate. The profile you will fill out is very complete and keeps the control of information you reveal in your own hands. You'll need to complete 4 pages of personal information and you get to decide the level of information you share about yourself, whether to keep it private, share with friends, share with friends of friends or with everyone. We like that. As well, you can include a picture of yourself, add more pictures to your photo album, join community groups, search through your fast growing network of friends and friends of friends to meet people. Overall, a fun place to be a member, a great way to meet people you'd otherwise miss. We really like the "six degrees of separation" idea.