Prior to Friday - and Thursday - I can't remember the last time I wrote about Orkut. Google's social networking site just isn't in the news that often. But as the existence of those two recent articles probably caused you to realize, Orkut's been making headlines lately, and new data from comScore suggests that it's a much bigger contender than most people thought.

Who knew? Maybe India's young people - they recently selected the social network as the Youth Icon of 2007. Or maybe Orkut's owners - they're in the process of giving the site a much-needed facelift

In any event, Orkut is ahead of every social network - every network other than MySpace, that is - in terms of page views. Facebook, Bebo, Friendster - on a global scale, Orkut beats 'em all. And, judging from a graph constructed by Michael Arrington, even MySpace isn't ahead by too much, though the gap is considerable (there's a difference of around 12,000 page views to my eye).

What the graph doesn't explain, though, is how Orkut could expand from its existing user base in India and Brazil, and as far as I know, there is nothing imminent that would make this happen. Orkut's powerful in its own way, but it doesn't look like the typical American is ever going to join or advertise on the social network.

Meh. I don't suppose the Indians and Brazilians mind too much.

Source: www.webpronews.com