Case 3 Google’s Orkut in Brazil

From the case “Google’s Orkut in Brazil: What’s So Social about It?” (Jain, 2011), we can know that Orkut, the social networking site of Google, had achieved an immense success in Brazil. However, it also faced many problems and challenges, such as how to keep the balance among the advertisers, members and the government, and whether they should protect members’ data even if they were criminals.
Social networking sites are platforms for Internet users to communicate with others online. The users can join in the websites by registering and providing their basic information. They can also put their photos online if they want. There were some early social networking sites such as SixDegrees, Friendster and MySpace. SixDegrees, established in 1997, was the first one but did not have many functions; also, it did not have a sustainable model to develop the website continuously. Then Friendster appeared and achieved a big success; however, it failed because of the unenlightened technology and social problems. After that, MySpace launched and focused on the relationship between bands and Internet users. MySpace aimed at the users of Friendster and tried to attract them. In 2004, Facebook turned up and grew rapidly from a Harvard-only site to a platform for all people above age 13. From the chart (Henrikson, 2011), we can find that during the period from 2004 to 2011, Facebook was the most popular social networking sites with 310 million daily unique visitors, which accounted for 63.64% of the membership share. Marketing started to pay attention to this area for the popularity of websites and the target customers. However, the social networking sites also provided a platform for illegal activities. As a result, the social networking sites such as Facebook and MySpace had to slow down and deal with complaints about pornography, harassment