Comparison of Facebook and Orkut

Here I am discussing about two popular social networking sites. Facebook and Orkut. In past few days we are watching some significant changes in both the sites. But still, Facebook is running far ahead from Orkut. So what makes Facebook world’s number 2 site (Alexa Rank) and why having a lots of changes Orkut is not competing with Facebook. Here are the things-

Social Networking

Well, social networking is more easy in Facebook rather then Orkut. I don’t understand the reason behind that Orkut does not allow to crawl the profile pages of its users by search engines. If you have to find someone you just type his/her name on google, it will show you their profile pages from Facebook or even linkedin,twitter  too. But not from Orkut WHY?

If you have to promote your product, brand or company , Facebook allows you to create pages that are known as Facebook pages. They are truly professional pages and can be used for brand promotion. I don’t see such a feature in Orkut.  So marketing professionals and brand promoters are not considering Orkut as platform. It makes Orkut away from Social Media world.

Developer’s View

Facebook has a good development kit that allows third party developers to access Facebook. Facebook API is very strong and easy to access. Facebook comment, Facebook streaming, Facebook widget, Facebook profile, Facebook connect, Facebook share are very popular tools that are used by the developers to access facebook from their application or website. Orkut is lacking in this point. They have come with Orkut share, similar to Facebook share. But still they have to cover a long journey to beat Facebook.

Sharing With Other Sites/Twitter

Facebook can be integrated with other social platforms and vice versa. For example you can send your tweets to Facebook directly and you can update your twitter status via Facebook (pages) too. Twitter is a rapidly growing site and the integration of  Facebook and twitter is a good step for both the sites.

GUI

In terms of GUI the new Orkut is competing with Facebook somehow. Facebook did a beautiful use of Ajax to make their site more interactive and smooth. Orkut is doing the same with new Orkut.

Here are some figures that will really show you the difference

	Facebook	Orkut
Alexa rank	2	66
Quantcast rank	3	4928
Unique Visitors (Compete.com)	132,130,132 per month	410,239 per month

(Data compiled on 26 January 2010)

Orkut has its user base in India, Brazil and Paraguay. In India Orkut has rank 10 while facebook has its rank 4. So Orkut needs to reconsider its expansion plans because the new generation of internet users are more focusing on Facebook.