The Global Community

Orkut is all about community, and we sure do have lots of them: more than 45 million, covering all imaginable topic areas (and a few that defy the imagination). Owners can specify languages and countries for their communities, and I'm pleased to see that all of orkut's many languages and countries are represented.

The most common community language is Portuguese, with more than 10 times as many communities as the next most common language, English. Third most common is UK English, which was introduced in spring 2006 to distinguish between people who call the World Cup sport "football" and those who call it "soccer." Spanish and Hindi take fourth and fifth place, as shown in this table:

language	communities	largest community	members
Portuguese	40,460,878	Eu amo a minha MÃE! [I love my MOTHER!]	3,903,588
English	3,738,534	Nike	624,095
English (UK)	469,538	David Beckham	118,657
Spanish	186,323	Pra que serve o Orkut? [What's Orkut for?]	79,734
Hindi	43,837	Cafe Coffee Day	55,492
Estonian	37,199	Estonia	63,505
All	34,294	Caipirnhas [a cocktail]	311,487
French	25,118	Paris	21,772
Telugu	23,925	అబ్బా!!! ఛా!!! [Yeah, right!]	15,665

(Fine print: Afrikaans would have come in sixth, but none of the top communities were actually in that language. Similarly, none of the top "Hindi" communities had names or most of their messages in Hindi, and the top two "French" communities aren't really in French.)

In response to a suggestion, I also looked at which of the 28 community categories are most popular. We were curious about which countries are most represented in each category relative to their size, some of which are shown below. For example, Indians have far more communities in the Alumni & Schools category than even their large numbers would predict.

category	% of communities	some top countries
Individuals	23%	Madagascar, Brazil
Other	21%	Benin
Alumni & Schools	6.8%	India
Music	6.5%	Norway, Canada
Recreation & Sports	4.2%	Argentina
Romance & Relationships	3.8%	French Polynesia, Monaco
Family & Home	3.6%	Mexico, United States
Activities	3.3%	Paraguay, Pakistan
Fashion & Beauty	3.2%	Monaco

All other categories are below 3% of the total. The least popular category is Science & History (.4%), to the dismay of this orkut historian.

Until next time, enjoy community wherever you find it!

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orkut trends: The State of orkuters

A question came up in the orkut trends community: What is the distribution of orkut users among the different states in the US? Here's a peek into where US orkuters come from.

All 50 states, the District of Columbia and Puerto Rico are represented. The #1 state is my adopted home (and that of so many other US Googlers), California, with 20% of US orkuters. Next comes the great state of New York (11%), and then two southern states, Florida (8%) and Texas (7%).

In fifth place was Massachusetts, the home of my alma mater, MIT. This state's name had the distinction of being spelled the most incorrect ways by our users. Misspellings including: massachussets, massachussetts, massachusets, massachusettes, massachustes and even massachuster. (I confess to using spell-check to get the right spelling although I resided there for ten years. I guess what they say about engineers and their lack of English skills may be true.)

Rounding out the top ten were New Jersey -- referred to by some as "Joisey" -- at 6%, my home state of Illinois (4%), Georgia (2.5%), Pennsylvania (2.5%) and Virginia (2.4%). Other states making up more than 1% of our US user base were Washington (2.3%), Michigan (2%), Ohio (2%), Connecticut (1.9%), Maryland (1.7%), North Carolina (1.6%), Arizona (1.4%), Minnesota (1.1%), and Colorado (1%). Least represented were the sparsely populated states of North Dakota (.07%), South Dakota (.07%), and Wyoming (.06%).

I was intrigued by the number of US orkuteers residing in "states" which I had never heard of. One such state is Fakelandia (4555 residents) and its presumed capital Fakecity (158). I was disappointed that there were more residents of Hell (367) and Inferno (356) than of Heaven (135). I would enjoy visiting the residents of the magical states of Disney (346) and Hogwarts (247), or the neighbors of the fictional Simpsons in Springfield (175). While I have spent many happy hours observing Sim City, unlike 107 orkut users, I do not reside there.

Until next time, may your state be a happy one!

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orkut trends: Who sends scraps?

When orkut launched, we had no idea that scrapbooks would be the primary way members would interact. Billions of scraps later, we've learned that scraps are a huge hit, and have added ways to make them even more fun by enabling you to add videos, photos and HTML.

We've been wondering (and perhaps you have too): Which orkut users are scrappiest? In our recent sample, members from the island nation of Grenada had the highest scrap counts at an average of 1877 scraps. Of the biggest orkut nations, Pakistanis came in first, followed by Americans, Indians, and Brazilians. (All of these statistics are based on current scraps that have not been deleted by the recipients.)

Women receive just under half (48%) of all scraps. Women from the Cayman Islands receive the most, followed by those from the British Virgin Islands, Trinidad and Tobago, San Marino, and the Northern Mariana Islands. (What is it about those islanders?) Albanian women had the fewest scraps (81) -- still a pretty substantial number when you think about it.

On the male side, islanders still rule: men from Grenada averaged a whopping 2569 scraps each. Here's the full chart:

Country (gender)	Scraps received	Scraps received (women)	Scraps received (men)
Grenada	1877	557	2569
Cayman Islands	861	1093	715
Pakistan	758	717	779
United States	423	249	578
India	345	443	301
Brazil	267	272	263

Who's sending these scraps? The scrappiest users hail from Pakistan, followed immediately by Madagascar and the Central African Republic. Among women, the most scraps come from Jamaica, then Madagascar, followed by the nation of St. Pierre and Miquelon. Among men, Pakistanis sent the most, then Qatar.

And what are people saying in scraps? Some messages occurred again and again. Out of a sample of 1,000,000 short scraps, the following were among the most common:

scrap	# of occurrences
hi	1131
oi [hi]	689
ok	298
parabens [congratulations]	273
.	187
hello	184
=]	146
vlw [thx]	135
^^	133
blz [ok]	132
=)	124
:)	117
[:p]	115
=D	115

Not only was the word "hi" common, it also appeared frequently followed by extra "i"s. For example, "hiiiiiiiii", "hiiiiiiiiiiiii", and "hiiiiiiiiiii" each occurred more than 90 times in our 1,000,000 scrap sample.

Until next time, our 46th most popular scrap: "bye"!

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