(PUC-Rio -2006)Orkut is a virtual community design
(PUC-Rio - 2006)
Orkut is a virtual community designed to help users meet new friends and maintain existing relationships. Today, "virtual community" is loosely used and interpreted to indicate a variety of social groups connected in some ways by the Internet. 8It does not necessarily mean that there is a strong bond among the members. 2An email distribution list on Star Trek may have close to one hundred members, 3and the communication 9which takes place there could be either one-way (the list owner making announcements) or merely informational (questions and answers are posted, but members stay relatively strangers and uninterested to each other). The membership turnover rate could be high. This is in line with the liberal use of the term community.
5Similar to Friendster, Orkut goes a step further by permitting "communities" of users. It is also invitation-only: 4Users must be invited to join the community by someone already there.
Orkut was quietly launched on January 22, 2004 by Google, the search engine company. The service was created by Google employee Orkut Büyükkokten, 10who had developed a similar system, InCircle, for 11his previous employer, Affinity Engines. 6InCircle was intended for use by 13former university students.
With regard to copyrights, their terms of service 14state: "By submitting, posting or displaying any Materials on or through the Orkut.com service, you automatically grant to us a 15worldwide, non-exclusive, sublicenseable, transferable, royalty-free, perpetual, 16irrevocable right to copy, distribute, create derivative works of, publicly perform and display such Materials".
1Originally, the Orkut community was felt to be elite, because 12its membership is by invitation only. However, at the end of July 2004 Orkut surpassed the 1,000,000 member mark, and at the end of September it surpassed the 2,000,000 mark. As of September 2004, 57% of Orkut's members were from Brazil, followed by 14% from the United States and 6% from Iran. Brazilians were below 50% from August 9 to August 20, 2004. It is believed that this happened because 7a lot of them changed their nationality to something else due to a rumor that users with their countries set 18to Brazil got slower speeds and a greater chance of getting an error page.
Invitations to Orkut are obtainable, with a few minutes' (or days') worth of diligence, 17via the web.
From "http://www.whatis.tv/Orkut.html" (with slight adaptations)
The passive voice is used in "Orkut was quietly launched on January 22, 2004". Find the sentence that is also in the passive voice.
Communities have never rejected new members.
Good ideas took shape at the end of the session.
Some communities have been able to control their growth.
Several social groups could be connected by the Internet.
Young students are never tired of chatting with friends on email.
