Orkut does not find threat from Linkedln and Facebook

NEW DELHI: Internationally popular social networking website Orkut, which celebrated its fourth birthday on Thursday, sees a long journey ahead and does not have any threat perception from rivals like LinkedIn and Facebook.

"Each of us has a different target userbase, we, at Orkut, aim casual and leisure exchanges between family and friends, as compared to a LinkedIn, which targets professional exchanges between individuals," Google India Country Head, Products, Vinay Goel said.

Orkut, with a strong India following, started as a plain vanilla exchange platform, but has now moved to the next level as a mature user now wants newer features.

So, as compared to the early structure where anyone could visit any person's account and get to know the personal details and conversations taking place between individuals there, one has now the option to restrict visitors.

"This new feature is increasingly becoming popular, and more so amongst women," Goel said.

Answering on Orkut platform playing the pivotal role in the murder of 16-year-old Mumbai boy Adnan Patrawala, he said "Adnan's case was very unfortunate."

"It is hard to rectify each user registering on the website in India, but we do work in close contact with law and order departments over them," Goel said.

99.9 per cent use it for the right purposes as a platform of self expression. Also, we try to educate them on etiquettes of being a part of a social networking sites through the privacy and security centre.