Orkut-Indianization!

Most of you would have noticed by now that the Orkut homepage has changed. The change according to me is quite significant but in reality the change may not even get registered in the user's mind..

Orkut has changed the pictures of people which appear on the homepage. You may say 'Does it really matter?'. Yes, it does. The new pictures are an actual representation of the actual user community compared to the earlier pics. Orkut finally acknowledges the fact that Indians form a significant portion of the Orkut population by putting pictures of Indian users.

Orkut Homepage

Orkut Demographics

Some number crunching now:)
Total users on orkut as on 7/04/2007: 49,636,859 = 49.64 million (this number appears when you come online).
Indians = 13.9% (the third largest group after Brazilians and Americans)
This means that there are 6.9 million Indians. HUGE right!!

Is this change significant? I believe yes because now i feel Orkut (i mean Google!) will try to cater to the Indian audience through local content. For example: To catch on to the world cup fever, orkut had built a community.
Read it here.
Talk cricket on Orkut
Cricket discussions that started in the elevator can spill over to the Orkut network. Especially this season, in association with us, cricket expert and former Indian cricket captain Krish Srikkanth has created his own community on Orkut to interact with cricket lovers, debate the latest happenings and just share cricket views.

This really does not sound like good news for the India based SNS's like Yaari or Minglebox which have 'local content' as their key strength.

I feel Orkut has a lot up its sleeves and it will unfold very soon. Correct me if you feel otherwise.