10 reasons why India is crazy about Orkut (83 Lakhs Indian profiles)

Do you know that as of now on May 30 83 lakhs(8.3 million) profiles on Orkut are of Indians (at 15.1% of total profiles) and this has risen from 48 lakhs as of Jan 8th to reach this situation a phenomenal growth rate in just 5 months.It is 2nd most popular site in India behind Yahoo .Do you know that Top 10 cities searching for Orkut in India on Google are not Delhi,Bombay but tier 2-3 cities like Silchur,Sangrur,Varanasi etc.
This phenomenon has now reached pan India what is the reason behind this love affair with Orkut ?

1. The biggest and the strongest reason has been word of mouth(Buzz or WOM) publicity nowadays if you are a youngster between 18-25 net savvy and not on Orkut then u r considered uncool .This age groups form 58.7 % of population on Orkut and one where being cool is more important.
2. It is very simple to use and is not like other feature-rich Social networking sites this meant that even those users who were not very net savvy were able to learn it easily.
3. One of the strongest reason for initial growth came out of easily available broadband Internet access in Indian software factories (TCS,Infosys etc) however now most of the offices have banned Orkut (people have discovered proxies for bypassing the ban though) but the invitations from these early adopters have reached out to people in tier 2-3 cities who have picked up Orkut like anything.
4. Initially Orkut was an invitation only service but now it is open for all making it easy to join.
5. The Indian culture and society meant that that their was no dating medium but now a vast group of previously shy gals and boys have found Orkut as a means to find a date or even life partner.
6. However still a vast group of guys use it as a means of voyeurism by staring at the photos in the albums of gals and reading into lives of others through scrapbooks.
7. A large majority of people though love the way Orkut allows people to connect and find long lost school & college friends.
8. As of now it is a strong means for activism with a spate of social communities and cases like the very recent Koushambi Layek case (featured on CNN IBN) whose scrapbook has become a shrine and that of his killer has become a hate forum.
9. It has also helped the underground communities of India like gay & lesbian communities to bond.
10. And lastly it has the Google brand name behind it which gave it a lot of early adopters in India.

Now there are spate of dime a dozen SNS sites targeting Indian users but to beat Orkut they have to do somethings which Orkut doesn't do but i will keep that for some other post .More on marketer's perspective on Orkut is here