September 2004
So who's on Orkut nowadays?
Some of you may be familiar with Orkut, the popular social networking / community site. Unlike its direct competitor Friendster, people can join only by invitation at the moment, which results in some interesting demographic trends.
Since I was bored a little while earlier, not to mention rather curious as to who's on Orkut right at this moment, I took a simple tally of the first 200 unfiltered search results. I specified no additional search criteria; instead, I simply logged the country of the person's origin.
* Other countries less than 2% included, in no particular order: Romania, France, the Netherlands, the United Kingdom, Sweden, Italy, Turkey, Ethiopia, Australia, China, Switzerland, Spain, Russia, Lithuania, Norway, Mexico, Luxembourg, Germany, Portugal, Iraq and Thailand. This extraordinarily unscientific study was conducted on Sept. 12, 2004.
Interestingly, three-fifths of the group comes from Iran and Brazil. Which begs the question: given their large respective representations, are Iranians and Brazilians actually joining the same communities? That is, are Iranians actively engaged in conversations about Carnival and bossa nova? Likewise, are Brazilians talking about the Achaemenid Empire and Hedieh Tehrani?
Which seems to call for a Venn diagram of Common Interests Between Iran and Brazil:
Ah yes: Pele, the great equalizer.
The Godfather of the Modern Internet
Ask yourself, "Who is the Godfather of the Modern Internet?" Depending on your level of nerdiness, you may come up with answers like... Berners-Lee. Brin & Page. Nielsen. Bezos. Well, you're wrong on all of them.
No, the real answer is Don LaPre. You may remember this affable young man from the mid 90s, when he barraged late night cable TV with his hour(s)-long, relentlessly hypnotic infomercials. Here are a couple of facts that corroborate my claim:
Don LaPre's secret to success was "placing tiny little ads in newspapers."
The hearts of Google's AdWords and Overture's product suite lie in placing tiny little sponsored links on search results pages and online newspapers.
All three networks rely on astoundingly large reach to ensure profitability and relevance.
For a little while in the late 90s, when he was promoting his amazing Vitamin Pill, Don appeared onscreen with his pretty sounding board, Internet celebrity Cindy Margolis. The anagram of Cindy Margolis is "My consigliere*." Coincidence?!
*Actually, it's ... "My consigliar...d." Also note that this whole article is weak satire.
Celebrity Math #6
Still working on another kawabunga redesign, but here's a Celebrity Math from the RNC in the meantime.
