Is Orkut Catching Up To MySpace?

That would be a good thing since it would put Google's social network on a path towards social networking king (as they enjoy being number one in everything).

Over on the Read / Write Web blog, Alex posts some interesting graphs showing Orkut sliding into the number two position.

Here is their summary of the competition between Orkut and MySpace:

From the charts we clearly see that Orkut is gaining, but why? The feature set and the user interface are not impressive. The answer has to be its affiliation with Google... [...]

But perhaps it is not just that Brazilian users dominate, but also the attitude and confidence of Orkut. [...]

MySpace is an undisputed leader on all counts, but Orkut is on the rise and it's moving very rapidly. [...] All and all it looks like the battle for the gold (MySpace, Orkut) and for the bronze (the others) is going to heat up.

According to Read / Write Web, Orkut has around 49 million users, which is almost half that of MySpace.

Although they still have a long way to go in order to catch up to MySpace, Google seems to finally be busy improving the Orkut servers, as one can tell by the growing list of dead orkut hacks and programs (hey, you either have to adapt or die).

Note: Google's rival Yahoo! seems to be jumping into the social network club and is considering buying out Facebook, a story that Inside Facebook is following very closely.

Update: Ionut, from Google Operating System posted on Google Blogoscoped that Alexa's numbers are flawed. Visiting HitWise reveals Orkut to be less popular than Friendster. Sad.