Orkut is a free-access social networking service owned and operated by Google. The service is designed to help users meet new friends and maintain existing relationships. The website is named after its creator, Google employee Orkut Büyükkökten.

Although Orkut is less popular in the United States than competitors Facebook and MySpace, it is one of the most visited websites in India and Brazil.In fact, as of May 2009, 49.83% of Orkut's users are from Brazil, followed by India with 17.51%.

Originally hosted in California, in August 2008 Google announced that Orkut would be fully managed and operated in Brazil, by Google Brazil.

Orkut was launched on January 22, 2004 by Google as independent project of Orkut Büyükkökten, a Turkish software engineer. The community membership was originally by invitation only. At first year, United States had the largest user base. On August 24, 2007, Orkut announced a redesign. The redesign has been announced on the official Orkut Blog

On September 4, 2007, Orkut announced another new feature. user would be able to see an "Updates from your friends.you can operate orkut account through our google collection portal.