MySpace ponders Brazil

Posted by: Stephen Baker on July 03

Within a half hour of returning to this office for the first time in eons, I sit down with colleagues and MySpace co-founder and CEO, Chris DeWolfe. He talks confidently about expansion 18 countries, from France to China. But one country gives him pause: Brazil. He says that Google’s Orkut “is part of the national culture there, almost.” Google has 300 employees in Brazil, he says, and MySpace won’t “go into Brazil lightly.” He sees MySpace opening its standalone Brazilian site in early fall (hemisfério do norte).

I looked around to read about Brazil’s love for Orkut. Found this venerable analysis. The most intriguing angle for me was pronunciation:

“Orkut is very easy to pronounce in Portuguese. Try telling someone from Brazil to go to Friendster.com or MySpace. The names of those sites are lost in translation. When someone pronounces “Orkut” in Portuguese (especially Brazilian Portuguese with the heavy incluence on the “ch” T sound), they can easily spell it, visualize the word and remember it next time they get infront of the computer.”

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