] THEY SAY IT'S ALL ABOUT who you know. But for Orkut
] Buyukkokten and Tyler Ziemann, it's actually about
] who you don't know. As a doctoral student in
] computer science, Buyukkokten noticed that his fellow
] graduate students had a hard time meeting people with
] similar interests. In November 2001, he came up with the
] idea of an online social networking forum.
]
] Buyukkokten, PhD, recruited Ziemann, a
] political science major, to manage the creative and
] business aspects of the project. Together they created
] Club Nexus, a free service exclusively for Stanford
] students.
]
] Club Nexus users introduce themselves by filling out
] profiles that can contain anything and everything from
] which dorm they live in to their sexual habits. They then
] link themselves to students they already know, and voilà!

Evidently an earlier version of the orkut service was "Club Nexus" for Stanford Alumni students...

Stanford Magazine: Orkut's Origins