The Orkutting Chronicle

It has been about one year since i joined this bandwagon. Was initially a bit curious..But now,it has turned out to be an integral item in my browsing list. A conceptually , very brilliant idea. The origin of Social Networking Sites (SNS ) started from friendster,tribe.net etc. But orkut has taken it a step further through the ideas of scrapping and user defined communities.

Created by a Turkish computer science student Orkut Büyükkökten and owned by Google, this has immediately caught the fancy of computer literate youth. Some interesting stats about this from wikipedia,

• The most number of users, i.e, a whopping 75 % or more are Brazilians.
  
• Estonia is the nation in which it is most popular .. 3% of its population has profiles in this. And, Brazil stands at 2.5% in this aspect
• The word 'orkut' in Turkish mean - The holy meeting place.
  
  

Now, a little bit about the interesting features that it presents...

Scrapping - Realistically, I dont like this. It is the marketing of our exhibitionist tendencies.To understand this argument if u are a regular orkutter,think about the time u spend reading the scraps in other ppls profile..especially when u go to scrap them.. For me, mails are more welcome than scraps...But, the overwhelming majority is behind this..and hence, I'm going with the flow.. I've some friends who dont reply when mailed , but they make it a point to reciprocate when u scrap them.. Anyway, I'm happy that they keep in touch.


Testimonials / fans - A refined and controlled version of the above feature. Though I've not received / given many , this is an OK feature which should be present in any SNS .


User Defined Communities- Perhaps the most debated feature in Orkut.From oxymorons like 'This is not a community' or 'I hate Orkut' to fan clubs and hate communities of various celebrities and mere mortals, ( I've seen profiles of ppl who create communities of his fans -- perhaps the greatest exhibitionist ..I can't think of anything greater than this) you can find them in any flavour. Because of the racist and sexual issues arising out of this, a lot of people are arguing for a ban on this...maybe, the way user defined yahoo chat rooms went off. But thats no solution, maybe there is something better.

But whatever be its demerits, this has been a wonderful platform for me.I've made some very good friendships and got back in touch with some old friends. Really, its something special for me :) .. And yeah, why stop like this ? A little bit (perhaps a lot) of exhibitionism from my side too.. Click here to see my orkut profile .

Ajith