In a post on Salesman, Salesman… Why don’t you sell me something…Wendell Dryden described problems he’d encountered using the Multiply.com service from within Facebook. Wendell has still not found the ideal solution: “So, the search goes on. I still want a non-Facebook, real-world social networking site where learners I and can connect” and then concluded “Multiply’s too scammy. Yahoo’s lost at sea. This spring, I guess, I need to take another look at Orkut.”
Now who remembers Orkut, Google’s social networking service?
As described in Wikipedia “Orkut is a social networking service which is run by Google and named after its creator, an employee of Google – Orkut Büyükkökten“. The service was launched in 2004, initially by invitation only. And it is now the most visited website in Brazil and second most visited site in India.
Sounds good, doesn’t it? And I subscribed to the service shortly after it was launched. But what can it offer in 2009?
Logging on for the first time in ages I found the various discussion groups (forums) which I’d subscribed to after I joined, which included one on Libraries. And what did I find? Well not much discussion – and the odd spam comment, as illustrated. Similarly the Web Developers and Designers forum, which has over 3,500 members, seemed to contain mostly messages advertising Web design companies.
But Orkut now provides more than just discussion groups – it also provides access to Open Social applications. And looking at the list of applications which I can add to my Orkut page I discovered, on the first page of applications, that I can add Photobuzz to “Make [my] friends smile! Animate their photos with Hugs, kisses, hearts and much more“, Superscrap to “Send christmas scraps and wish merry christmas to your friends. Dozens of new templates created to each occasion. Handwrite your personal message and superscrap [my] friends. True friends deserve a super-scrap everyday!” or use an ‘educational’ applications such as IQ Test to “Take a free 15 minute intelligence test to find out your IQ and compare it with [my] friends to see who is the most intelligent“. You can even install Slapster which promotes itself with the summary: “Don’t just poke your friends, slap’em around with Slapster! Select your friend’s orkut profile picture and slap it around as hard as you can with this fun application!“. This will be an undoubted favourite for Facebook users. Not!
Does Orkut have anything to offer me? I don’t think so. It seems to have been abandoned by the 35 colleagues I had befriended. And what’s the point of a social network if nobody is using it? It looks like Facebook will continue to provide the environment for me to keep in touch with friends and colleagues – despite the criticisms which this service seems to attract.
“What’s the point of a social network if nobody is using it?”
Well – there is no point. But as you say Orkut is the most visited site in Brazil and 2nd most visited in India, so Orkut (as I realise you know) doesn’t fall under this description.
So the question is “What’s the point of a social network if nobody I know is using it?” Here we have an issue about the closed nature of social networks – it is very difficult to break into a new social network (virtually or physically).
How do you generally ‘get to know’ people on Facebook – presumably through existing contacts – i.e. Friend-of-a-Friend? This isn’t possible between closed systems like Fb and Orkut.
Of course there are other issues – like possibly a language barrier with Brazillian users (unless you write Portuguese?).
An additional thought that strikes me is in the context of UK Universities, India is still fertile ground for recruiting overseas students. So, surely the question is ‘Can your University afford not to be on Orkut’?
Really useful observation, Owen. If you want to use a social network for interacting with your friends and peers, you’ll want it to be popular amongst those groups. If however, as you suggest, you want to reach groups in other countries (or reach different age groups, etc) you’ll want to use a service that is popular by your target sector – assuming that reflects your intended usage.
A blog post by Brendan Mitchell (possibly due to the popularity of access to networked service on mobile devices in Asia and Brendan’s view that “Facebook’s mobile phone implementation isn’t great“).
“It looks like Facebook will continue to provide the environment…” Me, too. If only Fb had a better blogging tool (and I was better at creating pages and groups).
In any case, the only way Orkut (or Ning) will work for me is if I aggressively create a network of learners and colleges – which I could probably also do just by chaining together a bunch of blogspot blogs with post and feed widgets.
It feels a bit odd to be complaining, in 2009, that the internet doesn’t have enough…
“Does Orkut have anything to offer me? I don’t think so.”
It offers you everything but people.
Hello Brain,
I was just googling and got to know about this well written post of yours. Well, I was asking the same questions few months ago about Orkut and its feasibility. What this social networking is giving me and you wont believe me but fortunately or say it unfortunately I discovered something which is not common in any other social networking site and that is the emphasis on online communities of Orkut.
There are hell lot of dump but many are really unique and became a biggest resource point. Their can be lot of difference between our thoughts but I liked the way communities or forums are growing in orkut. If social networking for you is only for friends than get the one your friends use more, but if social networking is a tool of bridging societies and culture than I will recommend Orkut.