Orkut
Sunday, February 1st, 2004Yeah, I’m on Orkut.
It is pretty neat. I have punted the invites to LinkedIn, etc, for a variety of reasons. I have been blowing off the LinkedIn invites mostly because they read so much like spam.
There are three features of Orkut that are keeping me interested in following, even participating, within the resulting community.
First, Orkut seems to have taken the “let’s build it and see what happens” approach. Orkut doesn’t enforce any particular kind of usage pattern or community structure.
Secondly, Orkut’s approach to managing email is such that it is easy to stop orkut from ever sending you messages. As well, Orkut’s messages state clearly exactly why the message arrived in your mailbox and don’t seem to try and “hard sell” some kind of a “BE A PART OF THE FUN NOW OR BE SQUARE!!!” advertising message.
Finally, Orkut may ask for a boatload of personal information as you sign up, but it is pretty much all optional and you can easily customize exactly how your info appears on the pages contained within the site.
To me, the measure of Orkut’s success will be its ability to connect me with folks that I care about. Through Orkut, I have already heard from a couple of folks that I haven’t caught up with in far too long. By that metric, Orkut has been a wild success.