orkut - boon or bane

Recently my company infosys technologies Ltd, Mangalore conducted a contest inviting write ups and other creative art work from its employees. i had come to realise the importance of orkut as it was one of the sites i daily visited to keep in touch with my friends. surprisingly it not only won the early bird prize but also third place in best articles section. so guys it is time for me to confidently torture you all and also eat up some time of yours. please read on.... :)

http://www.orkut.com would be one among the top five addresses that any person glued to the web will key in any browsers address bar. Or if he is like me, he will have the address stored in his favourites. So what is so special about this site that makes everyone visit it.

If one google’s for “Social community sites” without quotes it returns 164,000,000 search results in its traditional lightning speed and you will be surprised that orkut is not in the first page of the search results, well not in the unsponsored links atleast. It is second in the list of sponsored links. Inspite of this it will have “name any” friend of yours or long lost school buddy or school crush and there is a high chance that your search will end in orkut. Orkut was conceptualized and developed by Orkut Buyukkokten and was aptly named after him. He did this in the 20% time he spent at google every day of the week. Google has this concept of every resource spending his 20% time on the thing that he wants to develop. Orkut - the person wanted to develop a social community site and so was the birth of Orkut - the site. Initially google employees were asked to open their profiles and the number of registered users kept on growing and there was no looking back.

The reason orkut has grown so much is because it is more than just a social community site. Apart from just being a repository of your friends it has many communities ranging from serious politics to the daily soap opera (K syndrome) on the television. You can not only join one of these communities but start one of your own and moderate it. Recently my friend mentioned that he has been looking for tintin comic book on the web with no luck. I asked him to check out in orkut as there sure would be a community dedicated to the famous cartoon character. He found not only the community but also the e version of comic book in minutes.

Apart from sharing your favorite snap, blog, favorite videos (basically yourself) you can discuss various things through postings in communities. In fact my communities in orkut ranges from Algorithms, Donald E knuth to Little Johnny jokes and I have gained knowledge from both sides of the range. I and my roomies even have a community dedicated to the apartment in Melbourne we are staying in so that all the ex and current roomies can stay in touch and share their moments. All in all orkut is both for easy going folks and for people with a purpose. And it’s great that one can find both at a single site.

Recently people have started using orkut even for commercial purposes. Whether you want to advertise your apartment or want to sell something. It is gaining popularity as an e-commerce site. In fact I got two replies for my posting when I wanted to find an accommodation in Melbourne before my travel.

There are of course instances of misuse of orkut. People have met the wrong person on orkut and taken that too far. But out of every power that is bestowed to mankind there comes the responsibility and the caution with which that power has to be used. Same is the case with orkut. World Wide Web was developed to make information available from anywhere to anyone. But now we have hackers, black/white and of various other colors. So every pro comes with a con. It is left to the users on how they want to look at things and use it.

With 128 friends I am connected to 67,159,231 people through orkut. There is no second thought that orkut has been definitely a boon to me and in general to the mankind. So do me and probably yourself a favor. Join orkut and add me as a friend if you have not. Happy orkuting