Since I have been in Orkut for more than a year, I would like to review on it. Orkut is a cool place to hangout if you have nothing to do. I first got introduced to Orkut by one of my friends. When I joined Orkut in December 2005, I didn’t see many of my college mates there; maybe there were altogether ten from my college. But since the beginning of 2006, people from my college started joining and now there are more than 150 from my college in Orkut.
What is it so special about Orkut that lured millions of people? What made
The people to come out of other online communities such as Hi-5 and to join Orkut?
Orkut was invented by Orkut Büyükkökten, a Turkish software engineer and also an employee of Google. Lets see what is special about Orkut. Before that you also may consider reading the article on Orkut at Wikipedia.
1.Orkut brought a new concept called scrapbook. According to the dictionary, a scrapbook is an empty book where one can stick their own collection such as pictures, articles, etc. But the Orkut’s scrapbook is used to chat with other members of Orkut.
2.Orkut used much features of a forum, such as, maintaining one’s identity, having avatar, private messages,etc.
3.Orkut allowed users to classify their friends in Orkut into several categories such as a good friend or a best friend or an acquaintance, etc.
4.Orkut allowed users not only to add friends but also let them join or also create communities thus expressing the user’s liking.
5.The forums in communities allowed the user to chat about their favorite topics and also to get new friends.
6.Users have their own unique profile to express themselves
7.Users can search for other users with similar interests of their own.
- >Bugs in Orkut:
If you had read the Wikipedia article about Orkut, you would have seen that there are nine bugs in Orkut (which might have been debugged by now). Some of them can be found even by a normal user of Orkut, such as not showing the actual friends number (this problem was there one year back) but showing one extra or one less.
–>Bad Donut:
This problem occurred frequently in Orkut where a page “Bad Donut, No server for you” occurred when the user clicks on any link in Orkut. This problem would exist for a few minutes.
–>No data:
Sometimes, seen very rarely, Orkut, sometimes, is unable to fetch the data to the
user such as displaying the message “Data currently not available”.
But put altogether, is Orkut a very good place? Most people would have been aware that Orkut has a bad side too. But Orkut allows users only above the age of 17 which ensures that the users are of legal age to accept it.
->Underage:
As said above, Orkut allows users only who are above the age of 17 but would that stop underage people from joining Orkut? I have seen many boys and girls who are under the age of 18 in Orkut. I didn’t know how they joined in. Maybe they gave a fake birthday year. I was shocked to see a user whose age is 14 and also in the 9th std in school has an account in Orkut.
->No Privacy:
As the users of Orkut may know, Orkut has no privacy. A scrapbook is a user’s open room where anyone can come and talk and also listen to what others speak. But this is normally accepted by the users of Orkut as they don’t seem it much bothering.
->Hatred:
Orkut has users from around the globe. There have been cases of discrimination and hatred among the people. People express their hatred openly on other people. Let it be in the scrapbook or in the forums in communities, the hatred started growing everywhere.
–>Bogus Reports:
Orkut has a very useful option called as “Report as Bogus”, which can be used to report people of their misbehavior or their inappropriate action which might have caused displeasure of others. If a certain fixed amount of such reports is reached, the person or the community would be deleted by Orkut. But this was used by people to delete and insult the innocent.
–>Anti-communities:
The hatred among the people and societies even went to the formation of anti-communities where one insult and destroys their target in words. This in turn invokes the supporters of the attacked to reciprocate the same. A large number of anti-communities are growing proportionally to the communities.
–>Revolutionary communities:
A number of communities such as Revolutionary ones were spotted everywhere. These communities were formed in order to revolutionize Orkut, to change the way it is; some mainly focused on the anti-communities and the ones who misused Orkut to disturb others in any form.
->Viruses:
Orkut was not any exception to get infected by virus profiles. These profiles spread unwanted messages asking the user to click on a link which may lead to a severe virus.
–>Scanning Links:
After the virus spreaded a lot, Orkut decided to put an end to it by introducing the word verification system to it everytime an user types a link in a scrapbook or in a forum.
But some new viruses were able to overcome the verification system and were seen in a few places.
->The photo problem:
Some months back, a message was being spread that the photos in a users’ (especially girls) Orkut album were being misued and also being faked. This led to panic among the users.
->Orkut vs Messenger:
Though Orkut was popularized, there was still one thing Orkut lacked – the interactivity and features that messengers gave. Messengers were still a faster way of communicating between friends. Hence one could have expected, there were many transitions from Orkut to Messengers.
–>Third-Party softwares:
Though Orkut didn’t come forward, there were third-party softwares that helped Orkut get what it didn’t have. At first, Orkut didn’t have the reply option immediately below the scrap, it was once provided by a third-party software developed for browsers such as Firefox. One more problem that users faced is the lack of interactivity; such as not being informed that they have got a new scrap. A Third-party software called Scrapboy was getting popular soon which informed users of new scraps and also provided a single click from sending a scrap.
–>Integration of Google Talk into Orkut:
Orkut atlast came forward in introducing its own messenger into Orkut. Now Orkut shows whether a user is online in Google Talk, hence Orkut easily integrated Google Talk to let users switch into Google Talk easily.
Orkut has made many changes in the past years. There are just under 4 crore users in Orkut. Thats what Orkut has brought into the people. Some people like Orkut because it connects old friends, or maybe because they wanna find new friends, but whatever it is, Orkut may still rule this year.
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