Google Social Network: Orkut

shelleymonster writes "According to CNET, Google has quietly released its own version of Friendster, called Orkut. About 3 months ago, Google entered into talks to acquire Friendster, but was turned down. Named after one of its engineers, Orkut Buyukkokten, the new social network looks even tougher to get into than Friendster. An initial 12,000 invitations were sent out, and new users can only join through an existing user. Someone want to invite me?"

Comments

Re:oo, shiny web site

[CaptainBaz]

It's just javascript and css - the javascript darkens the rgb values of the text progressively in a setTimeout(), until it hits the maximum. not very Accessible, but looks pretty...

Re:oo, shiny web site

[zellyn]

Javascript changing text color of the CSS attribute assigned to most text. Look for the sa() function.

Not the most fortunate name

[joonasl]

In finnish, the word "orkut" is the plural form of the slang word for orgasm. Gives a completely new meaning for the idea of "Orkut is an online community that connects people through a network of trusted friends."

Re:Not the most fortunate name

[Anonymous Coward]

In Holland everybody sees the word KUT in Otkut, it means 'vagina' in dutch

Re:oo, shiny web site

[mansemat]

Right Click > View Source

This is only art of it, but it's the color changing part...

<script>
col=255;
function sa() { document.getElementById("ws").style.color="rgb(" + col + "," + col + "," + col + ")"; col-=5; if(col<0) col=0; if(col>0) setTimeout('sa()', 10); }
</script>

Re:Get Invited...

[mirko]

Nice one : in French (slang), a "clique" means

• a group of people
• or "some stuff"

I guess the first applies to such a closed server (NB: it's not an offense, just some familiar word :)

Re:Orkut?

[agurkan]

actually this sounds like a turkish name and turkish people usually go by their first name rather than last. politicians are the exception but even they sometimes go by their full names rather than only last. common example is the football players, few people know their last name even though they usually are very famous if they are good (or in good teams).

Re:WOO HOO!

[Anonymous Coward]

A-FUCKING-MEN.

I couldn't have said it better. The few times I've dropped in on sites like Friendster, I've been astonished at what a "high school" atmosphere it has. And in all the bad ways. A bunch of attention-starved girls looking for any dork on the internet to pay them a little attention and lots of losers and their regional "cliques" trying to make as many friends as possible.

I can only imagine what kind of STDs are floating around in Friendster-like circles. These are the most vaccuous, inane, brain-dead, MTV-esque dregs you can find. Stay FAR away.

Club Nexis

[darksmurf]

Orkut Buyukkokten has done this before.

Maybe you don't understand...

[Anonymous Coward]

...what a circle jerk really is.

There is no "bitch" in the middle. It's just a circle of men, each of them reaching into the lap of the guy to their right, stoking his neighbor's meat.

Try to learn the terminology before attempting to use it in a sentence.

Slashster

[DarkHelmet]

Okay everyone, shameless plug time.

I am currently creating a PHP version of friendster which I call Slashster. (Yes, this is inspired from Slashdot and Friendster).

I figured that a PHP/mysql implementation would be interesting, and I'm rather curious to see how this thing can end up scaling, and if it can do it well.

I was thinking of launching this on Monday, but this slashdot story was too relevant for me to wait on it, and get some of the press on it.

Right now, its layout is nearly identical to friendster, but will change once I actually get someone with design skill to help me redo it.

There are a couple primary differences between slashster and friendster so far:

• Slashster has a messageboard. You can only see threads / post from people two degrees of separation or less from you (You, your friends, their friends). Friendster kind of had a "post-it" system on their site, which didn't have any sort of interaction on it. This aims to be a little better.
• News feeds. I'm still working on getting the XML parser working better, but I have a couple news feeds on the "main page" which are pretty much customizable.
• Moderation: Right now, people who submit new threads to the messageboard have control on moderating people up / down on those posts. The way I figure, people who want to talk about one thing will have their own corner. People who want to be irrelevant and stupid will have another corner.
• Karma. Your karma is (roughly) the sum of your moderations (slashdot style) divided by the number of days you've been on the site. This way, it'll encourage people to be there on a daily basis and contribute. Also, the amount of space you get for uploading pictures depends on your karma.
• Referrals: You end up getting more picture space for the Karma of your friends. Hopefully this will encourage people to invite others who participate, and not those who do nothing.

I'm very interested in getting input on the place. I'm still doing bugfixes on the site, as I said before, so people visiting might get the occasional parse error or two while I'm updating things.

Still, I'm looking forward to any feedback (positive and negative) on this place. I'm really hoping this post gets modded up, simply so that more people will check it out.

You can email me at the address listed with this user account. Thanks everyone.

--Mark

Orkut Research Paper

[davebrot]

Looks like Orkut has been thinking about this for a while. Here's a paper he published with two HP Labs folks on the subject. Funny excerpt: "They (english majors) were also twice as likely to describe themselves as sexy (18 percent), while on the other hand, only 3 of the 136 Electrical Engineering majors chose to describe themselves in that way."

This is an expansion...

[ghostis]

...of smaller social experiment done at Standford with a network called Club Nexus. Orkut was an architect of that experiment. Now he operates on the grand scale of the entire internet. Orkut.com will be able to read clustering, small world effect, and weak tie strength in the global internet society.

http://www.firstmonday.dk/issues/issue8_6/adamic /

The man himself

[Anonymous Coward]

Here's a picture of Orkut. I understand why everyone's clammering to be his friend:

http://www.stanford.edu/~orkut/bwphotos/p105.jpg

Orkut running Windows/ASP.NET ... HMM

[x31forest]

Well well, and I thought google is all for linux. It seems their orkut site is running on a Windows ASP.NET platform. That can be checked easily with http://www.orkut.com/inc which is an invalid page but shows you their menu structure.

Re:WOO HOO!

[Anonymous Coward]

You're 100% right. I'm posting anonymously because of my Stanford ties, but this is precisely what (and who) Orkut is. There was a demo version built while he was at Stanford, and it was just a clique competition... you even got ranked (similar to PageRank) by the number of "important friends" you had. It's truly repugnant.

Can Anyone Say "Beta"?

[gbulmash]

If you look in the upper right corner near the "Orkut" logo/name, you'll see "Beta" in light letters.

I'd guess the reason it's invite only is to keep things manageable. If you had a community in beta, would you want it slashdotted with new users (many of whom would bitch and moan about every glitch) while you were still trying to smooth out the rough edges?

I'm sure that once Google feels this is ready for unfettered public consumption, the invitation only rule will die.

Greg

Name issue

[ahmetaa]

Orkut Buyukkokten is a Turkish name-surname. Orkut is actually an ancient name probably thousand year ago it was used. Buyukkokten literally means "Coming from big root" or "Has big roots" Please do not make fun of names.

Can social and business networking co-exist?

[ThatAdamGuy]

I've been playing with orkut.com for the last day or so, and it's definitely a pleasurable step up from Friendster (though admittedly, Friendster sucks pretty hard).

One thing that I'm curious and/or concerned about, however, is whether orkut can really be -- as it seemingly intends -- all things to all networkers. In this early version, there seems to be enough goofy/mushy/flirty stuff in it to deter serious business networkers (who'll likely prefer spoke.com), but not enough of the romance/love/sex component to effectively compete with Yafro, Match.com, and Evite.

Currently orkut's (obviously) got the Google cache plus the processor speed that comes along with that. Additionally, the founding members of orkut.com are largely Googlers who -- from my cursory observation and knowledge -- happen to be largely intelligent and interesting people.

I've actually written a more detailed review of my initial orkut experiences, and I'd certainly welcome feedback :)