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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?"
It'd be interesting to see how the contacts branch from the original 12,000 people.
You could see how they branch, what countries they cross into, and how people relate to each other (interests, age, etc.)
I wonder if this'd be something sociologists would like to watch...?
Cause if it is, I don't see how it will. Friendster makes it far easier for people to join - and create their own social networks with their friends, because you don't need an invitation to join in the first place. That allows them to create a much larger userbase - even if it means isolated communities within the larger group.
This on the other hand seems to want to create one large community, but it's based on the 12,000 people that got emails in the first place, which makes it much more restrictive and makes it much harder for new users to join and thus expand the userbase.
Frankly, I think they can go screw themselves....I won't hunt down a way to get into "the clique" and may not even if a friend invites me.
It seems to me, that once you've been invited, you can "invite" your web-driven robot, which can offer a backdoor for many other random people you don't know.
It's like saying you can't get into a brick-and-mortar "gated community." Unless you're a pizza delivery guy. Or any of his friends.
[
And how did I not make the initial list? Are there really 12,000 people better known to Google than me? In conversation, I now ask questions by prefacing them with gg: .
What I'm listening to now on Pandora...
1) Wow, it's even more cliquey than C2! Well, almost.
2) The Orkut website is really pretty.
This is typical for Google. How do they get the text to fade in on page load? It's really neat. Look at the TOS page for an example - you see the pink/purple orkut.com's for a while, and then the rest of the text fades in. Is this just a simple CSS thing I should know but don't because I'm stupid?
3) Check out the "golden key" icon (at their privacy policy). It's amazing! lol
We recently had heard in the office over one of the Yellow Machine that's made by Anthology Solutions.
They (friendster) really could _really_ use the horse power google has. It can be _very slow_ sometimes and I constanly get messages that my network cannot be traced from me to someone in my network. Hmmmm. I really like Friendster but Orkut may have the backend power to make social networking a more friendly experience.
Mecworks BLOG
... but while "invitation only" to begin with, doesn't necessarily ensure the quality of the network in the future. All of us have some "good" friends, as well as "bad" friends. The people with more questionable ethics could even go as far as auctioning an invitiation on ebay or something similar.
All forms of socialization over the internet seem to start out with loads of potential, but in the end, they all suffer from the scum that tends to surface.
"When life gives you lemons, don't make lemonade. Make life take the lemons back!" -- Cave Johnson
It seems to me that Google could very well be sitting on a large pool of cash that might make it worth some corporate raiders' time to finance a huge takeover and pay for it out of that pool of money. If Google purposely diversifies their operation to initiatives that might not ever turn a profit, they can reduce that pool prior to IPO. Might not be the brightest choice right out of the box, but given that their price is sure to reduce over two-three quarters post-IPO, it'll reduce their attractiveness to a takeover attempt.
Of course, being private at this time, none of this has any basis in fact. Although, the fact that Google's probably going to spend $25mil on this suggests that they really do have stupid piles of cash, and can afford to potentially toss big chunks of it away on potential failures.
...where the word "orkut" is the colloquial plural of "orgasm".
The potential is huge. Eventually both Finns currently reading slashdot will join, and will be largely disappointed.
-bpfh
-BPFH
This doesn't seem as big news as it could be. It's not a major project of Google, but something one of the engineers built during company time when instructed to work on a personal project. It's not branded "Google Friends" afterall.
Google has in recent months taken up a strategy of buying up every website with "google" in their domain name in a brand-image protection spree. They recently got computer parts storeGoogleGear.com to change its name to ZipZoomFly.com... which was a very interesting case because Google had no legal leg to stand on... the computer gear store had named its mascot a "Google" before the search engine existed, the sites looked completely different, and the computer gear store didn't do web searching and the web searching company didn't sell computer gear.
The deal was apparently struck quietly, but clearly some cash was paid. There never was any media coverage of the event, and I'm pretty sure the terms of the deal reqires the computer gear store to not disclose how much they got.
People tend to form groups with those who are like them in some way. If they sent random invitations and these receivers invite their friends to join, we might have a very interesting simulation. For example, we can surmise that everyone who joins is computer literate. Other than that, it's all up in the air. Therefore, as people invite other who are probably like themselves (friends tend to be that way), we may end up with a very large and fairly good sample of Netizens. This, in turn, would be very useful for market research which, as we all know, can fetch a pretty hefty price on the open market. Therefore: no fees to join, no fees to maintain membership...just fill out a survey for us every once in a while. We don't even really need your e-mail address...just fill out the survey. Call me strange but I think I could have been sitting on a pile of money if I would have implemented this first. I mean, people always want to join what you don't want them to join.
"We are accountable for not only what we do, but also that which we don't do." -- Moliere
Seems like a lot of addresses. How were they gathered?
Doesn't look like orkut.com had a sign-up period or anything...
Doesn't look like it was sent to Google-Friends Newsletter (not in the archive; plus RTFA, in which says "Google spokeswoman Eileen Rodriquez said that despite Orkut's affiliation, the service is not part of Google's product portfolio at this time.")
(..like anyone is really intereted in the linguistic finesse of finnish slang :)
"There is a terrorist behind every bush"
Anyone else surprised that it's .net?
email me and i'll send you an invite.
shelley{at}shelleymonster{dot}com
got biv?
Buddyzoo already does something like this. You upload your AIM buddy list and it draws connections between people by seeing who has who on their list. It rates your popularity based on how many people have you on their list and makes note of cliques (when a group of people all have each other on their list). It even generates a nice SVG diagram to show how the people on your list are linked with each other.
If Google's invite list looks like the photos on the webpage, they may be asking for a discrimination lawsuit. (Everyone's young and white). Their imminent IPO raises the question can a public company run a social network whose admittance policy discriminates based on who you know? I think they can probably get away with only offering the service to citizens of the US or EU, but can they get away with offering a service that is only available to the cool friends of the chosen 1200 and their cool friends? Professional clubs in most US states and cities aren't allowed to discriminate by race or sex; will this be treated any differently?
Personally, I dislike laws that enforce who you can associate with, but given that they exist, it seems like this service may easily run afoul of them.
I'm part of another exclusive social-circles site called The Yak which only allows people to join if they know current members. Seems like a number of these have been popping up lately.
http://www.theyak.com
I prefer Ryze.com. It's basically a social networking site but its got more of a Business Networking angle to it. You're free to sign up, but you have to "make" friends by requesting people to be added to your friends' list, and that doesn't happen till they click "OK". So that way, though its open unlike Orkut, there's still the element of closed clusters or whatever it is that you call them. I just won't add to my list the people I don't trust. Unless of course she's hot.. eh eh..ahem.
www.ryze.com
- Aalaap