Slashdot Mirror
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?"
To get invited, just go to a Dave Matthews concert...duh!
A programmer is a machine for converting coffee into code.
Friendster was hard to get into because of all those JSP errors. Orkut is by invitation only. Slight difference.
Subscribe for free to my show!
So those of us who no one likes will never be let to join? And I thought my life was bad now! First I'm kept out of all of the real world social places... not the online ones too? Could it get any worse?
Yes, the above is sarcasm!
Help Brendan pay off his student loans
Named after one of its engineers, Orkut Buyukkokten
:(
They should have named it Buyukkokten!
Never argue with an idiot, he'll just lower you to his level and beat you with experience.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
Alright! Now thru the golden graces of Google, they've amassed all the collective might of the PhD's they employ to re-create the negative social effects of high school cliques and elitism!
YAY!
Mac OS X and Windows XP working side by side to fight back the night.
Orkut? They'll have to do quite a bit of work to give their members the prestige that's associated with having a Slashdot fan.
An invitation-only society will always become cannabalistic and/or inbred.
I don't want to be invited into that!
Don't believe anything I say. I crash test crack pipes for a living.
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...?
google continue their world domination attempts, next thing you know we'll have google linux, google word pro, and google tunes (gTunes?) ... they'll release it all in a single package and call it googogogol
Take away the right to say "fuck" and you take away the right to say "fuck the government." - Lenny Bruce
...created Orkut.com in the past several months by working on it about one day a week--an amount that Google asks all of its engineers to devote to personal projects
Ok, that is a cool company. I wish I was working at Google. But they haven't opened a software development office in Iowa yet.
Why, exactly, is this on Slashdot?
===========
Together, we will drive the rats from the tundra.
slashdotters don't know 3 people each if you discount both parents and Mittens the cat.
Trolling is a art,
I wouldn't join any club that would have me as a member. =)
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.
yet another way for people to make themselves feel popular and socially accepted while being a commodity for someone else.
get over yourselves and do something useful.
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.
[
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
Does the fact that I don't need this service mean I have a life?
FLR
... 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
about these things. I met my best friend, my wife and my rabbi on friendster. I'm not even jewish!
;-) Sorry.
Quack, quack.
If I actually had any friends, I wouldn't need a "social networking service".
Friendster has such momentum even though it is so buggy and slow. Can anyone explain why it is so popular?
:)
Because it has a clean, simple and intuitive user interface. It is very well designed, except for the database part
All the other social networking sites are a PITA to navigate, and have really cluttered, obnoxious UIs.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
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.
Just kidding! :-P
Next time someone questions the educational ability of the internet, simply respond with that one word. It is proof that we've all learned something new, which we probably never would have.
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."
"There is a terrorist behind every bush"
I love the numerous links imploring me to 'Join Orkut', only to bring up a page saying " Membership to orkut is by invitation only." It's like yelling from your doorway to 'come on in', only to ask for a ticket at the door.
Why is anything anything?
Google put up a network to compete w/ Friendster.
Riiiiight
Twelve thousand initial invitations went out to join.
Riiiight
Only members can invite new members.
Riiiight
This is the BEST vaporware campaign EVER!
---anactofgod---
---anactofgod---
"Equal opportunity swindling - *that* is the true test of a sustainable democracy."
I feel like the fat kid who always got picked last for dodgeball. Wait, I am the fat kid that always got picked last for dodgeball. Somehow this hurts slightly more.
-=-=-=-=-=--=-=-=-=-=-=-
What would Yossarian do?
Who controls the British crown?
Who keeps the metric system down?
We do! We do!
Who leaves Atlantis off the maps?
Who keeps the martians under wraps?
We do! We do!
Who holds back the electric car?
Who makes Steve Guttenberg a star?
We do! We do!
Who robs the cave fish of their sight?
Who rigs every Oscars night?
We do! We do!
Yeah. I really want to be part of Orkut. Please, someone invite me. Not.
A social network's attempts at exclusivity would seem to be at odds with scalability. Once the network exceeds some threshold then it is bound to contain mutually distrusted people connected by chain of trust. The problem is that trust is not fully transitive -- it is not true that if A trusts B and B trusts C, then A trusts C.
A more scalable approach would allow open enrollment and self-organizing clusters. Each joiner would become trusted within one or more loosely defined clusters of BOFs, while remaining untrusted or disliked by other BOFs. At a higher level, BOFs could even assign trust to other BOFs, with members partially inheriting the relative trust levels of the BOF(s) they belong to.
Membership-by-invitation creates an unfortunate hurdle to creating truely globe-spanning networks because it means you have to know someone to be permitted to know someone. Although intended to weed out the riff-raff, invitation-only policies probably do more to create obstacles for legitimate, but previously socially unconnected, potential members. A better post-joining filtration/sortation/cluster would let everyone find their respective community(s).
A truely scalable social network would admit and support gun-toting republicans, and enviro-liberal democrats, and Microsoft apologists, and Apple fanboys. A set of trust distance functions would ensure that each member stays within their respective BOF clusters.
Two wrongs don't make a right, but three lefts do.
Mobster: you must be a member of a gang or Mafia. To get in, you need to have a rap sheet with at least 20 entries. First 12,000 invites went to email addresses in Federal prisons.
Witchster: you must be an initiate into witchcraft. To get in you need to have posted at least one spell of your own creation, with details on the underlying operation principles. First 12,000 invites went to the High Priest/Priestesses of covens registered as nonprofits.
Govster: you must be a politician who is, or recently was, running for any public office in the United States of America. To get in you must have a public web site that contains the slogan "Vote for America! Vote for me!". First 12,000 invites went to the list of people who ran for Governor of California in the latest state election.
=^..^= all your rodent are belong to us
Because most the people on Friendster are polly or sexually lose?
Because once on there are women who troll for "friends of friends" to bang?
Because most those women are computer Geeks who like "Geek pillow talk?"
Because most the female pics are very pretty???
Any of that explain it???
"Live Free or Die." Don't like it? Then keep out of the USA
Yeah. We call them "buddies" now.
Hey freaks: now you're ju
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.
It's the Eric Cartman business model... we've built this really great thing and YOU CAN'T USE IT!
People will be clamoring to try and get access to this thing only because they're being told they can't have it.
What a great country!
You are in error. No-one is screaming. Thank you for your cooperation.
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
I'm surprised that Google doesn't create more plays on its own name for various functions. Besides the Froogle shopping site that could have:
Whoogle -- social networks
Oogle -- porn
Doogle -- jobs
Zoogle -- info on animals
Choogle -- food, recipes, and restaurants
Two wrongs don't make a right, but three lefts do.
Orkut Buyukkokten has done this before.
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.")
I think you are confusing balding 40-year old men who pretend to be teenage girls online with actual women.
Or maybe I'm confusing AOL chat rooms with friendster.
The only question I have is, how are you supposed to "meet new people" or "expand your social structure" if all you are doing is inviting all the people you already know. From what I have seen, most people have a fairly static social circle, and there is not much movement between them.
If I could get a firm grip on reality, I'd choke it...
Take a look at their TOS before posting anything of any importance to you.
orkut.com's proprietary rights
By submitting, posting or displaying any Materials on or through the orkut.com service, you automatically grant to us a worldwide, non-exclusive, sublicenseable, transferable, royalty-free, perpetual, irrevocable right to copy, distribute, create derivative works of, publicly perform and display such Materials
Emphasis added by me.
Never thought I'd say this on Slashdot, but it's "loose" not "lose"!
I do not have a signature
I think there is only a finite number of people interested in social networking sites like Orkut, Friendster, Tribe, etc.
Given the proven theory of 6 degrees of separation, it shouldnt take very long for all possible connections to be made before the growth reaches a plateau.
Eventually, everyone on each social network will want to have the most connections and will also get an account at all the other social networks.
I've seen this happen in online dating websites that offer "free" accounts.
I've browsed all the online websites that have a sizeable number of people in my city, and 90% of all the women with a free account are the same women across all those sites.
I would go so far as to say that's the whole point. They're probably doing this to analyze statistically how such networking takes place. This would be useful as a model for many things, and I'm sure marketers would be interested if no one else.
Information transfer theory is cool, and no one has the possibility to study it like Google does.
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:
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
/^[A-Z0-9._%+-]+@[A-Z0-9.-]+\.[A-Z]{2,4}$/i
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."
and the point of the join button is...to take you to a "no, you cant join actually.." page weird
Anyone else surprised that it's .net?
email me and i'll send you an invite.
shelley{at}shelleymonster{dot}com
got biv?
...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.
c /
http://www.firstmonday.dk/issues/issue8_6/adami
Computer Science is all about trying to find the right wrench to bang in the right screw. -T.Cumbo?
If it responds with "invalid e-mail address", then you struck out; if not, score!
Now, next thing to do is to automate this with your mailbox, and then see which of your "friends" didn't invite you!
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.
I had to put on my tinfoil hat for this one, but "Orkut" is really, REALLY old news. The funny thing was, all mention of it has been virtually stripped from Google. "Orkut" is the revival of "Club Nexus", something Orkut built while at Stanford University. You can see a more complete description of Orkut/Club Nexus here.
Also, Stanford mentions it here. It's also been live for quite sometime as Stanford's inCircle. The oldest mentions I can find in Google are from 1991, but then again, Google's been pretty well stripped of information on the subject.
The oddest part, of course, is that http://www.clubnexus.com/ is gone, and purged from the Google cache. Same thing is true of http://clubnexus.stanford.edu/. *sigh*
Anyway, here's Club Nexus/Orkut in a nutshell: "Some people were upset because they're not sexy," says Buyokkokten.
Cheers.
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.
It's interesting... assume you're trying to colonize a planet... or pick a sperm donor for your baby. Do you want to pick 12,000 computer geeks? 12,000 socialites? 12,000 loose slutty women? 12,000 smart people? 12,000 funny people? 12,000 people with "a great personality" (aka: ugly)? A mixture of both/all? Will the intermingle? Will their procreations become boringly average people?
6degrees or whatever it was called was fascinating to me. Not so much for the seperation angle or the giant cloud, but rather for the cliques that showed up and/or developed.
I wonder how Googles newly populated universe will end up. And I wonder how cool it would be to have a UID
--D
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
Start a happiness pandemic
So let's see, this great site that noone can even see is the next big wave?
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.
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
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 :)
Only the truly shameless shill their blog in a Slashdot sig