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I know this whole spiel comes a bit late, considering this topic was *so* 2 weeks ago, but I felt the necessity to explain why I deleted most of my friends, groups, and have become utterly uninterested in checking my stats.

Sure the fact that it's invite only makes you feel all warm and fuzzy when you are one of the 'elite' to get in. Maybe that's why I jumped on it so fast. I got hooked. For the entirety of 2 days. Inviting online friends and real world 'unconnected' (read: not so net savvy) friends as well. I thought this could have some great possiblities. Slowly I came to the conclusion that I don't like Orkut. There are too many shortcomings.

First and foremost is the problem that happens with all these social network doodads. They turn into games. It turns out to be a popularity game to see how many *friends* (in the broadest sense) you have. I honestly don't even know how Orkut could go about fixing this one. Whenever there are numbers involved, people get competitive. Whether it be your skeeball score or your inflated friends list score. As Lago points out: "Social network software at its finest can only serve two purposes: facilitating the creation of artificial networks for people who don’t have real ones; and facilitating the artificial visualization of networks for people who have real ones. In other words, if you don’t have a meaningful social network, these tools help you pretend to have one, or to build one within highly bounded dimensions. On the other hand, if you have a meaningful social network, these tools serve as a sort of game where you can build fake identities, compete over the number of friends, or assemble raw data for research purposes. You don’t build networks; you play the network game."

Secondly, the fact that I cannot be a fan of somebody without adding them to my friends list. This is disappointing. I'm not friends with Russ, Mark, or even Ernie... but I'd surely be considered a fan. I believe you can't be a fan unless both of you have each other on your friends list. Which means in order to be recognized as a fan of Russ, I'd have to dilute his real social network (or best attempt using Orkut).

"Google had the opportunity to learn from Friendster and the other YASNSes, solving their known issues, but instead they released a tool that was broken in exactly the same way as its ancestors. This doesn't advance the art, it doesn't provide new value to users, and, because of Google's popularity and credibility, it foists the YASNS problems (like the Economy of Bullshit and the social awkwardnesses) on an even larger user-base. Friendster had the excuse that they were breaking new ground and discovering new problems. What's Google's excuse?" - Danah Boyd's Friend

As much as I love google, Jeremy Zawodny does raise an awfully good point on why google needs orkut. It would be a great way to easily get info on all of its users. "The kind of demographic data that marketing folks drool over."

For more reading on why Orkut fails and an example of a 'functional' social network check out Gary Murphy's The Power LinkedIn writeup.

Yes it was fun, and I even spent 45 minutes making a great profile that I will probably carry over to my about page at some point, but until I'm convinced that this is useful I will abstain.