Wasn't Orkut Enough?

I joined Orkut in 2006, two years after it registered its presence in the internet fraternity. One could join this social networking site only through an invite at that time. I myself had asked one of my ‘member’ friends to send me an invite, so that I too, could become a proud member of this vigorously burgeoning family. I still remember the kind of sentiments that this nascent site had invoked in me. I didn’t have a net access in my room that time and so I spent hours sitting in my internet lab either searching for long lost buddies or sprucing up my social profile. I didn’t even mind waiting in never ending queues in front of the locked doors of the room to be the first one to grab a seat. Believe it or not, personal thank you messages were sent to all visitors who used to land up in my profile either by chance or by choice. Rejecting friend requests was out of question; be it from a stranger or a mere acquaintance. Celebrations followed when the number of friends hit the hundredth mark. Number of scraps was the newest exhibitive among friend circles. Fan count became the status quo. Joining coolest communities became a rage.

Facebook saw me as its user a year later, at the end of 2007. I did not join it on will; circumstances pushed me to do so. The incessant e-mail requests and reminders by friends pressed me to check out this latest fad. Though it was creating ripples in the virtual societies, it failed to inspire a thrill in me. Instead I was very unhappy to see new competitor sites coming up. I used to get anxious and annoyed when people talked about joining Facebook, Minglebox, Mypace or LinkedIn. Perhaps I was well aware of the future consequences of this latest trend. I didn’t want my contacts which I found after so many years with so much difficulty, to get drifted away to some other site so easily. After all, it meant my own migration as well because a network would be nothing without friends that constitute it. Keeping pace with one social network was in itself a big commitment with respect to time; I was not at all in favor of giving another chunk of my precious time to a site which served exactly the same purpose. I reluctantly joined in, but pledged to keep my loyalty with the elder brother. The extent of my despondency is very much clear from fact that its 2009, and I haven’t even filled up my profile information yet. I am there just because my friends are there.

I know for sure that majority of those reading this post would say that they prefer Facebook over Orkut. Facebook has become choice of the sophisticated whereas Orkut remains the love of tenderfoot. Those giving a preference to Orkut are looked upon as technologically backward. One of the possible reasons could be the false pride that Indians get by following American and European culture. Facebook is highly popular there, in contrast with Orkut which has a fan following majorly in Brazil and India only.

Recently I have been spending a lot of time on Facebook trying to uncover the basis of my mental bias against it. Some of points that I came across are as follows:

1. First impression is the last impression. The mundane white and blue background with painfully small fonts, make the user interface unappealing.
2. The whole space looks cluttered with all of the quiz and game results, comments, advertisements and updates thrown unkemptly at the same place.
3. Quizzes and games, albeit addictive, seems to me a total waste of time. They keep you unnecessarily logged in without serving any fruitful purpose. If am fond of gaming, I would rather play nicer and challenging ones elsewhere rather than satiating myself with the limited ones provided by Facebook!
4. There is a restriction on the amount of information that you can view about a stranger. This feature, in a way, hampers the basic purpose of a social networking sites as it becomes difficult to ensure whether a person is familiar to you or not. And social networks are also for making new contacts; how will one decide whether a particular person is worthy of making a friend unless he/she knows a little bit about him/her.
5. Navigating around in Facebook is a pain in the neck.
6. Too much of updates from friends, becomes irritating.
7. The additional features that many Facebook supporters argue about are nothing but time wasting tactics. A networking site is just meant for catching up with old friends and not getting trapped in the virtual arena all day long.
8. Orkut communities score far over Facebook groups because of features like discussion forum and polls.
9. Privacy control, which was earlier an issue, has now been incorporated in Orkut. You can sensibly choose for yourself what to conceal and what to reveal.
10. Some may put forward this agreement that Orkut is copying Facebook nowadays, I say, even Facebook is not lagging behind. After all who came up first with the innovative idea called “Social Network”
11. I am a strong believer in the ‘KISS principle’, Keep it short and simple. Orkut fits better to this definition.
12. And last but not the least, Google has established a brand value among its users in the recent years and I just love Google products.

Although choosing one out of the two is matter of choice and personal taste, your pick certainly affects your friends’ preference and so on. Now whenever I come online, I need to open both the sites to stay in touch with the latest, which is not something I approve of. So guys, what do you say –“Wasn’t Orkut enough? “