Friendster was a great idea, but it's outgrown its little body. The website was built on the notion that people meet new people through their friends. While that’s certainly true, and Friendster often brings people together, the system is limited to that single type of networking. It ignores the fact that even more friends are made in groups of folk with a similar interest. Followers of Noam Chomsky are likely to dig other Chomskites, Howard Zinners, and Gore Vidalies. Terry Gross listeners might hang with other Grossers, Ira Glassheads, Garrisons. Scorpion fans and White Snake fans often find common ground. And so on.
Enter Orkut, a new online community concept created by Google engineer Orkut Buyukkokten (hence the ill-advised name). Instead of merely listing people with a similar interest, Orkut offers communities, each with its own discussion forum, in which to meet and gab with your kindred spirits.
Orkut = Friendster + LiveJournal-style communities + a goopy layer of cheesy design
(Don’t gag too much on the cheese bit yet — we’re feeding the developers a good dose of aesthetic advise, so hopefully the bad graphics will soon be replaced with simple functionality.) Joining requires an invitation from a current member, so if you’re not Orkutized yet, let me know and I’ll hook you up. Anyone who still endures my stewf.com ramblings deserves at least that in return.
Seriously, Orkut is good. Just today I got some good nightclub and hostel tips from my Stockholm group, soaked in fans’ favorite lines from the canceled-but-not-forgotten “Home Movies”, and even joined a “John McLaughlin Group” community. Yes, John freaking McLaughlin. If that’s not proof of Orkut’s goodness I don’t know what is.
Thanks to Dave for the tip.