Orkut and Orkutting are words to be added to the dictionary for they have become so common these days. I had absolutely no clue about it till a couple of months back. And now I am also an orkutter.
I would never make the mistake of saying its a very good site for the simple reason its use or advantages are limited and disadvantages creep in to take more space.
One aspect which everyone would accept is finding long lost school frends, especially because those days(about 6-7 yrs back) there were no mail ids even if you wanted to keep in touch, letter writing was limited to less than one percent of the crowd and mobiles were out of question and even landlines were very few- only with the upper middle class.
And now through orkut, I have been connecting to a lot of my school frends and also my school teachers. But there are a lot of factors we need to take care before we end up becoming addicts of this addictive website.
When we find a frend and want to keep in touch, share personal email ids through a secure message and DO NOT SCRAP IT. After which you can continue to keep in touch through mails and dont have to depend on orkut. Do not scrap any personal contact details through the scraps. Always keep it secure.
If you want to upload pictures for your frends to see, remember anyone and everyone on ORKUT can access it and download it(and be morphed as thry wish). Its not secure. So NEVER upload solo pics. May be u can put up group pictures which wouldnt be the taget of people who search for pics to be morphed and misused.
When a stranger adds you as a frend, first check their profile, check your scrap book and inbox for any msgs from them. If you are not convinced they are genuine people or simply dont wanna be frends with them, just deny it-dont think twice about it.
There a lot of people who also do the online business and hence a lot of bakwass msgs that you can expect. Plainly delete them.
If you find any person/community abusing, there is an option of voting that person/community as bogus and a few more votes as such, dat profile would be inactive and delted by the admin.
Inspite of all these cons, the factor that we get to meet old frends and if lucky can make gud and genuine friends.
As it is more often mentioned, we the people need to be more careful when using such websites for ultimately we get affected.
So be careful, do not get addicted but go ahead and find your frends and make new ones who will last for a lifetime...