Well, who hasn’t heard of Orkut, it’s supposed to be one of the most congested community forums nowadays. I came across this website about the same time I came across gmail having received invites for both from certain friends. Gmail was cool in itself, but initially I found myself very lost with this orkut.com . Slowly but surely I came to terms with it, understanding it more and more by the day. Needless to say, as is common heresy , it’s become very much an addiction. A good addiction or bad? Well, that’s what we shall see now.
The GENERAL LAYOUT OF THE WEBSITE
Well, there’s not much special about the login page a standard set of text boxes for the password and id, a submit button and….c’mon that’s what is there on every website. Right! Moving on, when one has logged in you’ve got these tabs at the top which read as home, friends, messages, communities, search, media, news. And of course further up one has the help, settings and logout links. The general demeanor of the website is a darkish metallic gray.
On the leftmost top , you have space fore your picture which can be uploaded if one so desires, followed by links for personal use like scraps, testimonials, profile, lists album, settings. It has space in the centre of the page to show your number of scraps, fans, profile visits, inbox messages, recent visitors and today’s forecast.
Below these set of buttons we have a list showing us the birthdays of people whom we have added in our friend list. Talking of the friendlist it’s all compiled on the right of your screen with your communities compilation below it. So, that’s basically what the personalized page wears, not dressed in resplendent attire I suppose, but pretty neat overall.
THE BENEFITS OF BEING AN Orkutian?
1.Well, to start with this about forming an online community of friends so that one can stay in touch distant from themselves. And with a splendid membership that Orkut enjoys you are bound to stumble upon many friends of eons ego??? Not exactly but in my case I’ve reestablished touch with so many friends I’d been cut off from 12-14 years. That’s the power of Orkut. It let’s you maintain a catalog of all your friends along with their details as is fed in the database.
2.So, the natural next question, How does one communicate with friends here? Well there are 2 modes of doing this. If you want to send a personal mail, Orkut provides you the option with a personal inbox to serve the purpose. And if it’s some casual note or general small piece information you want to send use the scrapbook option which is open to public viewing.
3.Then, you have the communities option whereby one can add on clubs or association to his personalized accounts according to tastes. The use? Say, one is a Tom Cruise fan and are part of the community which has more than 120, 000 members. You want to know something specific? Start a thread in the community forum. Or if you query already exists in a thread, elaborate on it. Get all you wanted to know about him. You have numerous fans connected to this forum from various countries. Someone’s bound to know the answer. Or say you like reading e-books. You join such a community so that you can have access to links to download the same or discuss links with other members. You can even start a community if you feel one should exist where the public should discuss the matter.
4.By being part of this huge network you get to know who are the people who actually regard you as friends by the degree of acquaintance they maintain with you on a regular basis which can often be a predicament in real life.
5.For all those people, who forget important birthdays and anniversaries (like me), this site is the ultimate solution. It automatically highlights the concerned person’s avatar if he/she has a birthday on that day. So, all one has to do is login to Orkut for five minutes. daily and you are not going to miss anything at all.
6.Then, there is this album section via which we can share our memories of our day to day life with our friends from a distance via photos. So, one can have a visualisation of what’s happening at the other end.
7.Then, one could also chat here since your list of friends shows you their profiles according to the most recent logging ins. So, you’d have a good idea of who maybe online and who not. And, if you have some catching up to do, well get on with it! Just like a messenger client.
8.You can maintain a complete profile here with information about you, whom are the friends you are a fan of and vice versa and there is an option for testimonials that can be written by your closer friends which displays on your profile and of course those who don’t know you that well can get to know you better in this indirect manner.
9.The settings options let’s you decide what is to be displayed to whom, so you could control the level of privacy you want to maintain as an Orkutian for most matters.
NOW LET’s HAVE A LOOK AT THE BADDIES
1.Well , I for one hate the fact that one has to visit the other’s page to actually scrap him/her making it cumbersome if you are experiencing net congestion. I’d rather they make it a complete messenger like process keeping the scraps aside for one off purposes.
2.Well, if you are one with many friends, it becomes to search them from your list, so it’s advisable that they form different links for friends with links for names starting with A-Z besides the latest logged in list for our ease.
3.No matter how much you adjust the filters and settings , the inbox is more of a nuisance than a help. Some spam or the other always finds it’s way into it. And yes, you’re the one who has to delete them!
4.The scraps may be for public messages but who’s to stop anyone from writing things about yourself you’d never want to declare in public the scraps section being open to all. And it ‘s not a rare occurrence I’m talking about.
5.Then of course, the latest rumours especially of concern to ladies. The buzz is that pictures from women’s profiles are being illegally used to pornographic purposes.The site doesn’t allow us to make the pictures untouchable. Whether it’s happening or not isn’t a certainty but it definitely can happen and Orkut would be better off finding a solution to it soon.
6.One might often find oneself whiling one’s time away on Orkut rather than using his time constructively, that’s a general bad tendency Orkut tends to inculcate in others. Be it students, professionals or adults alike they all fall prey to this propensity.
FINAL SAY: Orkut isn’t infallible!Browsing on Orkut is what we love and love to hate as well but let’s face it if it were to disappear out of the blue now, we would be more sad than happy as if a part of our lives has been scraped away.It might have its flaws but it’s definitely more good than bad. All we have to do is make use of it in the right way. So, if you’re not part of it yet, I’d recommend you’d get on it without dallying further.
-affiliated with google