I took this photo of my friend Ray at Museum
subway station by holding the camera over my shoulder; I
had no idea if I was aiming correctly, etc. I liked the
resulting blurry effect. And yes, that's me on the right!Slept a lot yesterday, feeling somewhat better today.
I've been using the beta version of
Orkut for about a month now. I admit, a lot of my Orkut fascination is because I've always been interested in the organic nature of online communities, seeing how they grow, figuring out what makes them succeed (and fail). And I love the idea that someone in Osaka, Japan can be giving writing encouragement to someone in Finland, that people living on opposite sides of the earth can be collaborating on a creative project. In case some of you don't know my history, I've started several online communities on my own (including
Inkspot, which had a subscriber base of about 50,000) and have also been hired as an online community consultant several times.
Here are some comments so far:
Things I like about Orkut:
- I'm running into acquaintances and work contacts I haven't been in touch with for a while.
- I'm meeting some interesting new people I likely wouldn't have otherwise. Like a Toronto children's author who sounds pretty cool; we're actually going to (*gasp) meet in person sometime soon, probably for a coffee.
- Interesting to click on anyone's profile on Orkut and see how they are connected to you (through various contacts). I hope Orkut uses its database to give more info like this.
- People are encouraged to use their real names and photos of themselves. Not all do, but the majority seem to be decent about it. As great as Livejournal is, I -still- don't know who some of the people on my Friends list are because of nicknames, though it's clear we've met in person. To those unfamiliar with Livejournal: on LJ, people can add other people as "Friends" without permission.
- I can find a message board about nearly anything. If I can't find one, I can create one myself if I'd like (but see below).
Things I don't like about Orkut:
- There are way too many message boards (called "communities" on Orkut) with very little content or reason for existing. I recently saw someone complaining that Orkut wouldn't let him create more than 100 communities without deleting some. *100 COMMUNITIES*!!! I've suggested to Orkut Support that they find some way of flagging communities that have over a certain number of members; that way it will be easier to weed out duplicates and to find more active message boards. I understand the benefit of allowing users to create their own communities, but I'd like the option of NOT having to scroll through pages of communities with names like "Rent An Orkut Friend", "Lipstick Junkies" and "Head In A Jar" in search results. Perhaps if categories were subcategorized into serious and silly? By membership numbers? As the system stands now, it's more of a hassle than a help to find the specific communities I'm interested in.
- The fact that any member of a community can send a mass posting to ALL members of that community. I don't get any of these postings because I've turned that option off in my profile, but many people may not realize you can do this.
- Before creating a community, a potential moderator needs to be given information about his or her responsibility. There are far too many people who are creating a community (the process takes about ten seconds, and any member can do it) on whim and then abandoning it. Inactive communities should be deleted after a certain time period. There also needs to be a way of automatically checking for potential duplicates before a community is allowed to be created.
- Communities aren't ranked any particular way, and organized by very general categories. You also can't manually organize categories in your own profile, putting your favourites at the top, for example. It would also be nice to have a record of where I've posted, so I can check for follow-up postings. Some kind of notification system, perhaps.
- It would be good to be able to bookmark or "watch" a community without having to join it immediately. This would also help reduce the number of members in a community to those who actually want to participate in it. Some people may just want to lurk for a while first.
- The term "Friends". I have the same complaint about LJ, where the term is used even more loosely since anyone can add anyone else as a "Friend" without permission. Because the term "Friends" comes with a built-in connotation, politics abounds ("How come she added you as a Friend and not me?" etc.) as well as encouraging the "add as many Friends as I can whether I know them or not" trend. I have the same complaint about Orkut, where a far more accurate term would be "Contacts", even though it's not as touchy-feely-sounding. You can categorize Contacts as personal or business. This would also help others looking at a particular person on your Contacts list, knowing your context with that person.
- The karma ratings are rather silly. I'd rather see ratings on how well any particular member contributes to the community (this has worked well in Slashdot, for example); this would also encourage participation.
- There needs to be more online guidance for new users. The FAQ is ok, but there should be more tips for newbies (perhaps a tutorial that all new users are encouraged to take) on how to get the most out of the community, rules of etiquette, etc. This info would need to be divided into two sections, one for users mainly interested in business networking, the other for personal. One of the current problems of Orkut is that they're trying to mash both into one (except for a brief attempt at keeping separate pages for personal/business info in one's profile). They are likely to lose their potential business networking users to services like
Linkedln if they don't watch out.
- The
copyright clause I mentioned in an earlier Blathering. I did finally get Orkut Support, however, to specifically say in writing that they would never take an original piece of writing I had posted in a message board and use it elsewhere without my permission. I have strongly suggested that they reword their current Terms of Service to reflect this.
General comments:
- I am NOT saying Orkut is better than Livejournal or vice versa. You can't really compare them since they're such different animals in terms of online communities.
- I've adopted a policy of only adding people I know in person or whom I've worked with online to my Friends list. I've had to turn down some Friends requests as a result, but because I publicly state my policy on my profile and stick to it consistently, I haven't got any flack about it.
- Right now, people seem to be adding more communities than they're willing to participate in, resulting in a great many fairly dead message boards. I was one of these guilty parties as well, so am in the process of whittling down the number of message boards in my profile. Instead of complaining about how dead they are, I'm going to do something about it and try to get discussions going, or participating in ongoing discussions. May succeed, may not...I figure if it helps revive even one of the mini-communities I'm interested in, it's worth the effort. :-)
- I've already gotten more out of Orkut than I expected, but I'm still reserving judgement about whether it's worth visiting longterm. It's still a beta version, so I'm curious about what changes they plan to make for the release version. I've been sending them suggestions, and have also sent them the URL to this particular Blathering.
-I believe that Orkut has a ton of potential for both business and personal networking; I just hope they don't let their ballooning user base numbers go to their heads...online community users can be fickle. Everyone pays attention to the shiny new toy, but there's got to be substance behind the shine or they'll go back to their favourite old toys before long, or find a new one.
Sunday, June 6, 2004 at 12:49PM 
When I was ten, I was taking piano lessons. I wasn't that crazy about practising, wanted to read instead. Sometimes I'd prop an open book up on the piano music stand and then read it while I went through scales and arpeggios and triads like an automaton, knowing my parents wouldn't realize I wasn't focussing on what I was playing. I'd turn pages between exercises. Years later, those years of piano lessons paid off: I taught piano on my own, had about 25-30 students when we lived out in the country. I organized recitals, prepared them for Conservatory exams. And got frustrated when some of them didn't practice properly, of course. The theory I learned during lessons helped me when I started playing flute, guitar, Celtic harp and other instruments.