Orkut - Google Social Networking

January 23, 2004 1:01 AM

Google (kinda) Offers Social Networking called Orkut
Acording to this CNET artice, Orkut is the outgrowth of a personal project by Google Engineers Orkut Buyukkokten. He created "Orkut.com in the past several months by working on it about one day a week--an amount that Google asks all of its engineers to devote to personal projects". And oh, by the way:

"Membership to orkut is by invitation only.
If you have a friend who's a member of orkut, have them invite you to join."
posted by Steve_at_Linnwood (32 comments total)

Q. How do I join orkut?
A. Orkut is a trusted community. In order to join, you need to receive an invitation.

Does this mean that all people who become Orkut members are just a matter of degrees away from a Google Employee?
posted by Steve_at_Linnwood at 1:03 AM on January 23, 2004

What kind of lame community has closed doors and is so exclusive? What a bunch of lamers. That's lame.
posted by The God Complex at 1:14 AM on January 23, 2004

It's a beta. Friendster grew the same way, everyone slightly knew Jonathon whats-his-name that started it in the bay area.

I just got invited in and so far the most surprising thing is the whole thing was built in ASP. Maybe that's why it's not public yet, they haven't ported the code to a real platform yet.
posted by mathowie at 1:17 AM on January 23, 2004

Got an invite to this. Got an invite to Linked In recently. Friendster is banned by my spam filter so I do not know if I have been invited to join. Closed doors may be good or may be just pretentious. Time will tell.
posted by arse_hat at 1:25 AM on January 23, 2004

I was joking since Metafilter is, at least currently, a closed-door community.
posted by The God Complex at 1:44 AM on January 23, 2004

"Does this mean that all people who become Orkut members are just a matter of degrees away from a Google Employee?"

I thought the exact same thing when I tried to sign up.

Something I would find interesting is being able to set up satellite friend groups with specialized interests, but it would/could still be by invitation only. A person could be involved in as many different groups as they wanted to be (if/when invited); each with a different general theme and/or interest. Networking with other web developers (or multi-racial couples, or fathers, or musicians, etc.) in the Seattle-area who have all been invited by myself or other friends of mine would be something I'd be interested in.

Hmm... that description smacks of Meetup.com (et. al.), but in a way I think that at the heart of it all of these "social network" services and/or sites all meet roughly that same description.

PS - ASP? *yeck* At least it's not Cold Fusion! Sorry, mathowie. :) Hmm... If I help port some code to PHP can I get an invite so I can kick the orkut tires?
posted by crankydoodle at 2:04 AM on January 23, 2004

I think it's kinda neat (and a little unnerving) that one of my co-workers' pet projects can garner so much attention at such an early pre-anything kind of stage. When CNET called some people just looked around and said, "Orkut should get an agent. And a glamour shot."

Google: A noun which, among other things, also currently means "under the microscope, emphatically." I get weird emails from reporters about projects I've only every thought about - much less actually coded. Guess we'll have to be careful what we upload to Sourceforge.

S@L, crankydoodle: *laughs* I'll totally suggest some sort of programmatic way to upgrade beta testers to being actual Google employees. That's just good manners.
posted by massless at 2:11 AM on January 23, 2004

'Orkut' is Finnish for 'orgasms'. I have a feeling that us Finns will get a slightly wrong idea about the exact nature of the service.
posted by ikalliom at 3:08 AM on January 23, 2004

I just got invited in...

Oooo! Get Mr A-lister ;-)
posted by i_cola at 4:48 AM on January 23, 2004

I would not join any club that would have me as a member.
posted by troutfishing at 5:33 AM on January 23, 2004

Metafilter: where membership isn't
posted by andrew cooke at 5:55 AM on January 23, 2004

Why even have a join link on the home page if you can't join without being invited? What's the point? Just to reinforce the exclusivity? I already know I'm not cool, you don't have to remind me.
posted by cpfeifer at 5:59 AM on January 23, 2004

2B1ASK1
posted by dirtylittlemonkey at 6:28 AM on January 23, 2004

I'd like to be invited... can it really make for better search results?
posted by christina at 7:51 AM on January 23, 2004

I think I should get invited, just so I can feel more A-list. These things are important to me!
posted by tranquileye at 8:00 AM on January 23, 2004

I never mix meatspace with metaverse.
posted by xiffix at 9:01 AM on January 23, 2004

Gee Steve, look at all those TrackBacks.

Everybody wants a piece of the action.
posted by troutfishing at 10:00 AM on January 23, 2004

Entertainment Weekly's zeitgeist tracker, in a few weeks:

OUT:
Mixers

5 MINUTES AGO:
Friendster

IN:
Orkut
posted by jengod at 12:01 PM on January 23, 2004

"I'll totally suggest some sort of programmatic way to upgrade beta testers to being actual Google employees."

LOL! I'd be happy just to get onto Orkut, but if Google needs some PHP work done just let me know. :)
posted by crankydoodle at 1:21 PM on January 23, 2004

couldn't Mathowie invite all of us? ;))

ikalliom - bwahahahaha. I love that. Finnish is great.
posted by dabitch at 1:26 PM on January 23, 2004

couldn't Mathowie invite all of us?

Suddenly, Orkut membership jump 17,000 people overnight.

heh
posted by Steve_at_Linnwood at 1:50 PM on January 23, 2004

I'm waiting by my e-mail box feeling like Charlie Brown on Valentine's Day.
posted by wendell at 3:01 PM on January 23, 2004

'Orkut' is Finnish for 'orgasms'. I have a feeling that us Finns will get a slightly wrong idea about the exact nature of the service.

Oh, you Finns...always with the sex, sex, sex. ;)
posted by dejah420 at 6:10 PM on January 23, 2004

so this is for people who can't find friends in 3D...? aren't there a jazillion of these online already...? i'm confused as to why there's any buzz about it at all, at least around here, being that it appears to be such a pedestrian service.

Join orkut to expand the circumference of your social circle

hehe! that's hella goofy.
posted by t r a c y at 6:29 PM on January 23, 2004

Oh, you Finns...always with the sex, sex, sex. ;)

If true, their birth control technology must be light years ahead of ours.
posted by namespan at 6:57 PM on January 23, 2004

thanks for the invite!

It's really beautifully designed... do I sense Kevin Fox's touch? Good looking and easy to use. But I wonder how they'll duck the friendster/ryze issue-- linked in seems to be going strict to avoid freindspam.
posted by christina at 8:32 AM on January 24, 2004

Seems like a lot of accounts of MeFi folk have been deleted.
posted by riffola at 7:13 AM on January 25, 2004

Q. How do I join orkut?
A. Orkut is a trusted community. In order to join, you need to receive an invitation.

Or you can always buy an invitation ;)

I was invited by a friend of a Google employee, and it seems ok thus far, though not very different from the other sites like it. There are definitely some technical issues, including users being able to spam the entire membership base, and some of the functions were clearly not thought through or designed very well. Additionally, the folks running the site seem to think it's ok to delete any community posts that point out system bugs.
posted by valerie at 11:03 AM on January 25, 2004

Not that anyone cares, but myself and a bunch of other people seem to have been deleted/removed at random with out notification....
posted by Steve_at_Linnwood at 12:16 PM on January 25, 2004

I was deleted, but suspect it was because of my starting of the group 'Horsefuckers'. As well as creating the group WWWWWW(truncated)WWWW , and joining over 70 communities just because I could.

I would've liked to have known exactly which reason was the one, however.
posted by angry modem at 1:24 PM on January 25, 2004

am, i think the goatse one prolly didn't help anything. ;)

But, some of us were not members of thes groups and still got deleted. So far, only an automated response has been sent out in reply to questions about being deleted. It had an ever so helpful link to their help section - which can't be accessed since we can't log in.
posted by thatothrgirl at 1:34 PM on January 25, 2004

I also had a tubgirl community.
posted by angry modem at 7:33 AM on January 26, 2004