The Social-Networking Curry

It all started in early 2006, when I got a notification from a friend inviting me to ‘Orkut’. Social networking was a concept that was nascent then. I had only read about Orkut, but refrained from joining it because I had already joined a similar site called Hi5, with a network of around 10 friends. Till then, somehow, I didn’t strike a chord with the idea of social networking. Joining Orkut changed the scene.

With Orkut, I suddenly began to find my long lost and even forgotten friends. Everytime I logged into Orkut, there was a surprise in store for me with a notification from friends from whom I heard after a decade or even more! Soon I was in contact with my primary and secondary school friends, college friends, and of course the present lot. This feeling of nostalgia and retrospecting of good old memories gave rise to a new craze and addiction of social networking with Orkut, and the odyssey of discovering more friends continued…

With time, the craze did diminish, but I made it a point to check my Orkut profile and keep in touch with my friends. I had made a pretty good network of friends of my own, a few communities and I was back in touch with a number of old friends again on phone / emails and chat. Orkut for me was an easy and convenient way of keeping in touch, socialize and build new acquaintances, and have my say, and share my blogs / opinions with others.

In mid-2009, friends started to become inactive or dormant on orkut. They would respond to a scrap after weeks and suddenly a few of the friends began putting their status as ‘Find me on Facebook’ or ‘Bye Bye Orkut, Get in touch on Facebook’.

I joined Facebook just to check out, but Orkut was still my first preference for social networking. When I first saw Facebook home page, it was a feeling that you get when you stand in the middle of the Margao Fish Market. A number of fisherwomen scattered here and there, all shouting to grab your attention. Amidst the fisherwomen there are vegetable vendors, fruit vendors, attractive cold-storage stalls, you hear a lot of noise and can hear the conversation of hundreds of people and what they are trying to buy, you stumble upon a few familiar faces that smile and have a short conversation with you, and finally you almost forget that you were there to buy fish!

Facebook homepage was cluttered, with lots of disturbing and irrelevant updates from even the people I didn’t know! Every activity I did was known to all (or a few more than expected if not all). The concept of ‘writing on the wall’ was like saying hello to a friend in the fish market on a microphone. Communities were called ‘Groups’ with poor or no moderations. You would suddenly find your profile added in a community which is of no interest to you! I may well land up in trouble if some Tom Dick Harry adds me into a ‘Jihadist’ community and if I am not attentive enough, then I may well be misunderstood as a militant..! And more than social networking and being in touch, I got dozens of requests for ‘Farmville’. Facebook was more about social gaming and applications and everything else other than social networking.

And now there is Google+, which is pitched as Google’s answer to Facebook. I am really perplexed by Google’s strategy. Why did Google feel the need to work on an ‘answer’ to Facebook with another social networking site when they already had Orkut? Rather than a new product- Google+, something like Orkut+ would make better sense.

Google+ plus comes with the same social networking features like ‘friend circles’, and sharing of photos, videos, links etc. Your Picassa web albums become a part of your Google+ photos in your profile. The privacy settings don’t change, but if you have already shared it with your friends, with Google+, your friends can share your Picassa album with other friends. All your contacts from your gmail are imported and you may just drag-and-drop them in your Google+ circles. Google+ has some pre-defined circles for you like ‘Family’, ‘Friends’, ‘Acquaintances’ and you may create more circles of your own. All friends have to be in circles, which will see to it that your friend list is better organized. But all in all, I would say it’s the old wine in a new (or better) packet.

From the end-users point of view, I would prefer all these features as part of Orkut as Orkut+, because I already have a profile and a huge network of friend there. With Google+, I have to join with a new profile, build my network all over again to avail the benefits of these new features, and in the process I end up juggling with Orkut, Facebook and Google+. A few of my friends have already started using Google+. Now, if I have to share photos, I have a dilemma of whether to share it on Orkut or Facebook or Google+.

Too many cooks have indeed spoilt the social networking curry. Now I wonder if I am going to see status messages on Facebook saying – “Find me on Google+”. Fingers crossed!!!