Orkutized

Google is jumping headlong into the associative web community market (i.e.Friendster) with a new service called Orkut. It’s gonna be huge.

Right now it’s in beta, so going to the link isn’t going to be too rewarding an experience. The only way to get in is to be invited by an existing member. Soon enough, though…

Friendster has been hobbled by its popularity. At least, I hope it has. Site performance at Friendster is horrific, and has been for months. I have to hope it’s because of load and not inattention. With the wind of Google in their sails, Orkut suffers none of that. At least not yet. We’ll see how it scales, but I’ll bet they’ll do fine.

I’ve already found an issue where I cannot post karma info for people with Safari and need to use Firebird. That needs to be fixed before release, folks.

It’s been fun poking around the past day or two, despite it being flaky at times. It’s like Friendster, but without the suck. I’m surprised by how many people I know are in on the beta. I’d invite you all, but that’s not in the spirit of things. No blanket invitations.

Watch for an Orkut invite, or announcement of its release. This thing will be massive. As friend Scot’s blog remarked last week, “If Google can do for social networking and blogging what they’ve done for search, and once their web services APIs become available to developers, they’re going to become the unstoppable internet platform.”

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *