Orkut: Google's Friendster-Killer

[Chester]

Friendster sucks, Tribe.net was an improvement, and Orkut.com is better than both.

It has all the six-degrees networking stuff that you'd expect, as well as the "Community" club/interests groups that Tribe has, but isn't plagued by crappy, slow code and overwhelmed servers.

It doesn't allow HTML code in form boxes, which was a big pet peeve I had with Friendster, but it does allow carriage returns!

Y
A
Y
!

Anyway, way, way better than Friendster and given Google's well-deserved clout, it ought to quickly leave Friendster in the dust.

Apparently, because it's still in beta, you need an invitation to join. Let me know if you want one.

[Chester]

Ooh, cool...it's got a feature to allow for extra-testimonial comments. And there is a cool/sexy/trustworthy karma-ish rating system...rad.

[Chester]

Sweet! You can categorize friends into different groups!

[ellsworth81]

oooh
send me an invitation.
can i be your friend?
grey112@hotmail.com

[bluemonq]

i wanna be a friend too!

but i'm under 18. sigh.
i would think that somewhere someone's working on this for aim or icq. i mean, if you clean up some of the holes in those software and melded it with some sort of secure buddy-profile type-thing, you'd sort of get the same thing, right? *is* there something like that out there already?

[Kuchana]

Sweet! You can categorize friends into different groups!

I can tell you're really into this^^ :biggrin: Makes me curious to see what the fuss is about.

[Chester]

Poop. Orkut -- Google's eponymous creator of the site -- is taking the site down to make some revisions...it ought to be back within a few days.

Some other cool things...
- You can actually format text using propietary tags, almost identical to vBulletin's.
- Friends can be viewed either by how many friends they have, or alphabetically. Hopefully, they also do something where they are categorized by friend "Groups."
- Unlike Friendster, they don't degrade your uploaded pictures by compressing them into pixellated messes.

[lethal]

Sounds interesting.

[moJo]

i hadn't heard of this yet, but it sounds cool. friendster is sloooow, and it's not worth waiting for, esp since the fuss with it has died down. but i am guilty of occasionally updating it (pics, mostly) because sometimes i'm just THAT bored. :)

[etcj]

Well I'm curious to how they will try and reduce all the bandwidth and server problems that Friendster encountered.

[Chester]

Well I'm curious to how they will try and reduce all the bandwidth and server problems that Friendster encountered.
Well...I imagine they have wrote leaner code and are using a smarter back-end, but, fundamentally, they also probably get to enjoy Google's vast network of data centers.

[Emperor_Mike]

Sounds interesting actually.

[Chester]

Sounds interesting actually.Very much so. If you think Friendster is interesting, then this is far more so -- coded far more intelligently both in terms of the actual application, as well as all the options that are built in.

Like others note, it would make most sense for the social networking sites to be tied into one or all IM apps (Orkut does have profile fields to list IM contact info)...I have to imagine Yahoo, MSN, AOL, et al are working on something to integrate with their IM clients...

[Chester]

oooh
send me an invitation.
Just sent one. It's back online as of yesterday.

Cool. I just discovered that you can post to your own profile's "scrapbook" (bulletin board).

With Google's acquisition of Blogger beforehand, it would be cool if they could integrate the two...

[coagulated fat]

Chester's in love.

I can't do it because my javascript is broken. How very sad. In a few days when I reformat my comp I should be on though, so never you fear.

[Chester]

Chester's in love.
Not with Orkut. I'm actually in love with Anna Stern.

And, insofar as Orkut is concerned, I'm always on the look out for truely fun and engaging ways to avoid work.
I can't do it because my javascript is broken. How very sad.
That sucks. It might just be the javascript implementation in your main browser. You could always try using Mozilla or Opera or something to get around corruption of your IE.

[coagulated fat]

It might just be the javascript implementation in your main browser. You could always try using Mozilla or Opera or something to get around corruption of your IE.
Well everything on my computer is sort of dying right now. I'm hoping that a reformat will solve all my compu-woes.

[Chester]

Well everything on my computer is sort of dying right now. I'm hoping that a reformat will solve all my compu-woes.
It most probably will. At the least, the whole javascript thing will be fixed (are you sure you don't have java scripting disabled in IE?). And then you can join the party, though you'll be a Janice-come-lately.

[Azn Retribution]

i had been using myspace... which used PHP... much better/faster than friendsters Coldfusion.
what is orkut using? PERL?

[ism]

i had been using myspace... which used PHP... much better/faster than friendsters Coldfusion.
what is orkut using? PERL?

Looks like ASP.NET. Would have assumed J2EE since it's Google-affiliated. Maybe more of a database and connecter influence, because I can't imagine them moving away from a non-Windows clustering solution (assuming they're clustering...).