Active bloggers of Ahmedabad, let us get together at this fresh Orkut Community ‘Ahmedabad Bloggers’ http://www.orkut.com/Community.aspx?cmm=23901743.
Please spread the word

In a multi-part series, I will be trying to analyse why orkut has become a big rage in India and whether is it going to die soon??

Some history first:

Well long years back, in 1999, I had opened my first email account on hotmail, which I use till date. Web-based emails were the best thing to keep in touch with your friends round the world. ICQ was also available then, and it instantly became my key weapon to get connected. Then came yahoo messenger followed by msn. For years after 2000 to 2004-5 things were largely stable on net.

Meanwhile, Google was already becoming a force on the Internet, simply because of that one search textbox on a white background page that they had made finding information easy for most Internet users. Then they expanded into mails, and loads of other services. The company focussed on employees like most other software companies do. They kept on the entrepreneurial energy of their early days by making a policy, where employees have to give 20% of their time on some project they like. Orkut was launched as part of one such project by an Israeli with the same name. This is a version of the history, that many talk about. Whatever the history may be, reality check says the orkut has been rage in Brazil and is fast catching up in India.

So what special did orkut offer that caught the eyes of not so net-savvy generation of Indians. Why did friendster, hi5 and loads of other social networks being used in limited circles before remained there only, whereas orkut took over from the beginning of 2006?

1) Well, several web analysts have identified that a social network that may work in country X may not work in country Y. This biggest factor that contributes to this drift is the variation in user preferences that in turn depend on the overall culture of the society. Orkut somehow made it users feel safe to put their picture in the profile, along with a few more in the album (or atleast tat was the case some weeks back, recent events have changed the game).

2) Signups are based on invitation only. Additionally, they dont source your whole address book from your hotmail, yahoo or any other address book. Thus, people will put in efforts to join only if they are interested. Now, once you get to a level, where there are a lot of interested regular users of your network, more will be inclined to join it, and that is how orkut made its name here.

3) Fan list, Cool, Sexy and trusty ratings, and of course, the sleek interface is very user-friendly; google brand name gives it more boost, but fundamentally, orkut does deliver a knockout punch to all other social networks in terms of usability, even if they were more original in ideas.

4) People could communicate easily with other through the scraps. And ofcourse, people can peep into their friend’s life by reading scraps written to them by others. Most features provided on orkut are being used, except for the mailbox, which is total shit. Mail is one more option , in case you want to send a private message!

I have finally given a new look to the blog. The Green Marinee Wordpress theme was no more appealing to me. I luckily found the InBusiness Wordpress Theme made by a fellow gujju Kaushal Sheth based somewhere in the PotelLand(America).

The theme has a much cleaner reading interface and more space and the best part is that the width is not fixed. Thus the theme has enough width fluidity to give a nice view to wide-screen laptops.