Cappuccino Musings

Stay beautiful
Does this remind you of anything? If you spend most part of your day "scrapping" your friends, you probably would know what I am talking about. For the benefit of those who are not big "fans" of social networking websites, I am talking about of Orkut, arguably, the most successful online socializing community.
Orkut's popularity doesn't sound all that surprising considering that the mastermind behind it is the almighty Google. It is adept in making all the right moves to get a mass user following. One such sure-shot technique to build up a large user base is to make the membership covetous. This is what Google did with Gmail and Orkut. By making the membership "invitation-only", Google made the membership the most fashionable thing to have. No wonder there were news of invites up for sale at eBay.
Talking about the popularity of Orkut, we all know that instant messengers replaced email, but who would have thought instant messengers would be replaced by "scraps". To quote an incident, a few days back, I was supposed to meet up with my friend. But surprisingly, there were no calls or messages from him which made me assume that the meeting was off. To my bewilderment, my friend calls me up and says "Heavens, What is with you? Don't you check your scrapbook?".
There is no doubt about the fact that Orkut has helped people catch up with long lost buddies. It is a definite treat for anyone who values a moment of nostalgia. Orkut communities are slowly replacing yahoo e-groups. When I thought I could never be able to recollect my high school prayer, all I had to do was ask my batchmates at one of the communities, and the messages started pouring in, each one keying down the lines they could remember.
On the flip side, Orkut has also being started to use as a virtual dating site. There are plenty of people prowling for potential preys with nice looking photographs and inviting profiles. "Shall we be friends?", "Interesting profile, scrap me back and we'll be friends" are some of the common scraps you see on some of the scrapbooks. There are some hopelessly obscene profiles and communities which have reduced Orkut to a mere sex network. Orkut claims that it has been policing such communities and profiles, but the sheer magnitude of its users makes it impossible to cleanse. Well, as they say, this is the cost of popularity.
As for me, let me refresh my Orkut webpage and see if I have any new fans, testimonials and scraps. Wishful thinking as it was, there aren't any.