Today, I read an article titled "The Next Orkut" in the Information Technology Magazine (October 2007 issue). Being an active member of Orkut, I found the topic very interesting. The first thought that came to my mind after reading the headline was, “Wow, I’ve found another network where I can scrap and add my friends!” :D
The article is based on a survey conducted among some prominent figures in the IT industry. Orkut is rated as the most widely used social networking site among youngsters in India. This is why Orkut was chosen as the MTV Youth Icon of 2007.
The main reason I am grateful to Orkut is that it helped me reconnect with many old friends. After leaving school and college, I completely lost contact with many of them. After joining Orkut, I searched for these friends using the ‘Community’ feature, which helped me regain my lost friendships.
Features like scrapping, videos, photos, and communities, combined with user friendliness, made Orkut very popular. Nowadays, Orkut has also added security features such as locking albums and videos and preventing non-friends from viewing your scrapbook.
According to Rajesh Lalwani, founder of Blogworks, Facebook will be the next Orkut. Facebook allows third parties to build applications for its platform. Millions have joined Facebook in the past few months, and several new applications are being added every second.
Not only Rajesh Lalwani, but also others like Rajiv Dingra (WATconsult.com, WATBlog.com), Dhiraj Singh (freelance journalist), and Surekha Shetty (Director of Marketing, PK4 Software Technologies Pvt Ltd) believe that Facebook will be the next Orkut.
How many of you know the founder of Orkut? I will tell you — his name is Orkut Buyukkokten. If you want to know more about him, here is the link:
http://www.stanford.edu/~orkut/
