January 30, 2004
Orkut: Please won't you be my neighbor?
If only we humans weren't such connection junkies, we wouldn't feel compelled to join yet another online community. The frustration, contempt, humor and apathy that many people are expressing toward Orkut is due in part because this site, like it's social networking kin, is lacking one of the most basic tools of human connection; the commons.
All networked up with no place to go.
Joining Orkut is not unlike staking your claim to a shiny new house in an exclusive invitation-only neighborhood. Once you're in, you drag in everyone you know. Why? Because it's no fun to sit alone in a network of one. So now I'm in my house, on a street where all of my friends live. But now what? We're all staring out from our shiny new homes, nodding to each other. "Yes, there's Dave. Oh, there's Chris. Look at us, all networked up with no place to go."
You see, I already have established ways of communicating with the people on my Friends list (blogs, email, IM, phone). I don't need a profile page to keep me in contact with Xara or Sooz. I know where to find them. They know where to find me. For the rest of you Non Friends... well, Tara has quite enough on her plate and is not accepting applications for the position of Friend at this time. Thanks for your interest. Seriously, am I going to find a new friend or business associate by "cold calling" people because of some tidbit in an artificial and forced Orkut profile that was created while desperately trying to get through a sixty-page registration process?
There are meeting areas on Orkut, but they are segregated by topic and squirreled away in the depths of Communities. I took a look at my Communities today and realized that for each one I identify and associate myself with, I already have an established method of staying in contact with those people (and make no mistake, they are all the same people) like a listserv, blog or discussion board. There is absolutely no incentive for me to dilute the strength of our group by making contact via this untested, unintuitive venue.
There are probably groups on Orkut that I don't identify with, but that I might be interested in conversing with. Perhaps in the Gay and Lesbian group, they've got a great discussion going about the film Boys Don't Cry. Maybe I wrote my senior thesis on that film and my points would be a welcome addition to the discussion. I'll never know, because I won't see it.
I wouldn't join an Anime group because my interest in that topic is casual. But in a common Orkut meeting area, I might see a post in which someone mentions enjoying Sprited Away and asks for names of similar films. I might jump in and offer Princess Mononoke and we could end up talking about the English screenwriter for the film, Neil Gaiman, a longtime favorite author of mine.
At the intersection of our segregated interests is where we find the richest forms of social connection. Orkut curtails the organic development of the network by forcing us to categorize ourselves very specifically and discouraging general discussion. The stickiest community sites offer a "hang out" area, typically a message board and to a lesser degree a chat room. Where can I "hang out" on Orkut?
There are two types of people in this world, Friends and Not Friends.
I went to David Weinberger's house once for a Dean for America letter writing party. I read his blog(s) and his books. I enjoy his work. But am I his friend? Not really. He might see me in Harvard Square and vaguely remember a girl who sat at his dining room table and whined about the deterioration of her penmanship since the dawn of the computer age, but he doesn't know me. So, landing in that gray area between Friend and Not Friend, David will remain unconnected to me on Orkut.
On the flip side, Clay Johnson is an uber-friend. 1) I trust him. 2) He's very active online. Between those two factors, Clay is someone from whom I need more that just a profile and photo. I want to be able to keep track of what he's posting, who he's reading, who he links to. But on Orkut, he's just a picture with equal weight as every other picture in my network, which is useless to me.
Bring the community to me.
My email comes to my inbox, my RSS feeds come to my desktop aggregator, and my IMs arrive whatever computer I happen to be using at the moment. Even the much-maligned Yahoo Groups allows me to configure messages to arrive with my mail; where I'm already present for much of the day. I refuse to log onto Orkut (which offers no "remember me" cookie) each time I want to interact with my network.
And... the most annoying thing ever... when I receive a message from my network, I'm sent only a notification that I have a message. The text itself is a well-kept secret until I actually go to retrieve it. (This may have changed in the new iteration -- still checking it out.) Don't force me to come to your site, make me want to visit with a rewarding activity.
Come to my exclusive party, bring anyone.
When I heard that Orkut was invitation-only, I was hopeful. I envisioned a cutting-edge online community in which each member is held accountable for the actions of those they invite. Inviting someone implies that you vouch for them. The network grows more slowly, but with carefully selected entrants. And members are less tolerant of abusive behavior when it has negative consequences on their own membership. Think hard, do you really want to invite Crazy Bob the Network Admin? He tends to flame people whenever the subject of Janeway vs. Sisko comes up. Do you really want to ask Karen to join? She has a tendency to forward all of her funny spam to the anyone whose email she can get her hands on. Do you want to be held accountable for those two?
But that's not what Orkut is about. It's rather like those slick sidewalk guys handing out photocopied flyer invitations to an "exclusive" loft party downtown. Sure, you can only get in with an invitation, but every nutcase in town can get one. You can even buy them on eBay. The invitation part seems to have been just a ploy to get the mavens and their connected friends in the door first. Invite technorati, let them play, sit back and watch buzz unfold. Too bad the buzz seems to have a little sting to it.
Comments
Good post, Neil Gaiman rocks. I have all his Sandman series.