The story starts with
a Turkish man who had the near-unpronounceable-to-lesser-mortals surname of Büyükkökten.
Like almost all Bengalis and a handful of Turkish, he wanted to study Computer Science.
Like a handful of Bengalis and a handful of Turkish, he also did an MS and PhD
in Computer Science as well.
Büyükkökten launched
a curious concept called Club Nexus at an age of 26 to interact with his
college friends at Stanford. He later went on to introduce inCircle — a concept
similar to Club Nexus — but for the alumni of his college.
He took up a job in
Google, and devoted 20% of his time to develop an improved version of Club
Nexus. He came up with a product — the first major one of its kind. Google
decided to name it after Büyükkökten’s first name: Orkut.
***
Orkut was still a new
concept in the summer of 2004. Like GMail (which arrived on the fray much
later), Orkut was an invitation-based concept; I was fortunate to get an
invitation in Orkut’s earlier days, and suddenly looked at the world with new
eyes.
Gone were the a/s/l
days: you can now see the people you were interacting with. See their
pictures (though some, for whatever reason, came disguised as Namitha). Know
their likes and dislikes. Read their About Me’s. Send scraps to them. Connect
with old friends. Join communities with like-minded people.
The world opened up
for me: till then I was confined to the realm of Yahoo! Groups to communicate
with like-minded people, whether cricket or Bollywood or literature. Orkut took
things a step further: the people you talked to were real. Friends came
closer. Strangers became friends. And they became fans and wrote Testimonials.
There have been few
concepts as ego-boosting as Orkut fans: everyone, everyone on Orkut could
be classified into two categories:
-
People who kept a sharp eye on the number
of fans they had, maintaining a tab on the count, and reacting strongly to any
alteration, and
-
People who did the same, but lied about
it.
Testimonials, of
course, were another issue. Being a fan, just like capturing a selfie, meant a
simple click. Testimonials actually needed serious, often well-thought, efforts,
and once I approved them, my promise of not showing off went through the window:
I gloated over them, and can hardly be blamed for that. Who would not show off
if one received the likes of these (from a person I had met on Orkut)?
 |
| What did I tell you? Testimonials are for showing off! |
What about scraps,
then? In the initial days you had to keep your scrapbook open and hit the F5
button, and go to the user’s page to respond to the scraps; then they used
scrap threads, where all responses to scraps came under the initial scrap; and
then, finally, they allowed notifications for scraps. What fun!
This, unfortunately,
is what my current scrapbook looks like:
 |
| Does this not make you sad? |
You could also put up
pictures. The count was restricted to 12, which meant that you had to keep
rotating them if you wanted to add to them. They later added the restriction on
the count of pictures, and, surprise, surprise, allowed your friends to comment
on them, and even delivered notifications for such comments!
Then, there were the
communities. You could join them. You could create them. You could have fun,
discuss serious bits of information, get involved in topics you were genuinely
interested in (something you could not do with the man sitting in the cubicle
next to you), wonder who the people behind fake profiles were.
Those were the days:
we bad-mouthed people who used SMS language or leet; we used to add “in the
toilet” after Today’s Fortune and had a hearty laugh; we added YouTube videos
at will; we got to know of birthdays a fortnight in advance; we could even update
our status, which remained till we changed them. And finally, they incorporated
Google Talk in Orkut. All was well.
Then came Zuckerberg’s
ogre, and spread its tentacles to cast an iron-grip on poor Orkut. Google never
tried to evolve as Facebook took rapid strides. As for us, we decided to shift,
ever so slowly, as the Facebook juggernaut gradually took over. The shift
became complete when Dorsey, Williams, Stone, and Glass launched another one in
2006.
Google took drastic
steps: it introduced Likes; it even created a parallel (which is growing surprisingly
powerful with every passing day) network called Google+; but nobody cared for
poor Orkut. We never revisited the accounts we were once so proud of. We shifted
to Likes and Shares and Comments.
I had smiled when this
image had appeared on my timeline in 2010. I cannot recall whether I had shared
this. But I had felt a hollow somewhere deep. I had paid a visit to my Orkut
account, got bored, and had left.
 |
| Source: The internet |
I came back only on June 29, when Google
announced it was closing down Orkut.
They are taking away
the first social networking site of my life, but I have Facebook.
They are taking away
the site that had given me some of my closest friends, but I still remain close
to most of them and am connected to them via Facebook and Google+.
They are taking away
the communities, but I still have Facebook groups.
I can post my
blogposts on Google+ and get +1’d. I can take stupid quizzes and post results
on Facebook and get comments. I can make snarky comments on Twitter and wait
for them to get re-tweeted and favourited.
Neither of them,
unfortunately, come with Orkut’s innocence. Facebook seems to be walking on vitrified
tiles in comfortable slippers; Orkut was like jumping on puddles, splashing mud
all over. The greatest attraction of Orkut was the fact that it was mysterious,
it was naive, it was difficult to get around with, it came with ridiculously
weak features.
Facebook is
comfortable and easy; it kept on experimenting and evolving; it also grew with
the smart-phone evolution; which is why I will forget about Orkut in a couple
of days and pay my occasional visits to the all-conquering f-button.
It is just that it
does not come with Testimonials. I have 30 of these. How many do you have?
