The Most Unkindest Orkut

The other day a friend of mine forwarded me a mail he had received on orkut’s announcement mailing list. Apparently Google has now launched a multimedia online publication, blog-style, under the moniker “orkut media“. The first thing that struck me was the over-the-top cheesiness of the mail in question, with zingers like “when you land at http://media.orkut.com, you’ll venture into the realm of love and politics and beyond” and the signature, “Stay beautiful” (oh puleeeeeeaze). The second thing that struck me (having checked out the new service) was the dearth of anything vaguely new, creative or even social-networky about orkut media. Sorry guys, but in style and substance it looks more than anything like a mediocre college newspaper.

I’ve been sceptical about the current crop of social networking sites in general, and orkut in particular, since day one. They’ve always struck me as a potentially cool feature in search of an application, rather than (as proponents would apparently have us believe) a new killer app for the internet. And apparently I’m not the only one who feels this way: recently I had a meeting with a technical team at a large European company. At some point the topic of orkut came up as an example of a social-networking website, and someone mentioned that the user base was estimated at X million (I think X was 2). I countered that I had signed up for orkut ages ago (flattered to be invited, thank you very much!) but hadn’t logged in in months. The reaction around the table was telling: a lot of heads nodding and no one piping up to explain how they, unlike the others, had actually found something useful to do with the service.

Anyway, today I discovered (thanks to a posting on the Many-to-Many blog) that I’m not the only one baffled by orkut’s foray into the media space. In fact, there’s a whole article in the San Francisco Chronicle quoting oodles of experts pondering just where the heck Google thinks it is going with this. Are they just trying to get more content out there so they can tack advertisements on it?

Well I have a theory: orkut is flailing. As far as I can see, it was conceived as a very public inside joke. It doesn’t particularly mesh with any part of Google’s strategy or other online services. But social networks were a red-hot topic at the time of its inception, so its creators were able to get management approval to go ahead with the deployment despite the fact that the main purpose seems to have been for Google insiders and other digerati to figure out how well they were keeping up with the Joneses in the geek popularity game. Unfortunately, expectations were predictably high for the new venture (social networking AND Google… why this has to be huge!), so the fact that there is patenting nothing new or interesting about orkut has probably started to cause some tensions inside Google. Hence orkut media: a straightforward attempt to bolt, ex post facto, a raison d’etre onto the orkut edifice.

Like everyone, I use Google’s search engine a zillion times a day, and I’m also an unrepentant addict of their brilliantly implemented news service. They’ve got some other very interesting irons in the fire. The subpar level of orkut’s vision and realization reflects poorly on these world-class applications. Google should figure out why they are running orkut, or put it out of its misery once and for all.

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