Well, this thing seems to be taking off. Nat threw in the first invite, so I signed up, and another half-dozen or so folks have fired off invites. This is another one of those networking site things, and I've decided that while I'll go accept invites from anyone I know (I really need to get a picture up--I'd throw the rainbow parrot pic I use for iChat, but the TOS seem to indicate that'd be ill-advised) I don't think I'm going to go to much trouble to actively go search people out.
These things are always interesting to look at, and to look at the networks, but I do wonder how much personal maintenance will it all take? I'd think it wouldn't take too long before a lot of these links become stale. It just feels like a point-in-time thing, where the links are all OK as of some point, something that gets built and maintained for a short while before being abandoned as just too much hassle to bother with. So we'll be able to look at you and get an idea of your immediate links for, say, a week or so, but any fallings-out or new contacts won't be in there.
Asks a lot of questions too, though that's not too surprising as its a combination professional/friend/dating site. I figured I'd answer all the questions right, but I managed to make it only about halfway through before I gave up. Sheesh, after the fiftieth page (or so it seemed) it was getting awfully tedious, and I'm not 100% sure that anyone's going to want to know all that info. (I usually put on the professional face in public and try to behave, and I wonder sometimes if folks'd be surprised if I didn't bother)
I'd bet this thing either takes off insanely (which'd be helped, I think, if a reasonable public API was exposed so you could update and track the info without bothering with the execrable web interface) or dies in a month when people tire of it. I can see either one, but I don't think there'll be any real middle ground.
Bet it lasts longer than LinkedIn, at least.
Posted by Dan at January 31, 2004 02:16 PM | TrackBack (1)With the invite-only approach, I figure it's kind of a '6 degrees' type of experiment. It should be a matter of time until everyone who wants to be on Orkut gets invited in.
Posted by: Ducky at February 2, 2004 06:25 PMWell... 5 degrees, at least. That's as far as Orkut seems to go.
Posted by: Dan at February 2, 2004 09:02 PM