I've been playing around in Orkut.
I find I have a hard time quantifying and qualifying what it means to be (or have) a friend. Once I signed up, I didn't invite all my friends to join, just a few. (hey I'm just checking it out and right now my "c'mon everybody, let's all sign up!" instigator quotient ebbs low.)
And, once I'd gotten in and connected to a coupla friends, I found myself approached: So-n-so [whom I sorta know, or sorta maybe not know] has invited you to be a friend. Why do I pause over a one or two hypertext links that have thumbs up (yes, this person is my friend) and thumbs down (no, this person is not my friend)? Friend? Acquaintance? I hesitate to declare either way. Guess that's what was meant by comments I read (before being invited/joining/checking it out)-- Orkut forces binary (yes no) choices over something that's far more nuanced. Do we all have to re-define what "friendship" is to mean, well, acquaintanceship?
Uh oh: Orkut's a time sink. And I don't need that right now.
Warnings: What is Google doing with all this new data about humans? (something that keeps me from going hog-wild into it)
Cool things:
- Making new acquaintances, after getting past the "is this person a friend?" stumbling block. UPDATE: Jeneane Sessum blogs it too. : )
- Interests and Communities of people I sorta know from the blogosphere... finding out new areas of interests (the browse/search communities section of Orkut is clunky. Too many to browse, thinking up search terms cold (let's see, uh, how about.. oh, um, dang, drawing a blank!) is hard, but it gets easier once you see what other communities there are based on interests of other people
(but, seriously, do I need to find any new interests?)
- New websites I've found thanks to Orkut
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