Posted 4 years, 2 months ago in the late afternoon by oso
First of all I’d like to thank Revaz and Elena for inviting me to use Orkut and also props to those who have offered me Gmail accounts. They both look like good services. But here’s my beef and here’s why I’m not going to use either one.
The internet is all about openness. That’s what I love about it - absolutely anyone can read this, there are no restrictions. Anyone can comment on it. Anyone can start a blog and write absolutely whatever they want. The world wide web is built in a way to avoid exlusivity and encourage inclusivity (yes, my own word). But there’s a new trend in online marketing that’s starting to bother me.
It’s all this invitation nonsense and how it’s creating a popularity hierarchy on the web. Like, ‘look at me, I already got my gmail invitation and it’s only been up for two days.’ Or ridiculous blog posts like this one that offers gmail accounts to which ever reader best “tell[s] me why you read my blog and why I am, like, the best blogger ever!”
Or all the commotion about Orkut and how it’s ‘just as good as Friendster or Myspace, but like so much more exclusive … so full of people you really want to meet.”
Why? Because Orkut only handed a few invitations to the supposedly higher-ups on the internet community figuring that they would invite similar friends and that the network would develop with an exclusive and elite foundation. Just the opposite of the original nature of the internet - egalitarian and inclusive, if not outreaching.
Furthermore, as Scott Allen writes, not letting people in is just the way to get them to want to join.
So there you have it: why I won’t be signing up for Orkut (avoiding a Googlelopoly is another reason) and why I will continue to blog and continue to visit any and every blog of someone who comments on this one.
</steps down from high horse>
glad you got down off your high horse, and lowered your nose before it started to bleed.
i see no difference between friendster (which i thnik you may be a member of) and Orkut. Yeah, so you have to know someone first to join, but it ain’t that hard. What I like about it, is that it is dominated by Brasilians. Friendster is just too many midwestern corn feed people…like me. =P
[...] Web services and Digital Identity - I gave up my resistance long ago when I started swearing by Gmail thanks to Derek and now I just accepted an invitation to Orkut by Hipo. Which meant that I had to once again fill out my name, address, birthday, relationship status, interests, favorite music, blah, blah, blah. If I ever decide to change, let’s say my favorite music or address, it means I have to go to Friendster, MySpace, Orkut, Digital Divide, Omidyar, Amazon, my Banks, my AIM profile, and probably 30 others to fill out the same information over and over again. Not only that, but when I do change my address, I need to send out an email to every contact I have telling them to go into their own private address books and make the change. This horribly inefficient process is because we still haven’t come up with - and aren’t even close to coming up with a solution to Digital Identity. I’ve been wanting to write a post about it for literally more than a year now. [...]
Well said! Excellent point! Nice to know I’m not alone in not wanting a Gmail account.
Hey! That’s creepy the way it says the browser and os…wish I’d known about that before I commented on this borrowed-without-permission (roommate’s) computer!