Orkut or Facebook?

For me, the answer is Orkut. I realised it pretty late, though. Or perhaps I never thought about it. I have never been very fond of social networking, nor do I consider myself to be a social animal. I know, these statements are contradictory with the fact that there are 500+ friends in my friends-list and 100+ fans on Orkut. But this is what happens when you are liked by one and all you know. Of course, I do secretly list them as 'friends' or 'acquaintances' -- but you can't always deny friends requests when you live in such a small world.

I joined Orkut sometime in 2004, if I remember it right. Those were the days of final year engineering, the thing was new, we had time and all that. Naturally, we wasted quite some time scrapping people "Hey-dude-'ssup" and "Long-time-no-hear-baby" kind of things. And got replies like "Im-fine-brotha-whatchya-doin-these-days" or "So-nice-to-hear-from-you-(but)-I-got-married" n blah. The point was, it was all worthless. Even the arbitest discussions in the arbitest forums. Keeping track of fan-count. Sugary testimonials.

But today, when I don't even have time to wipe my a$s properly, these things have stopped. I no longer entertain such scraps. In fact, I no longer get such scraps from the people that are still jobless enough to send them (do note that I have not used words 'dumb enough not to realise its worthlessness'). Community discussions no longer matter to me. I use this medium of 'keeping-in-touch' only when I need to send a quick message (which, again, is not very personal and priority-wise low one) to one of my 'friends'. Acquaintances do not exist for me anymore.

Let me tell you, I always remain a great fan of emails. On an average, I send more personal emails from my work than work related emails. And most of them are longish ones. I frequently use my cell phone as well. So the point is, when I can be in touch with people I have to, why do I need to use Orkut? When we are at it, quickly read this excellent post by Dilip: To stay in touch.

One simple reason is that it's a fact that I have discovered some of the long-lost friends through Orkut, and now I am in 'proper' touch with them through other personal means of communication. Besides, not everybody is as comfortable with email as medium of communication. If some of those 'matter to me', I'd rather use Orkut to be in touch with them. It's a fact that scraps on Orkut is a slightly casual way of communication, and hence some people are more comfortable with it.

And then there came this Facebook. I joined it a few months back and realised that it is an utter waste of time. Almost all the people I have seen on Facebook have an Orkut account. Now unless you want to throw.. er... chuck weird ass things at your friends, or boast about the number of books you've read, or give your buddies virtual spanks or hugs or kisses, or draw meaningless drawings for them, or join groups with weirdest names you can ever come across, or compare best of your friends with each other, or ask your friends useless questions, OR you are jobless enough to do the things mentioned, why do you need facebook? Just because it is new, or it looks funkier than Orkut (is it??), or it offers few of the extraordinarymost functionalities that I am not aware of?

I am not starting a debate here. Please note that this is a very personal opinion. Orkut has all the things that I might expect a social networking site to have, and I don't really need the funkiness that Facebook offers. Indians seem to be sentimental with the communities like "great facebook race - the Indians". They want to outnumber Americans on facebook or something. Females want to outnumber males and vice versa. But why?? [I do understand facebook has a wider, global audience. That just multiplies your chances of getting random sex through a social networking site, doesn't it?? Enough of that poking baby, let's just get in the bed! Yeah, right.]

Just for the records, Orkut has a brand-new look which I feel is pretty decent. And I am sure they have many more 'new' things in store. One of my close buddies works for the Orkut team, but he seems to be getting all the hate mails these days. It's a tough job that he is doing, and best wishes of Orkutters will always be with him.

Big rant, this one.

Anyway, the bottomline: It's Orkut for me, and I don't really care what it is for you.

Now this sounds like one of those communities - oops - 'groups' on Facebook, doesn't it??