Until today I had been ignoring the various social networking sites like Orkut, because I just didn't see the point. But today I received my first invitation to join Orkut, from Dan Sugalski.
Dan is close enough to the borderline between friend and stranger that accepting the invitation suddenly seemed worth while. If the invitation had come from someone I knew better, like someone at work, I would have ignored it. If it had come from someone I knew less, like someone I'd never met in person, I would have ignored it. I'm not sure quite why I feel that way, and in fact I was taken by surprise to realize that there were any social connections that I would want to make public via a social networking site. I wonder whether it's a common reaction.
Once I had joined, I quickly became sucked in. I received an Orkut message from a co-worker and then... well... it's so easy to add links to people, that I ended up adding half a dozen co-workers within just a few minutes. Then I noticed that one of them belonged to the computer science "community", and I liked the little graphic, so of course I had to join too. And at that point the snowball was too big to stop.
So, for anybody who cares, here's my Orkut profile.
Posted on February 5, 2004 06:12 PM
More personal articles
from a paper on the "privacy impact of Orkut, Friendster, Plaxo, etc.":
"...The new dimension that these services bring is that they entice users to
disclose personal data about their friends, business contacts or
acquaintances. That is a disturbing feature, and it requires careful analysis."