Orkutified
I lost track of the number of people who asked me at DebConf if I was on Orkut. So, being the keen reader of subtleties that I am, I figured it was time to check it out.
I’m still finding my way around, but I’m also having much more fun than I was expecting to. I probably spent three hours clicking around that first clip, finding the people I’ve gotten to know over the past six months in my travels but always got too busy to add to my address book when I got home. I still have a pile of business cards and scraps of paper with contact information on them sitting on my desk at Progeny. And there’s far more information about the people I’ve met on Orkut just sitting there waiting for me than I’d ever be able to collect in my own address book, even with several assistants to help me.
Being a businessman, one of my first thoughts was: What’s in this for Google? They didn’t charge me a cent for joining, and I’m not seeing ads anywhere.
Then it hit me. This is an identity management play.
What if Orkut evolves into the Internet’s address book, much as Google has evolved into the Internet’s memory? What if the next step is a set of Orkut extensions to the Google APIs that allows me to transparently tie into the Internet address book from my mailer and eventually to authenticate myself once for the entire web or store my preferences for any website or any number of other “holy grail” type things..
In short, Orkut is Passport done bottom up, which is to say, done right. All the folks diligently entering their information and linking to each other inside this closed system (including, now, me) are unwitting accomplices to Google’s plan. That’s not necessarily a bad thing, but it does remain to be seen what Google will do with its power in the long run.
Watch out, Microsoft. These guys are very, very good.
June 10th, 2004 at 8:28am
It’s not good place!! but I can’t fine a good resource :: What is mean Of Debian?:::
June 10th, 2004 at 10:20am
It’s scary, too. Orkut now has the personal info (including photographs, personal addresses and a lot more) of many, many people that either didn’t read the small print in the Terms of Service, or just didn’t care too much (I’m in the latter group).
They basically own gigs of very personal data now.
June 10th, 2004 at 11:57am
And they’re probably tracking those Gmail invites that everyone is clamouring for.
June 10th, 2004 at 2:08pm
Thanks to the wonders of Technorati, it appears I’m not the first to come to similar conclusions:
http://jeremy.zawodny.com/blog/archives/001504.html
June 12th, 2004 at 12:32pm
Orkutified too
Well, I’ve been orkutified too.
First of all, my impressions: it looks too invasive to me, buy hey, I can’t fool myself. I have a weblog and anyone who wants to contact me just have to google me.
So, the invasive thing is out of concern. However, there…
June 20th, 2004 at 6:13am
Google’s Plot
My old boss Ian Murdock has an interesting take on Google’s Orkut: he says it’s the beginnings of Microsoft Passport, but done right, from the…
June 20th, 2004 at 7:52pm
Orkut and Gmail
Ian Murdock and Jeremy Zawodny have opined on Orkut and so has Dean Esmay. That being said, I have to thank Dean for sending me an invitation to Orkut. If you’re one of my regular readers or friends and you…
June 25th, 2004 at 5:29am
It was clear to me early on that the missing component of Orkut is an LDAP front-end.
E.g. I would be able to bind to a personal LDAP DN and then my social network is immediately presented in my email client addressbook. The system as a whole thus forms a white pages with a personal view, automatically updated by your friends.
Like you, I expect instead to be offered some kind of integration with Gmail.
J