Orkut

What is Orkut? Orkut is an online community that connects people. Is it any good? Undoubtedly, my friend. Well, Wikipedia does not seem to have too much information on Orkut. You can check this link nonetheless.

You can join Orkut only by invitation. An existing member has to invite you for you to get in. You can grow your contacts (circle of friends) in Orkut either by inviting new people to join or by adding on existing users as friends. You can view the profiles of your friend's friends, and by extension their friends and so on. Sometimes, I go profile-hopping and see if I can locate some friends or if there are any interesting people.

I have bumped into quite a few friends this way. I was pleasantly surprised, however, to see one of my instructors on Orkut! I used to take coaching from him in my twelfth class. I was of the opinion that the Orkut crowd was largely a young one. Moreover, I had not associated him with net-savviness. My bad! I then chanced upon his webpage, which he had listed on his profile, which had some material (assignments, mock exams, etc.,) online and realized that he was using the net as an effective tool.

Coming back to Orkut, Wikipedia says that Orkut' s terms of service includes "By submitting, posting or displaying any Materials on or through the orkut.com service, you automatically grant to us a worldwide, non-exclusive, sublicenseable, transferable, royalty-free, perpetual, irrevocable right to copy, distribute, create derivative works of, publicly perform and display such Materials." I do not know the implications, but you might want to consider them before putting up any of your creations on Orkut.