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Tuesday, October 14, 2008

Stupid Profile Names on Orkut

Orkut profileTo say that Orkut is popular here in India would be a gross understatement. And since it is popular you cannot afford to stay away from it (for long) and especially if you are in the online business you just cannot afford to.

Thanks to so many people being in there I'm now in (remote) touch with a number of old friends.

But I get flummoxed when I get a scrap from someone called "IM oN tHE 7tH HeAVen aNd In NO mOdd 2 GEt DoWn." Good for you buddy if you're there and I wish you'd stay there but at the same time I'd also like some clues towards your real, non CrAzY cased identity?

I then go snooping to the scrappers profile and try to hunt for clues - common friends, photos, videos, scraps, testimonials. Usually I make a good guess, but often am left clueless.

To many this might seem cool, but it actually defies the real purpose of social networking. One your identity gets camouflaged (unless it is a deliberate act) and someone looking for you there by your name wouldn't find you in the search results. And when you scrap someone, he/she would be left wondering.

Some clever chaps have found a way out, they insert their names in some other field, eg city, and hence get featured in the profile search results.

Maybe Orkut should give these bacchas some other field where they can let their creative energies roam free while I get to know who is scrapping me.

Thankfully, my Facebook friend's list is still sane. Maybe because Facebook emphasises on the 'real name'. Or are my Facebook friends saner than my Orkut ones? Or people tend to be proper on Facebook and go crazy on Orkut? Maybe I'm getting old?

4 Comments:

dwaipayan said...

wow... i agree with u...

that u r getting old... and senile, too

San said...

I think i tried Orkut for a few weeks but i couldn't get into it - social sites weren't really my thing and so many randoms would send stupid messages. But, yeah facebook does seem better then other social sites i've seen, more genuine less of the usual junk id's taht we see elsewhere.

Anonymous said...

No crazy is the right word. How ever having had similar discussions with my friends, I think the paranoia over age, bad spellings etc just comes from having grown, worked or the constant metamorphosis that we go through in adult life.

Soumyadip said...

Dwaipayan, senility is still a few years away.

San, junk is what most of the web is filled up with.

det-res, I think we get more finicky with experience.