Impressions on Orkut

I decided to pass on Scoble's offer to send an invitation to Orkut to anyone who wants one and wait to see how long it would be before I got one through my usual channels. The invite came on Thursday or Friday through one of my geeky friends in the bay area. I am on Friendster too, but haven't tried LinkedIn.com. Overall, pretty neat. Fast, which I appreciate, but parts of the UI are difficult to find. Took a bit to figure out where all the profile sections were. There are sections of profile information that can be secured by groups (ie, viewable by friends only or friends of friends or everyone) so for instance, you can display your address to your friends and maybe your email to friends or friends. I like that feature, but it seems not all sections can be secured like that, which I would like. I also like the idea of the “terminate” button. With these social network sites, I like to sign up and see who is connected to the people I know and see what they have to offer, but after a time I just want off because the site fails to be useful or interesting. Communities are pretty cool as well, if only to find people you know to build your network. I am also enjoying seeing who is on the friends list of the industry “players”. For fun check out Newsweek's Steven Levy's friends list. It's a who's who list of the industry bigwigs. Wow.

(feel free to add me as a friend if you want to network or just for fun)