Friendster, Orkut, Tribe: February 4, 2004

I have been mightily impressed with what I see developing in Orkut (especially when contrasted with Friendster).

And although Tribe and Orkut are similarly featured social network sites (the ability to create communities separate from user profiles, etc.) they already seem to be developing in an completely different directions.

To compare and contrast these three sites briefly:

Tribe, with about 70,000 members, has a sort of San Francisco laid-back community feel to it, with lots and lots of alternative discussion groups (one of the biggest is for the Burning Man tribe), and a sort of buy, sell 'n swap section thrown in. Funky, fun. Avoid if you hate the colour orange :-)

Friendster (NOTE APRIL 2012: now gone) is 6-million-member worldwide free-for-all, average age is 18-22, the focus is on dating/flirting/making new friends (or creating new false identities: "Fakesters"), but there are NO discussion groups. The Friendster servers are currently straining under the user load, so service can be slow at times, and completely unavailable at others. Check out the funnier Fakesters, e.g. Miss Cleo, Friendsters Anonymous, etc. for a good laugh at how creative people can be.

Orkut (the new kid on the block) is Google's answer to Friendster, just launched in mid-January 2004, and it's currently still a small site (about 40,000 people as of today). People can post detailed profiles if they wish (similar to Tribe), and set up and join as many communities as they like (again, like Tribe).

However, the Orkut network seems to have been "seeded" by the Google staff themselves, and their friends, and their friends, and these first 40,000 people are certainly VERY different overall from the Friendster crowd. They are more mature, both smarter AND wiser, and very "plugged-in".   I am staggered by the names of the people I keep coming across: people like Esther Dyson, John Perry Barlow, Mitch Kapor, Brewster Kahle, Howard Rheingold, Gary Price (ResourceShelf), Blake Carver (LISNews), Tara Calishain (ResearchBuzz), Jessamyn West (librarian.net), Evan Williams (evhead), Meg Hourihan (megnut)... Orkut's still got bugs, and crashes every so often, but it still looks quite promising.

Click on the Communities tab in Orkut, and browse the "schools and education" communities, the "computers and Internet" communities, and the "science and history" communities, to get a feel for the place, and to see its potential. My prediction is that Orkut is gonna kick Friendster's ass, and probably sooner than anybody might predict. Orkut has Google's deep pockets and massive computer power behind it, and is already evolving fairly rapidly in response to user input.

(UPDATE APRIL 2012: Well, Orkut's level of maturity sunk pretty quickly as millions of new people signed on and the original "seeders" left.  Some days I worry that Google+ is going to follow a trajectory similar to Orkut.)