Ode to Orkut, the innocent pioneer of a social media revolution

The social networking website Orkut shuts down forever on Tuesday, September 30.

I was 18 years old when I first came to know about Orkut.

I am not sure how I came across social networking. Those were still the days of Yahoo Messenger chats, Yahoo Groups and scary chat rooms infested with fake profiles. I don’t recall if Gtalk was being used as frequently.

But the first ever social network I used was hi5. Hi5 was very flashy in its design and had few privacy controls. It resembled a more colourful version of MySpace. After scourging for friends and adding some newbies there, I began to tire of the addiction. It was more glamour and less substance.

Then one fine day I had to bear a friend’s ridicule for using hi5. He said, “Get on to Orkut, you idiot”, and there I was, the next day. He gave me my first scrapbook entry and my first testimonial - a bad one.

The problem started with pronouncing the social network’s name - Or-kat or Or-koot? Nobody seemed to be obsessed with this as much as I was, so I just went along.

A rush to get onboard

Within the next six months or so, it seemed that my whole school was on Or-kat, as so was my college. After feverishly adding people as “friends”, I would post in their “scrapbook” for fun. The chats were public and non-moderated. But the social media space back then was benign, the right wing saw it as a threat to Indian culture and parents were exasperated with their kids’ newest addiction. In other words, all was normal in the Orkut world.

Soon it devolved into the now-familiar world of an unhealthy new age addiction, becoming an avenue to express your support for a particular cause (though you might never step out of your house to do something real about it). I founded a group called I Hate Moral Policing after Mumbai’s cops decided they would shoo away/ harass/ attack couples on the city’s streets. The group (or community, as Orkut called it) became a hub for feminists, pseudo-feminists, liberals, right-wingers, leftists, confused Indians, kids, hypocrites, and some others. For some crazy reason I refused to upload a lead picture or hand over the “moderator” duties to anyone else.

Simple interface in nascent era of social media

Orkut’s interface was simplistic yet pleasing to the eye. It was to social networking what the gramophone was to music. With less evolved means of virtual communication, public scrapbooks provided a way to keep in touch with those you cared about, and those whose lives you were interested in.

Then came the Orkut-leads-to-murder stories, the vulgar communities, online harassment, political protests, and so on. Here, social media started to lose its innocence. Chest-beating politicians who had never as much as seen an Orkut page by their own admission, demanded a ban on the social network in India. Court cases were filed, directions were issued to the police and cyber crime authorities and we got caught in a rigmarole.

Meanwhile, Orkut introduced more security features, such as giving users the ability to display selective (or no) pictures or scraps to strangers. Even as Yahoo Messenger became redundant, Orkut held sway over the hearts and minds of the mesmerized Indian youth. 

Facebook takes over

I am not certain as to when the focus shifted to Facebook and Orkut became an abandoned child. Facebook’s features allowed far more secure and diverse interactions within groups, with the ability to create polls, group photos, events, sharing incredible stuff on the internet, and so on. Facebook allows for personal messaging, which Orkut only added much later.

The first memory I have of making a Facebook profile and hotly following the new craze was after the Mangalore pub attack of 2009. Mad with a desire to do something about it, I joined a Facebook group called the Consortium of Pub-Going and Loose Women. Now the group had a lot of men too, who joined the women in criticising the Hindu right wing day and night without pause. Most of these intellectuals were NRIs living comfortable lives in Europe or the States.

Simultaneously, one Nisha Susan sent pink-coloured chaddis to the architect of that pub attack, Pramod Muthalik. But that remained the side story as entire days were spent slamming the Indian right wing. The group was hacked twice, almost deleted once and reported innumerable times. In the end I think the owners weaseled out of the whole deal by distracting the members. The group had been formed to pay the Sri Ram Sene back in kind and it had succeeded in its mission.

Facebook more secure?

After this however, to my mind, Facebook became the No 1 social network in India. It actually assumed this position a year or two later. With internet trolls having taken over social media, more cases of murder, stalking, harassment coming to the fore, Indians became smarter and decided to use the (apparently) more secure Facebook platform. It didn’t help Orkut that its functionality was severely restricted. It tried to counter by introducing themes for its user and community pages, but it was too primitive, too little. Introducing new wallpapers to attract old users? That was so passe by then.

Facebook continues to introduce more privacy controls, more custom features, and simultaneously grows more dangerous and addictive, even as concerns about its so-called safety and allegations of unauthorised data usage remain. Social media has blown up immensely over the last three to four years, with just about every entity around the world using Facebook to promote itself. Even entire national election campaigns, protests and agitations are being planned on and around Facebook. Orkut never ever got here.

Why Orkut was unique

Orkut was instead the gateway to establishing our first wholesome presence in the virtual world. It was the platform which introduced “ME” to the world, creating a unique personal identity online which you could take pride in. For young India just beginning to appreciate both the usefulness of the internet and the benefits of liberalisation, Orkut perhaps was a true introduction to the world outside.

Somewhere, I still miss the simplicity and innocence of Orkut scraps, the lower-resolution images, the childish excitement of receiving your 1000th, 5000th, 10000th scrap, knowing this is not much more than your daily dose of recreation. Facebook has evolved (or devolved?) from being a space for personal interaction to a global political tool. While Facebook has inextricably intertwined the personal and the political, Orkut showed it was eventually incapable of doing so, thus retaining a unique place in people’s hearts.