Few years back, when I got introduced to Orkut, it was a different time. I had not heard of Facebook then, in fact nobody around me. I was among the leading user of Orkut in my surrounding then. I injected this virus in many people's mind around me. It was thrilling then. Everyday used to begin with checking Orkut profile. New updates, scraps, updates in friends scrapbook. Beating head to refresh the memory of any possible person who at some point of the time was your friend and still exist on this earth. It was a good exercise trying to locate friends in different corners of the world. I even succeeded to catch hold of some of my school mates. Orkut then allowed only 12 photos to be uploaded on your account and we tried to make the best use of this by posting the best clicked photo till date. The photos were then receiving lot of appreciations. It was simple then like your own diary where you know all the notes written on each page.
Slowly Orkut started getting complicated. From your personal diary, it turned into a reference book where you refer any subject, searching it from the index. It turned liberal allowing more number of photos initially to 100 and now up to 10000, allowed to reply the scrap without visiting persons profile, showing the updates of all your friends on your front end. It no more remained a page governed by you, but by the friend activities. This started killing the fun. I guess the main motivation of social networking site was to spend some time for your “friend”. When you visit a persons profile to scrap him, check photos, you try to check other updates on his profile. It might introduce you to your common friend who is not in your friends list. Now these social networking sites suggests you all probable friends but that takes away all the fun you get from searching. It slowly started introducing online games which took people on a crazy ride. It no remained the social networking site but turned into a game zone.
In the mean time, I visited a place where people were not aware of Orkut, but mad about Facebook.
So with the sole purpose of keeping my those friends in contact, I opened an account on Facebook. I had few friends on Facebook for a long time till Facebook introduced a utility of searching friends. Many of my friends used this utility to reach me. Since I was not much active and least interested to check Facebook, only thing I used to do was to accept the friends request. I doubt if I visited even one fourth of my “friends” profile immediately after accepting them as friend. The worst part of Facebook was that I used to receive loads of requests related to Farmville, which I guess again is a on line game.
Recently, I realized that orkut has started fading out and facebook has taken over it in all the aspects. I see more and more updates coming from friends on Facebook and less on orkut. I feel only those people are still active on Orkut who were its initial user. I tried to make a shift from Orkut to Facebook. I started checking, updating Facebook account equally as my orkut account. But sooner realized that this transition is not smooth. I couldn't feel the high in Facebook as I felt with Orkut. It failed to absorb me even for a short time.
I am still a regular visitor of these sites and I might keep visiting these sites in future. But I also doubt that they become a history. I still see some of the fabulous photos my friends upload, but I don't feel the same as earlier to compliment them. I still receive the Orkut scraps or Facebook writings on the wall, but I fail to respond to the scraps and the writings promptly.
What is happening – Have these social networking sites turned boring or am I growing old?
