Orkut or Facebook?

For me, the best thing about Facebook is [in comparison with Orkut] that you don't really care whether people are online and interacting with you. In Orkut, suppose you had a very long onversation with one of your friends and the very next day, when you start chatting with him/her, it may turn out that he/she isn't interested to chat with you at that time. Besides, there is this universal problem of not having pals online [unless obviously you personally make a call or an sms, and ask him to come online, but then you can carry on the conversation through your mobile, why should you switch to orkut?]. Under these circumstances, a net freak has very limited option because Orkut provides you with only a limited set of features. So people are compelled to visit random profiles or even forced to go through the old scraps [which isn't a pleasant experience always], but then, the fucking Orkut privacy setting has enabled most of the users to set their pictures, scrapbook,videos and even testimonials locked. So there you go, you have nothing to do, you even don't have the option to go beyond your known boundary. I don't mean that this thing is all bad, because certainly it stops people from stalking someone and that security issue is also true to some extent. But all these has made Orkut a pretty boring social networking site.

But then in Facebook, when you have nothing to do, you may indulge yourself in the quizzes, or play games like Mafia wars and Castle age, there are hundreds and thousands of applications ready to entertain you. And you don't really care about whether people are paying attention to you or not! However, these features have obviously made Facebook to get deviated slightly from the " model" social networking site, but I think, this deviation is on the positive side.

The main complaint, that I've faced while requesting my friends to start using Facebook instead of Orkut, is that its a little bit complicated. Well! complicacy comes with functionality. [scientific calculators are much more complicated than regular ones], had Facebook been only a " chat site", the interface would have been much simpler, but its not and one has to realise that you need to give some effort in order to achieve better results.

But the Facebook interface isn't that complicated. One of my friends told me that she finds it difficult to locate the appropiate links [like the links to profile information, pictures etc] in Facebook. But after 3-4 days, now she spends much more of her time in Facebook than in Orkut.

One serious limitation of Facebook, is the chat engine. Its much more complicated than the incorporated gtalk in orkut, and also it lacks functionality and fast response.

Orkut has realeased its new version and strangely enough it resembles the facebook interface to a great extent. Also, it is incorporating some of the "patent" facebook applications [although their no. is very limited as far as I reckon], which clearly tells that I am not the only user, who is pissed of Orkut. And already Orkut has started to evolve in order to match with the increasing popularity of Facebook.

LONG LIVE FACEBOOK