pondering the futility of social networks

[rone]

I'm >this< close to deleting my orkut account; that is, to requesting that it be deleted. I will set aside for a moment my opinion of social networks, and point out why orkut sucks as a service:

• There's no communication. There's no news page that tells you what Orkut is working on, what new features are coming, what bugs are being fixed, not even a fucking FAQ. This is key.
• The "communities" suck ass. There's no threading; if you leave, your posts become "anonymous"; only 10 entries are shown per page, and you can't change that.
• The random disappearance of accounts and communities lead many to believe that there's an active censorship vector. In itself, that's not a big deal, but because there's no established policy, and referring back to my first complaint, we can't KNOW what's going on because nobody's SAYING ANYTHING.
• orkut's First Law: You can't delete your own account. orkut's Second Law: Your account can be deleted at any time for any slight against orkut, real or imagined. Corollary via Murphy's Law: trying to diss orkut in order to get your account deleted will fail.

I used to defend orkut by saying it was a beta site. No longer; it might say "beta" on each page, but it's evident that development ceased weeks ago (probably as soon as Orkut's stupid launch party occurred). It's abandonware, folks, so do the appropriate thing: remove your personal info and abandon your account.

Comments

[tongodeon.livejournal.com]

You want to delete your account because you suspect that Orkut deletes accounts of people who say unpopular things?

Sounds like a chance to test your hypothesis, kill two birds with one stone, and have some fun in the process.

[lusercop.livejournal.com]

See also the section of Rone's original post marked "Corollary". :-)

[ronebofh.livejournal.com]

Ah, but i did. I posted this to "Antisocial Networks". I'm going over there now to check out what sort of lame-ass retorts i've garnered.