Did any of you guys ever own a community on Orkut?

Yes that giant social networking site which has been crushed to rubble by Facebook. I did, and was quite proud of it. It was a community called "IIT Aspirants" whose ownership had been tranferred over to me while I was in my 11th. Watching it grow from a humble 20 odd something to a whopping 9000+ and still growing was quite fascinating and then t mails. Oh the mails. Tons of them. Advice, rankings, validations of facts and the thank-yous. I had for some time become one of the most credible sources for info on competitive exams. Agreed after a point of time I did a sub standard job as an owner courtesy the banning of orkut at BITS last year and thus appointed moderators. However after I log into my account after what would have been 3 months I notice that I am no longer the owner of the community.

I punch in furiously into my google toolbar and find this

The current Owner is some guy called Vendetta(6), the queer part being that he's Cuban. The moderator is some guy whose screen name I suppose is Evil Genius, he's from Quetta, Pakistan and some girl called Kavita.
And these are the related communities

!?

When Orkut results in Death

We hear about it so often, yet unless it happens to us, we dont tend to take it seriously. Be it having unprotected sex, drinking water which isnt clean or meeting people after getting to know them from chatrooms/social networking sites.
Its hard to figure out a person's intentions when he is online because he can seem to appear anyone he wants to be.
You can state that your passions are Hiking, Bungee Jumping and Rocket Science and that you've got the perfect figure(despite any of that being true). But the power of an avatar or lack of face to face conversations can also help 'psycho's' hide their identity quite effectively.
Recently a girl and guy got to know each other through Orkut, became really close pals, wrote each other sweet testimonials and the works. The guy was already married. They fell in love and met...

Find out what happened next...

Its quite easy to blame all this on fate and take the easy way out, but come on! Be sensible.
This is the guys profile:
(You can still see the girls testimonial I think)
http://www.orkut.com/Profile.aspx?uid=348385650417627297

And this is the girl's:
http://www.orkut.com/Profile.aspx?uid=11725203022944506305

A Tout le monde
Be careful on any social networking site or any of the chatrooms. I know it sounds like I am sermonising here, but its been happening to so many people and its so easy to fall in the trap.

Orkut.com

A creation of Mr. Orkut Buyyokoten, a Stanford-ite and an employee of Google, which ensured that the vetti(jobless for those who aren't accustomed to the Bitsian slang) are never left jobless. It's re-united many lost friends, spread the message of many events and also ruined many lives(oh havn't you ever been addicted to it?).

It is supposed to be a forum for healthy interaction. It has all these communities based upon people's interests, which one can join. One can read and contribute(if he has joined) to the topics in each community.

There are all types of communities, and I mean ALL types. You got communites on popular and not-so-popular TV shows, movies, personalities, brands and also stuff like "The Pope should break dance" and "Bitch make me a sandwich" which is about guys telling girls to STFU make them a sandwich".

Coming to these communities. When you join any of these communities on orkut, you are demonstrating your affiliation with them. Rationally speaking, it would be expected that since you've joined these communites you should take part in the proceedings.
Yet we see that people join the communities and remain "dormant" for extended periods of time, sometimes even indefinitely.
Many a times, joining communites becomes an obsession. You just want to join more and more communities. You know you've really lost it when you join the community called "I have joined too many communities" . And then to top it off, you also have the community "Orkut Rehab".

Now for the ultimate question. What goes on in these communities?
One would expect that the community would be brimming with meaningfull discussions on the topics associated with the community. Enthusiastic members chipping in with their valuable opinions on the issues posted in the community forums.
Lets take the example "Gladiator", the community dedicated to the Oscar Winning Ridley Scott beauty. A quick glance at the forum will introduce you to the following topics:
#Give only one word for MAXIMUS
#let us make Gladiator the number one rated movie of all time
#Want to be my friendzzzzz
Out of the 200 topics in the community only 2-3 have received replies in double figures.

In another community "Internet Addicts", one of the posts read "How many hours do you spend on the internet?"
The active members of the community enthusiastically answered in succession
"atmost 2 hrs..Or sometimes 3 to 4 hrs.There was a time when I spend almost 8hrs. continous for 3 days"

"hmm.. so i m really addicted :D
12-16 hrs daily.. :)"

Almost all communities that have a substantial number of people are flooded with irrelevant games. In one of these games the last person to post wins(does that explain the smirk on my face), in others you have to answer a queston with a question. I am not against these games, do what ever you want out of your free will, but keep a separate platform for this will you? I'm sure having posts such as "Will you go out with the person above you?" in a "Aspiring Cricket Writers" community is quite relevant ;)

Also observed is a phenomenon that in every community there are a number of posts in foreign languages such as portuguese and spanish. So in an IIT-JEE aspirants community you find stuff like "FOTOS DO FLAGRA DA CICARELLI NA PRAIA"

To witness this phenomenon just create a community open to all and dont assign any moderators and voila!

I admit that for a while I too was mesmerised by Orkut and in this frenzy joined many communities aimlessly. Before I knew it, there were 356 communities on my profile. I figured out that if I spend a minimum of 2 minutes on every community every week, I'd end up spending 1/30*356, thats nearly 12 hours.
Now out of these 356 I hardly checked out 50-60 communites (even if once in a bluemoon) and actively participated in less than 15.

It is also observed that regardless of the number of people that are in a community, the active population is limited to a very small fraction. The vast majority(like me), just join the community and then forget about it. And this vast majority makes up those huge 6 digit numbers.

I am right now in the process of un-joining all those communities(about 98% of the origianl number), though I must admit its going to take a long time.

-Rishabh Kaul