I was invited by a friend about half a year ago and my virtual life changed from that day on. Orkut made it possible for me to catch up with those special school friends I thought I would never be able to catchup with.

Someone told me that Orkut was started by a Turkish businessman who wanted toget back to his long-lost girlfriend and now, it has become a fantastic way to re-introduce myself to my former friends, who never knew me so personally before. Today, you will find people everywhere talking about it - in trains, buses, classrooms and even online.

So what is this Orkut all about?

Orkut is a site wherein you can catchup with your former friends within a matter of seconds and join communities (groups) of your interest. For instance, there are communities for everythingunder the sun including your favorite dishes, stores, mobile carriers and much more - sometimes even on your best friend!

What I liked about Orkut is the fact that I am able to now determine who my true friends are and who are not. The friends who are not genuinely interested in being friends with you never add you to their profile. I could post my photos, private message or scrap my friends, check out what they have to say about me (in their testimonials and scraps), say my mind, check out whois interested in me and write my feelings about other people and about theworld in itself. We get to know several people’s true opinions on anything and everything under the sun through this website.

You could track your former mates (no matter whether they are hiding out therewith a different username) with the search facility that Orkut has (but not all the time as your mates may have shifted elsewhere)! Most of my friends are inother parts of the world, but they are easily able to keep in touch with me through this technological delight.

The website has a help section , wherein you could either enter your comments, your complaints about the site or simply make suggestions to the Orkut web administrators. The section provides Frequently Answered Questions as usual and tries to answer as many questions as possible, making it user-friendly. The new media section on the website brings out the news and happenings of the world in one colorful page. The Orkut Best Profile Contest community encourages people to make their profiles better and incorporates the spirit of true competition in the virtual world.

Orkut.com is like my favorite website, mouthshut.com in some aspects. This virtual wonder keeps away my loneliness and makes me feel happy at times when I am feeling down or want company. The system of sending invitations works similar to the good old system of personalized word-of-mouth recommendations (which spread 11times faster than wildfire) and many people have joined in as a result of that. Orkut is the place to get to know about all your friends better and is also a place to recollect those golden memories once more.

Orkut sometimes starts misbehaving and makes me feel irritated with one of its F-server errors or slow uploads. At times, it makes me feel ignored when someone I like does not add me to their list. The site is, however, updated very slowly and it has a lot of catching up to do. The problem is that one cannot even revoke their account once they have canceled it. One can find several offensive communities and users whose profiles are obscene or irritating.

The Orkut server goes down often or their upload time is very slow when thereare problems back there. Sometimes the site does not list my friends in the”Friends list” and sometimes it does not display my photographs orcommunities properly. The other problem is that of the number of fans andscraps. It is really hard to retain the fans out there and when even one ofthem gets bored or disappointed, they either withdraw the fan ratings they give or they simply delete their Orkut account and leave, making it all the more difficult for people to stay in touch with them.

Several messages advertizing individual communities are sent constantlysent by some people, which becomes absolutely irritating at times. The featuresfor protecting people’s privacy are not as much as it is on hi5.com, facebox.com or any other similar site. Friends just write their feelings openlynot realizing how they could offend the other person through their words. One disappointing fact is that Orkut can never replace the spirit of true life , but it has tried to incorporate the same in it.

Some people, I found, receive obscene, cumbersome and irritating messages through the scrapbook or simply misuse the site thus defeating the main purpose of the site. My other friends have been able to get in touch with their long-lost friends and also talk to them “live.” You could sometimesfind unauthorized visitors coming to see your profile or trying to add you.Orkut could still make improvements with regards to privacy settings, language and other settings to make it a better site to be in. Otherwise, Orkut is truly a beautiful experience.

It’s, however, a small world with Orkut.com and the site has made the world a global village. All said and done Orkut rocks!