Cupid Online ...

After my roommate swami’s recommendation to visit orkut, I decided to give it a try yesterday. As usual I wound up my work at 5:00 PM as I don’t want to work when my brain stages a dharna … (Swami says that even government officials put more hours …) and got into orkut … It required an invite to log in but it was not difficult to find one, especially when I am from ISB …

Orkut is a social networking site. There are lots of these types of sites out there ( I am already member of Linked in, HI5, Plaxo) and orkut slightly differentiates itself by including dating facilities apart from professional networking … ( I recommend Linkedin for professional networking) … I was just going through the site and browsing through the pictures of beautiful girls out there … (especially I am a fan of Pakistani girls ) …

I could realize the power of such sites and why google has bought this one … Though orkut didn’t pickup as much as one who understands the power of networking sites would have expected, it is surely a successful venture … I could see most of the entries were more related to personal relationships rather than professional networking, this indeed becomes a USP and differentiates it from Linkedin. I would say Google does a good job in choosing the future markets such as blogs, networking etc.

Social networking has huge potential just because of the network effects that comes alone with it. For those who don’t know network effect (aka network externalities), just think about telephones … As more and more users get telephone connection, more beneficial it is for the customers … So the telephone company might struggle in the beginning, but once it reaches a critical mass (MBA jargon: Tipping point), the subscription explodes .. Now think why social networking is a good area for companies to concentrate …

Apart from network effects, these sites collect a lot of information about its members and this data itself is a pot of gold for data warehousing, e-marketing etc. In addition, Google doesn’t have customer info as yahoo, ebay or Amazon and this site could perfectly complement it …

PS: Well… I am thinking about these marketing concepts only when I am writing this blog … My thought process was more about fashion when I was browsing orkut … There were questions on whether I have strategically placed tattoo, pierced tongue, visible tattoo, other piercing, pierced ears, navel ring etc .. :)