Earlier I thought that Orkut was primarily a dating site, but in recent weeks my perspectives have got shaken by the following:
1. Headhunters are using Orkut's communities to advertise jobs and sometimes profiling candidates and 'scrapping' them (in Orkutspeak!) to inform them of jobs and asking them for referals. The fact that there exist organization-based communities for past, present and future employees to connect is a great way for recruiters to target passive job seekers. Of course, educational institute communities are also ripe for targetting.
2. Three of the employees for whom I am a HR Manager first connected to me through orkut, before I met them in person. That really brought the reality of managing GenNext (or Millenials) to me in person !
Update: In response to Ajit's comment below, I think Orkut should start offering RSS feeds of their community postings. That would be a good strategy to take on Yahoogroups. Even Yahoogroups offers RSS feeds but only for groups open to the public.
Well orkut was never perceived as a dating site. Most ppl use it for business networking. And the 'communities' idea is gonna scrap out the yahoogroups concept.
ReplyDeleteThe common perception about Orkut is somewhat misleading,it's just that people have now staring taking it seriously.
ReplyDeleteInitially even I thought that it was meant only for time-pass kinda activity.
But i still feel that Yahoo groups will continue to be important for serious discussions.
I think RSS feed is a must for any connecting tool.But still feel that orkut has got a lot to improve in terms of quality.
ReplyDeleteSince membership is free,most of members are not serious about discussions and knowledge sharing.(which i find happens in case of moderated Yahoo groups)And that is a very convincing reaosn why serious folks don't join orkut.
But as a social tool it works effectively for the simple reason that it's easy to join and less demanding.