Fabula

Exclusivity: orkut, Gmail, and Fahrenheit 9/11

This recent spate of Google's invite only services is frustrating, because it immediately makes me feel unpopular. I am, of course, referring to orkut and Gmail.

orkut is a by invitation only Friendster / MySpace type service. Here's what they say about themselves:

"orkut is unique, because it's an organically growing network of trusted friends. That way we won't grow too large, too quickly and everyone will have at least one person to vouch for them.

If you know someone who is a member of orkut, that person can invite you to join as well. If you don't know an orkut member, wait a bit and most likely you soon will.

We look forward to having you as part of the orkut community."

Gmail totes itself as "A Google approach to email". What makes it special is it's storage space. Allowing 1 GB of storage, Gmail says:

"Gmail is an experiment in a new kind of webmail, built on the idea that you should never have to delete mail and you should always be able to find the message you want."

These new Google innovations are fascinating -- of the social networking craze, Andrew Leonard of Salon.com writes:

"The venture capitalists and start-up CEOs call this 'the return of the consumer Internet,' but the truth is that nothing ever went away. Our attention may have lapsed -- I know mine did. After the dot-com crash, 9/11, corporate scandal and war, what people are doing online just doesn't seem as world-changingly important as it once did, last century. But that doesn't mean that we stopped doing things online -- on the contrary, more people are doing more things online than ever before, and social networking is an essential part of it. Like e-mail, like using a search engine, social networking is a part of the Internet way of life. And it's barely getting started."

The folks at Google are bright. Their marketing is incredible: they don't throw ads out there; they simply create the impression of exclusivity and wait for the demand to grow. I don't know how they're going to cash in on this stuff, but no doubt they've got some plan.

It's amusing when we contrast the internet with the images we see coming out of Iraq. Check out Fahrenheit 9/11 -- if for no other reason than it provides some footage that you probably haven't seen on the news.

posted by Rob @ 3:30 PM