A Substandard Orkut!! is the Indian youth Icon

Orkut was chosen the MTV India's Youth Icon. I am not in agreement with Orkut being chosen the Youth Icon. I know Orkut is very famous among the Indian youth. But Indian Youth Icon. I don't agree. Check this link for more on this. What is more damning is the absolute neglect for usability from a product of Google stable. I had decent expectations from the recent release of Orkut, boy! was I disappointed. Read on for more.!

I will not go on with what is good about Orkut. It does not matter as it is quite popular in this part of the world(India). From a usability perspective, it is one of the worst I have seen.

• There is no way to search within communities. I am part of 60 odd communities, If I have to go to one community I am forced to browse through all the list. (Worse the list is cannot even be sorted)
• Cannot search within my scraps.
• Cannot edit/ modify scraps I wrote.
• The friends can be viewed as Orkut shows me. I cannot modify/sort the way I can view my friends.
• I can view friends of my friend, but navigating through them is a pain
• There is no way, I can sort my scraps nor see more than 30 scraps per page? What surprises me is how come the same company has come with some thing as good as a Google reader.
• I keep seeing a new message count, though there is none. A bug not fixed for eternity.
• Community Forums are another big pain. There is no category, nor there is an idea of how many forums exist. It is a complete mess.

These are just some of the stuff that I faced in my limited use of the tool (about 2-4min every day). As a product, it is one of the most substandard I have seen on the web. If the Orkut usability team is hearing me, folks get your act now.

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