Experiment lands Kynn in Orkut Jail

A friend, Kynn Bartlett -- the technologist behind Shock & Awe Blog and Inland Anti-Empire Blog -- passes along this interesting development:

For the last few days I've been alternately in and out of Orkut Jail. That's really the name for it -- they disable your account and give you this message if you try to do nearly anything.

I'm not really surprised, though -- the cause seems to be an experiment I tried. I wanted to see what would happen if I "stole" all of Robert Scoble's friends.

So I went and added everyone from his friends list to mine -- that's over 100 people total. About 9 of them wrote to me to ask who I am. Another 80 or so added me, even though we never met and don't really know each other.

I find these types of social networks interesting in their implications -- including, in Orkut, the transformation of relationships into a "numbers game." The more friends you have, the more important you are in the Orkut hierarchy, it seems.

It's also interesting that by just using the system, you can end up in Orkut Jail. I don't consider what I did to be an ABUSE, because, let's be real, there's no rule against adding someone to your list of friends who is a stranger. If there were, over 80 of you would be in trouble right now for adding me back!

It may or may not pervert the intent of Orkut, but I'd have to say that the current setup, which places "important" people at the center of everything, already does that by reducing relationships to a numeric score. Marc Canter may be a nice guy, but I am skeptical that he knows as many people as his "score" would indicate -- especially since he added me with no questions asked! :)

Anyway, that's my little experiment. Who knows -- I may end up back in Orkut Jail again after this message! I keep popping in and out for reasons which are unclear to me. If you want to talk about this some more, or about anything else, drop me a note. I've got 80 new friends to get to know.

Kynn, let me know if you need some bail money.