The BeOSJournal ~ Current News

The BeOSJournal ~ Current News: "As of just a few hours ago, Orkut has over 340,000 people signed up to their community system, with hundreds joining each and every day since its inception. What does this have to do with the great BeOS Community, I can hear you asking...?

It means we have a captive audience, one already tuned into things with a technical bent, one eager to try out something new, and a smart population not afraid of challenges. Orkut hasn't hit mainstream, yet despite their lack of advertising, dramatic flair or just bad taste marketing campaign (unlike some insensitive companies), Google has established itself in all that it does, as a company that tries not to be evil.

The BeOS Community can relate to the moral dilemma of trying not to be evil. Throughout our varied history we have had our share of the good times and the bad times, with it being mostly better-than-average overall. Despite having a company steer itself into oblivion, we have forged ahead, and have quantifiable measures of success with the continuation of our beloved OS.

Can we still label it the 'Media OS'? Perhaps not, but it sure looks like OpenBeOS (or whatever it will be named, shortly :-) will try to fill this niche in due time. In the meantime, we must stay the course, and continue diligently with our combined efforts.

So what does this have to do with Orkut, again I hear you asking... :) As I stated already, the Orkut system has over 300,000 people at this very moment signed up, and for the immediate future, it doesn't look like the rate of admissions is slowing down. This is a great opportunity for our fledgling community to pick up new members, since the type(s) of people joining Orkut are very communicative, open to new ideas, and willing to share whatever they find as interesting anyhow.

Here's the breakdown (as at 19-May-2004, from the Orkut Statistics community) of Orkut members:

346631 total
114095 women
232541 men

That's approximately 33% women who are members, which is quite incredible, considering that traditionaly men have dominated the IT mindspace till now. This might not be as incredible as I state, but to me, its a sign of some dramatic shift online, with the consequences still unknown. So, how best to use this new-found knowledge, I hear you asking... And no, I do not point out the female statistic as some sort of chauvinistic chest-thumping exercise, but merely as an indicator that I find interesting given the general history of IT, computing, etc.

Here's what I am going to be doing more of, which in fact have been doing since Orkut began. I will be crawling (for lack of a better word) the communities, friend's list and FOAF feature, among other things, and generally trying to make contact with people whom I value as being interested in BeOS, or alternative OS's.

What you do with this knowledge, these statistics, and the ideas I present here is entirely up to you. If you wish to contact me with an idea or two, please do. Not only will you be doing me a favor, but you will be able to offer the idea to hundreds of people when I post it here in the future. ;-)

I wish everyone success, and may our great BeOS Community grow and grow. ;-)

Peace,
-Chris Simmons,
Avid BeOS User."