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This week, Facebook celebrated its 15th anniversary, which is a great success, especially for companies working on the Internet. The network serves nearly 2.5 billion people worldwide with its distinct services and continues to have good financial results, despite all the controversies traversed by the network in 2018 (from Cambridge Analytica to indirect participation in genocide in Myanmar).
Many people have grown up with Facebook services and many have some platform goat created by Zuckerberg or are looking for alternatives (though often within network services such as Instagram). To remind me a bit of the pre-Facebook era, I decided to chat with one of the world's social media pioneers and the person in charge of the first contact with a Brazilian social network: the Turkish Orkut Büyükkökten
"What Orkut .com was doing is so special that the network has created authentic and meaningful relationships between people, and these connections have often started with common elements," said the network's creator in conversation with Gizmodo Brasil via Skype.
Orkut.com [usaremos esta nomenclatura para diferenciar o serviço do fundador] was created in 2004 and lasted 10 years in total (so less than Facebook). I think the main advantage of the network was precisely to serve as a hub for those who are interested in a wide range of problems (and without algorithms).
If you like football, there was one (or hundreds) of community (ies) on the subject. If you wanted to know more about bariatric surgery in SUS (!!!), you also discussed it with a staff member. In short, people have actively turned to these groups to learn, exchange ideas or simply participate in "hugging or pbading" channels. There was no Facebook thread where people shared opinions on a wide variety of topics.
Of course, Orkut.com was not an ocean of roses either. As the user base grew, it was common to see malicious uses of the network, such as the distribution of pedophilia, defamation, among other virtual crimes. However, the general perception was that the network was a good space, at least to discuss specific issues.
Speaking directly to California where he lives, Orkut told us about the current state of social networks in World, the fall of the website that bears his name and what he did with Hello.com, his new social network. Below is a summary of the conversation with Orkut Büyükkökten:
Gizmodo Brazil: What is your badessment of Facebook?
Orkut Büyükkökten : The scene of the social network has changed in deep decade since the time when Orkut was active. I will not speak specifically about Facebook, but I will talk about social networks in general
Today, 4 billion people have access to the Internet and 60% of them have a mobile phone. If we look only at the reach of Facebook, they have 2.32 billion active users, so we are in an era where we are still connected and hyperconnected.
If you notice what social media did for us and how we changed the way we do things. communication between us, you see that most of the time, the results were negative. Social networks, in theory, should make us happy and we should unite, but things were going in the opposite direction.
Here's what happens: all artificial intelligence algorithms and machine learning ] are optimized for people to share more and are psychologically influenced by the sharing of things that they think , will have more commitment
. So we have a series of pictures of celebrities or friends with their endless holidays around the world. There is the impression that you will never be able to compare your life to that of others, you will never be good enough. It ends up producing unhappiness, isolation, depression, anxiety and creates a generation that is not in good mental health.
Social networks are not optimized to connect people significantly, but to serve the interests of third parties, advertisers and large corporations.
Orkut continues to wear t-shirts.
Orkut: Orkut.com was designed for a completely different generation of users Orkut.com was designed for a completely different generation and with different technologies. When we launched, everyone had access to the Internet via their computers. almost no one owned a smartphone with a camera at the time. It was developed for a generation that used a social network for the first time in their life.
And in this area, it is very important to pay particular attention to user behavior in the use, as well as the evolution of technologies and infrastructures. But when I think of Hello.com [rede social criada por ele e lançada no Brasil em 2016] I see it as a spiritual evolution of Orkut.com, but created for a new generation that has different concerns.
iPhone with social network Hello, created by Orkut.
Gizmodo Brazil: Do you believe that Facebook can be overtaken by another social network? I ask because the company owns the main platforms of the world and shows no sign of weakness …
Orkut: I've talked to friends, a lot more young people, and I find that they have migrated to other platforms. For example, more and more people are using Instagram instead of Facebook, and it's also possible to note that Facebook's public profile itself has changed.
From what we have seen in the past, there is always some reduction. in the use of some social networks. We have seen this happen with MySpace, Friendster, among other platforms.
I mean, when it comes to social networks, we always have to remember that it's about men. It is about connecting people to each other in an authentic way, but also to improve and optimize the network to increase the real happiness of the users.
Nowadays, they have a strange effect. Social networks have made people less interactive in real life and have created a generation that suffers from a number of insecurities about self-esteem and the body. And people have the feeling of being loved, accepted, knowing the number of tanned and hearts they receive. And that ends up creating a very unhappy environment.
Some companies are looking for the types of apps that most influence people's moods. Humane Tech Research is trying to determine which apps make people happier and sadder depending on how long they are used. The number 1 that makes people sad is Grindr, a gay dating app, and the third is Facebook.
If you look at applications that make people happier, they are interest sharing apps that can be physical exercise, music, movies or reading.
At its peak, Orkut.com spoke of communities, sharing topics that pbadionate others and establishing conversations and connections between them. It was to increase the connectivity and happiness of users through technology.
If you look at social networks today, most of the time, people publish something superficial. And you can only create meaningful connections by sharing something that carries emotional risk and makes you vulnerable.
I'm watching my feeds on other social networks and I say to myself "man, I hate these people, why am I her friend?" For the content she's putting is just doing to attract l & rsquo; # 39; s attention. This comes from some projection of insecurity that social networks have created in us.
Gizmodo Brazil: Do you think Facebook can do wrong by keeping things as they are? The network seems always willing to change, but in the sequence, there is always some kind of controversy …
Orkut: In social networks that deal with people, it is necessary to have confidence. And trust is something that is earned. Once you lose, it is very difficult to recover. So that's what I would like to say, but I will not talk about Facebook in particular.
I think it's important that social networks have a purpose and that this goal is to optimize for people to be happy and create authentic connections. ] By selling user data or doing things like that, you end up losing people's trust. Although no one reads the complex terms when you access the service, it is not fair for companies to just say "ah, this is in terms of service". Companies that share people's data should explicitly ask for their permission.
Gizmodo Brazil: I know you are working on Hello.com now. What can you tell me about the users and countries that have the most people on the network? Up to now, we have only publicly launched that in Brazil. And we have about 1 million users. In addition, we have a beta version in India.
We focus on Brazil, improve the user experience based on user feedback and develop a web version. In addition, Portuguese was the first language for which Bonjour was translated.
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