Orkut.com was to be the promise of the social networking web sites. The Google prodigy had taken the concept of Friendster and like tribe.net expanded it by adding communities, or forums, easily created by any user.

My name is Huy Zing. I was one of these early community creators, recognized for the hundreds of communities I had given birth to early on. After 30 days of furious addiction to orkut.com since January 24th, 2004, I find that for me the dream of a wonderful social networking world is over.

I was, without notice, deleted and most of my communities, most of them actively enjoyed by hundreds of users, gone. No explanation was given, no warning was ever sent. If I did something wrong or if the communities were bad, orkut.com sure made an effort not to let me know.

This story is far from unique. I know people--real people--who have been deleted 3 or more times from Orkut. For what reason? Who knows. But evidence points to bogus-flagging.

For every profile, Orkut.com provides a "Flag as Bogus" button intended to allow any user to report profiles that are known to be fake. This bogus-flagging sounds like a great idea, but it turns out it has been used between forum flamers to spread hate and escalate battles beyond the community discussions. Unfortunately, orkut.com chooses the policy of shooting first and asking questions later, presuming guilt before innocence. So argue with someone in a community and you'll be looking over your shoulder for a while.

I don't think that I'm a victim of bogus-flagging, as I'm fairly sure that I've had no enemies on Orkut.com. My crime seems to be the fact that I either created too many communities or that odds are that I created some questionable communities. The problem is that there are no known rules against creating communities that members might enjoy. Why wouldn't I want to make Orkut.com entertaining and fun for others?

The only conclusion that can be drawn from the many deletions of users and communities over the past month is that you may be deleted at any time for any reason. You won't be warned, and you won't be told why. All the friends that you've painstakingly added and made on orkut.com will be disconnected from you, all the communities you joined will be unjoined, all the ones you created will be disowned or deleted, even if other users enjoyed them.

This kind of uncertainty is not very reassuring for a service whose goal is to attract many users and keep them coming back.

I recommend not to get too attached.