Following on to Judith Meskills' post a few days ago talking about the arrival Orkut a Google affiliate, I wanted to thank my good friend Eric over at PickHits who has invited me in to the *inner circle* (ok…maybe that was too dramatic) at Orkut. 

So far, from what I can see, there's only one thing that differentiates it from the likes of Friendster, Linkedin, Ryze or any of the personals services like match.com, yahoo personals, etc…  Orkut has implemented a "Karma" system, where you can rate your connections in three different categories Cool, Sexy and Trustworthy. 

Make no mistake about it, this is pretty unique at the moment.  Most of the other sites have "testimonial" sections where you can write nice things about the person in a free form text field.  Orkut however appears to be the first to provide a rating scale that can then be compiled and the statistics used for *other* purposes.  The key to the karma system will be…what "other" purposes it will be used for and will Google ask for permission to use it or assume ownership of the data.   Just a few of the questions that we'll have to wait and find out about.

Right now Orkut claims that once a person is rated by 5 other people, there is some indication added to their profile that others have rated them.  As someone who has been rated, you have no way of finding out what the ratings are, just that someone has rated you.  On the other hand, since the ratings (see table below) are pretty positive in their nature there's really not much to worry about.

Hope to see you around Orkut.