Orkut Media?

I got an odd email from orkut yesterday, as did many others. It reads:

Dear John,

Today all of us here at orkut are pleased to announce the
launch of orkut media, a weekly collection of writings and
photos by our very own orkut members.

When you land at http://media.orkut.com, you’ll venture into
the realm of love and politics and beyond. Here’s a quick
lay of this new land: the “Porch” offers a variety of
columns ranging from the hot and humorous to the thoughtful
and thought-provoking, along with galleries of riveting
photos from around the world. The “Lounge” and “Studio” will
contain archives of all the collected orkut media material
(on the off-chance that you miss a week), along with tidbits
about contributing writers and photographers.

orkut media can be viewed by anyone surfing the Web. And
it’s open for you, the orkut member, to submit your own
work. Got something to say? A perspective that you think
needs to be heard? Go ahead and send us a column, write us
a letter, or forward a photo.

As always, you can make your thoughts known in a community
forum and start a discussion. So tell us what you think, in
whatever way suits you. We just hope you enjoy your
experience at http://media.orkut.com.

Stay beautiful,
the orkut team

OK, I’ll do my best to “stay beautiful” (migod, please), but what is this all about? I have not been on orkut since the service’s launch period, save occasionally trying to log in so as to insure that yes, in fact, orkut is still not working properly. And now this – a media product? Media? The equivalent of a weekly magazine online? The very idea of media under the umbrella of Google (even if it’s sort of leaning in under the umbrella, not quite out of the rain) is interesting. For now, it’s not much to look at. We’ll see if that changes.

One thing hasn’t: When I tried to read the Orkut Media FAQ, I got the error message at left.
Good to see some things are still consistent in this crazy world of search.

Interesting to see that the editor of orkut media is Gavin Tachibana, a “content manager” at Google who graduated from UC Berkeley’s Graduate School of Journalism, where I teach (though I’m on leave this year). Cool. Looks like Google is hiring media types – an interesting move.