I just registered into Orkut, thanks to an invitation from Chris Pirillo — thanks Chris!;-).  While the registration process was a bit tiring, Orkut UI and user experience were more pleasant than Friendster or LinkedIn.  It could use some improvements here and there, but at least it was pleasant enough for me to invited a bunch of friends and collegues, something I haven't done with other similiar services.

Hmm.  It might be interesting to mix PKI with social networking.  For example, I could issue Friend of Don certificates to my friends that basically say “I know this person to be trustworthy, smart, and nice enough to be my friend.“  What uses would such certificate have?  Nothing in the horizon but I am wondering what might lie beyond that…

If you are my friend and haven't received an invite from me, just send me an e-mail.  I just grabbed the names that were handy and definitely missed many of you whom I would be proud to call a friend.

Update:

Apparently, Orkut invitations are highly likely to be classified as spam by spam filters.  When I got mine, it was in the Unsure pile.  Since there is no significant factor stemming this trend, invitation-by-email is likely to be a thing of the past eventually.