My introduction to social media was done by an edition of “unish kuri”, in the later part of 2006. I joined orkut following my cousins.. Orkut for me was another tool for me to collaborate and study 😛
I remember I used to scrap Agnit with physics problem. The only community I was active in was ISC study forum.. created by Saurabh Goenka. I made few friends there like Tusha, Kaveri, Sanmitro.. and yes solving problems for them was fun.
After my ISC exam, I got more involved in orkut. I used to get engaged in the ravishing discussions in the community “World asks, Indians answer”, “Indian idol 3”. 🙂 Yea.. that was my first exposure to actual public speeches (in writing though) I remember fighting with Clifton Brooks, few of staunch India haters from USA and Pakistan. I made few friends from Pakistan and Bangladesh. I was already a fan of Emon Chatterjee by then, and made many friends at the related community. Friends like Tomoghno da (powell da), Ankita, Roshan are still in touch with me. That was the time when I started interacting with them at a larger scale, moderating people and understanding them.
After I recovered from the shock of my WBJEE rank, I realised the blunder I made.. yea, I had already chosen BCET as my college. I felt the urge to meet the people here. Our college started late, by that time most of my schoolmates had joined their colleges. They used to talk about their start to college life, their new friends, girls and the inevitable seniors!
So the best thing that I could have done was to join BCET’s group at Orkut. I even opened a new community “BCETians 2007-2011”. Well yes, I made some stupid questions like “Who is Mr SKSharma?” in the BCET community, to which my seniors ridiculed me. But true, back in 2007, no SKSGi existed. It was only one college name that everyone knew. Getting back.. I even joined communities that were made to meet your batchmates in the universities. I went aggressive when I found a guy – Silver Saurav quite offensive. What I did was to join WBUT version 07-11, owned by Arnab (Heritage institute) and it was fun fighting with Silver saurav.. there we made friends many out there of which Bastab, Proma, Subhobroto are the prominent.
It was fun interacting with people of my batch over orkut! I even used orkut to find my roommate!! Yea, initially we were promised two people in one room, later the hostel manager changed it to 3 beds in one room… So I had to find the third guy, and what better than Orkut could have helped me? I met numerous friends, who are with me even now… be it Anindya, Satwati, Sandipon, Raj, Ritobroto,Koustav, Govind Singhi, Arnish.. well after having a good chat with Swastik, we decided of becoming roommates..
Trust me those days were of fun, where talking was the only thing we could have done to get our jobs done.. we had to talk to so many people so that they didnt create nuisance in the Emon chatterjee or Amit Paul fan club..so many people so that they become more loyal to our community… it was the time we really started to collaborate and work. Basically it was the time when words were actually sold !.. and that gave me a name “orkut” in the boys hostel when I joined it..!