The year 2009 for flockpost.com was a combination of good, bad and best times in a year. I witnessed many major and 
revolutionary changes on flockpost.com and sometimes there came a nadir where I was scared to realize that I may need to shut it down because of my un-availability and the chaos present in my life. Thank god, things are better now.
If you remember, I wrote a recap of 2008 with great joy. But it was not the same this year, and then too I could not resist writing this piece of article. So, it’s another year orkutheroes has completed and here is a recap of the year 2009, hope you will enjoy it.
Starting from January 2009 it was a pretty smooth start for orkutheroes with featuring some of very good orkut related blogs; it’s unfortunate that one of the top orkut related blog of its time, InsideOrkut.com is finally clogged down by the owner Darnell Clayton just few months back. I managed to write 11 articles in that month of January. Among most successful in terms of “most commented” was an online community review on an orkut based virtual group of Zakir Naik Fans. Then came a very sincere community of Social Workers from Chennai, Chennai Social Service community on orkut. Another was a Music Maestro A.R Rahman’s fan group on Orkut which I reviewed and it grabbed lot of attention, concern and praises by the community members. This was the month when I also interviewed two very interesting and successful personalities who impressed me and I found them important for social networkers to connect with, they were, R. Sridhar, a journalist from Times of India and a Martial Art master Gajanand Rajput. It was a learning experience for me and I am sure their interviews are a master piece for others too.
February was another exciting month for me. I played with my amateur PS skills and tried to design many graphics related stuffs like greeting cards and avatars for social networking profiles, I know it wasn’t too professional but after all that’s called amateur. Hot content on February was an interview with a Techie star of Orissa Bulu Pattanaik which successfully helped his large fans and followers to know this young personality better. Orkutheroes got more than 1000 unique visitors in few hours after publishing it and 50+ comments in less than a week. Another big article happened this month was a review of a beautiful community of a few really good flock of people from Kolkata, Baro Mase Tero Parbon was another hit on orkutheroes, and the founder Nilay Hazra is now a good friend of mine since then.
In March, the work I did was less than the last two months of the year 2009, but I was happy with whatever I did. I emphasize more on the satisfaction my readers get with the content I publish. In this month Orkutheroes showed how social networking helped more than 2000 users of Major Sandeep Unnikrishnan’s orkut community who celebrated the 26/11 Mumbai attack martyr’s Birthday. It was an emotional moment for all of us. I also rejoiced writing about Fraud Mallu, a very unique group of South Indians who are not living in South India. I was big fan of orkut India Pakistan Friendship Club community then and interviewed one of the co-founder Aminur Rashid which was another best interview I did, but unfortunately it sparked some unwanted debate by commenter’s on the post. Another interview I consider best in this month was BigLee Murali, Murali Vijaykumar a techie and a bodybuilder who moderates many bodybuilding communities on orkut.
April was damn bad and also one of the best months for orkutheroes, bad because Tara (ex-editor of orkutheroes) posted only 1 article in this month and I was busy with some serious family affairs. Best because Tara’s only post changed the perspective of flockpost.com and gave us a hope of a bright future with this unique idea we are carrying with us by writing on online communities and people from social networking site orkut.com. That interview was of a Software Sitarist Sameep Kulkarni, after which, a well respected Newspaper, ‘The Hindu’ published his story in their supplement ERGO mentioning Orkutheroes.com. For a small blog like us it was first media attention and an appreciation. In the last month of April, I decided to give it a new look and uploaded a new premium theme which was more catchy and looks more professional than the old one. I don’t know why I took this step but I think I did it right.
May and June was like a punishment for us, Tara’s bad health and my temporary long stay in Tanzania scared us to shut down flockpost.com because we both could not manage to come online, so it was far to write and update our baby blog. This was the same time when Tara asked me to give her a break and I was again alone like before. I was pessimistic about my online career but suddenly a ray of hope arouse when I started writing for Tanzania’s leading newspaper, ‘The Guardian’ as a freelance internet technology expert. By that time I also got chance to re-start orkutheroes.
Thank God I did it and now I was back in July with a boom! Reviewing a very good niche community related to weight loose, I came back and there was another surprise waiting for me when OrkutHeroes.com was featured in that same ERGO magazine who wrote about Sameep 2 months back. It definitely proved to be a morale booster for me when I saw ORKUT HEROES written bright and bold on their edition. I was lucky enough to discover a rocking community on orkut MPG later featured on orkut’s official blog which really rocked everyone and I feel its effect till now. End of this most memorable month was with an interview with orkut help forum expert Jomy Moses. It was great Jomy!
August was bad again and I think we all have same life with the equal combination of all good and bad, worst and best. I can’t express in words, that what I go through when I can’t post on orkutheroes but let me apologize if this irregularity disappoints you.
September was a further try of mine to bring back life to my nearly 2 year old baby, “orkutheroes” and I somehow managed to write about some really brainiac guys I found online.
October came with some great news and also some good posts from me. Great news was so great that it took me a minute to realize that I am really not dreaming while seeing flockpost.com on orkut’s official blog, Wow! It was a great feeling. I missed Tara that time. In this same month Orkut.com also did some major changes in its User Interface (UI) and I reviewed the new UI which helped many to understand and calculate the potential of new orkut. Digital Photography forum review was also done in this same month, I am thankful to Jinan Shah and his team of members for helping me with all information. I love this community and find it one of the best photography forums online.
November was month of big changes and we moved forward expanding our mission to feature best online communities and flockpost.com started focusing on other big social networks like Facebook and Twitter. The first post related to facebook groups was a Horse Riders group on facebook, and the first post related to twitter was the list of 21 doctors I found worth following on twitter. I also interviewed twitter girl Mellyssa Karina in this month and gave a hint to all of my readers that orkutheroes is not only for orkut but it’s for all social networkers and bloggers.
December was best in many terms, I returned back to India, I re- aligned orkutheroes’ categories, added blogs and application reviews and did much more research on future of orkutheroes. This is the month where I reviewed 14 best food blogs of the world, listed 110 best orkut communities of 2009, Interviewed social media strategist Jonathan Nafarrete and wrote about facebook group of Africans “The Africa They Never Show You”. One memorable moment was reviewing Shahrukh Khan’s fan community.
Whatever I did on orkutheroes was not as well as I expected in 2009 but I hope I will do better in 2010, OrkutHeroes may die, I repeat “may die” but the aim of writing the evolution of online communities will live forever. I wish OrkutHeroes.com stay here for long. I wish you all a successful New Year! Happy 2010.
Zaheer Abbas – zazo.
Founder, flockpost.com
