I wouldn't thank Orkut in particular. Last 10 days or so I met my old school buddies..one with whom I parted way back in 1992, and meeting couple others a decade later. Socializing Networks (SN) are just a fallout or natural extension to the Internet (extension may not be the right word here).

Theres lot of room for improvement in many of these SNs, mainly in the areas of UI, navigability, and importantly integration with the desktop. I particularly hate going on such websites just to read or write a 'scrap' or such. Its difficult for people, like me, who live in their mailboxes. Apart from this there are innumerable features that can easily go into such networks, increasing user participation. Security is particularly flawed and cases of identity stealing are not uncommon.

There are number of such networks out there. And secondary purpose of each network is different, primary being connecting people together. Not everyone can participate in all of those, and arguably its right too. Most don't want to bare with all of their accounts with for example Livejournal, MySpace, Facebook, hi5, LinkedIn, and Orkut. Atleat I don't.

I see a need and room for a generalized standard for any such SNs. This is needed for allowing the compatibility between two SNs. Apart from enabling single sign-in mechanism, such standard would allow to be able to connect to more number of people from various different networks. This could be more intrusive than just having a wrapper around each such network and gluing everything together.

Its just an early stage, though, for such networks and such networks will play a very big role in Web 2.0.