Okay, I will not wrap this up in any form of introductory bullshit. Lemme get this straight and right to the point. The Apps on Orkut are ALIVE..finally. I was buzzed on my GTalk today by my friend Praxy, who told me that he noticed certain changes in Orkut, right as we were speaking. It was a bit hard to digest coz I had just logged out of my Orkut account a few hours back and I had noticed nothing. So, what was next? I logged in to find the first surprise. My account Homepage showed the following pick.
Just like the introductory Facebook message which invited us to install more and more apps. Well, for me, it was high time. Remember OpenSocial Alliance had been formed and announced way back in the 1800s, I mean in November last year. And now, it’s more than 3 months over of 2008. Still, I hadn’t seen any signs of anything to do with OpenSocial out here on Orkut. (A brief tutorial for all those who do not know about Orkut. It is one of the most visited Social Networking sites by Google, on which the entire online society of India, Pakistan and Brazil resides. And that means, it has a HUGE user base. It’s true that Facebook has invaded a space which was ruled previously by MySpace, and arguably still is. But then, Orkut is HUGE in this part of the world, much like Bebo is still much larger in the UK than any other social network.) The brief ask the question addition was at best an annoying and minuscule addition which didn’t even qualify as an application. But the wait is now over. The apps are here for you , and this is where they are. The page is called the App Directory, and the list looks like the following:
(Click here for the full screen snapshot)The List of Apps include some familiar ones and some not-so familiar ones. And not so suprisingly, it has some India centric applications too like Chakpak, India Dekha, Teen Patti and myHangman which is brought to you by C2W aka Contest2Win.The total list of the apps so far are as follows. (Click the links to go to the official App description on the Orkut Blog).
Music iLike
Emote!
PhotoAttack
Horoscopes
TypeRacer
Top Friends
Slide TV
myHangman
iRead
Flixster
Chakpak
Reading Social
Bible Verses
India Dekha
Teen Patti
Hangout
BuboMe
Music N Movies
However, this is not the exhaustive list. The Orkut Blog contains some more like MyMiniLife (which at the first glance looks like the SIMS meets Second Life, or is it?), Viibee- which is similar to “Are you Interested” app on Facebook, Crazy Story Game among other soon-to-arrive applications.
Though it is a good thing that Orkut is finally moving ahead with the inclusion the so far promised OpenSocial API based Apps, but it is still yet to see whether Orkut will stand and succeed in this race of the social networks. Orkut has so far always been criticised as the network with a fair amount of anonymity, and which has lead to a lot of criticism when it comes to fake profiles invading privacy of other accounts. All this came to the notice of the admins, and they finally included the privacy policy, with settings enabling users to disable non-friends of a profile to be not able to view their scrapbooks, photo albums etc. And now, with the applications being added, Orkut has to monitor it’s privacy policies and settings more closely. It is a common thing these days to see Orkut in the headlines (in India) for all the wrong reasons. All I wish it is all the luck, and may we not see Orkut again being judged.
Lastly, when it comes to uniformity and sorted out interface, Facebook knocked down MySpace. I wish the Apps inclusion in Orkut also remains clutter-free, even though it might add the provision of skins and themes very soon. And yeah, I hope to cover more of Orkut in the near future.
Update: Praxy tells me , he also can see that status update that Facebook allows, on his Orkut Profile. Now it hasn’t happened on my Profile as yet, but here’s the proof of what he says.
Hopefully, it will be rolled out for all accounts soon. And we might even see a Twitter integration for it too. 
--> Author: Sujoy
Here is a user guide to make huge money with Orkut’s Teen Patti.
http://purnank.blogspot.com/2008/04/make-huge-money-in-orkuts-teen-patti.html
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The Opensocial API is much easier to program than in the Facebook API. Another advantage is that the one standard being followed across many platforms will mean all apps being able to added on many other sites or as widgets even. Great post!
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Here is a small theory to make sure no body cheats you out in TeenPatti game.
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hi nice keep it up
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I was waiting for this. The rule that the benefit of competition goes to the customer worked here too. As people in India started moving towards Facebook and Twitter, Orkut had to do something. So they started adding features like them to Orkut too.
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