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:

Remember the thing called Opensocial that Google came up with when rival Facebook’s fraction of a fraction was bought by Microsoft, making them worth 15 billion $. But that’s like ages ago. The current buzz is that Yahoo, which was about to be acquired by Microsoft, is now joining forces with the Opensocial Alliance. According to NY Times, Yahoo is considering to join the alliance which will enable it to create more tools and services which will work across many platforms. The Opensocial gang as of now consists of Google, Friendster, hi5,Ning, MySpace Orkut,Xing and many others. If Yahoo joins, that would make Facebook the odd one out. Clearly, if Facebook continues to go independent with their own API, and the rest of the entire Web 2.0 following Opensocial’s API, it would not be long for facebook to eithr face its doom. But then, World’s youngest billionaire – Mark Zuckenberg isn’t that dumb, yeah? If Yahoo for sure joins Opensocial, Facebook might get forced to switch to Opensocial API for its applications. Finally, we might get to see a uniform distribution of API for application developers. Yippee!!
Related Post:Yahoo Plans to Join OpenSocial Alliance?
Image Courtesy:Thomas Hawk
Category : blog, recap, techkeyla
Tags: apple, blogging, facebook, google, humor, iphone, mixx, opensocial, rumors, social networking, techkeyla
2007 has been a year like never before for the world of Technology and Internet, abuzz with so much to talk about, so much to debate upon, so many doubts to be clarified and so many rumors and speculations made. I was lucky enough to cover a few of these topics and hot news on my previous blog. In my three odd months of blogging for Techkeyla so far, I wrote on topics ranging from Facebook’s “is” in status message being (not) removed to Google’s Opensocial Project to Mixx to Tech rumors floating around to even some random lists generated by my alter-ego. Surprisingly enough, people dug them and even replied to me with their comments. Based on the number of comments, MyBlogLog’s record of visits for each topic, here I have compiled a top 10 list (yeah, yet another one) of the Hot Posts of Techkeyla for 2007. So, here they are:-