Who the F needs another Social Network? @Microsoft -Seriously?
Like it or not, Orkut is potentially one of the largest social networks around. While people in general, and industry specialists in particular have always termed it as Google’s unsuccessful social network, to be only successful in India, Pakistan and Brazil, but they always ignored the number of users that Orkut has from these three countries. The communities that Orkut brings in have recorded members more than a million. Yes, as huge as that!! Anyway, this post is about how Google is actually revealing more and more new features into the social networking site.
In the latest post on Orkut Blog, Orkut’s Vlad Patryshev talks about the new privacy features that Orkut has brought into the forefront. We aready have been seeing the changes in the add-friends section. The appearance of the check box and manage friends section. The blog says,
In addition to having your privacy settings to be just “friends” or “everyone,” you can now select also “friend of friends.” We feel that this is a good choice for those of you who may wish to share your information with an extended group of friends without making it public to everyone. We hope this additional flexibility helps you manage your experience on orkut better.
What could be next from their sleeve? Guess, we just have to wait and watch. At Techkeyla, we definitely are watching.
Orkut walks the Facebook Way. Adds the Opensocial Apps
Posted on: 16-04-2008
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:
The Google Social Networking site, hugely popular in Brazil, India and Pakistan, turned 4 years old this 24th. As expected, the logo was changed, and is shown above. I joined Orkut in late 2004, back in the days when it was quite exclusive, and was invitation only. It has grown by leaps and bounds in the last 3 years with the number of members exponentially multiplying, and communities spawning like anything. Orkut has also often been a target of moral police due to its “Anonymous/Fake identity” enabled features. And this has more than often caused disturbances and uproars, especially in India.
A t Year 4, Orkut is now open to all. Does that mean, it is going to be more of fake and pseudo profiles, more spam invitations to even more spam communities, or is Orkut fighting back? Orkut has seen a lot of changes, especially in the last one year, with the addition of new features. Like the Report Spam to Scraps, and also New Privacy Options. And now, the ultimate measure in tracking down spammers. Apparently, whoever creates an Orkut ID, his/her IP address, ISP provider address and machine name will be logged in the Google server. So, no one in the Orkut network is a stranger for Google.So beware anyone who is planning to play a prank against any sensitive person/organisation. They might get in touch with Google and hunt you down.
In the coming year, I have a lot of hopes from Orkut, as it still remains my favorite social networking community. Primarily because I have all my friends here. But also because, I still see Orkut having enough room for improvement, and also we are yet to see the actual dawn of Opensocial on the Orkut platform. Let’s hope that 2008 be a fruitful year for Orkut. Cheers!
