Tag: Orkut

Whats wrong with Social Services of Google?

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It disappoints you when you get to see nice innovations not catching up that faster than they should have. I was under huge disappointment, when come to see Google wave not taking off the hood that well and even when its for sure that Google Buzz is here to stay, it annoy you a little that why its not catching up that faster.

What wrong with technically the best services of Google in social department?

A question that’s been repeatedly asked and attempted to be answered so many times in so many ways still work-in-progress remained confusing. A company, who seems to have best moral grounds and respect among users all around the globe, a way of thinking that always seems to be working for betterment of technology and pushing the standards up, a technical leadership, which always believed in simplicity yet the best practices and at the end, owner of something called close to God Google’s Search, which tends to knowing people’s habits more than anything else in the world. Still the company not rising that big on social fronts? Why?

Just trying to think.. recollecting facts … not suggesting … not answering

  1. Blogger has much support and options than WordPress, still WordPress rules big time.
  2. Orkut been more simpler, cleaner and centered around people more than the business/ advertising, but still it not catching up big time against Facebook or MySpace.
  3. Social Connect and FriendFeed been around with nice features, but no one seems to know much about them not even names.
  4. Google Wave was a path breaking and real huge thing happened to this century, but still …
  5. Google Buzz was way better than Twitter or Facebook status updates, if we count on specifications sheet, but still it seems to loosing battle against Twitter.

Then why so many ‘failures’ whenever Google attempts some social thing?

  • Is the answer lies in their most successful service Google Search itself?
  • What if its Google’s obsession with cloud computing and unification of services, which holds them back from thinking outside the box?
  • Is the reason, is compatibility issues that take time with their 64 acquisitions till now?

All of the above may seem to be random and somehow irrelevant with the current discussion na… let me explain each.

google_god Why I am pointing over the most sane thing ever happened?

Issue is that their programmers and other people involved are kind of devotee for Google like anyone on this planet and sometimes it hinders with ability to think outside or against the main philosophy that may be laid by top management that “Let the consumer use the thing in simplest way, all complications we will handle free of  cost” Philosophy is great, Simplicity is great, but the problem is – Everything is not a Google Search.

You may not decide what would be the best for users. You have hands on almost each service in the world,  but you cant keep on suggesting people to use them at the first place before you mature each of them to stand on their own. I know many would say that Google does allow other services more than any other company in the world, but still I am making my point here ..

One example is WordPress Vs Blogger; Acquisition from Pyra Labs, Blogger seems to be most flexible blogging platform on the planet for people, who are happy with writing and don’t even want to own a domain. you can make use of all kind of scripts, insert any kind of custom code, add other Google services and even write and use your own theme yourself. Then why wordpress still known as the best platform for blogging?

Blogger-Wordpress-Conversion Sometimes initiatives and one product centered approach wins over projects with bigger potential and bigger resources. WordPress has established the whole system with involvement of other companies as well, while Google thinks that we have options in our own domain itself then why go outside? What’s point of not providing support to import whole blog to port on WordPress or others? What’s point in letting users resister their domain names with Google only? What’s point in keeping just a few very basic themes on showcase thinking that users will do everything? Why no inbuilt tool for stats? Why can’t one webmaster change the content of comments to strip out abusive content?

Once you start using Blogger, you really find that its best thing to go with, but not in first glance itself. Sometimes, I feels that flexibility should be matched well by offering excellent example/ templates and it should not only be on users and third party developers to evolve over the platform, but one should keep himself running in the race. There are some excellent themes and options with Blogger, but none of them are on showcase, like Google don’t wanna save itself from responsibility after putting other’s work on showcase. This doesn’t suit a beginner.

twitter-orkut-facebook

Same with Facebook Vs Orkut; Google’s initial hesitations from advertising inside Orkut due to inputs from overly cluttered interface of Facebook and MySpace cost its being first choice for third party developer doing their work for money. That kept the concept of Social Networking sane, when Zyanga with its games like Farmvilla and Mafia Wars etc attracts 80% of Facebook, then one really come to rethink that if the strategy to keep the place personal only was helping at first place?

I still love Orkut and still know, the traffic to Orkut is true traffic rather than that of game freaks (the case with Facebook), who will sooner or later get bored with games and then will be frustrated that there is nothing like friend updates in Facebook, but just Farmvilla updates…. but still I wish to ask question that why Google failed to bring more developers in orkut? Simplicity may not be the best policy always.

Cloud Computing: Somewhere we don’t see what Google might be seeing for future. Google’s each move heads towards cloud computing. Similar things were started from Microsoft, who wanted to place best solutions for everything that a user might ask for, but now Google seems to be more aggressive on the same front.

Google is heading to the topology of “One Account for all” and their recent XOAuth step seems to be right step in right direction. They already have placed all common services on cloud, be it search, mails, blogging, news, feeds, photos, maps, friends, entertainment or anything one do with computers. Chrome OS meant to be the gate of cloud computing, where one login will make you working from anywhere and from any device.

Yes! they had removed the necessity of having a Google Account for their Chrome OS, but still that clears the intentions. What do you think the Google’s obsession for speed, Launch of Google Docs, which enables you to read all common kind of documents online without any installation, advancement of YouTube and its agreement with Media giants to provide full movies or cricket shows like IPL, Google Books, Google translations and flooding like a rage plugins for Google Chrome; is all random?

Google seems to have learned that sometimes things that come in packages and work decently win over specialized products, examples been Outlook Express and Internet Explorer. The rise of NetBooks and popularity of Google Docs really have made it possible for Business persons doing their work with minimal and cost effective setup. Being comfortable with such a system is the first step towards Cloud Computing and though Microsoft started this, but Google making it a reality for sure.

GoogleAppsEd2-717009

If we see from Google’s point of view, then it makes sense that you login though one account on Chrome OS and you will get all your work ready for you in the same state, you left it. Either it be your docs, your movies, your social networking with Orkut, your blogging with Blogger, your feeds via Google reader, your status updates via Google Buzz and so on.. moreover, once XOAuth starts working in that direction then it would also be easy to announce that all these services wont be sharing data (that could be a security concerns). Definitely Google understands that most of the users might prefer working with what comes out of box like they did with Internet Explorer or Outlook Express.

But question is, even if you seems to be winning in long run, why not to treat each service separate to make them best on their own? Didn’t Internet Explorer Team working in the same way now? Haven’t people started leaving Internet Explorer at last?

  • Orkut is still the best about functionality, just what needed is more attention and more people to it. At least few of giant applications, games etc.
  • Google Buzz requires celebrities as Twitter is riding on flow of early initiative? It needs to work on integration with services like Twitter is going along with Facebook, WordPress and all. Definitely its more powerful and APIs are available to do so, but still if developers are not catching, then Google should take it in own hands to make them catch up. How can you think that costly Android devices are enough for spreading Buzz? No apps for Symbian, no integration with Gravity etc and you think that you can make it popular? Think again…
  • Blogger needs to learn basics from WordPress. Something like WordPress.org needed to hand over the whole code to users. More of it, needs to integrate things in a way that one could get things working out of the box, be it states, widgets or professional looking themes? I find lack of flexible themes from Google itself as a major fault, at least should showcase 50-100 themes in dashboard like WordPress does.

Acquisitions; are they pose some issues as well?

When you acquire some new company then you mingle with entirely new set of rules that company might be following, a different environment, a different system that might have been crucial for working of the same. Sure,  the pieces don’t fit together that easily, but still users expect a lot. Orkut users expect that why not Picasa albums and Orkut Albums could be combined or have some link between them. Picasa users expect that why they are under 1 GB limit, when Orkut Albums could enjoys around 10, 000 pics means many GBs. I  understand the technical/ administration aspects, know that both of them are different services and acquitted at different times and its never been in Google that you change entire way of working once you take over some company.

mergers_acquisitionsBut users expect as other services from your side already keeping the bar higher. Obviously integrating things asks for compromises as you cant go with downtimes and can’t predict what will be the response, if you come to change something entirely. Obviously acquisitions pose some issues that take a little time to go off and that time might be crucial for an early initiative.

Even after writing this much long, I might not be sure that what other reasons might be, same with Google, I guess. My verdict is Social Services are different in the manner that early initiatives, spreading, integration with other services and reach to mass in simplest manner is what keep them going .. sometimes being technically better might not be sufficient.

Third party developers

developersBigPicGoogle needs third party developers a lot. To work over Symbian Apps for their Social Services, to work over engaging applications/ games for Orkut etc. Google Maps is brilliant, Gmail App is cool, but Orkut App is crap in looks as Jad apps might be limited in their functionalities. Needs to come out from the same. Twitter/ Facebook/ LinkedIn all getting apps for Symbian and others to get people catching up with them. You can’t rule out already popular things, if wanna growth of own things. Have to support Symbian Apps. Aren’t Gmail/ Google Maps App been a tremendous success? Being open has made Google a success and that’s what needs to go on.

Requesting others to take part in discussion via comments.

photo of Nitish KumarNitish Kumar

 
 

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How Orkut could regain strength in front of Facebook

“ Some find it hard to believe, some find it obvious now; some says that it will regain the place back, some says its just international trend arrived at India now; some wants to see Orkut rising again and some finding ways to shift their profile/ photos etc from Orkut to Facebook. But its true Orkut is loosing the turf in India against the Facebook: Social Network Giant for rest part of the world since long. ”

socialnetworkingsitesinindiatraffic

worldmap1

The news is not new and been floating around here on web since March 2009 that Facebook is getting a steady rise in India while growth of Orkut getting slower. I thought to write over it, n102452128776_1831when something attracted me to Facebook recently. It was addictive Farmwille application, which got kind-of-craze among my colleagues in recent days and when the craze finally got me, then I was surprised to see many of known faces on Facebook. I was also impressed with this particular application in the way its single handedly keeping users engaged in each hour and also luring more to join.

I had profiles on both of the social networks:

Orkut and Facebook, but Orkut always remained prime for me. In fact, I was logging into Facebook once in a while in month only, while Orkut was part of daily habits from Home, from Office, from Mobile. I kept on hearing about national/ international celebrity profiles on Facebook and getting search results showing Facebook profiles, but still it was not able to lure me as I didn’t thought that its offering me anything more than I getting from Orkut, specially after recent makeover of Orkut.

But after checking out techcrunch article, I thought to gather some info about the same topic and in the same way, I came across few interesting articles like 12 Best Reasons Why People Leave Orkut And Migrate To Facebook & 10 Ways Orkut Can Compete with Facebook and felt that I could come up with a few answers and suggestions of my own:

  1. Privacy: There is a lot of buzz about this and many people choosing Facebook over Orkut, because of this only. Initially, as per generic philosophy privacyof Google, it was to be open for all means one has to be shown as he is with all others. Scrapbook, photos, Friend Network and Profile info, everything was open to all. So, it was an open world, where you could contact and know about others in the way, they want to tell the world they are.

    In Facebook, by default only your friends can see your profile. The others can only see your name and thumbnail (reduced version of the profile picture). Nothing more. In addition, you can always configure the options for privacy as deemed appropriate.

    But many times it happens that you wanted to be open for some people and for some, you want to remain closed shell. Like celebrities or popular people, if everyone is allowed to write to them, then they wont be able to use these social networks coz of spam. So, later on, Orkut added some restrictions like only your friends could write in your scraps or could see your photos/ videos (in case of photos, restrictions could be categorized per person basis). Although somewhere I find these step more of caused by market demands than the original philosophy. More or less, people called it a welcome step, but still Orkut kept it more open than Facebook.

    As a step to answer demands, I think Orkut really needs to provide some more detailed Privacy configuration options. Like scrap book could be managed to open for people/ groups only we want, others could only read their scraps only or not even could write. Same for new feeds, photos, profiles and other features.

    Specially, where Orkut needs to look out is restriction over profile view. Even if I liked the larger profile pics, some might not and moreover, they might not be wishing to roll out their information for all. Although as being a technocrat, I understand the difficulties lying under such a big change as it will require to change the root way, Orkut stores information for users, which will not be a simple task.

  2. Publicity: We really find Orkut keeping itself low profile in comparison to Facebook, which although been a philosophy of Googlepublicity about all of its products. Google always  placed its products on top without too much going into media on the basis of its own unmatched set of features only. While this strategy worked for most of the services, might be reason of failure in case of Orkut. Facebook really has a strong media presence and in other part of world, we really could find many people, who might not even heard of Orkut.

    It’s really high time, Google should think about Media presence of Orkut even if Google doesn’t want it to be a Business Website. Although I also know the implications that it’ll also lead to brining more ads to Orkut in the way Facebook has coz no point in investing in media management, if you are not making high business use of the same. But still I am looking for Orkut to be heard in most part of the world.

  3. Applications: This is really becoming the bottleneck of the equations between Orkut and Facebook. Even if Facebook already been an orkut-appsestablished brand, now in India, its getting an high very much due to its diverse applications. Orkut also has few applications, but those are really few and none are kind of engaging in the way Facebook has some like Farmville and Mafia Wars.

    As I said this is bottleneck, so Orkut should really do something about it, not today, but now.

  4. Restricted Networking: In case of Facebook, if you wished to join Community of your Company Network,restricted then what you need a genuine corporate email id, otherwise, it wont  allow you to join, while in case of Orkut, its maximum level is moderator’s approval, whose task goes tough, if company is spread around world and moderator has no efficient and effective way to evaluate in real time.

    For some it might be, but as per my view, Orkut should not bother about such a feature. Orkut was not an Official Place sort for Corporate and communities were created by users only not from Corporate itself. It was not business world, but was an open and simpler world and I wish it remain open in the same way, coz this was the reason, Orkut was liked and grown even when MySpace and FaceBook were already giants in other parts of world.

  5. Design: Some find Orkut’s design as a benchmark, while some says same for Facebook. When I joined Orkut, then it was due to its decent and simple blue theme and even this was the tagline then. Although as per demands, it changed its way. I really dont know yet, if Facebook has something like scrapbook, where actual conversations flow and sometimes, you could get an idea about people by their scrapbooks, while Facebook kept it around newsfeeds, which might be many at a time as per size of your friend list.

    Though Facebook had an advantage earlier to keep most of the things limited to one page only, but new look of Orkut made it compete in that way as well.
    facebook new look New-Orkut-SnapShot

    I really find nothing to change from the root about Orkut design right now. It should grow with its own learning curve as being done in past. 

  6. Photo Tagging: Although that was an area, where Facebook started, but Orkut got it more better with face recognition. In facebook, you find the face manually, photo-taggingwhile in Orkut  it does the same automatically and recent makeover of Photo updates make it scoring higher over Facebook.

    What I am really looking for as an addition to Orkut Photos system, is its integration with Picasa & Picasa web. I means you could sync your Orkut album with the one you own at your home and upload photos from Picasa to Orkut. I know Orkut could do this due to integration of its services and really looking for, when this change will happen.

  7. Status Updates/ News Feed/ Link Share: This was really an area, where I was looking for an improvement from Orkut orkut-status-updatesside, which Orkut recently heard, by providing Share on Orkut feature. I guess, now we could find Orkut Share buttons spreading among blogs like Facebook/ Twitters share buttons. Although still I am disappointed with its being JavaScript based as WordPress.com doesn’t support that or might be I am not able to find some work around.

    But still I find status updates/ news Feeds an area of improvement for Orkut as now. Status updates a.k.a. News Feeds are more configurable, innovative and richer in Facebook right now than Orkut. A must feature, I will be looking for the next improvement in Orkut.

  8. At the end, I really dont wanna see “Bad Bad Server, No Donuts for you” again.

Not finished Yet …. I really want readers to add up more and more suggestions for betterment of Orkut. Please do write.

photo of Nitish KumarNitish Kumar

New Orkut for everyone without invite

“ Dec 17, 2009, from today Orkut has opened its new interface for everyone. Till now, it was available by invitation only basis, later they increased the number of invitations per users and now removing the need of invitations at all. ”

So, now no need for waiting for invitations, just click the button “Try New Orkut” on top of your profile and enjoy the new faster face of Orkut.

“Just wondering when the same going to be started for Google Voice and Google Wave :P”

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Faster and more effective photo updates in orkut

Last many news from Google side only and I was thinking to make the next post on something else, but here Google again got my attention, this time by Orkut.

After the complete makeover of Orkut and revamped interface from the scratch, a few of good things that came out was expected addition of slideshow etc into photo album of orkut and top of all, it was much faster than ever in facebook way. Although there were a few annoyance like recent photos going at the last of the photo album, but over all, it was faster than anything earlier.

“ Here comes the another addition in features, In-line Photo Browsing: means now if you click on photo update thumbnail from a friend then you will be treated with full photo at the same place with options of navigating to other updated snaps in the same sliding way as it is album (kind-of-brining his album to your profile without your opening a new page), not only that but you can comment or tag over the photos as well from the same place. Not only that but now you could see a slideshow of the same photos as well from the same place. ”

In-Line Photo Browsing

Name tagging from In-Line

The slideshow

The new interface is in-a-way keeping users on the same home page most of the time as they can perform many things from there only, either it be commenting, tagging or most of the daily stuffs, they were used to do by visiting others profiles.

I am also noticing one trend from Google side. They first launch the feature itself and then after hours or a day, the same come through some announcement or via blog. Interesting

Here is the official blog post about In-Line Photo Browsing.

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New Lighter and Faster Orkut

Have you got your invitation yet? Few days back, we were hearing the same about Google Wave and now we are hearing the same about New Orkut. Luckily getting to new version of orkut wasn’t that tougher as getting hands on Google Wave seems to be. In the ads, it was asked to join the community to get an invitation, although I didn’t liked the idea very much to join a community for sake of just getting an invitation, which in turns finally I didn’t got from.

Although the community started from 12th October 2009 to build up interest for New Version of Orkut, The Brand New Version of Orkut was officially launched by 28th October 2009.

As we can see that it’s completely rebuilt interface with heavy use of ajax everywhere and as their official blog says for building it they have make use of Google Web Toolkit (GWT) throughout. With what they been successful is bringing most of the things integrated on the first page itself, either its community handling, friends management, scraps, photos or anything else. I was very much impressed with Photos handling obviously, which is now at par with Facebook or other such sites. The interface to handle photos is very intuitive and blazing faster than the earlier version.

As other bloggers pointed out, here are some new features:

1. Added scroll bar for Communities & Friends List
2. Ajax color changer added for profile wrapper
3. Accepting members to the communities done with ajax, you can accept many people. at once
4. Accepting friends request done with ajax. you still have to accept individually.
5. Recent visitors and recent birthdays shown with profile picture. (Little anoying)
6. Icons changed for chat availability status.
7. Adding comments to status updates of friends.
8. Drop down CSS menu made for different tabs like profile, photos & videos.
9. More updates load below with ajax loader.
10. Link to other google services added on top.
11. Drop down menu added to orkut logo (useless)
12. Friends suggestions are in ajax ring like loading
13. Manage button added to friends & communities link.
14. Basic formatting options added to scraps with google chat smileys. (A warm new feature for all).

Although I still remember Orkut’s early days when the focus was to keep the interface simple and specially that blue throughout and I’m sure that many of us, will keep missing that simplest interface, which made us Orkut go higher places in comparison of Facebook or MySpace. But like technology is spreading and improving, changes are likely to touch the lives from every side and such an overhauling of Orkut interface was expected from long. So is this U-Turn from keep it simple and blue philosophy.

The new interface is sure useful in many senses for the users addicted to Orkut, but I also wish to point out that it might not be that easy or attractive for the new users coming into it. For new users, its just the same like MySpace or Facebook and I am not sure that you could win new users from there. Let’s see, how this new version proceeds.

Suppose you got the invitation for The New Orkut but after playing with the new interface for few hours, you want to go to the old version of Orkut then you can do it by following instructions.

“How To Get the Older Version Back in The New Orkut?”

You will switch back to the older version of the Orkut by going at the “older version” option in the top right corner of the new Orkut interface. Click on it and you will back into the old Orkut world. Simply click on the link “try the new Orkut”, in the top navigation bar, if you want to go into the New Orkut.

 

If we talk about users opinions, then not to mention only few bloggers, but I didn’t found much of a positive buzz about this around friends. Few of them commented about missing features and most of them commented that they were used to of earlier version and this new interface will take time to adjust with. I guess, its like shifting from Windows XP interface to Windows 7. We may feel it better, but find no reasons to change. 🙂 So tell me after your experience about which version of Orkut is better, the old one or the new one?

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Ban on Orkut?? Are you insane?

Again something moving completely against and out of logic and even then the one side is not getting proper attention, which made me back to write something again.

I am commenting on the newly started debates over the wrong message giving communities, especially through Orkut and not only debates and talk shows but even cases are started to be filed. The fundamentalist are with the arguments over communities like “We hate India”, “Call Girls from Mumbai” and so and so. There are also communities offending Indian holy God and Goddesses and yes, it is justified when you say that something should be done in regards to this, but A Ban???? No way ……

First let me present some facts about Orkut. Before Orkut and other such sites, the way to talk to people; whom you really never going to meet usually as they are very much away from you in distance or they are from very much different backgrounds or they belong to some other class of society or they might be belonging to some other country; was through messengers and chat rooms. But it was something very unstable; it was much easy to create a fake ID in minute and then login into some chat room to meet a new world, completely hiding your identity. It was never easy to trace someone, if offending or abusing in some public room. Ofcourse, the option to report someone abuse was there but practically that was not that effective. Moreover, at each login the crowd and the names in chat rooms were different, so people were tending to move into in initial days and then out with some IDs and then constrained within only those persons. It was sure spoiling the concept of an open world and was not enough to create a more reliable, stable world, in which you could meet some real persons, who might think about you selflessly and could provide a real positive and third person perspective about your problems.

So, websites like Orkut and Hi!! came in existence as answers to the loopholes in chat rooms and messenger services. Don’t compare it with dating sites like AdultFriendFinder as the motive and categories of both the sites are completely different from each other.

Orkut!! First of all, for moving into Orkut, you need a valid invitation from someone else and it will be kept in the database of Orkut and also the person, who has given you the invitation to join the community will be joined in you friend list. So, it was the initial phase. Now, let me tell you the things more categorically. The template of Orkut for presenting someone’s profile was much easier and also easy to maintain and day by day, it was changing for better and better and also with continuous removal of drawbacks. First of all, to get attention, one needs to make a profile, which will be having three sections; General information, professional information and then personal information. Although user is free to put only that information as he/she wishes, but even then it imposes a restriction as then your profile will not seem much attractive to others. Next phase is pictures, which is actually creating a problem for management purposes as well as creating problems like nude pics here too. But this (snaps) is sure one of the most prominent and honest way to attract people to you and also it is scientific fact that people remember faces more than names. So, definitely keeping pics in profile was justified, although it is sure a burden to web-space management of Google, who now owns this community.

The best feature of Orkut is its open scrapbook and completely accessible friend network, which guarantees that it is not that easy to create a fake identity and then being suddenly disappeared without leaving a trace behind you, as definitely, one’s friend network is likely to contain many real friends because as far as being friend is concerned then it is completely up to you. Watch someone’s acts and collect information about him/her from his/her social circle and then you could formally ask for friendship. Now as about open and accessible by anyone Scrap Book also presents a third person perspective of any user means a close view of the way of talking of some person and also a picture of that what other people think about the one as writing scraps to someone is like speaking in public and all this even before actually talking/chatting to the person. Definitely, it is much more reliable than ever.

Now, coming to more issues, Orkut is one site which is not supporting any kind of advertisements and also users are not allowed to post picture messages in open scrap books, they could only put pictures as display pics of their own identity or their community display pics.

As was the main issue of offending communities, then I think it is easier to encounter with nude pics and offers while surfing even Government and New sites, because of Spywares and Non-existence of any policy to stop such advertisements. Most of the time, Spywares sets cookies for them in your PC and then they will continue to come again and again, without you actually ask for them.

Anyway, I was moving to technical side, let me keep it simple. Like the real world, where it is always possible to get magazines and a lot of other adult material, how was it possible to keep it completely away from Net world and even from Orkut world.

Orkut has become such a large network, which contains students from each and every big institution and professionals from each and every big or small company (even if Orkut is banned in that company). If you are looking for some odd names as community then you should also check that there are communities from names almost all the big companies and institution, who are really providing the way to communicate between alumnae, batchmates and juniors. When in this world getting jobs and motivations for right side is getting rare and rarer, and then being at a place, where you could really come to meet much experienced and co-operating persons to consult about anything even before doing anything. Getting links in the industry was always a problem for everyone even if they were having one, then sometimes the changing contacts and fields were creating problems. Definitely traditional flaws like immature affections, addiction and habitual ignorance to the real world are here too but this could be said to be much mature form of conversation at the global level. I have found a lot of my seniors from very old batches working for big companies and many of them have provided my friends even shelters and supports in their cities and even in countries even on meeting for the very first time. In now days, when someone from professional courses got selected into Infosys then he/she first check for the profile in the Infosys community, so that could get in touch with some of them before actually joining or not joining them. Can’t people look at this positive side? As about bad things then really there are very few as the members of Orkut mostly are from educated youth from all over the world, so are much active in offending such nasty attempts and offending communities as soon as they got to know about them.

As about offending communities, then I, myself have seen even the honest attempt was getting tempered in these way, when some people started to use the popularity and coverage of Orkut as a medium to spread their products and thoughts means purely for business purposes. But it was really not that easy as Orkut provides you the way to make someone spam by just clicking a button. As about community, then I think for the first time, I encounter with a bad community three months ago, which was seriously offending “Goddess Durga”. As legal ways exists in the real world, there were ways too, I made the request spreading out to report this community and its owner as bogus and it worked. According to rules of Orkut, if more than 100 different users reports someone or some community bogus, then Orkut automatically removes that and this is really quick. After that I got similar message back to me about the community named “We Hate India”, whose most of the members were from Pakistan and one Hindu girl and a few Muslim boys from
India too. Definitely, it was an offending material and got the same fate means got deleted by Orkut, because of active participation of Orkut users to keep the place neat and clean.

I am afraid that because of popularity of Orkut, now Politicians and News Personals are pointing their guns to Orkut as they done in case of blogs few months ago. It is something like keeping females under curtains to keep them away from bad eyes or campaigning for banning Co-Education Institutions as they leads to love affairs. But it is not funny anymore.

The concept of banning blogs came from such a part of society, who was standing in favour of paintings of “Maqbool Fida Hussain” in the name of “Right to speak”. Definitely, blogs were a strong enough medium for professionals and intelligent students to express, when even Political Parties and TV-Channel were being suppressed from speaking anything against the issue, which was clearly looking to be completely out of logic but we were not having any power to do something as we have chosen the Government for five years and when after fighting to each other in most intense way in West Bengal, they come to join their hands to form the Government, then they are really not responsible or answerable to anyone. What a helpless crowd of much qualified students could do about it? Not all of them are in journalism and not all of them could take parts in ‘Dharanas’ and ‘Stirrs’, ofcourse, blogs are only medium to such crowd, who even on being right side and doing all hard works, feel helpless. What you could expect from News Channels and New Papers, when they are in either direct or indirect control of Government, because their dependency about license renewals and paper permits?

Anyway, I am again moving away from the main topic. Yes! Some bad elements are popping in Orkut too now and definitely it is likely to be increased more and more as now News Channels and Fundamentalist have moved in the way to publicize the few bad spots only on the almost perfectly clear white wall. But as like the real world, we have weapons against such things (like reporting them as bogus) and till yet, we have been using our rights in right ways.

In now days, Blogs and Orkut like sites came as the most prominent medium for highly qualified, undoubtedly talented and very judgmental youth of nation, so I request from Orkut Supporters to much much more active to avoid and restrict such activities and from Fundamentalist to keep their eyes away from us.

Definitely, there are a lot of things to speak but I know this is your time to speak, so I will wait for comments from reader’s side.