This is one thing which is on my mind for past few weeks. I recently covered Orkut and Facebook and also compared them on the lighter notes. I recently covered few changes done in Orkut. But none the less, I am doing it once again. This time my source of information is Google Trends. It is really quite interesting. Though it is not something which we didn't expected, but yes it is interesting enough to be here.
First of all, a note on Google trends...
They should make those charts more sharable. I have to follow print screen method which is really cumbersome, and if you know any refined and a free of cost method then feel free to tell me in comments.
Coming back on the topic...
Before any thing else, I would once again make clear that why this topic interest me so much. Orkut is highly popular and have the same cult like following which Facebook enjoys in US varsities. And after the recent news gain by facebook makes it an interesting competitor to orkut. Otherwise I dont have any kind of stake in any company...
Lets first look the trends for the search and news items which are the overall criteria of the Google trends, blue one is for Facebook and red one is for Orkut.
This one is for 2007, and will bring more focuses results for this year.
Inference:
Recently after F8 there is a sudden rise in the news references which Facebook got. Since this is not up to date trend, so we can not tell that what effect F8 caused to the graph . One thing which people can say that Orkut being an old network wont be the hot enough to discuss, and thus this graph does not make any sense. My answer to them is, when you are in social web space and you are not being talked about then there is something wrong, by wrong I meant that you are not innovating enough, and if you are not innovating then you are giving other networks a chance to gain more people. They might not take away your existing members but yes they may reduce the future numbers.
This point is much more solidified by the upper graph. People are not searching about Orkut. Why this must be saddening to Orkut, (beyond ego surfing for Mr. Orkut)? One word answer, NEW USERS. Old users are not going to search much for the network on which they are, but the users which are new will be inquisitive enough to search about the new network. One more probable reason for the searches can be, hacks for the network, but here again since Orkuts api is not open, then umber of mods and hacks are not there in market.
US was never a forte for Orkut. But US certainly have maximum internet users, so a trend analysis of US region makes sense.
Here...aha it was obvious...as previously mentioned...
US cetizens are neither interested nor using writing about it. This analysis as like previous is from history...so we can not tell about the latest hype effect, but I dont think that will be any way in favour of Orkut.
Now comes the other one...which is just the way round...and this time its all Orkut. Orkut in India, is making news and is being used. Though news are not for good reasons, but as it is said that any publicity is good publicity, so it is true for Orkut. In India Orkut is all up, and Facebook fares much poorer than Orkut in US.
People are not at all searching about Facebook, which may be taken as that it is not creating enough buzz. And buzz is all that matter , when it comes to such kind of products.
Below are the international top 10 ratings with Facebook and Orkut as reference respectively.
This is really interensting Facebook is attracting more buzz in Canada than in US...Oh this one is surprising...
Now lets see the Orkut international card, BRAZIL...BRAZIL...yup thats the topper...
One can not tell very much from these trends for the simple reason that they are not up to date. But this certainly can be extrapolated, to get the latest figures. One more thing, Google trends need to improve themselves or else they should buy some other service doing trends, becasue presently they are nothing but healthy Buzz index, which can be used to tell how much buzz one is creating. But none the less it provides some pieces of useful information. And for conclusion...Mr. Orkut...I have only one suggestion for you...think out of the box and innovate.
I think its blogging time for Google. Orkut is up with its very own blog. Because the services which didn't had blog till now are now up with their own blogs. Latest in this series is Orkut. Orkut is the only successful social network under the umbrella of google. There was once the latest news thing in the header of Orkut, and which was never updated and had news dating back to 2005 which was hilarious.
This new strategy of having more and more interaction points might just prove fruitful for orkut, the other interaction vents included a Google group, and a help center. Even Orkut feels that it is late to come up with blog now, but that said they also feel it is better late than never.
To mention one more thing, as it is with every other Google blog, it does not have a comments section, so you can not interact, butthere is a link else where which is aksing you to write down what you expect from the blog. I think that latest Facebook lava has touched them in some good way, (hope s0).
I was having problems to update my photo in the new orkut format which was recently changed. It has turned up more advanced, and web2istic. It was solved only the last night. Here is an example of the change made in orkut.
Quite azaxified....
Recently Blogger is also giving me troubles with adding photo, and is quite bugging.
Amount of hype(for good reasons) is already bringing Facebook some new members. I now have 9 friends in Facebook and 8 are new. Pretty interestingly Facebook is also showing a revved up performance in India all over. Globally also Facebook is seeing a rise in daily traffic. Which is pretty much clear from this graph.
One very interesting thing which can be seen is that Facebook's graph is showing an increasing trend where as other two are quite static. Though F8 can not be pointed as a specific turn around point but indeed it caught my attention. What Facebook did in F8, is now being sought by MySpace, that is, they want to open up themselves.
Hey, enlighten me, didnt we had third party apps, finely integrated in Myspace profiles, adding up lots of clutter and feeding a big parallel tertiary market. MySpace is already quite open, and its openness have already been utilized by few intelligent miscreants. To mention Facebook is like orkut a closed network, where you have to login before watching any kind of profile, they are not available as web pages.
So all in all as it seems from thousand of miles away from the place where few people are burning fuel to make MySpace more open is nothing but surfing. Surfing? yes they too want to ride on the wave of openness, want to gain some media mileage by telling every one that they are more open. Though there is high scope for opening up, but as history tells me, Myspace gets irritated when there is some high traffic gainer app on the profile page of various MySpace users. Bye the way, MySpace is being thrashed all over the park, just like Sachin did yesterday in Ireland, after they created a Youtube clone.
Orkut presently enjoys 2nd position in India as most visited website and facebook is on 29th. So there is lot of catching up required for Facebooks where Indians only constitute 0.8% of visitors. and this percentage is as high as 15% on Orkut.
At present Orkut is boring me a great deal, and the social networks which needs some opening up or some major overhaul is Orkut. And till then I will be resending invites to my friends so as I get more friends on Facebook.
PS: All the data is from Alexa.com
I am on Orkut, and at present its the only social network that keeps me busy. But there is something in Orkut which always tell me to look elsewhere. I also have an account on MySpace, but for MySpace isnt interesting enough. Recently after the F8 media hype (hyped for good reasons) I though to give Facebook another try. I had a pending friends request for months, I clicked on it and now I am on Facebook. And at present it seems it is something where I can rest of my time. I have repeatedly felt that quality of social network is not that important when compared to the number of people on it. An avalanche effect takes place when few friends of same mixed group joins a social network.
If I join a network, and so does my friend, then when we both send invitation to our common friends, then there is more initiation force on that third person. And when the number of friends cross a limit of certain value then the number of new friends joining that network increases quite rapidly. But for that to happen, the new social network has to be really interesting.
With Facebook opening their API, the innovation quotient has gone few steps up. And now onus of innovation is on whole community, and developers. Few of the new applications are interesting enough to become a social network on their own. And when such kind of things are being added on a regular basis, then it marks a question in your head, 'Whats Next?' And this is something Orkut is missing, where most of my friends resides.
Orkut and Facebook can be easily compared because both are doored networks. By 'doored', I meant that, to view any profile you have to login. This is a nice options for those who dont want their profiles to be a part of Google search.
So far I am quite impressed by Facebook, last time when I tried to join facebook, it did not had that innovation feel and was more closed. But later they opened their doors to everybody and not only to .edu based schools and colleges( that seemed idiotic to me). But this F8 phenomenon really impressed me, and latest addiitons are quite interesting.
As I have mentioned that I am on Facebook, you can check my Profile here. You have to be on Facebook to watch my profile and add me as your friend.
After seeing multi million deals surrounding social network, one can marvel the fact that none of them were a technical breakthroughs. So what made them such a hit?
I am talking about, the major social networks like MySpace, video sharing site like YouTube etc. More often than not it is being at right place and at right time. Social networks were there way back before MySpace, Facebook or Orkut came. But still only few are raking moolah. The most important thing behind the success of a social network is the initial crowd which surrounds it. But why am I talking about it, when we all know about it somewhere inside our brain?
The thing which prompted me to write about this is the arrival of new phenomenon; having a social network of own. And the avalanching force behind this post; social network surrounding Mashable, a very popular blog, and probably the best when it comes to pure social network news. Mashable recently got a social network of its own and woila it got zillion members already. Now thats ok for a Mashable but that not be ok for you, cause you must have a sizable network to start with, either from good advertising or from your connections. And, from my little expireince I can tell you, when it comes to creating a social network, any publicity is not good publicity, and bad publicity is really a bad publicity. I will try to explain it in my future post. And let me tell you, My mom is asking me to leave my laptop and get into the world of my course books, as I am having my Physics examination of second semester on Monday.
This is a post after eons, I was busy with examination, and few other blogs. The blog I am Talkin about is the one for my college club, Friday Colours. It is taking lot of my blogging time, and rest of my time is being taken by my studies. It some time become really hard to manage virtual life and the real life.
But then there are some things which excite you enough to break away from crunch schedule and write a blog post, and this surely is one of them. And once again this is related to orkut. The social network which is biggest in India and Brazil, and having a cult following in India. They have added and changed few things.
One of the minor change is that they have shifted few things from one place to another, this include the scraps and cool etc information which were previous present at right corner and are now present on left.
The other welcome change is the navigation capability in the album space of orkut. They did it once and then removed it, and now they have done it again, lets hope this time it remains as a permanent addition.
But besides all thes minor addition there is one welcome addition and one very brilliant is the capability to add RSS feeds to one profile and this one is really brilliant. They have now integrated Blogger and their Picasweb services very nicely and in very sublime manner to orkut. I always wanted to have both these facilities included in Orkut, this makes it more dynamic, and you can show off more things, and this to without adding much pressure on Orkut platform. Now I think they should make the orkut API open or some part of it, much in the way Twitter have done. And yes I still want multiple scrap posting in Orkut.
One of the other interesting service which I would love to have from Google stable is Calendar functioning in Orkut which would provide event handling capacity to orkut, much in the way like Evite or Renkoo. A mobile version of Orkut will also do great wonder. Having more control in terms of personal profile design will also be great, and make Orkut a better social network.
To sum it all, if Google is taking social network space seriously then they should work on orkut more than what they are currently doing.
I last time posted about Big Adda over here. And now they are in alpha. They banked on silent publicity, firstly they went for public opinion poll for their logo, which now is two hi fives. They are currently in alpha, and you can ask for invite on the site and hope that they will be sending it to you pretty soon, as I am doing.
The fact is that India is a growing market, and number of internet connections are going to increase and so will the market of social networking. Presently there is no path breaking or very wonderful Indian social network which are like mere clones to what My Space is doing. And the fact is that no body is doing it in the way My Space had done. So if Reliance Entertainment want to be the part of it then they are thinking it in right way.
What seems form their first page is that they have done it all, that is they are providing a home grown video hosting site, blogging platform, social networking platform(obviously), and then something sort of communities which they are calling addas. Orkut communities have already created some news in India, and it would be very good for Big Adda to have any controversy matching Orkut controversies. But are they ready to face lawsuits, which Google+Youtube are facing, because users will surely upload such stuff which can prove fatal for a small network. But small network may not fall under any radar, but a networking site backed by a big business organization can call unknown troubles pretty soon. But this is all stored in unknown future. Ant till then we can only hope for an early invite of Big Adda so that we can check it out.
As of things are going and if Amit from Webyantra is to be believed then Reliance entertainment industries is redying its Social network for India. And if that is true then Indian socail networking space which has been plagued by few clones and a snaily Orkut, can hope for something very interseting. Reliance Entertainment which recently launched Zapak gaming portal and also launched Zapak mail which is one the most irritating client, is under Anil Ambani and if it is his decision then I think they have got one good team at Reliance. Success of MySpace can inspire any one to fall in this race.
But the big question... Is news truly true...
They have named it as Big Adda, and currently they are asking users to vote for their logo. This is a nice startegy, becuase this step gives you time before launching and also get known. But the mother of all question, can they beat Orkut, which without any doubt is Indias biggest social network which is under Google's umbrella.
Consolidation, this has been the mantra for people at google for while, at least it seems from viewer angle. Gtalk with Orkut, then Orkut+Youtube, Reader+Blogger, and now Blogger+Picasaweb.
This time also they have done it nicely and it was a long felt need. I, always wanted to retrieve images I uploaded to blogger for posts and wondered where they went after I uploaded them, and now they have solved both of my problems. They have integrated both the platforms together. You can see all your photos which you uploaded on your blog on your Picasaweb page with a Blogger B logo on them. And them from there, you can use them for reposting.
This is still not done they can also make Picasweb a hub for my photos on Orkut, and can make them more secure.
There is one more thing which Google have added on Picasaweb, and that is community photo search. This now brings it in lines of Flickr, but still it is not very networking friendly, as you still dont have a single window kind of thing to view your favorites photos. But they are improving and that too on fast pace, and more importantly this king kong size organization is going for consolidation.
I have already mentioned, why I didn't posted any thing for such a long time over here. And here is my first storming post after the lull. First thing I did after returning was to get online, and after that I opened Google reader...to go on reading spree to read posts in excess of 4k. And as usual I started with web2.0 blogs, and incidentally I went to Mashable and found about Jabbits.
Jabbits is a new take on QnA, that revolves around video. We all will certainly agree that video is best way to convey a message, and QnA on video is indeed a nice idea. You ask question in form of a video, and receives answers in same form. As I am writing about it, a simple yet powerful struck to me, that is in distant teaching. Students fire there questions to group of teachers and get answers in return, and similarly teacher fires question and get solution from his students, all this in an organized manner.
As mentioned Pete Cashmore, on Mashable, they should look into providing widgets to embed in ones blog and various profiles. But one thing is for sure that innovative ideas revolving around user generated videos is a new trend, and will stay for long time.
But, yes a but, when it comes to QnA, I will still prefer Yahoo Answers, though Jabbit is ready to award me $100 for my good answers. Why I will stcik to Yahoo Answers is because it is simple. When it comes to anything user generated, lesser the numbers of steps to achieve some thing more usable it becomes. For example, lets compare erstwhile Hotmail and Gmail, Hotmail had one step in excess to read messages whereas Gmail takes you directly to all the mails. Coming back to QnA, creating video is not a one step process, its a multiple step process on Jabbit. If I have a question then I may want answer quickly, and that happens on Yahoo, you get answers quickly , sometimes within seconds. Then there is another problem when it comes to asking via video, people tend to go for explaining in excess, and then asking a simple question at the end... what it had done is, it kicked many viewers out of your site. In case of written questions your eyes somehow focus directly on key words and then if you like the queestion you answer it otherwise go for another question.
One more thing which bothers me is fake answers, how would I know that answer which I am just going to see is for real or some phony blot. They do provide for some written floats for answers but still I would love to have more. Because if I visit Jabbit on my bad day then I may never visit it again, and here Jabbit have done nothing wrong. They will pay for what their users have done.
Do I have a solution for this problem...Ok I will take my chance...
Use some sort of speech to text methodology, which will at least work for questions in english and then provide some thumb up-down option for questions and answers.
All said, I will still give it a try, not as a source to get valuable answers but for controlled use within my group, because in that way I will get best I can, and here it will certainly score lots of brownies over any conventional QnA site.
And as of site designing they have done some neat job, and use a nice color combination, such things by no mean are small, they matter a lot when thousands of users fall on your site on seconds basis.
Top 100, I would die even before naming top 10. This is from Read/Write web, and compiled by Charles S. Knight. Its one of my favorite blogs all due to very cool'n'crisp analysis on it.
Here is what list looks like, I dont know most of the names from the list, but would surely have a look of them in times to come.To read complete analysis please visit here. They are going with such list as an monthly post, which I think is too frequent for such an category which does not show major changes as per one month time period is concerned. One more thing to note its not a list of conventional search engines but of alternative search engines. And the difference among two categories is very much same as in medicines and therapies.
| AllTha.at | www.allth.at | The search engine that keeps on looking. |
| Ask Mobile | www.m.ask.com | Mobile search engine from Ask.com |
| ASK VOX | www.askvox.com | A second talking female user interface. |
| AnswerBus | www.answerbus.com | Ask in English, French, Spanish, German or Italian. |
| Blabline | www.blabline.com | Podcast / videocast search engine |
| blinkx | www.blinkx.com | Video Search |
| boing | www.boing.mobi | Search the Mobile web |
| bookmach.com | www.bookmach.com | Searches for posts related to your keywords. |
| ChaCha | www.chacha.com | Human Guides are available to aid in your search. |
| ClipBlast! | www.clipblast.com | Video Search |
| Clusty | www.clusty.com | Clustering search engine |
| collarity | www.collarity.com | Behavioral personalized search / Collarity Compass |
| CONGOO | www.congoo.com | Searches for Premium Content |
| crossEngine | www.crossengine.com | Searches Search Engines; formerly mrSAPO |
| d e c i p h o | www.decipho.com | Behavioral personalized search / Social Meter |
| Ditto | www.ditto.com | Visual search engine |
| Dogpile | www.dogpile.com | MetaSearch Engine |
| dumbfind | www.dumbfind.com | Featuring the Two-Box search method. |
| exalead | www.exalead.com/search | Web / Image search with a European flavor |
| factbites | www.factbites.com | Search Result snippets are complete sentences. |
| fazzle | www.fazzle.com | Search engine that emphasizes Boolean Search |
| filangy | www.filangy.com | Personalized Search Engine |
| FIND FORWARD | www.findforward.com | Multi-featured search engine; check this one out! |
| FindSounds | www.findsounds.com | Search for sound effects and musical samples. |
| FyberSearch | www.fybersearch.com | Parent site for some interesting new search engines. |
| GIGABLAST | www.gigablast.com | A multi-featured search engine. |
| girafa | www.girafa.com | Visual search engine - results are thumbnails |
| gnod | www.gnod.net | Oustanding recommendation search engines |
| gnosh | www.gnosh.org | Metasearch engine |
| GoLexa | www.golexa.com | "COMPLETE page analysis for each result." |
| goshme Beta 3.0 | www.goshme.com | A search engine for search engines. Top 10 pick. |
| GoYams | www.goyams.com | Metasearch engine where you select the mix. |
| grokker | www.grokker.com | A multi-featured meta-search engine. |
| GRUUVE | www.gruuve.com | Groovy music recommendation search engine. |
| hakia | www.hakia.com | "Meaning based" search engine |
| ICEROCKET | www.icerocket.com | Blog search engine |
| ixquick | www.ixquick.com | Metasearch engine |
| KartOO | www.kartoo.com | Visually appealling clustering search engine |
| Lexxe | www.lexxe.com | Natural language processing (NLP) search engine |
| like | www.like.com | Visual shopping engine; see also riya |
| liveplasma | www.liveplasma.com | Attractive music / movies clustering / recommendation engine |
| Local.com | www.local.com | Search for local businesses, products, and services |
| lurpo | www.lurpo.com | Searches for custom Google search engines |
| mamma | www.mamma.com | metasearch engine |
| MetaGlossary | www.metaglossary.com | Searches for definitions, phrases and acronyms. |
| mnemomap | www.mnemo.org | Clustering search engine |
| Mojeek | www.mojeek.com | Customize your own personal search engine. |
| Mooter | www.mooter.com | Clustering search engine |
| mrquery | www.mrquery.com | Metasearch engine / metasearch providers |
| MS. DEWEY | www.msdewey.com | Unique user interface - enough said. |
| Omgili | www.omgili.com | Social community search engine |
| onkosh | www.onkosh.com | Arabic / English Search Engine |
| Pagebull | www.pagebull.com | Visual results search engine |
| pipl | http://pipl.com | People search engine |
| PlanetSearch | www.planetsearch.com | Metasearch engine |
| PolyMeta | www.polymeta.com | Metasearch and clustering search engine |
| pronto.com | www.pronto.com | Metasearch engine |
| qksearch | www.qksearch.com | Multi-featured "3-in-1" multi-search engine |
| Quintura | www.quintura.com | Clustering search engine with a new interface |
| Quintura for kids | http://kids.quintura.com/ | Search engine for kids by Quintura |
| RedZee | www.redzee.com | Search Engine with nice preview results |
| retrievr | http://labs.systemone.at/retrievr/ | Visual search engine |
| riya | www.riya.com | Visual search engine; see also Like |
| scirus | http://scirus.com | Scientific information only search engine |
| searchbots | www.searchbots.net | Have a little fun, create your own searchbot. |
| SearchTheWeb2 | www.searchtheweb2.com | Search The Popular Head and The Long Tail |
| sidekiq | www.sidekiq.com | Multi-category search engine. Very nice. |
| Slideshow | http://slideshow.zmpgroup.com/ | Displays search results as a moving slideshow. |
| Slifter | www.slifter.com | A mobile shopping search engine. |
| soople | www.soople.com | A simplified version of Google's search options. |
| Speegle | www.speegle.com | The speeglebot talks to you. |
| Sphere | www.sphere.com | A blog search engine. |
| Sproose | www.sproose.com | Social search engine |
| S R C H R | www.srchr.com | Metasearch engine |
| SurfWax | www.surfwax.com | Meaning-based search engine |
| Swamii | www.swamii.com | Search engine that keeps on searching for you. |
| Swoogle | http://swoogle.umbc.edu | Semantic Web search engine |
| thefind.com | www.thefind.com | Shopping search engine |
| Trexy | www.trexy.com | Follow "trails" and "trailblazers" with Trexy. |
| turboscout | www.turboscout.com | Metasearch engine |
| TWERQ | www.twerq.com | Multi-category search engine with tabbed results. |
| UJIKO | www.ujiko.com | A fun interface where you can vote on the results. |
| url.com | www.url.com | "Search with many" community metasearch engine. |
| VMGO.com | www.vmgo.com | Vote on the search results with emoticons. |
| WASALive | www.wasalive.com | A new member of the list. |
| Web 2.0 | www.web20searchengine.com | Web 2.0 search engines |
| WEBBRAIN | www.webbrain.com | Clustering "see the web" search engine. |
| whonu? | www.whonu.com | Deluxe metasearch engine. |
| WIKIO | www.wikio.com | "Live information from 33981 media and blogs" |
| Windows Live Mobile | www.wls.live.com | Windows Live Mobile search engine |
| WiseNut | www.wisenut.com | Clustering search engine |
| Yahoo! Mobile | http://m.yahoo.com | Yahoo! Mobile search engine |
| Yahoo! MINDSET | www.mindset.research.yahoo.com | Intention-driven search; commercial versus research |
| yoono | www.yoono.com | People-rated community web search |
| yoople | www.yoople.net | Yoople! = Yahoo! + Google + People |
| yubnub | www.yubnub.org | Use command lines to search the web. |
| ZABASEARCH | www.zabasearch.com | People and Public Information Search Engine. |
| zapmeta | www.zapmeta.com | Metasearch engine |
| Zippy | www.zippy.co.uk | Search engine for webmasters |
| ZUULA | www.zuula.com | Multi-category, multi-search engine, with good tabs. |
If you want to suggest some more feel free to do so and if they have missed some thing outright then go RWW and mention it to them. Here you can find January's list.
To start with, I have started doing yoga, and to mention I attended Baba Ramdev's yoga camp. But that was no camp if you go by numbers, cos' there were some 20k+ people who attended it daily for 6 days. But why am I sharing all this information on GG which is a geeky blog, about latest in technology, or web, or in other words anything techy to mention?
Web2.0 as I feel is more about sharing than about AJAX+Javascript+interactivity etc. But what sharing are we talking about, sharing to what limit. Am I supposed to share the names of girlfriends I have or the state of my stomach after eating a roadside chowmeen, which indeed I am not going to, and would prefer to leave it on your brain power.
Success of any new social network of any type known or unknown is based on few things:
- Getting the alpha guy or girl.
- Being an important part of communication.
- And keeping users motivated.
Getting the alpha guy/girl : You can go on Mashable and find a new social network reviewed daily. Sometimes its for papa, sometimes for mumma, sometimes for dog lovers, some times for gays and some times for not so gays also, that you start feeling that you can open a social network of own for banana lovers. But key to success of any social network is to get the alpha guy/girl/gay/mom/dad/banana lover. You get them and you get their group most likely.
So to have successful social network you need to get alpha for your beta. And let me tell you best alpha to get is a blogger(guy/girl/gay/mom/dad/banana lover) to cover your beta.
Being an important part of communication : My prime motivation behind this blog post is Robert Scoble's daily rambling about Twitter. How? Go to his blog and as of present you may find every 3rd post mentioning Twitter and sometimes you feel that he is working for them(likely not). Twitter some how became an integral part of his daily communication, and to mention he is an alpha(guy/dad/and who knows, a banana lover). Falling on my experience on which I can certainly bank on is importance of Orkut in my communication. I dont find a new friend daily, neither I scroll through friends of friends of friends, what I mostly do is communicate with people I know, and thus it is an important part of my communication. But a communication will only occur if you have active friends in your list, and not like a girl who added me as her friend and never scrapped me back, and she seldom visit Orkut now. Hell, I really feel bad, for her not contacting me.
Keeping user motivated : To understand it, you can refer the last few lines of previous paragraph, about the girl. She probably lost the motivation and now she does not feel any need to visit Orkut any more, or else there is some kind of stigma regarding social networking. And some poor news for poor Orkut didn't helped the cause either. But all in all we can sat that user lost her or his motivation to stick to a particular network. This can probably occur due to stigma factor or utility factor. For any social network like any FMCG, its utility is very important. Social networks can easily be classified as FMCG of web, or as a pack of FMCGs. Now if I find another social network which is more useful than the one I am spending most of my time currently, then I may shift keeping other two points in mind, which once again weave all the points together.
One point which I mentioned but didnt included it in the main 3s was the acceptance of any social network in a society. Acceptance derives its roots from the upbringing, complete social outlook and many other factors which are are worth of a PhD research. I don't think that a banana lover's network would be successful in India, but it may be a super hit in Banana Island. Because Indians might not find apt to share their banana eating skills or habits. Or there can be a stigma attached of 'What if?' if tell others that I eat two bananas at one go and like this there can be more and can be different for other social networks.
To sum it all, I can only tell you one thing, try as many social networks as possible but do keep a list of them, because you never know that one of those social network start fulfilling all these points one day, and become a hit between you and your friend. And yes one more thing, best way to check that whether you are alpha(...) is to join a social network and then send invitations to your friends and then see how many of them joined it.
So we now have Renkoo, a social network for inviting friends, pseudo clone of a popular US site Evite. First of all let me tell you about Renkoo, if you haven't heard about it. Basically its a plan network , you can create a plan of certain party and then your network can finally come on conclusion. Its like cutting the hassles of When to meet, where to meet etc. There are many similar networks, I know few including Renkoo, but would suggest you to click similar pages for Renkoo on Google.
But now they are trying to come in the market of conventional social networking market, but they are doing it with difference. And to mention I loved this idea. Idea is, developing your profile based on questions asked by your friends. For an example, question could be, What is your favorite color? and your reply, say 'blue' will add up in your profile. Now you may asked why I loved this idea, because I always feel that, friends should be more inquisitive so as to strengthen the bond of friendship, but here it would be more on comical note. If you thin it in perspective of favorites and hates then it is not that bright idea, but when you look for more deeper question then it starts making sense. Since Renkoo is presently invite only therefore I could not test it, but I am really looking forward for it. (I have just got the invitation, its damn fast process.)
I am not being pessimistic, but there is also flaw, there is too much power in hands of friends, to understand, suppose, If I have few friends who already know me, might not feel the urge to ask the question. And as there wont be enough answers a new person might not feel the urge to add me in. But this is only a possibility.
As of present when I dont have any friend [;(] there are two default questions one to be answered by me and other to be answered by my friends. Questions are cool and are regularly update by and automatic process, but I dont know whether database of my answers to questions will be saved or not, to my pragmatic sense they should be. Like any social network, Renkoo also have one problem, that is lack of truth can mar the whole process. On design front I would give Renkoo a 4/5, I dont know what addition will get it 5/5 but I know that there is some thing more, that can be done. There is effective use of AJAX, on all the pages making , and this may fasten the whole process.
All in all, Renkoo is a nice attempt, to fuse two things that is social network and invites, making it a multi facet social network. I have made an account and if you want to make me your friend than contact me asap.
This is scheduled downtime, but I didnt knew about it, so for me it was not in schedule. My friend has posted his robot's video, and presently I can not watch it. Soon I will be posting it. Bye the way his Robot's name is Rusteez, inspired from animation movie Cars.
But waht can be the reason behind this downtime, are they going to bring any thing new, coz recently they had brought few new add ons, which will keep Youtube in technical lead for time to come. Lets see and wait for next.
To just get hold of its market potential one can just look at this fact:
Yahoo spends some $10+ on getting MyBlogLog in its stable.
Now you can see My Blog Logs on every next blog(overstatement). But yes for new bloggers it is becoming a nice tool, you go on other blogs you leave your characteristic imprints, very much like animals roaming, over there. By the way dogs pee to leave their characteristic imprints.
In this post I am going to look at Mybloglog and clones.
MyBlogLog: I dont know whether they were first or not, but they were certainly first to make it big. We had imbedded chat clients like Meboo on many blogs but they never came to prominence like Mybloglog(+), some how they never attracted me, one of the reason can be the time difference between countries.
MyBloglog got initial rave reviews from people who mattered most, yup, Ivy league of bloggers like Micheal Arrington and peers. Concept was simple, you put their code on your blog, then you can see when other members of MyBlogLog left their characteristic imprints. [;)] This thus became viral, you see log in sidebars, get interested and get one for your blog.
This was not it, you also get an option to build community for your blog, which get members under the law of mutual appeasement. Finally you get few members who remembers where your blog is.
Who's On My Page: This is also one such service which is one made for MySpace. Does things in pretty similar way with also mentioning number of comments. But they have got completely different approach for it, they ask you to download a toolbar for Firefox, and then getting instant results. To go anywhere ahead you need to download their toolbar, and then fill you profile etc.
But this is not something universal like Mybloglog but is limited to few social networks. Bebo, Friendster, Xanga, Hi5, and Myspace are supported networks.
Spicypage: To sum up this site, this is fusion of Digg and Mybloglog. You vote for blogs and pages and can also get a widget for your blog to get voted, again it is viral in same sense as is Mybloglog. But I would like to mention that I came to know about this site via Mybloglog, how there was a personal message by some lady which mentioned about this website.
There are few more services like Trakzor which is focused on Myspace, none of them had done it in the same way as MyBlogLog.
Community is one word to define Web2.0, and when blogs fuses with community building are network building then its like twin blade sword.
If you know of any other such service then feel free to post a tip.
This is not a very unique post, and neither it is breaking news. Stumble Upon is already having nearly 2 Million users who are stumbling over new sites daily and are pressing stumble button on stumble upon tool bar which must have become an integral part of their web surfing experience. One thing we all know that normal search engines leaves lots of logical sites which should have been there in search. But public is not a algorithm and thus services like Digg and Stumble Upon are very useful. You just click on a single button and will get a site submitted by a discoverer from a topic of your choice, you also get an option to search another topic. Most often than not you stumble on a very interesting site, and if you are one person who thinks that there is nothing exciting on internet or lazy enough to not to search for your choice of topic on conventional search engines then you must get this for your browser. This small toolbar will sit there at top pretty similar to Google search toolbar. Stumble upon is now also offering video stumbling which they will soon bring up in their toolbar.
I am not sure whether I would write about Powerset or not in near future, but I am sure that I am going to write more about user generated search results.
For now we have Google at the helm of internet search, they are biggest and fastest though by few milliseconds but still they are not perfect. I have one open question which have potential to run few brain mills wild. Should Google buy a user generated search engine and add their results to their conventional search? Bye the way to make your search on Google more intelligent you can go for advanced Google search.
Oh yes, I came and blogged which I wasnt meant to do, as my exams are on run, and I am trying to catch them red handed. But one thing compelled me to do this, yes after so many messages of suggestions which many others including me must have posted to orkut about including videos, we finally have them. It was quite simple, they are having one of the biggest library of videos, yes You Tube and still they didnt had video option for their social network. But now they have that. And yes it wasnt there yesterday.
They also had (for one day) a navigation button for pics in orkut album, which they removes after few hours or so, I dont know the reason behind, but that was a good add on.
Google can still integrate few more things on orkut just from their very own stable. They have many for that. And one certainly would be Blogger.
Googlers please add just one more button...on profile page for Blogs. And thats it.
And yes yes please remove the 12 image cap from album, we want to upload more, and yes few more personalized options for increased privacy. Like by whom we want our photos to be seen, because recently there have been few cases in India regarding this problem. As of currently any one visiting my profile can see my album, which was primarily meant just for my friends as orkut was a closed network. But late last year they made it open, and now we have more problems regarding privacy.
One more thing...yes for orkut...why dont they update there news section
Before ending lets discuss what this service is, its not a stand alone video sharing service. You upload your videos on two of the Google services, that is You Tube and Google video, which I think amount to largest user generated(and not so user generated) video library, and then put its link on your Orkut video favorites. So this makes it more like video blog entry without any possibility of any kind of write up. If google is in any plan to monetize videos for users than this can be a double edged master stroke. I dont understand one thing, why after making Orkut a open social network they are not providing easy url for profiles for example my profile url is http://www.orkut.com/Profile.aspx?uid=6074091533297241425 , this is some thing which I can not remember, at least that number is beyond my mental reach.
As of videos one more thing which I should mention is that this service is only limited to You tube and Google video, this means that if you are having your videos on some other services that you can not show them on your orkut profile. This is not at all good.
Beside adding an option for video they have also tweaked one thing for good, that is in scrap book, now they wont be telling you some out of world time for your scraps but would be telling local time and also relative time. Oh thats one great relief.
Even in present format Orkut is far from being complete, its not as big as Myspace but yes it does have potential to be so. Now they should try to make it much more secure, they should also look at privacy factor because that was one of their USP when they launched it.
They will be providing mobile alerts and from wha ever I read it seemed that they are not charging any thing for that. Then as usual they are providing links to feed the MySpace and networks.
I think they are just running it for fun as there is no obvious revenue generating system,and I think it will remain so. Soon they might start a video blogging on similar lines. And it will be good option.
The only thing I wish is that they shoud keep it simple and thats it, they should not try to match Flickr or others and should concentrate on mobile market.
I dont know if there are any other player like them, but I think there would be some similar players, doing round about similar thing. So this topic squares on a single point, the service which would be faster to penetrate in youngsters life, and simpler the service faster it would grow.
Technorati Tags: nowthen, mobile, MMS, blogging
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But to see that Orkut had got some huge publicity in India and Brazil though not for some good reasons, and thus increasing their traffic in folds is really enthr
alling. Why enthralling, just because its Google venture and Google, I think is very weak in community run ventures.By the way due to Orkut viral, I was not able to contact many of my friends. So if by any chance any one of you are here, then have a Hi from me in this my small space.
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Update...
After hours of waiting I checked it once again and it is on...bye the way it is 1:30 am in India, and I was digging in some physics books. Now on a serious note I think that google is getting serious about Orkut, and by now they are also fed up with DONUTS, so I think it would me much of a server overhaul and it took them some 18+ hours to do so. And on optimistic note they would have done some major arrangement for 1 Jan celebrations, by providing us a video+audio integration, and unlimited image posting. They already have server power and necessary services in place, what they miss is a bridge, which can join them all. Lets hope we have more skit options, to think beyond that awkward blue.
Update...
This morning there was an official statement from Orkut and here is what it says. So no... surprises...But life would still move on.
Technorati Tags: Orkut, social networking, google
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Too many profiles on too many networks? It certainly takes lot of time to go on individual network and then messaging them. Searching for old friends on many networks is also one hell of a task. So here it is an aggregator, which aggregate your networks from many networks, mainly MySpace and Facebook,biggest 2 of the social networks. But they have listed nearly every social network, barring few like Multiply, Vox and probably it can not include Orkut and Flash based networks due to their structure. But still it covers most of them. And over this it in itself is as good as a social network. It also allows searching in the networks. They are also giving you an option to suggest them the name of unlisted social networks, as even God can not track the budding of new social networks. They are also provi
ding a widget kind of thing which they are calling as portable profiles,through which you can link all of your selected networks as widget to put on any of the network or blogs which is also one nice innovative idea.So far so good. But it is not the simplest of all, and there await lot of problems for them if any of the social network closes their doors for them. Because any of the big brother can feel that it is not good and bang you are not having the access to that network through Profile Linker. But they would have certainly thought of this and would have made necessary arrangements.
But I have one question, I agree that many of us have many accounts, but how many of us actively use many accounts. I dont... And if you do then you must go and check Profile Linker, to ease your troubles to certain extent.
On other front I still yearn for more simpler interface, with less graphics and more substance, an ideal for such aggregation would be the interface of google reader, simplest to the hint of super-super ease. But still Profile Linker is a nice idea in itself and presently they are clean from any of the advertisements which stop me to go to many of the social networks.
Technorati Tags: Social network, Profilelinker, aggregator
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