Always provide the Basic Information about yourself: Full Name, Network, Sex, Birthday, etc.
Provide a good updated profile picture of yours so that people get to know how you look like.
In the Personal Information block fill up your activities, interests, write a few line about yourself. Try to be specific about yourself. Focus on your activities, likings, achievements. Don’t attempt to write an essay though.
Be proactive. Join a few active groups and participate in discussions. If you are a SEO geek or a blogger its a golden opportunity to interact with others and build your network.
In the Contact Information block provide your mobile no. if you feel you may be contacted for some business query. IM ids if provided are also helpful.
If you are a blogger and/or associated with a company, provide the URLs. That defines your internet presence.
Become Fan of your favorite niche products, public figures, etc. You will get a complete listing of all the pages here. Remember this defines your taste, level of interest to a great degree and all these listings are available in your profile page pre-login to facebook.
How many friends do you have on Facebook? Make use of Facebook Friend Finder to find your old school friends whom you haven’t spoken to in the last few years. Add them, build your network. Also consider the suggested friends. You will get some common faces in that list too.
Build your niche following. Add some stalwarts. Their regular wall posts, tips, link love, notes will help you stay up to date. Also someone who is viewing your profile wall will get to know more about your niche.
If you own a weblog, make full use of the Facebook Notes by posting your blog posts. This will get posted in your friends’ walls as well giving your blog exposure, help attract visitors. Comments, likings will define the popularity of the posts.
Share links, info, tips in the Shout Box. Avoid spamming though.
In the Links box share some important links you would like to share which can be links to your LinkdIn profile, Twitter profile, My Space profile, etc.
If you feel maintaining your login info at Facebook is a headache, make use of the Linked Accounts feature under My Account > Settings. This facilitates you to login using your Google, MySpace, Yahoo, OpenID. Makes life easier I guess!
Link your other online public profile pages to your FB profile page as a part of your SEO strategy. The more the no. of incoming links, better.
source:webtips.blogsome.com
Tuesday, October 20, 2009
Check out the following Facebook Tips to make your profile page more Presentable and Marketable:
Always provide the Basic Information about yourself: Full Name, Network, Sex, Birthday, etc.
Provide a good updated profile picture of yours so that people get to know how you look like.
In the Personal Information block fill up your activities, interests, write a few line about yourself. Try to be specific about yourself. Focus on your activities, likings, achievements. Don’t attempt to write an essay though.
Be proactive. Join a few active groups and participate in discussions. If you are a SEO geek or a blogger its a golden opportunity to interact with others and build your network.
In the Contact Information block provide your mobile no. if you feel you may be contacted for some business query. IM ids if provided are also helpful.
If you are a blogger and/or associated with a company, provide the URLs. That defines your internet presence.
Become Fan of your favorite niche products, public figures, etc. You will get a complete listing of all the pages here. Remember this defines your taste, level of interest to a great degree and all these listings are available in your profile page pre-login to facebook.
How many friends do you have on Facebook? Make use of Facebook Friend Finder to find your old school friends whom you haven’t spoken to in the last few years. Add them, build your network. Also consider the suggested friends. You will get some common faces in that list too.
Build your niche following. Add some stalwarts. Their regular wall posts, tips, link love, notes will help you stay up to date. Also someone who is viewing your profile wall will get to know more about your niche.
If you own a weblog, make full use of the Facebook Notes by posting your blog posts. This will get posted in your friends’ walls as well giving your blog exposure, help attract visitors. Comments, likings will define the popularity of the posts.
Share links, info, tips in the Shout Box. Avoid spamming though.
In the Links box share some important links you would like to share which can be links to your LinkdIn profile, Twitter profile, My Space profile, etc.
If you feel maintaining your login info at Facebook is a headache, make use of the Linked Accounts feature under My Account > Settings. This facilitates you to login using your Google, MySpace, Yahoo, OpenID. Makes life easier I guess!
Link your other online public profile pages to your FB profile page as a part of your SEO strategy. The more the no. of incoming links, better.
source:webtips.blogsome.com
Provide a good updated profile picture of yours so that people get to know how you look like.
In the Personal Information block fill up your activities, interests, write a few line about yourself. Try to be specific about yourself. Focus on your activities, likings, achievements. Don’t attempt to write an essay though.
Be proactive. Join a few active groups and participate in discussions. If you are a SEO geek or a blogger its a golden opportunity to interact with others and build your network.
In the Contact Information block provide your mobile no. if you feel you may be contacted for some business query. IM ids if provided are also helpful.
If you are a blogger and/or associated with a company, provide the URLs. That defines your internet presence.
Become Fan of your favorite niche products, public figures, etc. You will get a complete listing of all the pages here. Remember this defines your taste, level of interest to a great degree and all these listings are available in your profile page pre-login to facebook.
How many friends do you have on Facebook? Make use of Facebook Friend Finder to find your old school friends whom you haven’t spoken to in the last few years. Add them, build your network. Also consider the suggested friends. You will get some common faces in that list too.
Build your niche following. Add some stalwarts. Their regular wall posts, tips, link love, notes will help you stay up to date. Also someone who is viewing your profile wall will get to know more about your niche.
If you own a weblog, make full use of the Facebook Notes by posting your blog posts. This will get posted in your friends’ walls as well giving your blog exposure, help attract visitors. Comments, likings will define the popularity of the posts.
Share links, info, tips in the Shout Box. Avoid spamming though.
In the Links box share some important links you would like to share which can be links to your LinkdIn profile, Twitter profile, My Space profile, etc.
If you feel maintaining your login info at Facebook is a headache, make use of the Linked Accounts feature under My Account > Settings. This facilitates you to login using your Google, MySpace, Yahoo, OpenID. Makes life easier I guess!
Link your other online public profile pages to your FB profile page as a part of your SEO strategy. The more the no. of incoming links, better.
source:webtips.blogsome.com
UK hospital staff suspended over Facebook 'lying down game' pictures
Seven accident and emergency staff have been suspended from the Great Western Hospital in Swindon, Wiltshire, after they allegedly played the 'lying down game' during a nightshift and posted photographs of the stunt on Facebook.
The doctors and nurses are said to have taken part in the internet craze by taking pictures of themselves lying on resuscitation trolleys, ward floors and a helipad.
Their bosses at the hospital's A&E and Acute Assessment Unit were tipped off about the prank and the medics have been suspended on full pay pending an investigation.
The lying down game involves being photographed lying face-down in unusual locations, with participants trying to outdo each other by finding the most original place to be pictured, such as in trees, on mountain tops or in the middle of a busy road.
The game has its own website and several pages on the social networking site Facebook dedicated to it.
A spokesman for GWH confirmed the staff suspensions, saying health and safety and infection control regulations had been broken, as well as the NHS and Trust code of conduct.
He refused to rule out the possibility that sackings could follow, and said: ''The disciplinary hearings are yet to take place and we cannot predict the outcome.''
The trouble began when a total of 18 staff allegedly took part in the prank during a night shift on August 14/15 this year.
After taking photographs of themselves, they posted the pictures on a Facebook page called The Secret Swindon Emergency Department Group, which has since been removed from the website.
A source at the hospital, who spoke on condition of anonymity, said: ''It was just some nurses and doctors on nights having fun, but the photos got onto Facebook and the management found out when someone leaked the details of the group. No-one knows what the outcome will be."
Dr Alf Troughton, medical director for Great Western Hospital NHS Trust, confirmed the suspensions but denied that patient care was affected.
He said: ''A number of staff were suspended following allegations of unprofessional conduct while on night shift duty in the hospital during a weekend in August.
''This did not involve patients and we are satisfied that at no time was patient care compromised.
''The Great Western Hospital sets high standards for staff behaviour at all times and therefore takes any such breaches extremely seriously.
''It is important to reassure patients and our workforce that this was an isolated incident and staff cover was maintained at all times.
''The allegations have been thoroughly investigated and seven members of staff remain suspended pending formal disciplinary hearings.''
source:www.independent.ie
The doctors and nurses are said to have taken part in the internet craze by taking pictures of themselves lying on resuscitation trolleys, ward floors and a helipad.
Their bosses at the hospital's A&E and Acute Assessment Unit were tipped off about the prank and the medics have been suspended on full pay pending an investigation.
The lying down game involves being photographed lying face-down in unusual locations, with participants trying to outdo each other by finding the most original place to be pictured, such as in trees, on mountain tops or in the middle of a busy road.
The game has its own website and several pages on the social networking site Facebook dedicated to it.
A spokesman for GWH confirmed the staff suspensions, saying health and safety and infection control regulations had been broken, as well as the NHS and Trust code of conduct.
He refused to rule out the possibility that sackings could follow, and said: ''The disciplinary hearings are yet to take place and we cannot predict the outcome.''
The trouble began when a total of 18 staff allegedly took part in the prank during a night shift on August 14/15 this year.
After taking photographs of themselves, they posted the pictures on a Facebook page called The Secret Swindon Emergency Department Group, which has since been removed from the website.
A source at the hospital, who spoke on condition of anonymity, said: ''It was just some nurses and doctors on nights having fun, but the photos got onto Facebook and the management found out when someone leaked the details of the group. No-one knows what the outcome will be."
Dr Alf Troughton, medical director for Great Western Hospital NHS Trust, confirmed the suspensions but denied that patient care was affected.
He said: ''A number of staff were suspended following allegations of unprofessional conduct while on night shift duty in the hospital during a weekend in August.
''This did not involve patients and we are satisfied that at no time was patient care compromised.
''The Great Western Hospital sets high standards for staff behaviour at all times and therefore takes any such breaches extremely seriously.
''It is important to reassure patients and our workforce that this was an isolated incident and staff cover was maintained at all times.
''The allegations have been thoroughly investigated and seven members of staff remain suspended pending formal disciplinary hearings.''
source:www.independent.ie
Auschwitz launches Facebook site
The Polish authorities in charge of Auschwitz have launched an official site for the former Nazi death camp on the social networking website Facebook.
A spokesman said the move was aimed at reaching the younger generation and educating them about the Holocaust.
It follows the launch by Auschwitz - now a state museum - of a YouTube channel earlier this year.
More than a million people - 90% of them Jews - were murdered by the Nazis at Auschwitz during World War II.
"We're always trying for new ways of reaching people, and in today's world one of the most popular tools is the internet, and on the internet millions of people use Facebook," said Auschwitz Museum official Pawel Sawicki.
source:bbc.co.uk
A spokesman said the move was aimed at reaching the younger generation and educating them about the Holocaust.
It follows the launch by Auschwitz - now a state museum - of a YouTube channel earlier this year.
More than a million people - 90% of them Jews - were murdered by the Nazis at Auschwitz during World War II.
"We're always trying for new ways of reaching people, and in today's world one of the most popular tools is the internet, and on the internet millions of people use Facebook," said Auschwitz Museum official Pawel Sawicki.
More than a million people have visited Auschwitz so far this year, the majority of them young people.
"If our mission is to educate the younger generation to be responsible in the contemporary world, what better tool can we use to reach them than the tools they use themselves?" said Mr Sawicki.
The Facebook page contains news and information about the museum, links to its YouTube channel and official website, and a discussion board. The first topic is about whether Auschwitz should have a presence on Facebook.
"The Facebook page will provide a place for discussion which is not available on the official website," said Mr Sawicki.
"We want it to be a place of discourse but of course we won't let anyone do anything that may abuse the memory of the victims and this place.
"So far, it's just an experiment. We'll see how people react," he said.
source:bbc.co.uk
Friday, July 10, 2009
Delicious
 | ||
 | ||
| URL | delicious.com | |
| Commercial? | Yes | |
| Type of site | Online social bookmarking | |
| Registration | Optional | |
| OwnerYahoo! Inc. | Yahoo! Inc. | |
| Created byJ | oshua Schachter | |
| Launched | September 2003 | |
| Current status | Active | |
Delicious (formerly del.icio.us, pronounced "delicious") is a social bookmarking web service for storing, sharing, and discovering web bookmarks. The site was founded by Joshua Schachter in 2003 and acquired by Yahoo! in 2005. It has more than five million users and 150 million bookmarked URLs.[1] It is headquartered in Sunnyvale, California.
Site description
Delicious uses a non-hierarchical classification system in which users can tag each of their bookmarks with freely chosen index terms (generating a kind of folksonomy). A combined view of everyone's bookmarks with a given tag is available; for instance, the URL "http://delicious.com/tag/wiki" displays all of the most recent links tagged "wiki". Its collective nature makes it possible to view bookmarks added by similar-minded users.
Delicious has a "hotlist" on its home page and "popular" and "recent" pages, which help to make the website a conveyor of internet memes and trends.
Delicious is one of the most popular social bookmarking services.[2] Many features have contributed to this, including the website's simple interface, human-readable URL scheme, a novel domain name, a simple REST-like API, and RSS feeds for web syndication.
Use of Delicious is free. The source code of the site is not available, but a user can download his or her own data through the site's API in an XML or JSON format, or export it to a standard Netscape bookmarks format.
All bookmarks posted to Delicious are publicly viewable by default, although users can mark specific bookmarks as private, and imported bookmarks are private by default. The public aspect is emphasized; the site is not focused on storing private ("not shared") bookmark collections.[3] Delicious linkrolls, tagrolls, network badges, RSS feeds, and the site's daily blog posting feature can be used to display bookmarks on weblogs.
History
The precursor to Delicious was Muxway, a link blog that had grown out of a text file that Schachter maintained to keep track of links related to Memepool.[4] In September 2003, Schachter released the first version of Delicious.[5] In March 2005, he left his day job to work on Delicious full-time, and in April 2005 it received approximately $2 million in funding from investors including Union Square Ventures and Amazon.com.[6] Yahoo! acquired Delicious on December 9, 2005.[7] Various guesses suggest it was sold for somewhere between US$15 million and US$30 million.[8][9]
There are several competing social bookmarking services as well as a few open source clones.
Name
The "del.icio.us" domain name was a well-known example of a domain hack, an unconventional combination of letters to form a word or phrase. Del.icio.us and delicio.us now redirect to the new domain, delicious.com.
In an interview, Schachter explained how he chose the name: "I'd registered the domain when .us opened the registry, and a quick test showed me the six letter suffixes that let me generate the most words. In early discussions, a friend referred to finding good links as 'eating cherries' and the metaphor stuck, I guess."[10]
On September 6, 2007, Schachter announced the website's name would change to "Delicious" when the site was redesigned.[11][12] The design went live on July 31, 2008.
 |
| The old logo of Delicious. |
info:wikipedia.org
digg
 | ||
| Type | Private | |
| Founded | San Francisco, California (December 5, 2004) | |
| Founder(s) | Kevin Rose | |
| Headquarters | San Francisco, California, United States | |
| Area served | Worldwide | |
| Key people | Kevin Rose (Founder) Jay Adelson (CEO)Scott Baker(Operations Director) John Moffett (CFO) Daniel Burka (Creative Director) | |
| Employees | 71 | |
| Website | digg.com | |
Digg is a social news website made for people to discover and share content from anywhere on the Internet, by submitting links and stories, and voting and commenting on submitted links and stories. Voting stories up and down is the site's cornerstone function, respectively called digging and burying. Many stories get submitted every day, but only the most Dugg stories appear on the front page. Digg's popularity has prompted the creation of other social networking sites with story submission and voting systems.
History and description
Digg started out as an experiment in November 2004 by Kevin Rose, Owen Byrne, Ron Gorodetzky, and Jay Adelson. All except Byrne currently play an active role in the management of the site. "We started working on developing the site back in October 2004," Rose told ZDNet.[6] "We started toying around with the idea a couple of months prior to that, but it was early October when we actually started creating what would become the beta version of Digg. The site launched to the world on December 5, 2004." Rose's friend, David Prager (The Screen Savers, This Week in Tech), originally wanted to call the site "Diggnation", but Rose wanted a simpler name. He chose the name "Digg", because users are able to "dig" stories, out of those submitted, up to the front page. The site was called "Digg" instead of "Dig" because the domain name "dig.com" had been previously registered by the Walt Disney Internet Group. "Diggnation" would eventually be used as the title of Rose and Alex Albrecht's weekly podcast discussing popular stories from Digg.
The original design was free of advertisements, and was designed by Dan Ries. As Digg became more popular, Google AdSense was added to the website. In July 2005, the site was updated to "Version 2.0". The new "version" featured a friends list, the ability to "digg" a story without being redirected to a "success" page, and a new interface designed by web design company Silverorange.[7] The site developers have stated that in future versions a more minimalist design will likely be employed. On Monday June 26, 2006 version 3 of Digg was released with specific categories for Technology, Science, World & Business, Videos, Entertainment and Gaming as well as a View All section where all categories are merged. Digg has grown large enough that submissions sometimes create a sudden increase of traffic to the "dugg" website. This is referred to by some Digg users as the "Digg effect" and by some others as the site being "dugg to death". However, in many cases stories are linked simultaneously on several popular bookmarking sites. In such cases, the impact of the "digg effect" is difficult to isolate and assess. Wordpress is especially known for its tendency to crash under the increased traffic.[8] On August 27, 2007, Digg altered its main interface, mostly in the profile area. The domain "digg.com" attracted at least 236 million visitors annually by 2008 according to a Compete.com survey.
Potential sale
Several reports have come forward claiming Digg has been trying to sell itself to a larger company since early 2006.[9] While Adelson claims that Digg will meet with any potential buyers, he denies that they will actively begin talks for a sale. The most recent sale talks were with Google in July 2008 for approximately 200 million dollars. On July 25, during the due diligence part of the potential sale, Google informed Digg that they were not interested in the purchase.[10] As a result of Google's decision, Digg entered into a third round of funding, receiving $28.7 million from investors such as Highland Capital Partners. With this funding, the company plans to move from their current offices to accommodate a bigger staff base.[11] On December 2, 2008, BusinessWeek reported "Digg Chief Executive Officer Jay Adelson says the popular news aggregation Web site is no longer for sale, and the focus of the company is to build an independent business that reaches profitability as quickly as possible. That means the four-year-old startup will dial back some of its expansion plans, instead prioritizing projects that generate revenue and profit".[12] On December 18, 2008, BusinessWeek analyzed Digg's financial statements. They reported that Digg lost 4 million dollars on 6.4 million dollars of revenue in the first three quarters of 2008.
Website
Digg Inc is based mostly from its Digg.com website. Many of Digg's new developments are improvements and features to its website.
Facebook Connect
In May 2009 Digg launched a new feature called Facebook Connect.[14] Facebook connect allows users of Digg and Facebook to connect their accounts. When a Facebook account is connected to a Digg account, Digg articles can then be shared on the user's Facebook page.[15] Facebook Connect also allows Facebook users to log into Digg with their Facebook account, thus bypassing the normally required Digg registration.
Digg Dialogg
Digg Dialogg allows Digg users to submit questions to a preselected famous individual who agrees to do an interview with a reporter chosen by Digg.
Digg Bar
On April 2, 2009, Digg released the Digg Bar, which provides a toolbar above the top of a site allowing the user to produce shortened urls, or access digg comments and analytics without leaving the page. After its release the Digg Bar rapidly became the target of criticism, for framing the original webpage and not redirecting the user to the original url.[47][48] There is an ongoing worry about whether the Digg Bar would lower sites' page rank because the shortened urls fail to give 'link credit' to the original sites.[49] Several content management systems released plugins that blocked the Digg Bar and Engadget began redirecting users to the original urls.
Criticism
Digg has come under criticism for varying reasons. Most disparagements are centered on the site's form of user-moderation: users have too much control over content, allowing sensationalism and misinformation to thrive.[18][19] The site has also suffered the risk of companies paying for stories submitted to the site,[20][21][22][23] similar to the phenomenon of company-attempted Google bombing. Other critics feel that the site's operators may exercise too much control over which articles appear on the front page as well as the comments on Digg's forums.[24][25] Some users complain that they have been blocked from posting, and their accounts disabled, for making comments in the user-moderated forums that conflict with the personal interests of Digg's operators.[26] The existence of the "bury" option has also been criticized as undemocratic and due to its anonymous nature, unaccountable,[27] which often leads to expungement of criticism of hotbed topics that do not mesh with the prevailing view of the community, which has been characterized as liberal or left-leaning by some critics [28] and users.[29] Another criticism in this area has been[30] how a faulty or misleading article can reach many users quickly, blowing out of proportion the unsupported claims or accusations (a mob mentality). Certain Digg users have been accused of operating a "Bury Brigade" that tags articles with which they disagree as spam,[19][31][32] thus attempting to bury stories critical of Digg.
It has been reported that the top 100 Digg users posted 56% of Digg's frontpage content, and that a niche group of just twenty individuals had submitted 25% of the frontpage content.[24][33] A few sites[19] have raised the problem of groupthink and the possibility that the site is being "manipulated", so to speak. In response to this question, the site's founder Kevin Rose has announced an upcoming change to the site's algorithm:[34] "While we don't disclose exactly how story promotion works (to prevent gaming the system), I can say that a key update is coming soon. This algorithm update will look at the unique digging diversity of the individuals digging the story. Users that follow a gaming pattern will have less promotion weight. This doesn't mean that the story won't be promoted, it just means that a more diverse pool of individuals will be needed to deem the story homepage-worthy."[35]
Due to the controversy surrounding it, Digg removed their shout feature as of May 2009, replaced with options to share via email, Facebook, and Twitter.
Marketing tool
Digg has become a very effective marketing tool for entrepreneurs. However, companies on social bookmarking sites have the image of an outsider, or a third party. Oftentimes, businesses are not in tune with the community surrounding social bookmarking sites and can alienate "friends" with incessant company news (aka spam). In order to function within the community, entrepreneurs need to follow social bookmarking etiquette—contribute, be honest, get involved.
AACS encryption key controversy
On May 1, 2007 an article appeared on Digg’s homepage that contained the encryption key for the AACS digital rights management protection of HD DVD and Blu-ray Disc. Then Digg, "acting on the advice of its lawyers", removed posting submissions about the secret number from its database and banned several users for submitting it. The removals were seen by many Digg users as a capitulation to corporate interests and an assault on free speech.[38] A statement by Jay Adelson attributed the article’s take-down to an attempt to comply with cease and desist letters from the Advanced Access Content System consortium and cited Digg’s Terms of Use as justification for taking down the article.[39] Although some users defended Digg's actions,[40][41][42] as a whole the community staged a widespread revolt with numerous articles and comments being made using the encryption key.[43][44] The scope of the user response was so great that one of the Digg users referred to it as a "digital Boston Tea Party".[45] The response was also directly responsible for Digg reversing the policy and stating: "But now, after seeing hundreds of stories and reading thousands of comments, you’ve made it clear. You’d rather see Digg go down fighting than bow down to a bigger company. We hear you, and effective immediately we won’t delete stories or comments containing the code and will deal with whatever the consequences might be."
info:wikipedia.org
ORKUT
 | ||
 | ||
| URL | http://www.orkut.com/ | |
| Slogan | Who do you know? | |
| Commercial? | Yes | |
| Type of site | Social Network Service | |
| Registration | required | |
| Available language(s) | Portuguese English Spanish French Hindi and other 39 languages | |
| Owner | ||
| Created by | Orkut Büyükkökten | |
| Launched | 22 January 2004 | |
| Alexa rank | 107 | |
| Current status | Active | |
Orkut is a free-access social networking service owned and operated by Google. The service is designed to help users meet new friends and maintain existing relationships. The website is named after its creator, Google employee Orkut Büyükkökten.
Although Orkut is less popular in the United States than competitors Facebook and MySpace, it is one of the most visited websites in India and Brazil.[2] In fact, as of May 2009, 49.83% of Orkut's users are from Brazil, followed by India with 17.51%.
Originally hosted in California, in August 2008 Google announced that Orkut will be fully managed and operated in Brazil, by Google Brazil, in the city of Belo Horizonte. This was decided due to the large Brazilian user base and growth of legal issues.
History
Orkut was launched on January 22, 2004 by Google as independent project of Orkut Büyükkökten, a Turkish software engineer. The community membership was originally by invitation only. At first year, United States had the largest user base. By word of mouth various Brazilians began adopting and inviting more friends, in a viral driven by the blogosphere. Soon after, Brazil surpassed U.S. in number of users and orkut started becoming heavily popular in Brazil. Americans then started leaving the service and switching to other similar sites such as MySpace and Friendster. This phenomenon was covered by the English blogosphere with some criticism towards Brazilians [8][9][10] because they communicate among themselves using their native language Portuguese and not English.
From that time, orkut growth was driven by Brazilian users, first being opened to everyone by register and becoming the most popular website in Brazil. The creator Orkut Büyükkökten visited Brazil in 2007,[11] in attempt to understand the success in that country. In 2007 orkut began attracting large amount of Indians who were not intimidated by the number of Brazilians on the site. As for now, orkut also has a simplified site for mobile users. "m.orkut.com". In 2008, a new feature was introduced for users having slow internet connections to access orkut using the "View orkut in lighter version" setting. Soon Orkut emerged as the No. 1 social networking website in the industry. It was claimed that Google makes in turn profit from Orkut, with AdSense Revenue generation system.
FeaturesTraffic on Orkut by country
Traffic of Orkut on March 31, 2004
United States 51.36%
Japan 7.74%
Brazil 5.16%
Netherlands 4.10%
United Kingdom 3.72%
Other 27.92%
Traffic of Orkut on May 13, 2009[12]
Brazil 50%
India 15%
United States 8.9%
Japan 8.8%
Pakistan 6.9%
Other 29.6%
A user first creates a "Profile", in which the user provides "Social", "Professional" and "Personal" details. Users can upload photos into their Orkut profile with a caption. Users can also add videos to their profile from either YouTube or Google Video with the additional option of creating either restricted or unrestricted polls for polling a community of users. There is an option to integrate GTalk (An instant messenger from Google) with Orkut enabling chatting and file sharing. currently gtalk has been integrated in orkut. Users can directly chat from orkut page.
Scrapbook
"Scrapping" is popular among the Orkut community as a form of offline and online communication. In December 2007, the ability to pop up alerts when a scrap is received was added.
Communities
Another feature of Orkut are "Communities". Anyone with an Orkut account can create a community on anything. One can post topics, inform users about an event, ask them questions or just play games. There are more than one million communities on Orkut with topics ranging from pizza to pasta, and space flights to Srikakulam. The first five communities on Orkut were started within 24 hrs of the site's launch. There were a total of 47,092,584 communities on Orkut as per March 24, 2008 4:25PM IST (+5:30 GMT). With the recent addition of the search topic feature in the communities, some Orkut communities become the in fact source for the website links to movies, e-books etc. A community's members may also create polls, and invite other members.
Other miscellaneous features
Members can make groups to join friends according to their wishes. Further, each member can become fans of any of the friends in their list and can also evaluate whether their friend is "Trustworthy", "Cool", "Sexy" on a scale of 1 to 3 (marked by icons) and is aggregated in terms of a percentage. Unlike Facebook, where a member can view profile details of people only on their network, Orkut allows anyone to visit anyone's profile, unless a potential visitor is on your "Ignore List" (this feature has been recently changed so that users can choose between showing their profile to all networks or specified ones). Importantly, each member can also customize their profile preferences and can restrict information that appear on their profile from their friends and/or others (not on the friends list). Another feature is that any member can add any other member on Orkut to his/her "Crush List" and both of them will be informed only when both parties have added each other to their "Crush List".
When a user logs in, they see the people in their friends list in the order of their logging in to the site, the first person being the latest one to do so.[13] Orkut's competitors are other social networking sites including MySpace and Facebook. Ning is a more direct competitor, as they allow creation of Social Networks which are similar to Orkut's communities.
Orkut redesign
On August 24, 2007, Orkut announced a redesign. The new UI contains round corners and soft colors including small logotype at upper left corner. The redesign has been announced on the official Orkut Blog. By August 30, 2007, most users on Orkut could see changes on their profile pages as per the new redesign. On August 31, 2007, Orkut announced its new features including improvements to the way you view your friends, 9 rather than 8 of your friends displayed on your homepage and profile page and basic links to your friends' content right under their profile picture as you browse through their different pages. It also announced the initial related languages: Hindi, Bengali, Marathi, Tamil, Kannada and Telugu. Profile editing can take place by clicking the settings button under the user profile photo (or alternatively, clicking the blue settings link at the top of any page).
On September 4, 2007, Orkut announced another new feature. user would be able to see an "Updates from your friends" box on the homepage, where it's possible to get real-time updates when friends make changes to their profiles, photos and videos. Moreover, in case someone wants to keep some things on their profile private, Orkut has added an easy opt-out button on the settings page. Scraps were also HTML-enabled letting users post videos or pictures. On November 8, 2007, Orkut greeted its Indian users Happy Diwali by allowing them to change their Orkut look to a Diwali-flavored reddish theme. On April Fools' Day 2008, Orkut temporarily changed its name on its webpage to yogurt, apparently as a prank. On 2 June 2008, Orkut has launched its theming engine with a small set of default themes.[14] along with the photo tagging has also arrived at Orkut.
Controversy
Fake profiles
As with any online social networking community, a number of fake and cloned profiles exist on Orkut.[15] Due to the large number of users and the deactivation of the jail system, the profiles were often left unremoved or, when removed, recreated easily. These profiles are normally created to troll, to spam, to flood or just for fun. It is not hard to find users owning more than one profile, with some stating they own hundreds.
Invisible profiles
In 2005, invisible profiles, communities and topics started to appear in Orkut. This could be achieved by using HTML escaping codes and 1x1 pixel photos to fool the engine behind the site.[16] This hole was later fixed, and currently there is a lower limit on profile image dimensions.
Flooders
In August 2005 a freeware program was made in Delphi called Floodtudo ("tudo" in Portuguese means "everything". This was developed by a Brazilian) specifically for flooding Orkut. It quickly spread through the users and was easily downloadable. The most common Floodtudo versions were 1.2, 1.5, 2.0 and 2.2. As this program was massively used by thousands of spammers, a big spam wave struck Orkut in September and October 2005.
Another most commonly used Scrap Flooder "Carbon Copy Scraper" & "Blind Carbon Copy Scraper" (commonly called CCS & BCCS ) was javascript based (popular versions 2.4, 3.3, and 5.1), available on almost every famous orkut community. The main idea behind this was to let profile holders send the same scrap to all their friends at a once, but it was missued by spammers.
As the flooding of Orkut was becoming out of control, the developers implemented some features to stop it by
not allowing 2 or more verbatim topics or scrapbook entries to be submitted
forcing the user to wait before posting another topic or scrapbook entry
requiring captchas, whenever a scrap entry is hyperlinked.
Community moderators were given the ability to ban users outright instead of relying on the developers to remove them.
Electronic spam
Recently, Orkut implemented an automated system to prevent spam. Orkut users can't send too many friend requests or scraps within a short time interval. If anyone does so, the user will temporarily be disabled from that feature for 24 hours to 1 week, depending on the users activity.
Hate groups
There has recently been controversy revolving around the use of Orkut by various hate groups. Virulent racists and religious fanatics allegedly have a solid following there. Several hate communities focused on racism, Nazism and white supremacy have been deleted due to guideline violation.
In 2005, various cases of racism were brought to police attention and reported on in the Brazilian media.[17] In 2006, a judicial measure was opened by the Brazil federal justice denouncing a 20-year-old student accused of racism against those of Black African ancestry and spreading defamatory content on Orkut.[18] Brazilian Federal Justice subpoenaed Google on March 2006 to explain the crimes that had occurred in Orkut.[19]
Anti-religion, anti-national, and anti-ethnic hate groups have also been spotted. Recently an Indian court has issued notices to Google on some of the groups. The Mumbai Police are seeking a ban on Orkut post objections raised by political groups. Groups denigrating various political leaders and celebrities have also emerged. Also in a reported case of 2005, racist groups have been reported. They were anti-Tamil groups.
State censorship
In Iran
Orkut was very popular in Iran, but the website is now blocked by the government. According to official reports, this is due to national security issues, and Islamic ethical issues about dating and match-making. To get around this block, sites such as orkutproxy.com (now defunct) were made for Iranian users. Other websites such as Yahoo! Groups and Google Groups have communities dedicated to receiving updates on the newest location of Iran's Orkut proxy. At one time it was possible to bypass governmental blockage of Orkut, but the site has closed its HTTPS pages on all anonymous proxies. Now it is almost impossible for ordinary users to visit this site inside Iran.[20]
Many other sites have been published in Iran since Orkut's blockage, using the same social-networking model - examples include MyPardis, Cloob and Bahaneh.[21]
In the United Arab Emirates
In August 2006, the United Arab Emirates followed the footsteps of Iran in blocking the site. This block was subsequently removed in October 2006. On July 3, 2007, Gulf News revisited the issue, publishing complaints from members of the public against Orkut communities like "Dubai Sex", and officially bringing the complaints to the attention of the state telecom monopoly Etisalat.[22] By July 4, 2007, Etisalat had placed a renewed ban on the site,[23] which remains in effect despite Google's promise to negotiate the ban with the UAE.[24]
In Saudi Arabia
Saudi Arabia is another country that has blocked access to Orkut, while Bahrain's information ministry is also under pressure to follow suit.[25]
Privacy
Earlier in Orkut it was possible for anybody to view anyone's pictures, videos as well as scraps, but people started misusing the photos and videos and placing them on the Internet with fake details. Many of them were vulgar, especially pictures of women. Moreover, the scraps could be easily read.
Currently privacy covers such features as scraps (separate read and write access), videos, photo albums, testimonials, and applications. These privacy levels are available to users:
friends
friends of friends
everyone in the network
In December 2008, Orkut developers introduced another privacy update that allow users to restrict viewing of their albums to certain number of friends, as well as selected e-mail contacts. The user can limit visibility of her/his profile to a certain region or group of regions (known as a "network"); in this case outside of these regions no user information is available.
Security and safety
In December 2007, hundreds of thousands of users accounts were affected, using another XSS vulnerability and a worm. A user's account was affected when the user simply read a particular scrap containing an embed which caused the user to automatically become a part of a community on the site, without approval. The affected user's account was then used to send this scrap to everyone present in the user's friend list thereby creating a sort of a huge wave.
MW.Orc worm
On June 19, 2006 FaceTime Security Labs' security researchers Christopher Boyd and Wayne Porter discovered a worm, dubbed MW.Orc.[26] The worm steals users' banking details, usernames and passwords by propagating through Orkut. The attack was triggered as users launched an executable file disguised as a JPEG file. The initial executable file that causes the infection installs two additional files on the user's computer. These files then e-mail banking details and passwords to the worm's anonymous creator when infected users click on the "My Computer" icon.
The infection spreads automatically by posting a URL in another user's Orkut Scrapbook, a guestbook where visitors can leave comments visible on the user's page. This link lures visitors with a message in Portuguese, falsely claiming to offer additional photos. The message text that carries an infection link can vary from case to case. In addition to stealing personal information, the malware can also enable a remote user to control the PC and make it part of a botnet, a network of infected PCs. The botnet in this case uses an infected PC's bandwidth to distribute large, pirated movie files, potentially slowing down an end-user's connection speed.
The initial executable file (Minhasfotos.exe) creates two additional files when activated, winlogon_.jpg and wzip32.exe (located in the System32 Folder). When the user clicks the "My Computer" icon, a mail is sent containing their personal data. In addition, they may be added to an XDCC Botnet (used for file sharing), and the infection link may be sent to other users that they know in the Orkut network. The infection can be spread manually, but also has the ability to send "back dated" infection links to people in the "friends list" of the infected user. According to statements made by Google, as noted in Facetime's Greynets Blog, the company had implemented a temporary fix for the dangerous worm.[26]
HTTPS Not Obvious
In and around April 17, 2007 users began reporting that secure (https) access to the Orkut login server was no longer available. In fact, Google had changed the main login page to http delivery to improve efficiency, but the actual login remained secure using https in an iframe.[27] This information had not been well-published by Google, and did not give the users the reassurance of seeing the "secure connection" padlock in the browser. On July 17, 2007, a revised login page, which is delivered via https, addressed these issues.
Session Management and Authentication
On June 22, 2007 Susam Pal and Vipul Agarwal published a security advisory on Orkut vulnerabilities related to authentication issues.[28] The vulnerabilities are considered very dangerous in cybercafes, or in the case of man-in-the-middle attack as they can lead to session hijacking and misuse of legitimate accounts.[29] The vulnerabilities are not known to be fixed yet and therefore pose threat to the Orkut users.
A week later, on June 29, 2007 Susam Pal published another security advisory which described how the Orkut authentication issue can be exploited to hijack Google and Gmail sessions and misuse the compromised account of a legitimate user under certain conditions.
Joseph Hick performed an experiment on the basis of the advisories published by Susam Pal, to find out how long a session remains alive even after a user logs out.[30] His experiment confirmed that the sessions remain alive for 14 days after the user has logged out. It implies that a hijacked session can be used for 14 days by the hijacker because logging out does not kill the session.[31]
W32/KutWormer
On December 19, 2007, a worm written in Javascript started to cause havoc. Created by a Brazilian user called "Rodrigo Lacerda", it automatically made the user join the virus related community and infect all friends' scrapbooks with copies of itself, the worm infected over 700,000 orkut users, it was a huge wave of infection. The worm is spreading through Orkut’s recently introduced tool that allows users to write messages that contain HTML code. The ability to add Flash/Javascript content to Orkut scraps was only recently introduced.[32][33]
W32/Scrapkut worm
On March 3, 2008 W32/Scrapkut.worm was found. The worm attempts to spread itself by sending orkut users scraps that contains the link to the worm itself. Aliases are Downloader.Banload.ONK (GRISoft)
TR/Dldr.Orkut.A (Avira)
Trojan-Downloader.Win32.Banload.auf (IKARUS)
Trojan.DL.Win32.Banload.dzm (Rising)
W32.Scrapkut (Symantec)
Other attacks
Private album crack
In December 2007, a Brazilian cracker named "Rodrigo Lacerda" published a script that allowed users to scrape other people's private photos. The exploit consisted of generating album photo urls, due to their simple structure. The main idea behind this was by "MUNNA-DON SA3ED N@g@ri@", an Indian cracker.
This crack made Orkut team implement new secure album/photos implementation.
Legal Issues
India
On October 10, 2006, the Bombay High Court's Aurangabad bench served a notice on Google for allowing a hate campaign against India.[34] This referred to a community on Orkut called 'We Hate India', which initially carried a picture of an Indian flag being burned and some anti-India content.[35] The High Court order was issued in response to a public-interest petition filed by an Aurangabad advocate. Google had six weeks to respond. Even before the petition was filed, many Orkut users had noticed this community and were mailing or otherwise messaging their contacts on Orkut to report the community as bogus to Google, which could result in its removal. The community has now been deleted but has spawned several 'We hate those who hate India' communities. Prior to the 60th Independence Day of India, orkut's main page was revamped. The section which usually displayed a collage of photos of various people, showed a stylized orkut logo. The word orkut was written in the Devanagiri script and was colored in the Indian national colours. Clicking on the logo redirects to a post by the orkut India Product Manager, Manu Rekhi,[36] on the orkut internal blog. There has also been some media outcry against Orkut after a couple of youngsters were apparently lured by fake profiles on the site and later murdered.[37]
On November 23, Bombay High Court asked the state government to file its reply in connection with a petition demanding a ban on social networking site, Orkut, for hosting an anti-Shivaji Web community.[38]
Recently, the Pune rural police cracked a rave party filled with narcotics.[39] The accused have been charged under anti-narcotic laws, the (Indian) Narcotic Drugs and Psychotropics Substances Act, 1985 (NDPS). Besides the NDPS, according to some media reports, the police were deliberating on the issue of charging the accused under the (Indian) Information Technology Act, 2000 perhaps because Orkut was believed to be a mode of communication for these kind of drug abuses.[40]
The Cyber police in India have entered into an agreement with Orkut to have a facility to catch and prosecute those misusing Orkut since complaints are rising.[41]
Brazil
On August 22, 2006, Brazilian Federal Judge José Marcos Lunardelli ordered Google to release by September 28 Orkut user’s information of a list of about two dozen Brazilian nationals, believed to be using Orkut to sell drugs and to be involved in child pornography. The judge ordered Google to pay $23,000 per day in fines until the information is turned over to the Brazilian government. According to the Brazilian government, the information would also be used to identify individuals who are spreading child pornography[42] and hate speech. As of September 27, 2006 Google has stated that it will not release the information, on the grounds that the requested information is on Google servers in the U.S. and not Google servers in Brazil, and is therefore not subject to Brazilian laws.[43]
info:wikipedia.org
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