Nithin Kamath’s Weblog

Orkut has in the last 24 hours added some new features and this list features one of the most requested feature that many have been waiting for, that of being able to delete multiple scrap’s at one go.

Here are a list of new features that I was able to notice today:

• Option to select multiple scrap’s at a time and deleting them.
• Option of being able to view either 10/20/30 scraps at a time.
• A new Reply button for each scrap means that you can reply to scraps from your scrap book itself. This was a a feature which was until now enjoyed by firefox users with the Orkut ScrapEasy extension.
• Now one can choose to get friend requests from everyone or only from people that speak the languages that one has set in the profile.
• In the messages sent to communities, i now find an option to ‘Ignore this person’, which means you can block messages from reaching you when the ignored person posts to the community.
• Here is something which i have not tried but may be of help if more coverage of India is done in Google Earth, visit http://www.orkut.com/Map.aspx when you are logged in to Orkut.

Though these may not represent all the changes that may have been performed, I am still wondering why Orkut does not have any mention of these in the ‘news’ of the site. Strange!.

Recently I was seeing a new craze in our college internet center, that of most people using orkut.com, the social networking site. So me being the person I am, i took a plunge into this to check out what it is all about.

The first thing I noticed is that Orkut is in affiliation with Google, and it accepts the google account id to login. I remembered that one of my friends had quite some time back sent an orkut invite or something like that and i had joined it. And had added him as a friend. But never used it since. So with that in my mind, I used my gmail id and logged in and hoped that this time around I would atleast last around till i completely try it out.

First I went through the list of friends of the friend i had mentioned above. I found quite a few of the degree friends in that list with whom i had lost contact. Proceeded further and added them to the list and so the hunt began to find more of the people I knew. In the process i discovered that Orkut keeps track of the relationship’s very nicely, for example when i clicked on one of the people through my friend’s ‘friends list’, and wanted to add it, it nicely showed how the person is relates to me(Something like: Nithin ->Friend 1 -> Friend 1’s friend -> Friend 2. It is a nice feature and makes life much easier. I am just wondering how the algorithm in the background works.

Then there are other features like scrap’s, testimonials, etc. It also has an option to message the friends or a ‘group’ of friends or just a person right from the site itself. Just now after a new friend was added I noticed that even Birthday reminders are shown.

I was adding more and more friends, so the next step was organizing them. So there was an option to create groups, which i happily did and create some groups and added my friends to the relevant group. Also there is communities, which I am yet to try, though i have joined a few.

It’s nearly two days since I entered Orkut, and I my friends list has 20 odd friends, some of whom I have not met for over 2 years now. Overall it is a great networking tool, the only thing that worries me is that how long will people continue using it and will take interest to keep the details updated, since that’s what will matter over time. For the time being, let me go slow on this, since I have already more than exceeded my broadband internet limit, so maybe try out more next month.

If you know me, and are not on my Orkut friends list, please let me know by posting a comment below, and I will add you in.