Monday, February 25, 2008

Orkut – The ‘unnecessary’ makeover??

Orkut had revolutionized the concept of ‘online communites and social networking’. They beat competition by doing what the parent company, Google does best – continuous innovation centred around the consumer needs, thereby retaining it market leader position in this rapidly evolving space. The add-on features its been rolling out have truly caught on with the audience and its popularity has been sky-rocketing, inspite of the on-and-off negative publicity it has been receiving.

However, of late Orkut has brought about some drastic changes in its services - such as locking one’s scrapbook, photos, videos etc in a bid to protect one’s privacy. However well intentioned and convenient this feature might seem to be, it tends to drive users against the basic ‘community’ principle. A series of measures such as these might make Orkut just a convenient extension of its popular Gmail. It remains to be seen on whether this move turns out to be yet another trend-setter in the community space or if this would prove to be the undoing of Orkut’s standing in this area.

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