Inside//Out: Google Orkut (beta)
Wednesday, September 26, 2007
Following up on yesterday's Yahoo Mash video, here is a look at Google's Orkut social network. There are a lot of similarities between the two search giants as they try to find their place in the social media universe.
Orkut is a little more refined and has more community hooks to join groups, etc. It lacks, however, the integration with third party applications like Facebook, MySpace and even Mash. The functionality in Orkut is pretty basic and requires some more advanced editing to really personalize the content. Orkut also suffers from a bit of identity confusion and sits at the "pro-social" (part social, part professional) divide.
Check out Google's Orkut:
[Feed readers please click through to the post for the video.]
Key takeaways:
- As with Mash, enable people to do cool stuff and get out of their way!
- Find out where your target audience is and focus there (Facebook, MySpace, Mash, etc.) - don't get sucked in to the hype of one network over another
- If you're looking to build on the platform, you will need to wait until Google opens this up
- Future hooks into outside content sources could make or break Orkut as network consolidation starts setting in
- Expect Google to make some moves around this network to bring its content into one place and allow users to even further customize their branded search experience
Related Videos:
- First//Look: Yahoo Mash (beta)
- Inside//Out: Facebook
- Inside//Out: MySpace
- Inside//Out: Twitter
- Inside//Out: LinkedIn
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