Orkut finally wakes up. But is it too little too late?
Labels: Future, technology Author: Sushant Sreeram
One thing (probably the most important thing) that makes Facebook so addictive is the various third-party applications developed on the API (Application Programming Interface) platform that create content for connecting with friends in a network. Think about the time you added the 'Compare People' app and compared your friends inadvertently sending them an update on it. This gets them to check their rankings and compare their friends and so on. Brilliant strategy from the point of view of building user loyalty and growing average time spent.
Facebook's been a pioneer in the third-party apps within social-networking space. This moves ahead of Web 2.0 defined as "The stage of Internet evolution that allowed users to create information, disseminate it and collaborate with other users". What this basically translates to is blogs, social profiles, etc where users themselves create the content and network with others within the community creating a whole universe of user-generation.
While Web 2.0 has created icons such as Orkut, Blogger, Wiki, etc., the inherent constraint in this model has been that the provider of the platform for user-interaction has to develop all the widgets, applications, and other functionalities that users might want. This requires the platform provider to a) foresee what functionalities might be userful, and b) constantly keep working on developing them.
Then there is Web 3.0 being described as "creation of high-quality content through trusted individuals/sources using the Web 2.0 platform". Example: Consider Wikipedia, a Web 1.5/2.0 construct. Users upload information onto the platform provided and this information is referenced by others. But what happens when incorrect/misleading information is put up? Yeah, they get flagged on Wikipedia currently but that's a round-about way of creating quality content. Instead of first allowing all information and then ranking them on authenticity, etc; why not do the latter first? How would this work on Wikipedia? Trusted users/sources would first authenticate information and then its published in its final form. But isn't this going back to Web 1.0 with the 'information police' coming in? No. These 'trusted users/sources' will be members of the community themselves.
Another example: Semantic search. Think about this. For us humans, the combination of the keywords 'cat' and 'dog' could, amongst other things, imply household pets. For us humans, it's a natural (more conditioned actually) categorization but can Google make this distinction? Currently not. Another example: Consider these two sentences -"Kill him, not stop" and "Kill him not, stop". Can you make the distinction. Of course. Can Google do it? No. Semantic search is a huge area being opened up as we talk. involving developing search engine platforms that understand human communication and interpret what we are trying to say and serve up the more relevant information from the database. While Semantic Search includes a lot of XML, NLP (Natural Language Processing), RDF (language to express relationships such as between 'cat' and 'dog'), etc; Web 3.0 is going to form a substantial component of a successful Semantic Search platform.
Web 1.0 - Community with police provided by the government.
Web 2.0 - Community with no police (assuming that people will reach a state of peaceful equilibrium)
Web 3.0 - Community with respected members of the society managing the affairs of the society (kinda like a 'sarpanch')
Now, coming back to Facebook, it is what I would like to call Web 2.5. This is because while Web 2.0 allowed creation and dissemination of information within a construct provided (which was more often than not inflexible), Facebook has gone ahead and made the construct of interaction itself Web 2.0. It has given away its authority (to a large extent) on how the construct should be, what components it should contain etc, to members themselves. Brilliant! Don't you think?
And now to the subject of the post, Orkut has finally decided to bring in apps to its members. I noticed it only a couple of days ago and a couple of things hit me right away:
a. All the apps provided (and there are not that many, around 30 compared with the hundreds on Facebook) are direct rip-offs from Blogger.
b. As a result of 'point a.', most of these apps are more the 'pimping my blog' kinda apps where you can display an emoticon of how you are feeling or add a daily horoscope to your page etc. They do not allow users to interact with each other through these apps (except some like iRead, iPoke, etc.
c. And finally, it is no comparison to the way Facebook operates simply because Orkut hasn't opened up its platform for third-party apps to be integrated within. And all long as that doesn't happen, Orkut Buyukkokten will be spending a lot of his time staring at the ceiling thinking of new apps or developing them.
While Orkut definitely had the first-mover advantage in India and did pretty well getting almost everybody in the 18-30 segment signed up (Orkut became a sort of a background-check source during recruitments, impending marriages, new dates, the works!), Facebook has proved that great innovation can always take away the first-mover advantage (the last time I checked the number of users in the 'India' network on facebook, it was 632,875. At the time of writing this, it stands at 638,224. That's about 5000 users in 3 days => 50,000 users a month. And almost all these new users would be members of Orkut. So basically, Facebook is heavily cannibalizing Orkut's India traffic and it won't be long before these 50,00 new users discover the apps on Facebook and 'come over to the dark side'!
Facebook's been a pioneer in the third-party apps within social-networking space. This moves ahead of Web 2.0 defined as "The stage of Internet evolution that allowed users to create information, disseminate it and collaborate with other users". What this basically translates to is blogs, social profiles, etc where users themselves create the content and network with others within the community creating a whole universe of user-generation.
While Web 2.0 has created icons such as Orkut, Blogger, Wiki, etc., the inherent constraint in this model has been that the provider of the platform for user-interaction has to develop all the widgets, applications, and other functionalities that users might want. This requires the platform provider to a) foresee what functionalities might be userful, and b) constantly keep working on developing them.
Then there is Web 3.0 being described as "creation of high-quality content through trusted individuals/sources using the Web 2.0 platform". Example: Consider Wikipedia, a Web 1.5/2.0 construct. Users upload information onto the platform provided and this information is referenced by others. But what happens when incorrect/misleading information is put up? Yeah, they get flagged on Wikipedia currently but that's a round-about way of creating quality content. Instead of first allowing all information and then ranking them on authenticity, etc; why not do the latter first? How would this work on Wikipedia? Trusted users/sources would first authenticate information and then its published in its final form. But isn't this going back to Web 1.0 with the 'information police' coming in? No. These 'trusted users/sources' will be members of the community themselves.
Another example: Semantic search. Think about this. For us humans, the combination of the keywords 'cat' and 'dog' could, amongst other things, imply household pets. For us humans, it's a natural (more conditioned actually) categorization but can Google make this distinction? Currently not. Another example: Consider these two sentences -"Kill him, not stop" and "Kill him not, stop". Can you make the distinction. Of course. Can Google do it? No. Semantic search is a huge area being opened up as we talk. involving developing search engine platforms that understand human communication and interpret what we are trying to say and serve up the more relevant information from the database. While Semantic Search includes a lot of XML, NLP (Natural Language Processing), RDF (language to express relationships such as between 'cat' and 'dog'), etc; Web 3.0 is going to form a substantial component of a successful Semantic Search platform.
Web 1.0 - Community with police provided by the government.
Web 2.0 - Community with no police (assuming that people will reach a state of peaceful equilibrium)
Web 3.0 - Community with respected members of the society managing the affairs of the society (kinda like a 'sarpanch')
Now, coming back to Facebook, it is what I would like to call Web 2.5. This is because while Web 2.0 allowed creation and dissemination of information within a construct provided (which was more often than not inflexible), Facebook has gone ahead and made the construct of interaction itself Web 2.0. It has given away its authority (to a large extent) on how the construct should be, what components it should contain etc, to members themselves. Brilliant! Don't you think?
And now to the subject of the post, Orkut has finally decided to bring in apps to its members. I noticed it only a couple of days ago and a couple of things hit me right away:
a. All the apps provided (and there are not that many, around 30 compared with the hundreds on Facebook) are direct rip-offs from Blogger.
b. As a result of 'point a.', most of these apps are more the 'pimping my blog' kinda apps where you can display an emoticon of how you are feeling or add a daily horoscope to your page etc. They do not allow users to interact with each other through these apps (except some like iRead, iPoke, etc.
c. And finally, it is no comparison to the way Facebook operates simply because Orkut hasn't opened up its platform for third-party apps to be integrated within. And all long as that doesn't happen, Orkut Buyukkokten will be spending a lot of his time staring at the ceiling thinking of new apps or developing them.
While Orkut definitely had the first-mover advantage in India and did pretty well getting almost everybody in the 18-30 segment signed up (Orkut became a sort of a background-check source during recruitments, impending marriages, new dates, the works!), Facebook has proved that great innovation can always take away the first-mover advantage (the last time I checked the number of users in the 'India' network on facebook, it was 632,875. At the time of writing this, it stands at 638,224. That's about 5000 users in 3 days => 50,000 users a month. And almost all these new users would be members of Orkut. So basically, Facebook is heavily cannibalizing Orkut's India traffic and it won't be long before these 50,00 new users discover the apps on Facebook and 'come over to the dark side'!
Pachi
30/7/08 1:14 PM