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Orkut Allows Users To Publish Ads On Profile Pages - Is It Just A Rumor?
(1 votes, average: 5 out of 5)
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Yes, you read the headlines right. According to our sources, Orkut plans to monetize its pages all over again. Since the fiasco with SaferNet, back in October 2007, advertisements might start mushrooming on the pages of Orkut. But what excites me the most is the chance of allowing Orkut members to become publishers themselves and post advertisements on their personal profile pages. I know, most people don’t like advertisements on their computer monitor. But think about the huge scope of opportunities this idea might open up for publishers.
Today, people are crazy about social networking sites like Orkut and I myself have seen people competing against each other on highest number of scraps, “testimonials” and “friends”. There are profile pages on Facebook that became hugely popular and were later converted in fan pages. Now, here is a huge amount of traffic I am talking about. Say, Meg Ryan creates a profile on a SNS (Social Networking Site). Isn’t her profile bound to get a large number of visitors and friend requests? We shall all agree that this huge influx of traffic is all because of Meg’s fame. In this scenario, isn’t it appropriate that it should be Ms. Ryan who gets the earnings on her page and not the concerned SNS?
Google created AdSense to allow Bloggers and other web publishers to put up advertisements on their personal pages and also earn a few bucks in the process. How many of the internet users, especially in India, has a blog or is a publisher himself? This number increases by at least 5 folds once Orkut opens up the gates and enables the users the power of publishing. Moreover, not everyone is fond of advertisements. So, in a way, profile owners and community moderators get the free hand on whether or not the advertisements should be displayed on their pages and also what kind of advertisements shall be desirable.
Now, all you shall need to do is “make friends” and “be popular” to earn big bucks!
Update :
It seems we got the perfect news. As evident from the screenshot above, Orkut has definitely come up with advertisements again. But, it seems, they are still testing out the feature as the advertisements aren’t visible on every page and neither every time you visit the same page where you might have checked it before. However, whether Orkut allows users to turn ad publishers themselves and whether Orkut allows users the freedom of checking off advertisements from their profile pages is yet to be seen.
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Its Sunday (rainy) afternoon and cant think of gelling up with friends for a hot cuppa of coffee thanks to the sad state of Mumbai roads, I decide to catch up with friends on Orkut. The first thing I see after i am logged in is the Naukri advertisement in the bottom right hand conner.
Yes Shayon it looks like Orkut is in the testing stage, but the interesting fact is that the ad which was shown to me was directly targeted to me. By this I mean, just a day before I had updated my profile and changed my professional status and next time i logged on the Naukri ad pops up on my home page! This can just be a co-incidence but more than that I feel what we are seeing here is ‘Behavioral Targeting’. If thats the case than i don’t mind Orkut putting up ads and I am sure others might not mind it either.
Another interesting fact is Orkut had first tried to put up ads in Brazil last year. But it went bust when a Brazilian nonprofit group, lodged a complaint with the Brazilian advertising body alleging that some of the pages in Orkut carry child pornography and other illegal content.
http://mashable.com/2007/10/03/orkut-ads/
Orkut has already been in trouble in India, we can only hope putting up ads doesn’t call for more trouble. As they say time will only tell
@ Ruchi…
The advertisements better be content specific or else they shall never work. However, I am not too sure if such is the case, at least now. Neither am I sure if Google has at all indexed the Orkut pages & unless they have indexed the pages, will it be possible for them to target ads? Moreover, Orkut profiles are private. One needs to be a member to be able to view others’ profiles. I just can’t understand why profile pages are not being turned public, like Facebook, LinkedIn and MySpace.
Moreover, if you check out the advertisement Google put up on my profile page, it’s about DJs for parties. I doubt I have any content on my page to get such an ad over here. Moreover, this screenshot was taken off my home page (dashboard) and not off my profile page. I still need to check up if such ads are visible even in the communitites.
there is a problem in youe heading though i wont get into it……….as far as orkut paying users is concerned google would never do that sort of thing cos imagine than there would be millions of people for whom google would have to keep records of…….and google’s policy has always been to reward publishers who has made content this sort of things is impossible and google would put there own ads rather than to pay people cos they also have to earn money in this business …….the era of paying users is started by cheap companies …..though bigger companies would never get into it….btw nice catchy headline …………….
@ Raghav…
I’m confused! first u say that there’s a problem with my heading…and then you call it “nice catchy”. What exactly do you wanna mean?
Secondly, this is the era of free sharing and services. Ideally, every user should be given the option of opting out of having ads on their own profile pages. Secondly, because such a choice is given, Google should pay the users who decide to put them up so that Orkuteers feel the impetus of allowing advertisements on their pages.
Now, a reality check. Google also owns Blogger. So, if you think Google has the right of monetizing Orkut pages, then it should also reserve the right of monetizing Blogger pages, isn’t it? In that case, why doesn’t it just go ahead and do it? Why does it allow blog publishers the choice and also pay them up for the clicks?
The idea is simple, Raghav…more the pageviews, more the rewards…both for the user and for Google too. If you ask an employee that doing great work is his job and pay another extra for doing a good job, it is always going to be the other employee giving you better performance. Rather than using the stick to judge performancesm just use the carrot.
when i said a problem in heading that means that from that heading one get the idea that the service of paying users has alredy started…..but it hasn’t till now so u shud have written google may allow……now as far as particularly google paying to profile owners is concerned they would never do why cos if they pay on orkut then soon they have to pay users on gmail…too……..so do you think a company like google would this suicidal thing…….and as far as putting adsense is concerned google searches a site b4 granting adsense id…..so fraudlent clicks and information mangaement is another detterent…………((((the most important thing that orkut do not allow below 18 people and majority of users are childrens or teenagers so just imagine if they have to ask for payment by submitting there parents tax information…..wouldnt that be a fraud activity cos a user is a child but parent gets the payment which advertiser would put ad there ……….and what they would put a bournvita advertisement) ……..google never stopped ads on orkut though they did stop ads on profile ….if u want to see those ads go to any profile and click any word in their profile like fashion etc…..you wud be getting results for fashion on orkut and at the right side would be advertisements….this is just like adsense for search.
I do not agree with your above comments….
And here is the reason why …
Google is having the similar service for blogger,however, after moving from CPM to CPC, the publishers have never got money from displaying ads on their blogs.
The only people who would be benefiting from that would be the advertisers and not the publishers. They get to display free ads on user’s profile paying peanuts for those who click thru.
This system of online advertisement is for the benefit of the advertisers only and not for the publishers.
Secondly, your subject, seems like it was deliberately given to attract readers.
This is very old. They have been displaying (testing?) ads since Jan ‘08
While browsing some community on orkut I saw an ad which was about “Help orkut in making it a better place and get paid for it”. Google is paying people up to $65 for an hour you spent (in person or on telephone) with google researcher on providing feedback and your experience on orkut. Unfortunately, I lost that link and couldn’t found it again. I even did a lot of google search for this but no results.[:(]
Here is the link of google FAQ for that http://www.google.com/forms/user_faq.html