Orkut yesterday announced the beta launch of the orkut mobile application, a downloadable app for Java-enabled phones (including popular phones like the Nokia N95, Nokia 6300, and Sony Ericsson W580i). Orkut is one of the top visited sites via mobile as per the state of the mobile web report that Opera releases every quarter.
So its no surprise that orkut saw the need to further compound this activity via mobile by launching downloadable app.
On can install the app by pointing ones mobile browser to m.google.com/orkut.
The app allows you to do the following
* Upload photos to orkut on-the-go, directly from your phone.
* View scraps, friends’ updates, and photo albums while you’re offline.
* Share your orkut albums with all of your friends whether they use orkut or not (via SMS).
* Easily call or SMS your orkut friends and address book contacts from within the app.
* Get automatic updates when your friends change their contact information or orkut profiles.
Orkut has always been a little lazy (either deliberately or otherwise) in launching both features and enhancements that its competitor facebook has done ages back. It went mobile in phases and after the mobile version of the site it launched scraps on mobile via sms and iphone compatible mobile sites as well. Most of these features were released way later than facebook.
One needs to understand that orkut started seeing tremendous traction in 2005-06 and shot to mainstream popularity with lawsuits and regular mainstream media coverage in India by 2007 and became India’s youth icon. Over the last two years the late adopters of the internet (the kinds that still use rediffmail and not gmail) have become a sizeable mass on orkut. This audience is very different to the early adopter segment that facebook caters too. Hence the delay in launching features vis a vis a facebook. We have always been upbeat on the future of social networking being mobile and being location based and a launch of an app is the step in the right direction as far as we are concerned. Over time we believe that the mobile app would over take the website in terms of functionality with regards to location based social networking. In India mobile social networking has been steadily rising and there are players would are completely focussed on this niche though its difficult to imagine how a standalone mobile social network would scale without a web presence.
