The mission statement of the Google data liberation front reads as follows:
“Users should be able to control the data they store in any of Google’s products. Our team’s goal is to make it easier to move data in and out.”
However it seems that all this was nothing in the prospect of losing consumers. Sometime back ago face book launched their export tool, which enabled users of Orkut to export their contact information including their email ids to facebook, however as soon as this happened, the feature developed a bug, which according to Goggle happened as they were upgrading the feature to offer enhanced security .
When the feature came back, users were in for a surprise, the feature had everything but the email ids, i.e. You could export a plethora of information but not the email ids, hence making the tool completely useless.
The official stand of Google on this is -
“Mass exportation of email is not standard on most social networks — when a user friends someone they don’t then expect that person to be easily able to send that contact information to a third party along with hundreds of other addresses with just one click. In order to protect user privacy, we now exclude email addresses from the CSV export file… “
The concerns of Google are right on this one as the growth pattern of a social networking site is exponential and not linear, i.e. even if we compare the stats that
Orkut had 4 million page views last month & Facebook had 5 million page views last month.
The information is actually useless, since it is the multiplier which we are concerned with
FB 2009 = FB 2008 x 3.28
O 2009 = O 2008 x 1.35
So, Facebook definitely is going to take the lead, unless something happens extraordinary and knocks it off.
However there is more bad news for Orkut, you can now easily integrate your Orkut account with your Facebook profile courtesy a new Orkut app for Facebook that’s not developed by Google but an Amazon employee
The application does more than just exporting contacts, it lets a facebook user access his/her Orkut account via Facebook, and do everything one could normally do with your Orkut account.
The application is already having more than 2000 users, and looks on to becoming a huge hit, guess it is time Google did something otherwise it is bye-bye Orkut.
Thanx for the valuable information. I love orkut. But my friends are spending more time on face book. So Iv got no choice but to move. Now I will have to search for my friends in manual way…. to bad… keep posting. Will be visiting back soon.
Hi Raje
Where did you get this data on pageviews on fropper and orkut . Looks far less at 5 mn and 4mn resp.
Especially when in India they claim to have around 15 mn and 7 mn users respectively .
Hi Hardi ,
Go to com score ,you would have to register first , with regards to the number of users as claimed by facebook and orkut, i would not be able to comment as i am aware detailed figures are apparently not released .
However if you go to most of the websites which give you this kind of analysis like Alexa and cube stats you would get a fair idea of my analysis , let me know if you need any other info , hope this helped .
Raje
Howver
Hi r4 ds,
Glad to be of help , do check out the tool i have mentioned in the
fag end of my article , you might find it useful , considering need for facebook and orkut .
Raje
Percent of global pageviews on facebook.com: 4.17
so 5 mn – seems far less . Is it possible for you to send a snapshot of reference data .
Thx
Hi Hardy ,
Thanks for pointing out the error: Here is what the line should have read
“orkut has added roughly 4M monthly page views over the last year, whereas Facebook has added 5M over the same period.”
I missed the crucial word “added”
My apologies for the same .