Google has launched a new feature (which is not a copy of it’s competitor) on their social networking website Orkut by which you can directly upload photos to your Orkut profile and albums right from Picasa – Google’s desktop based photo editing and management tool. Social networks like Orkut are the best place to put up your photos and show them to your friends and get comments on the photos. But at times, the photos we take aren’t quite ready for sharing and need some editing which involves transfering them to a computer for editing and then logging on to orkut to upload them to an album. Such a lengthy process!
But now with the help of a cool extension, you can directly upload photos to Orkut from Picasa. All you need to do is just install an orkut button on your Picasa program by downloading the free ‘Share photos on orkut’ plugin. This plugin (for Windows or Mac) makes sharing your photos with your friends as easy as clicking a button. Detailed instructions on downloading, setting up the plugin and configuring your Orkut account to be accessed by Picasa can be found on this official blog post from Google.
All this is so good and infact it really reduces the lengthy process of editing photo and then opening orkut to upload them. But wait, won’t this hamper the growth of Orkut in terms of pageviews? Definitely, earlier users had to log into their orkut accounts via a browser to upload photos, but now it is available right from a desktop client (Picasa in this case). Also, there is a possibility in the future that Orkut might make Album photos viewable right from Picasa itself and may be with the comments too. Orkut should really buck up as Facebook has already overtaken Orkut in India. Although this is a good move from users’ point of view but we feel, Orkut is killing itself to some extent… but only time will tell whether we are taking a wrong side of this story or Orkut!
I don’t agree. This is a good move for orkut, in fact having a convenient option for uploading only makes the experience better and with a desktop client like picasa, it’s gonna be an added incentive for people to upload to orkut (though there’s a facebook plugin for picasa as well)
You should be looking at the pageviews generated as a result of more photos uploaded and not small amount of pageviews spent uploading photos.
I agree with Nishant because from a users perspective it will be very easy now to upload and edit pics.
move towards killing orkut?? It is not at all making sense!!
Good that Google did this. Facebook has that plugin for uploads from Picasa desktop client since long and Orkut is following now! (Yes is a copy, if you want to label it that way).
And from a usability perspective, its actually good.
Debjit, I would like to correct your analysis. Please do not forget the fundamental tenet of business. Customer is always right and business will only be succesful if one is doing what is right for his customer. The business model has to be and must be evolved for the benefit of customer.
@all thanks for your comments. While I agree with you all Its ok to be wrong sometimes with one’s analysis. its great for us to have readers to give us insights and help us become better bloggers. Will make sure we churn out better stuff going forward. Thanks all.