ORKUT – A DEEP THOUGHT

Orkut – A social networking website does not require any kind of introduction. But a brief introduction is kind of necessary in such a post.
Orkut was launched on January 22,2004 by the search company Google, the brainchild of Orkut Büyükkökten, a Turkish software engineer, who developed it as an independent project while working at Google. Google allows its workers 20% of free time in which they can work in their field of interest. And anything developed in this time is a property of Google. Orkut was a result of Büyükkökten’s work in this free time. You can visit his orkut profile by clicking here on this link ->
Orkut Büykkökten's Profile

At the time this post was created orkut had 61,623,260 users. Orkut is the eighth most visited site throughout the world. It is also the second most visited site in India . Orkut has highest number of users from Brazil followed by US and India is at third place. India is with 8.90% share. It has become one of the greatest time pass for the people like us in India. Most of the time you can find us logged on to orkut and sending s‘craps’ like “Hi Dude , Whats up ?” , or just “sssup ??” and one of our favourite is “Aur batao” ….. some time I feel that orkut must include some shortcuts for such scraps ….. this feature will save a lot of time for us.
Well this is just a brief info. I don’t think there is any need of telling you more about the features and benefits of orkut because you would already know that. This post is actually meant to take your attention to something you might have never given a thought before. It was Thrusday 31st May , Ankur and Puneet came home. We called Priyank to come home but he couldn’t due to some unavoidable reasons so we people thought to just drop by his house to say a “hi” . Well it was almost 10 at night. We met Priyank. Where there is Priyank there has to be discussions. So just like that we started talking about google and then came to orkut. The four of us were discussing that why does google need orkut !!!
(Yes we discuss such things even at odd hours like 2200)


So that is the question….. Why does Google need Orkut ??
I am sure you would have your profile on orkut and would be well aware of all its features. You would never see any major advertisements on orkut. Infact you would not see much source of income on orkut. So the question is why is google giving terabytes of storage space to orkut on its servers and has employed thousands of people just to ensure proper working of orkut and also keeps on introducing new features on this website. I gave a thought to this question, also dived into the world of cyber space to get the answer and then came to a conclusion. Google is the greatest search engine in this world. If you were to believe Chetan Bhagat (Author of Five Point Someone and One Night @ the Call Centre) , nothing is perfect in this world other than Google. Some “rivals” of Google are Yahoo,MSN etc. Now you would say that Google is better than these search engines. It is ofcourse !! That is because of the search technique which it uses in its search which is different from that used by its rivals ( Will tell you in detail about it in another post). But Google is lagging behind Yahoo and MSN and others in one field, which is the knowledge about its users !!! Google doesn’t know anything about its users because there is no registration process required to search using Google whereas services like Yahoo and MSN has the registration process while we use these sites so these sites have a user database. So in order to know about their users, instead of convincing them to register they choose a social networking website “orkut”. Now this website contains tons of data about you (Now they even know whether you are going around with someone or not by your status ;-) ). So Google has the user database now. Moreover just imagine, if Google integrates Orkut with google.com (like they have integrated Google Talk , Youtube and Google Videos ) and starts directing your requests by “orkut.google.com”…… so now they have a “.google.com” cookie on your PC and your orkut id using both they can mine a lot of data about you. This data can be very useful for Google. Which can make them improve their search results and it can be beneficial in many other ways.

So in this way you don’t even come to know and without registering for Google.com , google has a lot of information about you , this time more than Yahoo and MSN had !! On a more philosophical note….. sometimes we just enjoy things as they come in our way but we should always remember that everything in this world comes with a REASON !!!

THE FOOL THEORY

Everyone of us have certain theories in life and we lead our lives following those theories. Even I have certain theories which have guided me whenever I felt the need of them. One such theory is the “FOOL THEORY”. Now it doesn’t mean that only fools follow this theory. And I think I must tell you about this theory and should not confuse you people.

Well our holy books like Upanishads and The Vedas do contain good knowledge. I know my surname suggests that I have the knowledge of 2 Vedas but that is not the case. It is believed that my ancestors had the knowledge of these holy books and it is through them that the knowledge is transferred to us. ( Sometimes I feel why don’t these people learn the topics like calculus , and wave optics , it would have been of great help to me ) Anyways coming back to the theory. So one of these knowledgeable books had a saying – “FIRST OF ALL YOU SHOULD NOT MEET A FOOL , IF YOU MEET A FOOL THEN YOU SHOULD NOT TALK TO HIM AND IF YOU TALK TO HIM THEN TALK AS IF YOU ARE A BIGGER FOOL THAN HIM”.

So this is the theory !! Now if you are still confused then here is an example to explain this theory to you.
If someone irritates/teases us on some particular matter ( this can be anything , linking you up with a friend of yours , usually of the opposite gender , or calling you with a name which you don’t like , doing things which you don’t like etc. ) then in these cases we usually tell these people to stop doing this but our effort goes in vain. When they know that we are irritated they irritate us even more. Then this theory is useful. If they are fools you appear to be bigger fools than them. You show them that these things don’t irritate you and that you are least affected. When they will see that you are not irritated and that they cannot succeed in their aim of irritating you then they will stop doing such stuff. Well I have tried this many times and have also succeeded quite a few times.

I have told a few people about this theory. It has also worked for them. Do let me know what do you think about this theory.

Recently I came across another such quote which I feel can be a good thing to follow in life. Will share that with you in a different post.

My entry to the world of BLOGGING !!!!

In todays world "blogs" form an intergral part of internet , this can be proved by the fact that in May 2007, blog search engine Technorati was tracking more than 71 million blogs. I like many other people still could not find the exact use or rather the benefit of making a blog. I used to think why do people will waste time visiting a blog written by a person like me when they would have the option of surfing the more interesting part of the web. But still there are more than 71 million blogs on the net at the time being.

As a saying “ We never get to know the depth of a river unless we dive into it ” (now you PCM people don’t start thinking about the techniques like sonar and others , some sayings are meant to be believed since they are said by “wise men” and this one should be believed since it is written on the blog of a “wiser” individual ;-) ) . So this saying made me dive into the world of BLOGGING in order to understand it in a better way.

Apart from this my entry into the BLOG world was also because I was getting bored sitting at home doing nothing when all my exams are over and the councellings have not yet started. Orkut Buyukkokten the founder of orkut, creating a blog of orkut also inspired me to make one for myself.

Now you people have to make sure that you offer your comments to my posts and also give your feedback on this blog regularly.