The news coming in from some popular publications confirm that social networking sites like orkut, facebook, hi5 are on their way to be banned in India due to security concerns. Orkut had been in the limelight most of the time for the bad reasons and the questions were raised every now an then debating if orkut was worth the gamble in India.


» Tech2 Reports

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“Sites such as Orkut and Facebook allow for heavily encrypted exchanges of information”, a highly placed source at the MHA told Tech2.com.

The government has asked all Indian social networking sites such as BigAdda.com, Yaari.com and Minglebox.com to maintain records of all user activity including “change of status, profile picture, favorite sitcoms etc.” in keeping with the law of the land.

This is a much scarier matter for guys like me who have websites dedicated to orkut. Is it the end? What do you think? Sacrificing Entertainment Websites for the Security of a Nation..A Fair Deal?

» Credits

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Tech2 for making (and confirming) the news public.

Is this the biggest bug ever? Just navigate to https://orkut.com in your browser and get ready for a surprise.

The Page Opens Google Search. This is a rare (forgotten?) page by Google. Not even a single link works. Earlier, i used this address as a proxy to access orkut. Now it’s an abandoned page with a search option and no link working.

» Links

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https://www.orkut.com

Jesse Stay is a social media guru. He is the co-author of I’m on Facebook–Now What???: How to Get Personal, Business, and Professional Value from Facebook with Jason Alba. This book helps individuals and business owners better manage their lives through Facebook. I asked him to provide ten Facebook power tips:

1. You can syndicate your blog. Through Facebook Notes, you can import one RSS-syndicated site, and items fed via RSS will appear on Facebook, to all your friends via the News Feed. This can also be done for each Facebook Page you create, in the same manner as your regular Facebook account. For information, see my blog post on the subject.
2. You can post images and set your status via your cell phone. Just add the “Mobile” app, and soon you will be able to add photos you take with your cell phone’s camera, by simply sending it to mobile@facebook.com and registering your phone with Facebook. You can also receive and send statuses directly to Facebook via SMS. SMS features are supported by almost all carriers but T-Mobile, and even with T-Mobile you can still send photos and check Facebook through your cell phone’s web browser.
3. You can post “Polls,” or “Surveys” to different demographics. Click on the “Business” link in the footer of your Facebook account, then click on “Facebook Polls,” and you’ll soon have access to create your own polls, of which you can target towards certain age groups, interests, and other demographics, and track the results. You can even set a budget of how much you want to spend for the entire Poll. Polls are $.25 a response. You can also create a Poll by clicking on this link.
4. You can track available demographics directly in Facebook. Similar to Polls, you can use Facebook Insights to find out how many people are within a certain demographic on Facebook. To get there, click on “Business” in the footer, then “Facebook Insights.” Click the “Get Started” button, and then act as though you are creating a Page or trying to advertise another link. Under the audience tab, you can click around on the various form options, and it will tell you how many people are within that demographic.
5. You can track your friends’ statuses via RSS. On your main page after you login to Facebook, click on “see all” next to “Status Updates.” On the right-hand side you’ll notice a “Subscribe” link - click on that to add your friends’ status updates to your RSS Reader and keep in touch with everything they are doing, very similar to Twitter!
6. You can post Flash and HTML directly in your brand’s Facebook Page. Facebook Pages (that’s with a capital “P”) are a way you can create a “Profile” for your business. Facebook gives a few more options for Facebook Pages however, one of those being you can add Flash and HTML direct to a Page, similar to the way you would do for a MySpace Page. This Flash or HTML can replace the main image on your Page, giving you one more venue to broadcast your brand to your Fans. You can learn more details about this in my post here.
7. The largest demographic on Facebook is the 25 and older group. Believe it or not, per Facebook’s own statistics, the fastest growing demographic on Facebook is those ages twenty-five and older. Facebook is quickly becoming not just place for friends to meet friends, but for business users, baby-boomers, and even the elderly like Guy!
8. Through a Facebook Page, you can track the traffic of a brand’s Profile. Once you create a Facebook Page, be sure to visit your Page Manager on the left after logging into Facebook. There, you can track valuable statistics about your Page: number of visits, Male-to-Female ratio, Page Views, and more. If you aren’t getting what you want out of your Facebook Profile you may want to consider creating a Facebook Page.
9. You can tag anyone in a posted note, video, or photo. Often the first instinct on videos, photos, and especially notes in Facebook is to tag only the people in the subject uploaded. There is nothing I am aware of in Facebook’s Terms of Service stating it is illegal to tag people that aren’t in the photo, video, or note. I personally like to use this for my blog posts, tagging those of my friends I would like to get attention from. See how to do this here.
10. Give others an easy-to-remember link to your Facebook Profile. Through SocialToo.com! - by registering at SocialToo.com and following the instructions to link it to Facebook, you can have yourusername.socialtoo.com automatically redirect to your Facebook Profile. This can be an excellent way to tell your friends how to find you on Facebook.

Jesse has many more tips, so keep checking here to stay at the cutting edge.

Taken From http://blog.guykawasaki.com