Alright. We never promoted our page (actually never had one!) on MyBlogLog/SU/Orkut etc, with a strong belief that the best communities are the ones which are loosely tied and come together for a common cause.

To me, community isn’t about follower/following, but its all about creating engagement based on topics of common interests (no point in starting a group to discuss a broader topic like ‘what can we do to promote entrepreneurship in India’. Sorry, not for me!).

But then..Given the interaction/insight that our reader-friends share, I was forced to create some of our social media footprints (actually a few of you kept suggesting us to have a Facebook page, for a better mode of communication). And most importantly, collecting insights from the community is my goal behind creating these social media presence (we don’t want to create another walled-garden socionet, so lets use the existing ones).

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Questions being asked in the Common Admission Test (CAT) are all over the Internet, making a mockery of the "nondisclosure clause" imposed on those writing the online exams by Prometric and IIMs. In fact, the online CAT has been an utter mess and students are demanding authorities to scrap it and restore the conventional paper-based test conducted without any goof-ups for the past 33 years. CAT aspirants who studied hard are resentful at the large-sale repetition of questions which have been openly shared on social networking sites such as Orkut.

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Those unhappy with the marred Common Admission Test (CAT) are venting their ire on social networking sites Facebook and Orkut. The IIMs and the American firm Prometric, which is conducting the online test, have come in for intense criticism. "Legal cases can be filed against IIM for harassing students in such a way. Many students came to give exams from remote areas.

The institute had enough time to prepare itself for such an emergency. This is playing with the life of several students," said one student on Facebook.The IIMs' "careless attitude" will take a toll on careers. "I am a student at Mumbai University and will have to forgo the CAT exam this year... My final year papers are going to start and I have to concentrate on them also. How I will manage both these exams at the same time," asked a student. Students are also upset at the way IIMs did not notify them of the rescheduled exam.

"My test was originally scheduled for 28th, but we were told at the test centre that the test would be rescheduled. However, I have not received any SMS or mail regarding the cancellation or rescheduling of the test. When I logged into my account..., it told me 'your appointment is currently scheduled for 30 Nov, 2009 at 15:30'.

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With social networking sites increasingly being converged on the mobile medium, it is of high interest to track the social networking segment in India. ViziSense, a new analytical tool from Komli Media addresses this need and highlights that Facebook is rapidly becoming popular within the Indian audience.

Facebook is seen growing at 19% and matching it is Flickr which again is growing at 21% on a monthly basis. In terms of unique visitors, Orkut still rules the turf with 15.5 million unique visitors to the site as on October 2009.

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Orkut introduced a new redesigned homepage at the end of October. The new Orkut as its users like to call it is currently invite only meaning that only those Orkut users who received an invitation to join might do so. Everyone else is left with the old Orkut page for now unless they can find a way to get an invite for the new Orkut page. Fortunately for them there is a very simply and straightforward way of receiving an invitiation for the new version of Orkut.

All they need to do is to join the new Orkut community at Orkut which will hand out an invitation to the redesigned Orkut interface to the user after the joining. The new Orkut community page can be accessed here. Just log into Orkut first and click on the join link in the left sidebar afterwards to join the Orkut community.

Some Orkut users might be wondering if the redesign is worth out trying right now, here are the main changes in comparison to the old Orkut design: Fewer pages, faster browsing: We’ve concentrated orkut’s principal actions onto your homepage, making it a one-stop-shop for nearly everything that you’d like to do. Now you can chat, watch videos, and browse and search within your full friends and communities lists without ever having to open a new page.

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The Detection of Crime Branch (DCB), Ahmedabad, has arrested a senior executive in human resource department of a city-based marketing company for allegedly posting fake profile of his female colleague and inviting readers for physical relationships with her.

The accused posted contact details of the woman on Orkut, which proved to be nothing less than a mental torture for her and her husband.Gaurav Joshi, the accused, was fired from his job for allegedly clicking photographs of his female colleague Meena (name changed). The cyber crime cell of the DCB arrested Joshi from Ankleshwar on Thursday evening.

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Ethical hacker Ankit Fadia, who was in the city on Friday, spoke about the vulnerability of Facebook, Orkut and Twitter users to fall prey to viruses on the social networking sites, and the urgent need for enhanced security for government websites.

The young tech-wizard warned that wall-posts on your Facebook account such as ‘Microsoft is paying you for forwarding this e-mail’, ‘Check out this video’ and forwards from a well-known friend’s ID with ‘lol’ in the subject were actually viruses.

Fadia said the most vulnerable were those with only basic know-how in operating the sites. “Financial fraud is becoming an everyday matter now, especially in tier-2 and tier-3 cities where the user in business circles is an average middleaged Indian who doesn’t know much about networking beyond the basics.

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Sony PlayStation has launched its second Indian game Desi Adda: The Games of India. The game can be played on PS2 and PSP is available in four languages: English, Hindi, Punjabi and Tamil. GameShastra, an Indian game studio, took 16 months to develop this game for Sony. The game is available at Rs. 499 for PS2 and at Rs. 999 for PSP. (More on Livemint)

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This weeks show of the playcast comes in three segments. In the first part of the show we listen to a cringe inducing video introducing the “new” Orkut and speak to Google about the social networking sites redesign.

Orkut has become India’s OTHER social network, the one that’s not been in the news for a while now. It’s India’s most populous social networking site, home to 13 million accounts and double the number of communities and groups.

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London - To keep pace with its rivals and to provide "seamless experience to users," internet giant Google Inc. has revamped its social networking site Orkut, giving it a new look and greater personalisation options.

The new Orkut dons a user-friendly interface and offers features such as posting video testimonials, changing the colours of the content boxes, the ability to discover friends automatically, video chat integrated with Google Talk, ability to upload photos in bulk, and add and view photos and videos in-line.

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