Google recently invited three Indian superusers ( Rakesh, Prashant and Gaurav) of its social networking site Orkut to visit its Bangalore office and meet the Orkut team and share their feedback. Product Managers, Engineers, Operations staff, user experience researchers and HR reps joined to talk with them.

According to Goggle, the three Orkuteers gave feedback on some soon-to-be-launched features, and also shared some common issues/pain points that the team can improve upon.

Following the meeting, one of the three Orkut superusers from India said,  “The invitation was really surprising for me…That day became the historic landmark for me. I will never ever forget that day that I spent there with Google. Google people are so careful about users and that day they cared a lot of me and my mates. I feel lucky that I’m a superuser. This was the first time for me that when anyone was asking question, I was listening with my full concentration.” [Source: Orkut Blog]

After Facebook & Twitter it’s now Orkut with it’s latest addition of getting to know “what are your friends doing?”

Now you can tell your friends what you are doing or how you’re feeling right this minute by changing your status message on your profile and letting it show up in your friends’ homepages.

Ever since Orkut added the Feed - updates from my friends on orkut homepage a lot of people have been requesting of this new feature so that they could stay informed on the latest developments from their friends.

It’s a fun feature to use, more at [Source: Orkut Blog]

Typeracing is the new buzz word inside Orkut these days. Typeracer is a quirky and a crazy application reminiscent of typewriter days of yore. Race with just about anyone who’s got the application installed and see the race results instantly. Throw a challenge; take up a challenge, speed racing with words is the ‘in thing’ these days.

The typerace gives you four different options to choose from i.e either you jump onto the racing arena directly or practice at your own pace. And yes, you can throw or take up a challenge with friends too. The interface is quite simple with no jazz attached, you get a sample text which you need to type race with your competitors, every comma, full stop, punctuation is well looked for as you pound the keyboard. Keep a lookout for the warning sign which yells out ‘Fix typo’ every time you are tempted to type ‘wht’ for ‘What’ else you lose out on points (wpm) or the speed. The Typeracing application does not count the actual number of words typed, it counts the total number of characters in the texts, using the convention of 5 characters per word.

The application can be perked up with audio files where one can typerace as the narration of either a song or a passage goes on. It can also be made funnier with the user speed typing the text in a foreign language.

Bottom line of this whacky application is that it is a well made and extremely addictive application to have in your profile.

Slapster, the game that is topping the Orkut application directory from the past couple of days grabbed my attention. The game enables users to “virtually slap” their friends and have fun. The motive for the slap also can be mentioned during the whole process which adds an extra bit of spice when shown up in the news feeds.

Slapster, is one of the most famous games by Games2Win. The flash based game allows you to use your friends face along with the dummy body to be slapped by your hand. Below is a screenshot:-

The idea is to click and drag your mouse with force across the game area to land a tight slap. The faster you move the harder you slap.Also Slapster delivers personalized experience to Orkut members. Users can personalize it by adding a male or female avtar for a friend’s profile picture.

Slapster, seems to be getting the same viral element that Poke has on Facebook. The application also has levels, an amateur Slapper starts with the rank of ‘Second Leiutenant’ and climbs up the Corporal Ladder as top ranked ‘General’.

A nice application to have on your profile. The profile part also shows which of your friends have been slapped and who has slapped you along with your fastest slap.

Well, the application could achieve more if there were other props to hit with like Duster, Husk,Chain, Belt, etc. Using different props with different strategies could result in varied score thus keep users guessing and hence more fun and addiction.

Zoomtra.com is an online travel marketplace that enables travel sellers (airlines, hotels, tour providers and others) to promote their deals with real time pricing to interested buyers has launched a Facebook Application focused on Travel in India, the first of its kind in the country. This application named, “India Dekha” was conceptualised and has been launched with the objective of analysing and understanding social networking in the travel space.

On “India Dekha”, Facebook users can create a personalised travel map by marking places and writing about past travel experience and places they aspire to go. Furthermore, one can share and compare the map with his ‘friend network’ on Facebook.

InsideSocialWeb Review:

The best thing which I liked about the application was ability to add review for individual restaurants,night spots and shopping places from the city. The application does take its references from similar apps made for other countries. The application uses google maps widely and it could do a lot if the user base increases to a good extent.

The app would be much better if the user would get the choice of plotting destinations directly on the map. App could have used the recent datastore API for facebook to get the star ratings..

The main features
- hometown
-has been to
-wants to go
don’t look good if added in large amounts (for a more frequent travel person the destinations are quite large) and it looks quite chaotic then…. perhaps a more better representation would have been great.

Although you could get bored with the application after a certain point of time, they company might have to do much to keep the user engagement level of the app. I see zoomtra doing their best by having different business strategies in place like the one currently on the app which says “Invite your friends to use India Dekha and you can win upto 3 Gift Vouchers. Start inviting now!”

All in all a very good effort and most importantly a complete application and definitely one which I would like to have on my profile…I might be wrong on stating they are first facebook application but its the first one i stumbled upon facebook.

InsideSocialWeb Rating:

User Interface:- 3/5
Concept/Idea:- 3/5
User Engagement:- 3/5
Overall Rating: 3/5