Use your domain with Orkut profile!
This is something which I’ve always wanted to do or preffered that if the social network services offered this services directly. Unfortunately, NO SOCIAL NETWORK (there are so many out there) offers such a service. What I am talking about here is that if Social Networks could offer the users to specify or link the domain name directly with their social network profile.
The reason or why it makes sense :
1. Social Network profile is more like a personal webpage : Everyone will agree that Social network profile is more like a personal webpage, where you’ve got information about you, your friends and family. You get to upload your photos, videos and with some networks you can have your own blog too. So, it makes sense if I can point my personal domain name (mayankgupta.com to my social network profile) and thus ask friends and family members to use that domain directly.
2. It is much easier to remember : Of course it is much easier to remember the profile name if it’s associated with the domain, rather than remembering those strange and long profile addresses. There are cases, when you search for friend’s family from that long list of friends, in this case you just have to put the URL of the person and you get the profile directly!
I like the benefits but what are the work around to use your domain name with various social network profiles ?
Well, I’m not the one who’s found out this trick. It’s Sankar Anand, who found out this cool trick which can redirect the profile from a webpage to your profile of social network. In case you find any other tricks, then share it with us. In case, you face any problem or have any question, feel free to share it in the comments section.
I hope that this post is read by the social network builders i.e. Myspace, Orkut, Facebook or Bebo. I think that if not all but Orkut who have recently started the blog and have been chosen as the best social network of India, should listen to this request of mine :)
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Wishlost
July 21st, 2007 at 8:45 pm #
Mayank,
It’s a brilliant idea but I see a reason why social sites don’t want anything like give out a static page. Though our profiles are our like our personal web pages, the main reason behind social networks are building communities.
Unfortunately every social network today is built for the owners profit and not to serve an individuals interest.
Social networking site, just for the users is a great idea and letting users have static description or names of their choice invites a lot of SPAM unfortunately. Squidoo is kind of a social network which lets something what you want, but it’s more of a marketplace, rather than a place to get to know someone :)
~G
Vyoma
July 21st, 2007 at 11:11 pm #
I am watching out this space. ;)
Benedict Herold
July 22nd, 2007 at 12:53 am #
Mayank, you have brought up interesting point. Yes, you’re correct if they provide that option to user it would truly be great.
Social Networking site would have provided a CNAME option so that you can forward the request from your personal domain. The only reason why they don’t want to do it may be because it will lose their brand name in the url :)
BTW, I hope some startups would use your idea… ;-) Seems you’re becoming a good idea generator :P
Bush Mackel
July 22nd, 2007 at 1:19 am #
What I try to do is just leave links back here on my social networking sites…which are dwindling now ’cause I just can’t keep up with them all!
Rishi
July 22nd, 2007 at 4:48 am #
This is a far clear thing, Orkut also won the MTV Youth Icon and now what!
Anyways, cool trick!
kanak
July 22nd, 2007 at 5:12 am #
I do agree with Wishlost .. this is a nice cool trick .. but putting our profile link openly .. might invite lots of spam ….. !!! I wish I could try this … but orkut is blocked here at UAE :(
Sankaranand
July 22nd, 2007 at 6:21 am #
thanks for posting my trick, i don’t care about other social sites but orkut should atleast provide this feature of short url since most of the indians use orkut especially for chatting up and finding their lost friend.
Already myspace and hi5 have the option of short url for their profile link like yourname.hi5.com or myspace.com/yourname but when you compare this urls with orkut its like long list of numbers which is very hard to share or remember.
Madhur Kapoor
July 22nd, 2007 at 7:02 am #
Thats a nice tip . There are a lot of other things which i would love to see in Orkut .
Ashish Mohta
July 22nd, 2007 at 7:55 am #
I would say iy depnds how a social networking site is being used. These days I had seen lot of orkut profiles which are nothing but a spam. You get lot of spammy messages which are actually not sent by the users and there is no moderation feature. So if somebody spams you like hell and somebody else checking your profile sees it, might conclude your profile to be spammy. I guess its best to stick profile to your own blog which has more impact
Wishlost
July 22nd, 2007 at 9:12 am #
My choice of best Social Networking Site goes to Myspace. But, it’s the marketers who seem to make use of all the band width and spread the wrong name.
Go to Orkut, you’ll find thousands of fake profiles with links back to almost “illegal” sites.
And since the network is huge, manual intervention and inspection seems impossible. They have a “report” button, but again, this can be misused.
All in all, it’s the truth of life that the ‘bad’ exists where the ‘good’ is, and there is always something ‘good’ around ‘bad’ :P …
~G
reviewsaurus
July 22nd, 2007 at 9:25 am #
I’m glad that my idea is actually creating some good conversation. I’ve gone through each and every comment and here’s what I think about the questions or suggestions or opinions shared in the comments :
Well, Most of the people are actually concerned with spam now don’t you think that if I link my domain name to my profile (if at all Social networks start this service) then the chances are that the profile is legitimate one. You’ll be able to trust that profile more than any other profile.
So, I think that domain linking will rather act as a spam buster in social networks.
Every one will prefer their own network to have such a service, I love Orkut and use it only because, it has got all of my friends and they don’t prefer to shift from Orkut to some other network, however Orkut needs hell lot of features and improvement.
Will
July 22nd, 2007 at 6:09 pm #
Hey, I saw you mention on QUick online tips that you had invites for pownce and to just comment here to get one. So, can you hook a brother up?
Thanks!
Will
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July 22nd, 2007 at 11:48 pm #
[...] Use Your Domain with Orkut Profiles [...]
kuanhoong
July 23rd, 2007 at 7:23 am #
I signed up with Orkut a long time ago, but I find it is boring.. Hmm maybe I will give it a try this time.