In the middle of Google Plus noise, Orkut has launched a new feature that shows all your current activity on the social networking service (that is, a poor cousin of Facebook activity stream).
Even though Orkut is dead, the reality is that Google cannot kill it (officially). Orkut still has a decent user base (in India/Brazil) and today, the team has launched few new features to keep the buzz going (the new features will roll out to everybody by end of this week).
1. A new page called “conversations”, which shows new scraps you get, new replies or comments to conversations you have participated on: videos you shared, scraps you’ve posted and photos you’ve commented on.
2. An indication of items you haven’t read yet. You’ll see a small box to the right of the labels “conversations”, “reminders” and “scraps”. Those will let you know that you should check those pages for updates. Once you enter the page you’ll see a small colored mark to the left of the items that you haven’t read yet. Simply opening those pages will automatically mark those items as read.[source]
In near future, I’d expect Google to enable people to import Orkut scraps (or whatever is left of the user activity) and eventually scrap the product.
The key question however is why is Google still spending development cycles in these products when the company recently announced shutting down 10 products. Why is Orkut still alive, when Google has a better product to showcase?
And as we mentioned earlier, Google+ is still miles away from being a great Social Product!
Also see: Google Ropes In Shahrukh Khan To Promote Google Plus In India [Too Early, Too Soon?]
