'We believe in providing useful and relevant information'

The Aurangabad court in India has recently issued a notice to Orkut.com on

the issue of India-hate community-one of the social network forums on the

site-spreading hatred against India. What is your plan of action now? 



Since case is sub-judice, we cannot provide any comment on the proceedings
of the case.

Does Orkut take any action when users report abuse against any

person or community?



Orkut has in place a comprehensive terms of service on www.orkut.com/terms.aspx,
which specifically prohibit illegal activities such as child pornography and

other objectionable content, including hate speech and advocating violence. We

also have defined a set of community standards for all orkut users on

help.orkut.com/support/bin/answer.py. Whenever we learn about any violations

including inappropriate content on the website, we review and take necessary

actions including removal of the inappropriate content. We have done so in many

cases and will continue to do so. Google also has implemented numerous tools to

receive, handle and respond to complaints about inappropriate contents on Orkut.

At the same time, we place a certain amount of trust on our users as well to

notify us of violations if any. I can say this has proven to be very effective

in identifying and reporting inappropriate activities. Orkut users can report

about any abusive content to our reviewers by clicking the 'report as bogus'

button. But one thing to remember is that, just as in the offline world, there

will always be individuals or speech in online communities that certain people

will find offensive or inappropriate.

There are also tools for community owners to delete posts or

topics, ban users and delete anonymous posts. At the same time we should also

keep in mind that this product is operated from within the US and complies with

the laws of the country.

How important is the Indian social networking website market for

you?



Social networking sites are experiencing exponential growth worldwide, and
we are very happy with the response Orkut is getting in India, which originally

started as a 20% employee project. We are focused on having more and more people

getting connected through Orkut, and we believe in providing useful and relevant

information in unobtrusive ways.

What is the source of revenue for Orkut?



We do not charge anything for the services and are provided free for the
users who can simply log onto the site and sign up. However, we are always

experimenting with ways to deliver relevant information, including advertising

to our users in an unobtrusive manner. We have also recently begun a pilot test

to include orkut.com in our content network and show relevant ads targeted to

the content of community pages. This pilot test is being introduced to a very

limited percentage of Orkut users around the world and we will pay close

attention to their feedback as we continue to look for ways to improve the Orkut

experience.

Stuti Das



stutid@cybermedia.co.in