Google Shutting Down Orkut Social Network

Google Inc will shut down its early social-networking service, Orkut, which was launched ten years ago but has failed to put Google ahead in what has become one of the Web's most popular businesses.

Google said it will shut down Orkut, which is widely used in Brazil and India but hasn't caught on more broadly, on Sept. 30, to focus on its other social networking initiatives.

The company declined to say how many users Orkut has.

"Over the past decade, YouTube, Blogger and Google+ have taken off, with communities springing up in every corner of the world. Because the growth of these communities has outpaced Orkut's growth, we've decided to bid Orkut farewell," Google said in a post on the Orkut blog post on Monday.

Orkut was launched early in 2004, the same year that Facebook Inc, now the world's No.1 social network with 1.28 billion users, was founded.

The service's shutdown comes as Google's social networking plans remain in question. In April, Vic Gundotra, the head of Google's social networking services, left the company.

Gundotra oversaw the 2011 launch of Google+, a social networking service similar to Facebook. Gundotra said in October that 300 million users visit the Google+ web page every month.

Google has increasingly sought to position Google+ less as a social networking "stream" that competes with Facebook, and more as a means of establishing a unified "user identity" system to improve Google's various Web properties. Last year, for example, Google began requiring users of its YouTube site to sign in with their Google+ identity before posting comments about videos.

The company said it would preserve an archive of all Orkut "communities" that will be available from Sept. 30.

"If you don't want your posts or name to be included in the community archive, you can remove Orkut permanently from your Google account," Google said.

Yahoo Removing Flickr Sign-In Via Facebook and Google Accounts by June 30

If you used to access Flickr by signing-in through your Facebook or Google accounts, things are going to change for you from June 30 onwards.

Yahoo, the parent company of Flickr, has started informing users that it will remove the option to sign in with a Facebook or Google account by the end of the month. Users will only be able to sign in using a Yahoo account.

At present, users can sign-in one last time using their old Facebook or Google credentials, after which they will be prompted to create a new Yahoo account. Users can either use an existing Yahoo account, or create a new one, while keeping the same Flickr account.

"We're streamlining our sign in process. As a result, you'll need to use a Yahoo account to access your Flickr account," Yahoo noted on its help page.

The company also notes that this procedure won't affect any paid services used already, such as Flickr Pro.

Notably Yahoo had integrated these third-party logins three years ago in 2011. Back in March this year, the company had announced that it will stop letting consumers access its various online services, including photo-sharing site Flickr and Fantasy Sports, by signing-in with their Facebook or Google credentials. Notably the change has been already deployed to Fantasy Sports.

"Yahoo is continually working on improving the user experience," the company had said in a statement, noting that the new process "will allow [it] to offer the best personalized experience to everyone".

Flickr was created by a Vancouver-based company Ludicorp in February 2004, and which was acquired by Yahoo in March 2005 for an estimated $35 million. In March 2013, the website had a total of 87 million registered users and more than 3.5 million new images uploaded daily.

Google Partners With Twitter to Include Tweets in Public Disaster Alerts

Google has announced that starting Tuesday, its Public Alerts service has begun incorporating tweets from disaster-struck locations.

Now, when the company issues a public disaster alert from official sources, such as the National Weather Service, it will include relevant tweets in Google Now, Search and Maps, as well as on its Public Alerts website.

The announcement came via a Google+ post from the Google Crisis Response team. Google made the Crisis Response page to make critical information more accessible in times of disaster.

"Starting today [June 3], you can find relevant data from Twitter on a subset of Google Public Alerts. We launched Public Alerts to provide updates from official sources, such as the National Weather Service, via Google Now, Search, and Google Maps. Now, some of the more extreme Public Alerts will include Tweets to help answer important questions: are schools closing? Are neighbours evacuating? What are people seeing on the front lines of a storm?" Google noted in its post.

The idea behind this is to have the public's tweets help answer questions in emergency situations. The feature is currently for English-speaking regions and only for Google's Public Alerts product. The company is also working towards adding "new kinds of social content to other products and geographies in the future."

Once partners in 2011, both companies has had issues in past. It seems that Google is leaving things behind and using Twitter's public API.

Although Twitter declined to comment on the news, but a Google spokesperson told Wired that the tweets are sourced via Twitter's public API and not the "firehose," or real-time data stream.

Hangouts 1.3 Will Reportedly Add SMS, Giving Android Its Own iMessage Equivalent

Google is said to be prepping an update
to its Hangouts instant messaging/video
chat Android app that would allow it to
integrate with SMS, making it possible
to get all text and MMS messages right
in the same inbox. That would fulfill a
promise made a long time ago, near
when Hangouts was first announced, by
Hangouts and Chat community manager
Dori Storbeck.

The new info comes from Android Police,
which says it had heard that Google
would be building SMS integration into
Hangouts in a version releasing soon, a
report which was then corroborated by
screenshots from an anonymous tipster.
In the screenshots, Hangouts is depicted
as showing messages clearly sent “via
SMS,” as well as being able to “Send an
SMS message” in the existing compose
screen. There’s also a screenshot of the
settings where SMS can be toggled on
and off.

The update would also offer up video
sharing via Hangouts, the report claims,
but the biggest news for both Google
and for other third-party messaging
platforms would be the SMS integration.
It would consolidate one more service/
app offering into Hangouts for Google,
which has already subsumed Google Talk
and Google+ Messenger. It would be
easy to see it taking the next logical
step from there and offering VoIP
services, too, providing a complete over-
the-top service.
It would also be potentially bad news
for competitors like WhatsApp and
Facebook Messenger. FB’s messaging app
already offers SMS integration, but
Google’s Hangouts version would ship on
devices pre-installed, and could
conceivably replace the Messaging app
altogether, making it the default option
for Android users. It could also eat
away at more carrier business, as
combining the two and favoring Google
+ based messaging first would have a
similar effect to iMessage, where
carriers eventually derive less revenue
from shuttling SMS content back and
forth.
SMS has long been in the cards for
Hangouts, and hopefully it’s arriving
soon. There’s no timeline attached to
the report, apart from some speculation
it could arrive with Android KitKat, but
in all likelihood this functionality will be
generally available to Hangouts users
regardless of their OS version.