Hung Truong: The Blog!

Facebook Vs. Orkut: What Do Googlers Think?

So I was browsing the various Facebook networks that exist for things like regions, universities, and workplaces. Being a fan of Google, I checked to see how many Googlers (Google employees) are on Facebook. The count as of right now? 2,041.

Okay, fair enough. Googlers are allowed to be on social networks, right? But Google has a social network of their own, Orkut! To be fair, Orkut is very popular with Brazilians (for some reason), but it has yet to catch on in North America. But shouldn’t Orkut be popular among Googlers? It is, after all, a product that’s made by their own company.

I tried to find an “official” Google group on Orkut. Of the Googlers that I know (okay, like one), they’re either in the “Google (863)” group or the “Google (1,301)” group. Keep in mind that on Orkut, anyone can join the Google group, whereas on Facebook, you must have a valid Google email to join. To be nice, let’s just call the one with 1,301 members the “official” Googler group.

This means that Orkut has 1,301 Googlers vs. Facebook’s 2,041… ouch.

I think this just illustrates my belief that Google really needs to put some work into Orkut to make it a viable social network. Right now, I think they’re just sort of letting it sit there. It’s really uncharacteristic of a Google product, and it’s something that’s surprised me ever since I found out that Orkut was owned by Google.

How can Google do this? Give Orkut some personality! Right now it’s incredibly dull to use. I think the reason people use Facebook (at least, the reason I do) is that it’s fun. Facebook has random crap that doesn’t make logical sense, but is fun anyway (like poking). That’s why I really like Facebook as a social network, and why I think it’d be a fun company to work for. The work atmosphere at Google is incredibly fun, which is why I can’t understand why Orkut is so boring. Even Myspace lets users customize the layout. Though this is bad for the eyes, users like it.

This isn’t so much of an attack on Orkut than it is a wake-up call. I really think that with the resources that Google has, they could create a great social network. Right now it’s wasting away.

And to end on a fun note, here’s a joke that I found on Valleywag:

Orkut Büyükkökten, creator of the Google social network that bears his name, dashes into CEO Eric Schmidt’s office and says, “We have a million Brazilian users!”

Eric says, “Keep up the good work.”

After Orkut leaves, Eric calls VP Marissa Mayer and asks, “How many is a brazillion again?”

Nintendo Wii – Super Paper Mario Mini Review

I just got Super Paper Mario for the Nintendo Wii yesterday. I played through the first chapter, so here’s my quick mini-review.

Super Paper Mario is different from the other Paper Mario games in a big way. The RPG elements have been pretty much removed. Now, instead of taking turns attacking and defending, Mario just attacks the enemies in real time. So it’s more like the original Super Mario, except with hit points and stats.

I’m not too happy with this, since I liked the RPGness of Paper Mario. I thought Paper Mario was just an extension of the old Super Mario RPG games. Now that they’ve got rid of the RPG, it’s just not as fun.

The graphics are pretty neat though. There’s this thing where you flip from 2D mode to 3D mode. It’s like going from a flat world to three dimensions. You can find hidden stuff and avoid the 2D enemies in 3D mode.

The humor is still intact, too. There’s a lot of references to the original Super Mario Bros. game. There’s even the super mushroom that turns you into a giant version of the pixellated Mario.

Super Paper Mario is still fun, but I have a feeling it would’ve been better if they had kept the gameplay from Paper Mario: The Thousand Year Door intact.

Craigslist and Google Maps Mashup Thingy: Day 6 – MySQL Refactoring

One of the things I didn’t really care about when I was coming up with my Google Maps Craigslist mashup thing was the correctness of the database schema. I’ve written database schema before, but this time I just got sort of lazy. When porting the application to CakePHP, I realized it was a bad idea to slack off. Today I spent some time refactoring and adding a association table to the db.

I also learned some more MySQL syntax stuff. Previously, I had worked with Rails, which sort of handles the query making itself. Since I wrote a custom listing parser, I had to do some MySQL magic with JOINs and whatnot.

I also worked a lot on the Facebook puzzle that I wrote about earlier today. I came up with an approach that was better than the last one I came up with, but only slightly. It’s still in the range of O(n), so I’ll have to figure out the last “clever” thing before I’ve got it finished. It’s actually a lot more interesting now due to the efficiency constraints.

Facebook Programming Puzzles – Prime Bits Revisited

So I got a comment on my original post about the Facebook Programming Puzzle called “Prime Bits” that asked:

did you get this part ?

Your implementation should have a running time faster than O(n), where n is b – a.

id like to see how you solved it.

I felt really stupid for not catching that part until I checked the Google cache of the page. Apparently Facebook added that requirement some time after April 2nd and, presumably, getting a lot of inefficient entries (mine included).

It’s also funny to note that if you look at the actual html, there’s a fun message hidden in comments that reads “with ‘efficient’ meaning whatever you think it ought to mean.” Touché, facebook, touché.

Off the top of my head, I can think of a way using dynamic programming to make the problem a lot more efficient. I’m not sure whether or not it’s just an amortization hack, or an actual better than O(n) implementation, technically.

Okay, so I went ahead and coded up the dynamic programming version. The running time actually does increase at a less than O(n) rate, so I think it counts. Maybe I’ll plot out the running time growth for good measure. I believe it’s in the neighborhood of log(n). I guess I’ll send this new version along with my resume again, and see if they’ll respond this time 🙂

Also, Rest in Peace, Facebook Guy. You’ll be sorely missed.

Ask.com on Google?

When I searched for ‘prime numbers’ just now on Google, the first hit was a sponsored link for Ask.com. You would think it’s a conflict of interest for Google to be suggesting a competitor to its users. When you think about it, though, Google is also taking money from Ask.com, literally!

It’s especially strange seeing Ask.com advertising on Google so soon after being criticized for launching a guerrilla negative ad campaign against them…