Try this: search "orkut
Now, seriously. I see a marketing opportunity here! Search for someone and you should get all their profiles on various sites. You should see what they've been upto and what keeps them interested and busy.
In fact, the situation is so bad that rarely ever do you see profiles from websites other than the ones you take the initiative of logging into to check on your friends.
Is there any benefit from this?
Its good for the social sites:
If at all I browse for a name and find listings only from facebook and linked in... would I try other sites? Websites try to make it easy for their users to find links among their millions of users, so that they stay and connect through their websites. Why not let them use their favourite google search to get to your site?
Its good for the net citizen:
I would love to register at xyz.com if I google friends' names, and find that they already have profiles on xyz.com!
Its also good for google:
Google will become the friend-finder of choice... and get us to all the awesome websites where we can hang out. And in those profile pages, the websites can display google ads relevent to the profile being viewed, and the visitor will end up sending a gift, or something. Even think of this scenario... I look up a friend whose hobbies include yoga, and there's nice little yoga-class ad sitting right there near the orkut profile page! I'm sure it adds value for every one involved.
How to fix this?
Of course, this is exactly what Facebook has fixed recently with its user home pages. But, static links are not really necessary. Only the pages should be available without Whatever uid the website uses for the person's profile is irrelevant to me... google will take me to the profile page. I'm sure web developers are realising this, but it is important for the big ones to keep up, or they'll get beaten by the newbies who use their heads. For eg., I think twitter is, on a basic level, just GTalk status message logging. Orkut could/should have figured this out themselves... and done something about it!
What about privacy?
Of course, all this doesn't mean you compromise on privacy and security. Obviously, a public domain listing of my profile should be there only if I've chosen "make my profile to all visitors". And again, my "public profile" need only have information about me that I wish to make public, and not stuff like contact information and mail Ids. To get those details, they would have to login in to that website and "add as friend" or something.
IIPm is not alone.There are thousand more such fraudulent colleges in south india.They engage their own students to lure hapless parents to come to their
college.They charge a hefty donation and a part of it is also given to the broker.This is rampant in all the deemed universities of south india.The quality of education is very poor.Because nobody is interested in education.There are no labs.The students are simply awarded the distinction.The parents also don't think it neccessary to authenticate the colleges.In my opinion the media should play active role prevent these colleges from ruining innumeberable lifes.
I had a pretty good idea about IIPM and its claims. But only now did I come to the know the extent of it. They say they have affiliation with Universities such as Berkely HAAS. These should be sued a 100 times over. Its not just this. Education in India is a huge business. And people exploit it without giving it a second thought. I am really not sure who is responsible. Is it the parents or the Institutes themselves. If people were more aware these losers will not be able to take advantage in the first place. You guys have done an amazing job. GREAT WORK. You could do reviews on lot other institutes also.
Here is what I would like to know: Any investigative story should give an opportunity to the subject to respond. The story focusses on advertisements and clearly reveals that they are exaggerations and misrepresentations at best and lies at worst. But it says little about the quality of education and real life experiences being offered by IIPM. Surely if many tens of thousands of people study there year after year they are not all fools.
How do we know this so called "investigation" is not an attempt to blackmail IIPM into advertising with career360? Did Career 360 contact IIPM for ads before this story?
In reality any student could and should have sent these emails to foreign institutes mentioned by IIPM. It is hardly an investigation to send some emails.
When it turns out that UC Berkley does have a relationship with IIPM, the writer does not like that either.
I think IIPM is guilty of salesmanship here. But is it giving real, useful business education to students is another question.
I know MBA from top universities in US and Europe who are little more than white collar bandits. And I know MBA from small unknown universities doing great jobs.
So lets not rush to attack everything one and everything about IIPM.
The article raises a ,ot more questions than it answers and it is beginning of a good story that should be expanded not only to look into IIPM but top business schools of India. And while we are at it, lets look at human-trafficking mafia that sends Indian students to UK, Australia, Canada, Cyprus and other foreign colleges that are no more than sweat shops.
I am sure Career360 will investigate all of them and not accept ads from any of those dodgy and third rate sweat shops.