1. Displaying user tweets in the Orkut profile page (deployed): I had to rewrite the whole code for this due the new server-side templates and data-pipelining standards enforced by Orkut. It has certain limitations in that you cannot click on any link that links to any external source. Clicking on the user’s pic or username leads you to the application page.

2. OAuth Support: Twitkut will now enable you to authorize it with your Twitter account via OAuth. Doing this will enable you to post updates from Twitkut, add your Orkut friends as your Twitter friends and many more things (listed as separate features). I chose OAuth since then you won’t have to worry about me storing your Twitter passwords.

3. Post updates from Twitkut: If you enable OAuth, you’ll be able to post updates to your Twitter account from within Twitkut.

4. Follow your Orkut friends on Twitter: Enabling OAuth will enable you to follow your Orkut friends on Twitter from within Twitkut.

5. Selective Updates: This will be similar to the “Selective Twitter Updater” Facebook app. You will able to selectively display updates on Twitkut by adding a hashtag to the end of updates similar to “#orktw” or “#orkut”. I’ve still to decide upon the hashtag. Only the updates containing the hashtag will be displayed on Twitkut.

Unfortunately, the popular demand for automatic updates to the user’s activity stream ( without the user having to visit the application page ) won’t be possible due to the limitations enforced by Orkut. If Orkut ever allows it, it’ll be the first feature I’ll add.

I cannot promise if and when I’ll add all these features. There are too many variables, time being the biggest one. You can keep abreast with the latest updates to Twitkut by following @twitkut.

You can also suggest features that you’ll like to be added to Twitkut as comments to this blogpost or as @replies to @twitkut.

Enabling Twitkut with OAuth has been/will be a complicated task. I’ll probably write a separate blog on writing an Opensocial OAuth Gadget.

I have an Orkut filter setup on my Gmail, so that all the emails notifying me of scraps skip the Inbox. Today, however, I decided to check my Orkut emails. And guess what, the first mail I saw was from the Orkut guys giving me the weekly statistics of my Opensocial application!

Here it is:

Here are the statistics for your OpenSocial app twitter.xml on orkut for the week of 2008/12/30: 

App submitted to orkut on 2008/11/04
Number of unique users who installed the app this week: 77
Total number of unique users who currently have the app installed: 532
Number of times profile pages of users who have installed this app were viewed: 16395
Number of times this app was viewed in canvas view: 446

Wow, and until now I thought that less than 100 users were using my application!

I think the Orkut team only recently started mailing developers weekly stats. I think it’s a great idea and hopefully they will continue to do so.

I use Twitter a lot. Unfortunately, almost all of my real life friends are only on Orkut. Most of them haven’t even heard of Twitter. That’s how I came up with the idea of creating something like Twitkut.

I update frequently on Twitter. So, I thought how cool will it be if somehow all my Orkut friends can also read them from Orkut itself. That will mean they will not have to register on Twitter to follow me and get updates.

Twitkut displays your recent tweets on your Orkut profile page. Besides, it also shows you which all of your friends are using Twitkut so that you can follow them. It also allows you to post updates to your twitter account from within Orkut using OAuth.

It makes use of Google’s OpenSocial JavaScript API as well as Twitter’s Search API to access the tweets.

OpenSocial is still pretty nescient, especially if you have seen the Facebook API. I was pretty dissappointed at times with the lack of features in the API. For eg., a chief functionality of my app would have been to update the status of the Orkut user with his/her latest tweet. But, the API didn’t allow it.

Also, to post an update to a user’s activity stream, the owner of the app must visit their profile page or the Twitkut application. This makes it impossible to automatically poll for new tweets and post them to a user’s activity stream. Maximum 2 updates are allowed to a user’s activity stream in a day.

Another feature OpenSocial currently lacks is that there is no way for the developer to keep track of who or how many users are using his application. I feel this should have been one of the first features that should have been implemented in the API, to allow developers to see analysis of their app usage from within Orkut.

There was one more thing that made me cringe. The Orkut sandbox allows using Opensocial 0.8 api whereas prod.sandbox.orkut.com as well as orkut.com only allow Opensocial 0.7 at this point of time. Nowhere did they mention this loud and clear. So, I ended up making the app using Opensocial 0.8. Then I got to know that I had to use Opensocial 0.7 if I wanted to submit my app to Orkut ( of course that’s the reason I am developing the app ) and so I had to make some redundant changes all over again.

On the brighter side, I was very happy with the response at the Orkut Developer Forum. Jason and others helped me along the way and were kind enough to answer all my queries. Without their help, I would certainly have been unable to develop this app. It also cleared some of my concepts regarding caching, etc.

All in all, I am pretty happy with the final result. I have received nice feedback from people who have already started using Twitkut.

So, if you use Orkut and you are a Twitter crazy person and want to share your tweets with a wider world, you can add the application by going here.

Follow updates on development: @twitkut

Follow me: @ahujaankit

Update: Twitkut is now visible in Orkut profiles. The profile view will improve gradually. This is after Twitkut was temporarily not visible on Orkut profiles as the profile view had to re-built using OPML.