Google Data » Natalie Schwartz

A new look for orkut emails

Natalie Schwartz — Thu, 25 Sep 2008 13:25:00 +0000

We are constantly working to make your orkut experience better, and while this includes adding new, useful features on the site, like new search features and support for applications, it also includes improving your experience when you are not logged-in to orkut.com. Recently we released a better orkut experience for your smartphone, and now you'll see snazzier emails from orkut.

We decided it was time to change our emails to give them a look and feel more like orkut.com pages. We started by giving a new look to the emails that are associated with orkut's most popular features: scrap alerts, testimonials, friend requests, photo tagging, crushes and teaser alerts, as well as the emails for social events, which is a brand new feature.

Now, you will be able to feel like you're inside orkut even before you click the links sent in our e-mails.

Posted by Diogo Kropiwiec, Software Engineer

orkut for S60, now with photo uploads

Natalie Schwartz — Thu, 14 Aug 2008 13:15:00 +0000

When we launched the mobile (xhtml) version of orkut back in April on m.orkut.com, we were overwhelmed by its adoption.

However, Google always tries to build our products for a diverse group of users. Many people access orkut from their smartphones, many of which can support more advanced functionality. So today we are launching a new mobile orkut experience that is optimized for Symbian Series 60 (3rd edition) phones. The new orkut works on many popular phones, including Nokia's Nseries (N95, N82, etc.) and Samsung's SGH models. We have added a bunch of new features including photo uploads, picture galleries, click-to-call, and quick friend searches. Best of all, everything is available without the need to download any special client. If you have a Symbian Series 60 3rd edition phone, just visit http://m.orkut.com in your mobile browser, and you are good to go!

So go ahead and upload all those wonderful pictures you took at the beach or at the city's latest dancing spot, and then start calling your orkut friends to plan the next gathering.

Posted by Ankit Gupta, Software Engineer

Update on recent Orkut maintenance

Natalie Schwartz — Fri, 25 Jul 2008 19:48:00 +0000

Many of you may have noticed or heard from friends that orkut experienced some downtime. On Monday July 21st we discovered a bug that affected the profiles of a small set of orkut users. Starting at 14:30 PST, our engineering team disabled access to orkut.com while we worked on this issue. We brought orkut.com back up as soon as the bug was fixed, although we temporarily disabled a small number of profiles while we were restoring them. Less than .1% of all orkut users were impacted.

At no time was any user's login information at risk. Additionally, our team has fixed any impacted accounts automatically. As always, you should not click on any links that you receive in your messages folder, scrapbook, or email as we are already taking care of this bug.

At this time, we have notified all impacted users on their orkut homepage (see example below). If you have not received this notification from our team, then your account was not affected. Your safety and security on orkut is the number one priority for our team, so we wanted to be as transparent with you as possible. It's important that we continue to work with our users to provide a safe community for all to enjoy!

Posted by the Orkut Team

New orkut search filters

Natalie Schwartz — Fri, 25 Jul 2008 13:22:00 +0000

You may have noticed that lately it's been easier to find what you're looking for when searching on orkut. For example, when you search for a person, we now show people in your network or country at the top of the results list , and we also suggest other terms if we think you've misspelled something. We're always looking to improve search on okrut, which is why we just launched some new search filters that we hope will further aid your searches. Here's how search filters work:

Say you are trying to find a person you met yesterday, but you can't remember his or her complete name. As always, you can type in what you remember of the person's name and hit search. After that, you can refine your search by applying the filters that appear on the right side of our search page. You might start by restricting the search to the languages you speak or the country you're in. To get even better results, try restricting by gender, age, relationship status, children or sexual preference. The more filters you combine, the more specific results will you get.

If you're searching for a community, you can now refine your results to communities that focus on only one specific category. This may help you find what you're looking for faster.

Posted by Diego Fernandes, Software Engineer

App Highlight: Joga TV

Natalie Schwartz — Fri, 11 Jul 2008 15:53:00 +0000

Posted by Nike

[Since apps recently went live on orkut, we're excited to invite orkut developers to guest blog and tell us about their apps here.]

JogaTV by Nike is a great place to discover and share your favorite soccer videos on the web. Search the world of soccer videos by most viewed (day, week, month, or all-time), top rated, most discussed, most recent, teams, and players. Pick your favorite videos and then show your top 5 to the world on your orkut profile. Easily view and comment on your friends selections. Use JogaTV to showcase your love for the world’s most beautiful game.

Making orkut more accessible

Natalie Schwartz — Thu, 10 Jul 2008 14:26:00 +0000

Posted by Rama Pokkunuri, Software Engineer

Google's mission is to organize the world's information and make it universally accessible and useful. We know that for visually impaired users, it can be difficult to navigate through orkut using a mouse to point and click on various links. In order to make orkut more accessible to all users, we recently added accesskeys for some commonly used links on orkut. With accesskeys, you no longer need to click your mouse to visit different pages on orkut. For example, if you are using IE, when you press "alt + s", the focus is moved to the "Scrapbook" link at the top of the page. Pressing "enter" will then take you to your scrapbook page.

Please note that different browsers use different control key combinations for accesskeys. On Netscape Navigator and Mozilla Firefox, "alt + shift + s" should take you directly to your scrapbook (you don't need to press "enter"). Similarly, if you hold down "alt+shift," simply press "h" for home, "p" for profile, "b" for friends, "c" for communities, "l" for logout. Almost all browsers support this feature, so please consult your browser manual to find the right key combination for your browser.

What are your friends up to? Check out your homepage

Natalie Schwartz — Wed, 25 Jun 2008 16:38:00 +0000

Posted by Priya Mandawat, Software Engineer

Ever since we added "updates from my friends" to the orkut homepage, you've been requesting that we add more information to these updates so that you can stay informed on the latest developments from your friends. Over the past several months we've some added new types of updates and ways for you to control what kinds of updates you see. You can see everything from new photos and videos that your friends upload, to testimonials they receive, to changes they make on their profiles.

Now you can tell your friends what you are doing or how you're feeling right this minute by changing your status message on your profile and letting it show up in your friends' homepages.

If you prefer to keep your updates private, we give you the option of not showing your friends your updates. To prevent your updates from appearing on your friends' homepages, go to the Privacy Settings page and select 'hide updates' under the "my updates" section. If you don't want to see updates from your friends, select the "don't show updates from my friends" option under the "updates from my friends" section on your homepage. But if you ask me, with all the cool comments I get on my new photos and the scraps I receive in response to my other updates, I'm not going near these settings!

orkuteers visit Google Bangalore

Natalie Schwartz — Tue, 24 Jun 2008 16:37:00 +0000

Posted by Robin Norvell, orkut Operations Team

A few months ago, we invited our Portuguese orkuteers to visit Google's Belo Horizonte office. But we weren't going to rest until we'd given our orkuteers in India the same chance to meet the orkut team and share their feedback about orkut in person. On June 6, three of our Indian superusers from throughout India met at the Google office in the Garden City (aka Bangalore), where they told us what they loved about orkut, shared suggestions for improvement, and sampled Google cuisine (and chai tea, of course). On hand to talk with them were a group of Googlers from the orkut team including product managers, engineers, operations staff, user experience researchers and HR reps.

Even at the end of a long day, there was still excitement in the air at the Bangalore office. The orkuteers gave first-hand feedback of some soon-to-be-launched features, and they also shared some common user pain points that the team can start working to remedy. The orkut team was happy to have Rakesh, Prashant and Gaurav share their perspectives, and the orkuteers were thrilled to meet the Google guides and engineers. Here's what they had to say:

"It was the most memorable day in my life because it helped me to meet the guides, orkuteers and engineers.”

"The invitation was really surprising for me…That day became the historic landmark for me. I will never ever forget that day that I spent there with Google. Google people are so careful about users and that day they cared a lot of me and my mates. I feel lucky that I'm a superuser. This was the first time for me that when anyone was asking question, I was listening with my full concentration.”

"The best thing about being an orkuteers is to receive the recognition from Google for doing something that I just love, helping people on orkut. The recognition I'm talking about is not just gifts, but to know that Google wants to hear from me about problems and suggestions for orkut and the orkut Help Group."

The orkuteers were happy to serve as reps for many orkut users, and would like to thank all members from INDIA community and OUG community for feedback to help prepare for the orkuteer Day in Bangalore.

We're glad they enjoyed the day, and many thanks to them again for their continued support in serving as wonderful guides in the orkut help group!

Drag and drop to customize your profile page

Natalie Schwartz — Mon, 23 Jun 2008 13:01:00 +0000

Posted by Adam Winer, Software Engineer

Orkut profiles have become a lot more dynamic in the last year. Not only are your photos, videos, and testimonials showcased on your profile, but now users in many parts of the world can also add OpenSocial applications to their profiles. With so many new elements on the profile page, we've received feedback that you'd like to be able to arrange it as you wish.

So, to help you organize all this content and show your visitors the elements you most want them to see, we've rolled out new functionality. Here's a couple of things you can now do:

Reorganize your profile page with drag-and-drop: Simply click on any of the applications or showcases (photos, videos, and testimonials) on your profile page and drag them around until they are just as you'd like. The new layout of your profile page will automatically be saved, so your profile visitors will see everything just as you want it.
Put as many or as few applications on your profile as you want. Until now, you were able to display up to three applications on your profile, and some of you wanted to show more. Now, when you add an application, you can choose whether or not you want it on your profile. Just select or unselect the "Add to my profile" box above the big "Add Application" button. You can change this any time with the "tool" button in the upper-right corner of the application.

So go ahead and rearrange your profile and make it your own...and if that's not enough, why not add a theme as well!?

Tag- that’s me!

Natalie Schwartz — Tue, 10 Jun 2008 20:30:00 +0000

Posted by Sam Goto, Software Engineer

Photos have long been a popular feature of orkut, which is why we have engineers working full-time to make it easier for you to upload, share and browse photos on orkut. Recently, we increased our photo capacity so you can upload as many as you like, and we made it easier for you to organize your photos once you have them in your orkut albums. This week, we launched photo tagging so that you can label your orkut friends in your photos.

Here's how it works: when you're browsing your own or your friends' photo albums, simply click the "add tag" link below the bottom right corner of the photo. Then click your mouse over the friend you would like to label. A box will appear, prompting you to type your friend's name. As you type, the field will auto-complete so you can easily find the orkut friend you'd like to tag. When you browse tagged photos, hover over the name of a person to see which person he or she is in the photo. If you click, you'll be taken to his or her profile.

When one of your friends tags you in a photo, you'll receive an email. If you'd like to turn this notification off, you can go to notification settings. If a friend tags you in a photo and it's not you (or just a bad photo of you!), you can click on the trash can next to your name and delete the tag for good. The photo owner also has permission to delete any tags on his or her photos. If you'd rather not let your friends tag your photos, or be tagged in any photos, you can disable the feature completely in your privacy settings. Many people have already begun tagging their photos. Happy tagging!

Sharing YouTube videos on orkut made simple

Natalie Schwartz — Mon, 09 Jun 2008 22:07:00 +0000

Narayan Kamath, Software Engineer

Have you ever been watching a funny video on YouTube and decided halfway through that you must share it with your orkut friends? Previously, you had to go to your orkut "favorite videos" page and copy-and-paste the video URL to post these clips. Now you can share videos on orkut directly from YouTube! Click on the orkut logo under the video you are watching on YouTube, and you'll be taken directly to your "favorite videos" page on orkut. The URL of the video you're watching will already be loaded, so all you need to do is hit "add video" to post. Now that it's easier than ever, go ahead and share videos with your friends on orkut.

Private communities for your work or school

Natalie Schwartz — Thu, 05 Jun 2008 12:56:00 +0000

Posted by Kuldeep Gharat, Software Engineer

Communities on orkut come in all shapes and sizes. Large, open communities are great for meeting new people and getting news on topics you care about, while smaller ones help you keep in touch with friends and people from your school or work. When we launched private communities several months ago , we let community owners decide who could access content in their communities -- all orkut users or just members of those specific communities. Recently, we added additional functionality to let you create communities that are only open to people who share your email domain. For example, I have an @google.com email address for work, so I could create a community that is only accessible to those who also have @google.com email addresses.

How does it work? First, enter the email address for the domain you share with your classmates or colleagues into the contacts tab of your profile. When creating a new community, simply choose the "validated - email validation required" option, then select the domain from the drop down box. Anyone who wants to join the community will first be required to validate his or her email address from that domain before being allowed to join.

A faster, lighter version of orkut

Natalie Schwartz — Wed, 04 Jun 2008 20:08:00 +0000

Posted by Nishant Redkar, Software Engineer

A few weeks ago we launched a low bandwidth version of orkut that makes your experience on orkut faster. This is especially helpful if you are using a 56.6 or 64 kps modem, or if you are on a DSL connection with many users. How does it work? The low bandwidth version of orkut avoids downloading images unless you really want them, which lets you navigate through the site more quickly.

When orkut pages seem to be taking a long time to load, you'll receive a prompt that lets you switch to the low bandwidth version. Similarly, orkut also prompts you to switch back to the regular version if the pages start downloading quickly again. If it seems like your connection is slow and you don't see a message, you can manually switch to the low bandwidth version by going to the general settings tab.

Although some things are displayed differently in the low bandwidth version compared to the regular version (for example, your friends and communities will appear as simple lists, rather than photos), people who have tried the low bandwidth version have told us that they are sticking with it: it's saving them money (if they pay by amount of data downloaded) and is making it more efficient and fun to browse the site. So give the new version a spin -- it may save you time or money or both!

If you’re in India and feel like a change of scene…

Natalie Schwartz — Mon, 02 Jun 2008 13:55:00 +0000

Posted by Nishant Redkar, Navneet Nair and Narayan Kamath

Since orkut first launched back in 2004, the site has had a soothing, blue color scheme that we've all come to know and love. When we redesigned the interface last August, we switched up some elements but kept the blue theme. While some of you love it, we've also heard that others would like more freedom to customize your orkut experiences, just as you customize your profiles. Now you can make your orkut profile reflect your mood for the day or change the theme to match the current season.

We recently began rolling out 12 themes to a percentage of our Indian users, and these themes should be available to all Indian users by the end of this week. We're currently testing this new feature, and if we hear that users like it, we plan to roll it out for everyone on orkut and continue offering more new themes.

How do you switch your theme? Click on the "change theme" link in the top navigation bar or go to the"themes" tab in the edit profile page. You'll then see our gallery page, where you can check out all the themes that are currently available. Alternatively, if you visit a friend's profile page and he has a theme you like, click on "get this theme." When you select a theme, all your orkut pages will have this theme: your profile, scrapbook, photos, videos, etc. When other users visit your profile or other pages, they will see your selected theme.

There is also an option to disable all themes in case you'd rather navigate orkut all in blue. There are times when you access orkut from slow speed connections, and images on the site may take longer than usual to download. On those days, it may help to disable themes completely so that your friends' profiles load more quickly.

So go ahead, be colorful! Express yourself. Let us know what you think of the themes at our orkut help group.

App highlight: BuboMe

Natalie Schwartz — Mon, 26 May 2008 14:01:00 +0000

Posted by Connie Zhou, BuboMe.com

[Since apps recently went live on orkut, we're excited to invite orkut developers to guest blog and tell us about their apps here.]

BuboMe is a photo application that lets you pimp your photos or your orkut friends' photos by adding themes and speech bubbles.

Create a Bubo

With a single click, your orkut profile photo is uploaded to the app and you are ready to pimp it by selecting a theme. There are nine categories with hundreds of themes to choose from. You can choose to be a superhero, a celebrity or even a cartoon character.

Drag thought or speech bubbles into your photo, type in the content of the bubble and then save it as a new bubo. When you are done, your new photos are displayed on your orkut profile as a slideshow.

The BuboMe photo app is currently available in 5 languages: English, Portuguese, Spanish, Vietnamese and Chinese. If you have friends who are not on orkut, they can still create a bubo by going to BuboMe.com.

What’s going on next to our blog

Natalie Schwartz — Mon, 19 May 2008 17:43:00 +0000

Posted by Natalie Schwartz, orkut team

We noticed the other day, after we added yet another link to the right-hand nav of our blog, that there is quite a lot going on over there. We thought it might be helpful to provide a short description for each item, so here is a top-to-bottom list of the tools and links we have listed.

Search box: search our blog for quick access to past posts
"Join orkut" button: chances are good that you're already a member, but just in case ;)
Site feed: learn how to read our blog's content through other feed reading services, such as netvibes, pageflakes, or iGoogle
"+ Google" button: quickly add our blog to your iGoogle homepage or Google Reader account
Archives: browse past posts by month
Email us your thoughts: pretty self explanatory, but please keep sending your feedback!
Orkut birthday gadget: add a gadget to your iGoogle homepage so you can keep track of your friends' birthdays without keeping orkut open all day long
Orkut demographics: we added this link in response to popular demand
Share your orkut stories: we have featured several of these on our blog and on the orkut site, so keep them coming
We've also provided links to a number of other products that are popular among orkut users, as well as links to dozens of other Google blogs

We hope this helps you take full advantage of the tools and links that accompany our posts.

Happy Mother’s Day!

Natalie Schwartz — Sun, 11 May 2008 14:40:00 +0000

Posted by the orkut team

To honor the thousands of mothers and mothers-to-be that we have on orkut, we've put this special doodle on the login page today. We expect that you've already called home, seen your mom, or at least sent her a scrap, and if you haven't already, get to it! We know you care, because our largest community on orkut is for mom lovers!

What’s new with you?

Natalie Schwartz — Thu, 08 May 2008 13:21:00 +0000

Posted by Luiz Genoves, Software Engineer

Are you headed off on a big trip? Want to share your excitement about a favorite sports team's recent championship? Inviting your friends to a party you're having tonight? Recently we launched status messages on orkut profiles that let you do just that.

It is simple, quick and easy: go to your profile, type whatever you want to appear as your status in the box right below your name, and it is done! Now whoever views your profile can view your latest news.

What do think of my photo? Make a comment!

Natalie Schwartz — Tue, 06 May 2008 19:07:00 +0000

Posted by Natalie Schwartz, orkut Team

Since photo sharing is one of the most popular ways to use orkut, we are constantly working to add more functionality to our photo albums. Last week we launched a feature that lets you rearrange your photos within an album, and we announced that you can upload up to 10,000 pictures to orkut (have you taken full advantage yet?). Today, we're happy to share that you can now comment on your friends' photos. Captions have always been a fun way to tell your friends what's going on in your pictures, but sometimes when you're looking at others' photos, you want to respond to the captions right there rather than sending a scrap or message. To post a comment, simply type your response in the comments section below the photo and hit "post comment." Your comment will show up below your friend's photo. If you decide afterwards that you'd like to take down your comment, you (or the photo owner) can always remove it.

App Highlight: iLike

Natalie Schwartz — Mon, 05 May 2008 17:42:00 +0000

Posted by Hadi Partovi, iLike

[Since apps recently went live on orkut, we're excited to invite orkut developers to guest blog and tell us about their apps here.]

iLike is an app that lets you share lists of your favorite videos, artists and music with your friends. One of iLike's unique features is that it lets you add songs and scraps.

To add song snippets as scraps, you'll first need to search the iLike library to find a favorite song.

To add song snippets as scraps, you'll first need to search the iLike library to find a favorite song. If you click "Send as a scrap," you will receive a simple line of code that you can copy and paste into any friend's scrapbook:

The iLike Challenge- how well do you know your music?
With the music challenge, you can test your musical knowledge and compare your score to your friends' scores. The app will play a short snippet of a song and prompt you to identify the artist. Challenge your friends and show your score on your profile.

orkut Super Users visit Google Office

Natalie Schwartz — Fri, 02 May 2008 17:19:00 +0000

Posted by the orkut team

On Apr 18, the Google office in Belo Horizonte hosted a special event for some VIP guests: the orkut super users from the Portuguese Help Group. By bringing together these orkut experts and enthusiasts, we got some critical feedback about orkut and learned more about how they sustain our help community. Here's what they thought about it:

"The invite was a surprise, a dream come true, which just shows how Google cares for its users and how it's always exceeding our expectations. The atmosphere in the office is so exciting that you don't want to find your way out. As if we were orkut ambassadors, we felt our voice was heard when brainstorming about suggestions and usability issues. We hope we have done a good job at representing millions of users who have orkut as their favorite website." Alexandre Luis Vignado

"This day became a historical landmark for me. I enjoyed every single moment, from printing my badge at the front desk to toasting with Googlers during TGIF. I had to pinch myself to believe that I was visiting the company responsible for the most successful social networking website in Brazil: orkut! The environment is so relaxing that you can easily forget there's hard work being done in each of those cubes. But Google doesn't forget it and does the best to reward its employees with massage, hammocks, and game rooms. And the treats in the micro kitchen, of course! Visiting a Google office is like visiting a Google product: fun and quality everywhere! As you can see from my impressions, I don't feel I myself worked hard on that day, event though I participated in brainstorming sessions for 7 hours. Those were magic hours when we felt part of the orkut team and did our best to speak for all those users we interact with in the Help Group. orkut just became more admirable and promising for me." Cesar JB

"The invite was a surprise that only the visit itself could beat. While taking a tour at the office, we met some engineers who were having a meeting around a team member's birthday cake, which they kindly shared cake with us. Nice start... Even after working hard at focus sessions for hours, we didn't want to leave, which was perfectly fine for those Googlers who stayed with us celebrating TGIF and playing foosball. Cool, sociable, and smart people work there – and we attest, they're NORMAL people. :-) It was also great to meet in person my partners in the Help Group, Cesar and Alexandre. This bonding time will just improve our teamwork spirit." Luiz Fernando

App highlights: iPoke and Teen Patti

Natalie Schwartz — Thu, 01 May 2008 17:41:00 +0000

Author: Sanjay Aggarwal
Company: Minglebox

[Since apps recently went live on orkut, we're excited to invite orkut developers to guest blog and tell us about their apps here.]

The Minglebox team is excited to develop applications that are tailored for the Indian audience -- iPoke and Teen Patti are two apps we've made available on orkut.

With iPoke, you can interact with friends using Indian lingo. Get caught in cricket with college buddies. Bowl a maiden over, fox a friend with a googly, or get hit wicket. Resume the chalk-piece war from your old school days. Missed your friend on his birthday? Smash a birthday cake on his face!

Teen Patti is an Indian version of 3 card poker, also known as flash. It is a must play before and on Diwali for many Indian families. Even losing is supposed to bring you good luck! Teen Patti is a multi-player game, so gather some of your friends online to get started.

Reorder and organize your pictures in orkut albums

Natalie Schwartz — Wed, 30 Apr 2008 14:23:00 +0000

Posted by Abhishek Surana, Software Engineer

Now that we have more capacity for you to upload your photos (if you haven't tested the limit lately, you can now upload up to 10,000 pictures), we've also upgraded our photo album features. For example, until now, you had to delete and re-upload photos to change the order of photos in your albums. To make this easier, we launched a 'reorder photos' functionality which lets you organize your pictures directly in orkut. If you want to mix things up in your albums, select the album you'd like to modify, click on "reorder photos," then simply drag and drop your photos until you have it just right.

Privacy Feature Update

Natalie Schwartz — Mon, 28 Apr 2008 18:19:00 +0000

Posted by Vlad Patryshev, Software Engineer

Thanks for all the great feedback on privacy, and we're glad to hear that so many of you appreciate our continued work to make orkut a place that allows you to be as public or private with your information as you wish. This week we are adding additional flexibility for you to manage the privacy of your testimonials, videos, scrapbook and feeds. In addition to having your privacy settings to be just "friends" or "everyone," you can now select also "friend of friends." We feel that this is a good choice for those of you who may wish to share your information with an extended group of friends without making it public to everyone. We hope this additional flexibility helps you manage your experience on orkut better.

App highlight: myHangman

Natalie Schwartz — Fri, 18 Apr 2008 13:02:00 +0000

Posted by Ekalavya Bhattacharya, Contests2win.com

[Since apps recently went live on orkut, we're excited to invite orkut developers to guest blog and tell us about their apps here.]

myHangman lets you play the classic game of Hangman. You can choose a topic from the existing list or create your own based on your favorite movies, music, TV Shows, celebrities, or anything else that fascinates you.

How to do I play?

Save your man from hanging by guessing the missing letters and filling in the blanks to determine the right answer. Don't worry, even if you lose one round, you can try to rescue your man again in the next game.

What else can I do on this application?

You can also create your own game and challenge your friends to play against you. C2W, the company that developed the myHangman app, even has plans to add prizes - another reason to try out myHangman!

Now available: orkut on your mobile phone, on the go

Natalie Schwartz — Thu, 17 Apr 2008 18:02:00 +0000

Posted by Hazel Mary, Software Engineer

Have you ever wanted to check if your buddy responded to your scrap about this evening's plans, but not been close to a computer? Do you wish you could pass the time on your long commute home by browsing through your friends' profiles?

Fret no more - if you have a web-enabled phone and a data plan, just point your mobile web browser to http://m.orkut.com, and stay connected to your friends anytime, anywhere.

We understand that oftentimes your phone's data network isn't as fast (or as cheap) as your computer's, so in designing orkut for mobile, we focused on offering the features that are most useful when you're on the move, instead of replicating all the desktop features. For example, we've made it easy to send, receive, and respond to scraps on our mobile interface so that you can step away from your computer and have conversations on the go. From your phone, simply click the new "Reply" link to respond directly to a scrap from your friend. You can also read recent updates from your friends, view upcoming birthdays, look up and add friends, and accept friend requests.

After you try out orkut for mobile, we'd love to hear what you think. From the http://m.orkut.com homepage, click on the "help" link at the bottom of the screen to send us your feedback.

Happy mobile orkuting!

Apps are live in India

Natalie Schwartz — Wed, 16 Apr 2008 13:03:00 +0000

Posted by Manu Rekhi, Product Manager

Today we began rolling out applications (apps for short) on orkut to everyone in India and will roll out apps to all orkuteers, in local languages, over the next few weeks.

Apps are integrated directly into your orkut experience. When you log into your profile, you will be able to add up to 25 apps to your orkut profile. Your friends will see all the apps you've added, be able to interact with them, and can add any apps they like to their own profiles.

Apps can relate to anything, from games and music to travel and books. If you're interested in learning more, we've put together a short video that explains what apps are and how to start using them.

Watch out for the "add apps" link in your profile over the coming weeks. We'll give you an update when apps are available to everyone worldwide.

App highlight: Catalog your past and future reading with ReadingSocial

Natalie Schwartz — Tue, 15 Apr 2008 14:13:00 +0000

Posted by Tim O'Shaughnessy, LivingSocial

[As we get ready for apps to go live on orkut, we're excited to invite orkut developers to guest blog and preview their apps here.]

Have you ever needed an easy way to keep track of which books you've read, remember the books you want to read, and see book recommendations from your friends? ReadingSocial solves these problems by giving you a tool for organizing your books on a virtual bookshelf.

We created ReadingSocial because we recognized that reading books is an inherently social activity. We're always getting recommendations from our friends and family, and we knew there had to be an effective way to keep track of this information online. It's also interesting to browse the bookshelves of friends who have similar tastes as you, and you may get new ideas for what to read next. For example, if you love historical biographies, you can rest assured that there are others out there who can provide reviews of books you might consider reading.

Lastly, ReadingSocial on orkut is part of LivingSocial, which brings together people who are interested in a variety of different topics, such as books, movies, music, video games, restaurants, and beer. We'll be looking to bring more applications to orkut as soon as we can.

Happy reading!

App highlight: TypeRacer

Natalie Schwartz — Fri, 04 Apr 2008 12:31:00 +0000

Posted by Alex Epshteyn, TypeRacer

[As we get ready for apps to go live on orkut, we're excited to invite orkut developers to guest blog and preview their apps here.]

TypeRacer is a typing game that lets you race your orkut friends, in real-time, using your hard-earned keyboard skills.

You start with a little car on the left side of the screen, and you type the given text to make your car move all the way to the right as quickly as possible. Your score will be saved, and your orkut profile will show how you rank among all of your friends, so challenge your buddies to a race! Even if you're not a great typist, your speed will improve each time you play. My own speed went up by 20 words-per-minute while I was developing and testing TypeRacer.

You can even race directly against a friend if you both log in at the same time and are at the same skill level. In the future, TypeRacer will make it even easier for you to go head-to-head against your friends in private racing rooms.

Oh, one more thing – if you have friends who are not on orkut, you can still play them as guests at TypeRacer.com. Happy typing!

App highlight: Viibee

Natalie Schwartz — Tue, 01 Apr 2008 19:53:00 +0000

Posted by Michael Marth, Viibee

[As we get ready for apps to go live on orkut, we're excited to invite orkut developers to guest blog and preview their apps here.]

Viibee is a dating app that lets you watch videos -- rather than read profiles -- from potential matches.

Simply click 'Yes' when you see someone you like. If you both click 'Yes' on each other's videos, you can send each other video messages and take it from there.

Creating your own videos is easy. If you have a webcam, you can record new video clips right in your browser window -- no software installation is required.

The continued search for better search in orkut

Natalie Schwartz — Mon, 31 Mar 2008 17:15:00 +0000

Posted by Eduardo Thuler, Product Manager

orkut may be all about your social connections, but Google is a search company at heart -- so we're always looking for ways to improve our orkut search features. Here are some of the latest improvements:

We are now making a greater effort to guess what you are looking for. In the past, you may have noticed that a more general search on orkut didn't always provide you the results you were hoping for. If you searched for a friend named Navneet, you may have found that the first results were for communities called "navneet." We've spent some time working on this and think you'll see better results more often now. So go ahead and try it here.
Just as with Google search, we'll now suggest a correction if we think you've misspelled your search words. You can see an example here.
We now take into account the country, state and city listed in your profile when searching on orkut, so you'll get the other Navneets from Maharashtra (if that's where you live), even if you have it listed as MH.

To help make these search improvements really effective, remember to keep your profile up to date.

App Highlight: iRead

Natalie Schwartz — Fri, 28 Mar 2008 18:02:00 +0000

Posted by Harish Abbott, Ugenie

[As we get ready for apps to go live on orkut, we're excited to invite orkut developers to guest blog and preview their apps here.- The orkut team]

What you read says a lot about you. So what better way to tell your friends who you really are than to show them what you have read? And what better way to discover new sides of your friends than to see what they have read? You can do all that and more through iRead. iRead is a vibrant community of book lovers that lets you:

Build your virtual bookshelf by listing, rating and reviewing books you are currently reading or have read in the past.
Browse what your friends are reading and see what they have said about books you're interested in.
Discover new books that you will like and discover people who share your taste in books.
Have fun! Chuck a book at a friend, take a quiz, challenge friends, meet writers, chat & discuss books.

Whether you love classics or popular fiction, Dickens or Dan Brown, iRead is a place where you can find others who share your reading tastes and through them discover new books that you will love. iReaders have already added over 22 million books to their virtual bookshelves and submitted hundreds of thousands of reviews and ratings. iRead is excited to be part of orkut and to expand this community and make it more vibrant. So come on, join the social book discovery revolution!

The latest updates from your friends

Natalie Schwartz — Thu, 27 Mar 2008 17:57:00 +0000

Posted by Luiz Genoves, Software Engineer

Do you have too many updates from your friends on your homepage? Are there certain friends you want to know more about, but others that you'd rather not see any updates from? If the answer is yes, I know how you feel.

That's why we're now giving you more control over which friends' updates appear on your homepage. First, organize your friends in groups. You can do that by clicking on friends in the header and then creating groups and putting your friends in them. To select which groups you want updates from, click settings in the left navigation, and then select the appropriate groups from the "updates from my friends" section. Once you've done this, only the updates of your selected groups will be shown on your homepage. If you decide you want to see more updates, you can still access all your friends' updates by clicking "view more" on the bottom of your homepage.

And if you'd prefer not have any of your updates appear on your friends' homepages, go to settings and click on privacy to set your own actions as private.

App Highlight: go4it

Natalie Schwartz — Wed, 26 Mar 2008 18:38:00 +0000

Guest Post by Muralidharan Bhoopathy, Chronus Corporation

[As we get ready for apps to go live on orkut, we're excited to invite orkut developers to guest blog and preview their apps here. - The orkut team]

Whether it is a birthday resolution, New Year's resolution, hobby or just something you have always wanted to do, go4it makes it fun to reach all your goals with help from your friends (and others). You can create projects or objectives for yourself, then choose to share them on your profile and with your friends. For example, if you want to run a marathon, add this goal to go4it and let your friends know so they can support you.

If you are like many of us and haven't been able to get to all those things you want to do, wait no more. Get started on your goals, hobbies, resolutions… go4it!

The Global Community

Natalie Schwartz — Tue, 25 Mar 2008 17:03:00 +0000

Posted by Ellen Spertus, Research Scientist

Orkut is all about community, and we sure do have lots of them: more than 45 million, covering all imaginable topic areas (and a few that defy the imagination). Owners can specify languages and countries for their communities, and I'm pleased to see that all of orkut's many languages and countries are represented.

The most common community language is Portuguese, with more than 10 times as many communities as the next most common language, English. Third most common is UK English, which was introduced in spring 2006 to distinguish between people who call the World Cup sport "football" and those who call it "soccer." Spanish and Hindi take fourth and fifth place, as shown in this table:

language	communities	largest community	members

Portuguese	40,460,878	Eu amo a minha MÃE! [I love my MOTHER!]	3,903,588
English	3,738,534	Nike	624,095
English (UK)	469,538	David Beckham	118,657
Spanish	186,323	Pra que serve o Orkut? [What's Orkut for?]	79,734
Hindi	43,837	Cafe Coffee Day	55,492
Estonian	37,199	Estonia	63,505
All	34,294	Caipirnhas [a cocktail]	311,487
French	25,118	Paris	21,772
Telugu	23,925	అబ్బా!!! ఛా!!! [Yeah, right!]	15,665

(Fine print: Afrikaans would have come in sixth, but none of the top communities were actually in that language. Similarly, none of the top "Hindi" communities had names or most of their messages in Hindi, and the top two "French" communities aren't really in French.)

In response to a suggestion, I also looked at which of the 28 community categories are most popular. We were curious about which countries are most represented in each category relative to their size, some of which are shown below. For example, Indians have far more communities in the Alumni & Schools category than even their large numbers would predict.

category	% of communities	some top countries
Individuals	23%	Madagascar, Brazil
Other	21%	Benin
Alumni & Schools	6.8%	India
Music	6.5%	Norway, Canada
Recreation & Sports	4.2%	Argentina
Romance & Relationships	3.8%	French Polynesia, Monaco
Family & Home	3.6%	Mexico, United States
Activities	3.3%	Paraguay, Pakistan
Fashion & Beauty	3.2%	Monaco

All other categories are below 3% of the total. The least popular category is Science & History (.4%), to the dismay of this orkut historian.

Until next time, enjoy community wherever you find it!

Happy Easter!

Natalie Schwartz — Mon, 24 Mar 2008 21:11:00 +0000

Posted by the orkut team

In case you were busy egg hunting and didn't sign in to orkut, here's the doodle we posted.

App Highlight: MyMiniLife

Natalie Schwartz — Mon, 24 Mar 2008 17:49:00 +0000

Guest post by Sizhao Yang, MyMiniLife

[As we get ready for apps to go live on orkut, we're excited to invite orkut developers to guest blog and preview their apps here.]

Are you stylish? Do you like to decorate and accessorize everything?

Now you can express yourself using MyMiniLife. Imagine a world where you can create your own place that fits your unique style and shows off all the interests you're passionate about. Personalize your hangout with photos, music, and all the furniture you could ever want. Share your favorite movies and games by adding them to your home. Your friends can even send you gifts and leave you notes at your place. Collect cool stuff, and flaunt it on your orkut profile.

Find more friends on orkut

Natalie Schwartz — Fri, 14 Mar 2008 17:45:00 +0000

Posted by Vidya Rangasayee Narayan, Software Engineer

Have you discovered that you have more friends on orkut through our find friends feature on Gmail, but wished you could do the same with other address books? Do you use a non-Gmail account and feel left out and unable to find your friends? Though we prefer Gmail ourselves, we understand that you may have other email accounts. That's why now you can find friends from address books on Yahoo, Hotmail and AOL.

Just choose the email provider (Gmail, Yahoo, Hotmail or AOL) from the drop down, and enter the user name and password for your email account.* Orkut will then show you the contacts from your address book and denote those who are already on orkut, so you can add them to your (ever growing) list of friends. For contacts who aren't on orkut yet, you can invite them in bulk.

If your email provider is not on the list, don't feel left out, we're working on adding more.

*The email provider list is not country specific, so find your friends no matter where you are, or where they are. For example, if you have a hotmail.com.in email address, simply select "hotmail" from the drop down. Remember, orkut values your privacy and security and will never store your password nor transmit it over non-secure channels.

App highlight: Crazy Story Game

Natalie Schwartz — Thu, 13 Mar 2008 18:13:00 +0000

Guest post by Keaka Jackson, Market Wall

[As we get ready for apps to go live on orkut, we're excited to invite orkut developers to guest blog and preview their apps here.- The orkut Team]

Crazy Story Game lets you create funny stories with your friends. One person starts a story with a few words. Other players continue the story by adding short sentences. After 5 people add to a story the game is finished, and you can read the wacky results.

App highlight: Hangout

Natalie Schwartz — Mon, 10 Mar 2008 19:01:00 +0000

Guest post by Paul Paturi, Auciti Info Technologies

[As we get ready for apps to go live on orkut, we're excited to invite orkut developers to guest blog and preview their apps here. -The orkut Team]

You have long loved to hang out on orkut with your friends. And often we hear that you meet up with many of your orkut friends offline too. This is why we've created the 'Hangout' application. 'Hangout' on orkut is meant for this very purpose -to enable you to schedule, coordinate and have fun with your orkut friends. Whether it's an upcoming music concert or a quick coffee down the street, a casual outing or a special event. Schedule it and invite friends. The 'Hangout' application's simple and intuitive interface will allow you to do all this within a few clicks. Let's Hangout!

App Highlight: PhotoAttack

Natalie Schwartz — Thu, 06 Mar 2008 19:32:00 +0000

Guest post by Lalit Sarna, ActOnMe

[As we get ready for apps to go live on orkut, we're excited to invite orkut developers to guest blog and preview their apps here. -The orkut Team]

Bring your friends' photos to life! Attack them with fun animations, ambush them with flying kisses, throw a snow ball, ninja kick them, send them some puppy love, and more. There are tons of different ways to make a friend smile. With cool new attacks being added often, the fun never stops.

We have you covered, whether it is your friends, that special someone, or your greatest rival. Our fun attacks should get their attention, so be prepared to be attacked back! Express yourself and most of all have lots of fun.

Apps on orkut coming soon

Natalie Schwartz — Thu, 21 Feb 2008 21:50:00 +0000

Posted by Amar, orkut Product Manager

Back in November, we announced that orkut was open to developers. Developers have been building exciting new social applications over the last few months that will make the orkut experience even better. This is why we're excited to announce that apps will be available to a subset of orkut users starting in a couple weeks, and to all orkut users several weeks after that.

In the meantime, here on the orkut blog, we will be inviting guest posts from developers as a sneak peak into some of the apps developers have built, so stay tuned!

If you're a developer and want to have your app available to orkuteers the last week of February, you can find out more on how to submit your app here. If you need more info on how to build an app, check out http://code.google.com/apis/orkut/.

The latest versions of APIs are available, and developers can build and test their apps at sandbox.orkut.com. We are going to be accepting applications into the directory manually in order to ensure apps are high quality. To get the latest news on the orkut sandbox, check out the new orkut developer blog.

Have an orkut app that you would like featured here? After you've submitted your app to us , send us an email (orkut-app-submissions@google.com) with a description (250 words or less), screenshots, and/or a video walkthrough.

Managing your friends (online)

Natalie Schwartz — Mon, 18 Feb 2008 14:59:00 +0000

Posted by Eduardo Cordeiro, Software Engineer

Do you have a lot of friends on orkut? Do you sometimes want to find all your school friends, send a message to all your co-workers, or check out your best friends' karma?

Friend groups have been on orkut for some time now, but we're now making them more accessible throughout the site to make it easier for you to create new groups or add new friends to them. Here's what's changed: when you add a new friend or accept a friend request, you can now select which group(s) you want to add them to. You can also modify these groups (rename them, remove them or add new ones) either when you add or accept a friend, or on the friend management page. And we've turned friendship levels into groups for you, so that you can send messages to all your best friends, or see all the friends on orkut that you haven't met offline yet.

If you're not sure what groups to create, we've made a few default groups to get you started. This will make it easier to categorize your friends. You can always change the name of these groups if they don't suit your particular need.

We're also planning on a bunch of new features so you can use your groups to make the orkut experience more tuned to your needs. Stay tuned!

Upload more photos, faster!

Natalie Schwartz — Tue, 12 Feb 2008 18:36:00 +0000

Posted by Abhishek Surana, Software Engineer

Back from a vacation? Had a party? Surely you must have a ton of photos to share with your orkut friends. Well, we're happy to tell you that we've made sharing those photos with your orkut friends even easier. We have increased the photo limit, so now you can share up to 1,000 photos, and made the upload experience faster for Internet Explorer users.

If you're on orkut with Internet Explorer, click on the link for "New! Upload multiple photos" on your albums page. It takes you through an instructions page for installing the application needed to upload multiple photos at once.

Once you have completed the installation, simply click "add photos" and select multiple photos at once to upload to your selected album. You can remove the photos selectively if you don't like them, as you can see the smaller images before they are installed. Ready? Just click on "upload photos" to complete the job.

Now there is no need to pick and choose a small set of photos to upload to orkut, because you can simply create an album and upload all photos from your event at once!

orkut trends: The State of orkuters

Natalie Schwartz — Fri, 08 Feb 2008 20:13:00 +0000

Posted by Ellen Spertus, Research Scientist

A question came up in the orkut trends community: What is the distribution of orkut users among the different states in the US? Here's a peek into where US orkuters come from.

All 50 states, the District of Columbia and Puerto Rico are represented. The #1 state is my adopted home (and that of so many other US Googlers), California, with 20% of US orkuters. Next comes the great state of New York (11%), and then two southern states, Florida (8%) and Texas (7%).

In fifth place was Massachusetts, the home of my alma mater, MIT. This state's name had the distinction of being spelled the most incorrect ways by our users. Misspellings including: massachussets, massachussetts, massachusets, massachusettes, massachustes and even massachuster. (I confess to using spell-check to get the right spelling although I resided there for ten years. I guess what they say about engineers and their lack of English skills may be true.)

Rounding out the top ten were New Jersey -- referred to by some as "Joisey" -- at 6%, my home state of Illinois (4%), Georgia (2.5%), Pennsylvania (2.5%) and Virginia (2.4%). Other states making up more than 1% of our US user base were Washington (2.3%), Michigan (2%), Ohio (2%), Connecticut (1.9%), Maryland (1.7%), North Carolina (1.6%), Arizona (1.4%), Minnesota (1.1%), and Colorado (1%). Least represented were the sparsely populated states of North Dakota (.07%), South Dakota (.07%), and Wyoming (.06%).

I was intrigued by the number of US orkuteers residing in "states" which I had never heard of. One such state is Fakelandia (4555 residents) and its presumed capital Fakecity (158). I was disappointed that there were more residents of Hell (367) and Inferno (356) than of Heaven (135). I would enjoy visiting the residents of the magical states of Disney (346) and Hogwarts (247), or the neighbors of the fictional Simpsons in Springfield (175). While I have spent many happy hours observing Sim City, unlike 107 orkut users, I do not reside there.

Until next time, may your state be a happy one!

Create a Private Community

Natalie Schwartz — Fri, 08 Feb 2008 12:04:00 +0000

Posted by Nishant Redkar, Software Engineer

A wise man once said "Privacy is the condition of being left alone, out of public view, and in control of information that is known about you." Here at orkut, we're keeping up with your requests for additional privacy controls. We recently added new features that allow orkuteers to limit viewership of photos, videos, testimonials and scrapbook to friends. Based on your feedback, we've decided to go even further to empower the owners of communities to choose whether to make their community content private or public. The additional privacy control we've added allows you to make your community an enclosed entity so that you can discuss whatever you want within its walls (of course, content must abide by orkut community standards and policies), resting assured that only members can view your discussions, forums, and events.

Have you ever thought of creating a community poll like "Who is the best teacher at your school?", but stopped yourself from doing it because the teachers might actually see it? Or perhaps you wanted to create a community to keep in touch with family, but didn't want to share your family events and posts with the whole orkut community? While communities are a great place to meet new people who share your interests, we understand that the current structure of communities sometimes makes it difficult to have intimate discussions with a select group of people. We hope that the introduction of private communities will fill this need.

So go ahead and create your communities, and use the privacy setting that fits your needs!

Google Privacy Tips, orkut style

Natalie Schwartz — Wed, 30 Jan 2008 12:32:00 +0000

Posted by Orkut Buyukkokten

Orkut isn't the same social networking site that it used to be. When I created the site, there was less information to share and there were fewer sharing controls. Since, we've added ways for users to upload photos and post videos, include friend updates on user homepages, and send and receive scraps. To help you manage what you post on the site, and what you share with whom and when, we recently launched some new sharing features that give users control over who gets to see their photos, videos, testimonials, and scraps.

In order to walk you through these changes and to continue educating our users about their privacy choices, I filmed this brief video tutorial, orkut style. As the video shows, keeping information private - or just between your closest friends - is easy and safe. And when you've got something that you want the entire orkut community to discover, then allowing everyone to see your profile or your photos is also just a few clicks away.

From everyone at orkut, we hope you enjoy the video. Let us know what you think and keep orkut beautiful.

orkut at 4!

Natalie Schwartz — Thu, 24 Jan 2008 14:21:00 +0000

Posted by Natalie Schwartz, Associate Product Marketing Manager

You may have noticed that the orkut logo looked a little different when you signed in today -- and if the four candles on the cake didn't give it away already, it's our fourth birthday. That's right, 2/5ths of a decade ago, orkut launched. It has grown up pretty fast, with many more features, communities, friends and photos since it first opened as an invite-only community. Whether you've been with us for years or days, thank you for being a part of the orkut community!

orkut trends: Who sends scraps?

Natalie Schwartz — Tue, 22 Jan 2008 16:27:00 +0000

Posted by Ellen Spertus, Research Scientist and Torsten Nelson, Software Engineer

When orkut launched, we had no idea that scrapbooks would be the primary way members would interact. Billions of scraps later, we've learned that scraps are a huge hit, and have added ways to make them even more fun by enabling you to add videos, photos and HTML.

We've been wondering (and perhaps you have too): Which orkut users are scrappiest? In our recent sample, members from the island nation of Grenada had the highest scrap counts at an average of 1877 scraps. Of the biggest orkut nations, Pakistanis came in first, followed by Americans, Indians, and Brazilians. (All of these statistics are based on current scraps that have not been deleted by the recipients.)

Women receive just under half (48%) of all scraps. Women from the Cayman Islands receive the most, followed by those from the British Virgin Islands, Trinidad and Tobago, San Marino, and the Northern Mariana Islands. (What is it about those islanders?) Albanian women had the fewest scraps (81) -- still a pretty substantial number when you think about it.

On the male side, islanders still rule: men from Grenada averaged a whopping 2569 scraps each. Here's the full chart:

Country (gender)	Scraps received	Scraps received (women)	Scraps received (men)
Grenada	1877	557	2569
Cayman Islands	861	1093	715
Pakistan	758	717	779
United States	423	249	578
India	345	443	301
Brazil	267	272	263

Who's sending these scraps? The scrappiest users hail from Pakistan, followed immediately by Madagascar and the Central African Republic. Among women, the most scraps come from Jamaica, then Madagascar, followed by the nation of St. Pierre and Miquelon. Among men, Pakistanis sent the most, then Qatar.

And what are people saying in scraps? Some messages occurred again and again. Out of a sample of 1,000,000 short scraps, the following were among the most common:

scrap	# of occurrences
hi	1131
oi [hi]	689
ok	298
parabens [congratulations]	273
.	187
hello	184
=]	146
vlw [thx]	135
^^	133
blz [ok]	132
=)	124
:)	117
[:p]	115
=D	115

Not only was the word "hi" common, it also appeared frequently followed by extra "i"s. For example, "hiiiiiiiii", "hiiiiiiiiiiiii", and "hiiiiiiiiiii" each occurred more than 90 times in our 1,000,000 scrap sample.

Until next time, our 46th most popular scrap: "bye"!

orkut Highlights for 2007

Natalie Schwartz — Mon, 07 Jan 2008 19:27:00 +0000

Posted by Natalie Schwartz, orkut Team

As we started the new year, we took some time to look back on the year for orkut. Sometimes we get so caught up looking forward to all the new features we want to launch, we forget to look back at what we have accomplished. If you've been on orkut since January, you may remember when you first saw these features. Or if you've joined more recently you may never have known the site without these favorites. So here are the highlights for this year by month - turns out orkut has come a long way!

In January, we launched our first mobile feature on orkut with orkut SMS integration with Claro, the Brazilian mobile carrier. Since then we have partnered with other mobile providers, and you can now send and receive scraps and find your friends' contact information if you have phone service with Amazônia Celular, Brasil Telecom, Claro, or Telemig Celular. If you still haven't signed up it's not too late to receive those new years scraps on your cell phone: just go to settings and click on the mobile tab.

February brought videos to orkut when we launched integration with Google Video and YouTube. People began copying and pasting URLs of their favorite videos onto the favorite videos page of their profiles. This has been one of the most popular feature launches ever. Since February you have added over 300 million videos to your profiles!

Orkut Buyukkokten, the creator of orkut.com, visited Brazil for the first time in March and spent three weeks touring the country, giving tech talks to hundreds of University Students, conducting focus groups and interviewing with the press. If you missed the visit you can check out the community and the photo album.

Community Polls were enabled in April. Since then people have been voting on topics from the best restaurants in their cities to the most important politician of their towns.

May brought feed integration, allowing you to bring in content from your favorite blogs, Picasa Web Albums or any other source that supports feeds. Still haven't added a feed? Why not add this blog so you always know the latest. Go to add stuff in the left navigation and add the URL.

You wouldn't be reading this if we hadn't launched this blog in June! In case you are bilingual, check out the blog in Portuguese as well.

We were honored to receive the award for "Best Social Networking Site!" from India PC World in July.

The biggest milestone for orkut, perhaps since the launch of the site, happened in August when we launched the visual redesign. This included a slight change to the colors, rounded corners, new icons and an easier-to-use navigation. While giving the site a facelift we also maintained the familiarity and simplicity you've enjoyed for years. Can you even remember the old orkut?

We revamped the site again in September to show updates from your friends right on your homepage. To show or hide your own updates go to the settings page.

In October, we went from allowing you to upload only 12 photos to your album to allowing 100 photos in your album. If you still haven't filled up your album, why not add your latest holiday photos?

This November, Google made the announcement that orkut would be opening up to developers through OpenSocial. If you're a software developer you can test out the platform by joining our Sandbox. We look forward to seeing what applications you're developing for orkut when we launch the platform to consumers next year.

As the year winded down in December, we launched new privacy features that allow you more control over who sees your photos, videos, testimonials and scraps.

Happy New Year orkuters-- we look forward to a great 2008!

Photo Albums on orkut

Natalie Schwartz — Fri, 04 Jan 2008 17:07:00 +0000

Chen Xiao and Anisha Malhotra, Software Engineers

Now that you can have 100 photos, we thought you might want to organize them into multiple albums to make it easier for you and others to enjoy. We were looking for ways to group all of our photos on orkut based on the different experiences that they shared. Today, orkut will be launching Photo Albums! Have many photos from a recent trip? Create an album specifically for that trip. Lots of pics from a recent night out with friends? Create another album with just those photos!

All of your current photos will be stored by default in their own album. Feel free to setup new ones by going to "photos" from your homepage. Once you have created an album, simply click on it and start uploading new photos inside. You can also change the cover photo by clicking on "edit" of the photo that you want to appear, and then selecting "album cover."

All of us from orkut look forward to sharing our latest photos with you!

Calling all spam fighters

Natalie Schwartz — Wed, 02 Jan 2008 15:30:00 +0000

Posted by Dharmesh Mokani, Software Engineer

orkut is an online community designed to help people connect, build relationships and create engaging communities around common interests. We love orkut just as much as you do, and we want to keep it fun and clean - or, as we like to call it, beautiful. So while many members of the orkut team work to build new features like the orkut platform, others of us are dedicated to building tools to keep orkut clean and spam free. But we can't do it ourselves- we need your help.

That is why we recently created a new tool for communities. While communities provide a great medium for people to come together and share ideas through forums, polls and events, lots of communities can be the target of spam. Until now, if you were not the community owner or moderator, you couldn't remove the spam if you saw it. Well that has changed. Now you will be able to click "report spam" to specific topics or items in communities that are spammy, even if you are not the community moderator or owner. This will help us take down spam faster and take the pressure off the community owners and moderators. You can also report spam on specific scraps that you see in your own scrapbook.

We're constantly working on new spam fighting tools, so stay tuned as we release more early this year. In the meantime, please help keep orkut communities beautiful and report spam when you see it!

Security Reminder

Natalie Schwartz — Thu, 20 Dec 2007 21:53:00 +0000

Posted by Sergio Marti, Software Engineer

This week, the orkut team discovered that a user had exploited a bug in our scrapbook feature. As a result, many of you likely received scraps from friends of yours that they actually didn't send, and friends may have received scraps that appeared to come from you.

The orkut team responded quickly, and worked late into the night to fix the underlying issue and contain the spread of these scraps.

We believe that this action has been effectively stopped and you should no longer receive any more of these unintended messages. We appreciate your understanding in this case and hope that this did not create too much of an inconvenience for you or your fellow orkut friends.

Planning a holiday party?

Natalie Schwartz — Wed, 19 Dec 2007 20:15:00 +0000

Posted by the orkut team

It's that time of the year again-when many of you may be hosting friends and family for a holiday party. While catching up is wonderful, planning a party can be a pain. Here's how orkut can help:

Scraps make easy invitations: Paper is overrated, and who knows street addresses anymore? Rather than printing and sending paper invites, make a colorful invite in Photoshop or Paint and post it in your friends' scrapbooks as an invitation. If you're tech-savvy, you could even make it in HTML.

Put Maps in your scraps: Go to maps.google.com and type in the party address. Once it shows up click on "link to this page" in the top right and paste the URL into your friends' scrapbooks. Then they'll see exactly where they are going, and will even be able to find driving directions and the nearest spot to pick up a bottle of champagne to bring!

Capture the fun on film: Break out your digital camera and take some photos. Now that you can upload up to 100 photos, that should give you plenty of space to document the fun. Since "added photos" show up in your updates from friends, your friends will be able to relive the party through your album. If you have some especially good ones you want to share, you can decorate the photo (as I have done below) or make a slideshow on slide.com and post it in your friends' scrapbooks.

Take some holiday footage: To really see your guests in action, there's no substitute for video. Break out your video camera and capture the singing, dancing and fun. When you're done, upload your videos to YouTube and put them as your Favorite Videos on orkut.

Happy holidays and we'll see you in January!

We hear you!

Natalie Schwartz — Tue, 18 Dec 2007 12:15:00 +0000

Posted by Viviana Agostinho, orkut Operations Team

2007 was a really good year for orkut. So many new features were launched! But where did these new ideas come from? Well, mostly from you. Yes, it was all of you who sent us the enormous amount of suggestions about how to make orkut even better.

For example, one of the top suggestions we've received was regarding the photo album. Of course, 12 photos weren't enough for you to showcase all the photos of your friends, family and travels to your orkut friends. So we worked hard to get enough storage space to bump that number up-- and now you can upload up to 100 photos! Another top suggestion was about privacy. We heard you tell us that you wanted to share your photos and scrapbooks with friends, but perhaps not with everyone on orkut. So we launched privacy settings for both album, scrapbook, videos and testimonials so that you can chose who you want to share your content with.

And how can you continue to change what you see us developing for orkut?

There are two different ways you can submit your suggestions. One is to visit our Suggestions Page, where you can select from some pre-defined suggestions that we hear often. The other one is to visit our Help Group and post any idea you have on the suggestions section. Either way, your voice will be heard.

Thanks for your suggestions, keep them coming and we look forward to continuing to take them into account!

Stay beautiful and happy holidays!

I’m feeling serendipitous!

Natalie Schwartz — Fri, 14 Dec 2007 21:02:00 +0000

Posted by Jude Britto, Software Engineer

There's nothing quite like the feeling you get when you find someone on orkut that you've lost touch with for a while. We've been working on ways to make this a more common occurrence.

One of the nice things about Gmail is that it adds the names of the people you have been in touch with over the years as contacts in your address book. Wouldn't it be nice if you could automatically find those contacts on orkut? We've started rolling out a new feature to do just that. If you use a gmail address to log into orkut, finding your friends is now just a click away. The find friends button on the homepage, friends page or friends list page gets you started on importing contacts. Your gmail address is already filled in, and since you've already logged into orkut, we don't have to ask for your Gmail password once again. We'll show you the contacts who are already on orkut, and let you choose which ones to add as friends. For contacts who aren't on orkut yet, we make it easy to choose the ones you want to invite to orkut. You can even add a personal message to send with the invite. Soon, we'll be adding support to import your contacts from other email accounts.

So go ahead and try it out. You may just find that long lost cousin, or maybe an old flame :)

Keeping more of your content private

Natalie Schwartz — Mon, 10 Dec 2007 23:51:00 +0000

Posted by Zachary John, Business Product Manager

Recently, we wrote about the new functionality that allows you to chose whether to let everyone or just your friends view your testimonials, videos and photos. And now, we're announcing that we've expanded privacy settings so you can now do the same with your scrapbook and feeds. Though some of us feel perfectly comfortable keeping our scraps open to the community, we know some of you are more private and would prefer to keep them among friends. How do we know? We've heard you in the help group and help center, and we've listened! Limiting who can view your scrapbook has been a long requested feature on orkut. To adjust your level of privacy, go to your settings page and click on "privacy". Thanks for the feedback, keep letting us know what you want to see from orkut!

Keeping orkut Beautiful!

Natalie Schwartz — Fri, 07 Dec 2007 18:11:00 +0000

Posted by Keyla Ribeiro, orkut Operations Team

We all love orkut, but no one likes to come accross profiles or communities of questionable content. It's important to keep in mind that orkut is a place for people to communicate freely about all sorts of topics -- but that doesn't mean anything can be posted on the site. Here are some guidelines to remind you what sorts of things will be removed when we become aware of their existence:

Hate comments about race or ethnic origin, religion, disability, age, veteran status and sexual orientation or gender identity; we also do not tolerate direct threats of violence towards individuals.
Content with child porn, pedophilia and frontal nudity.
Profiles and communities that promote or encourage illegal and dangerous activities that could result in physical harm to the person committing the act or those around him/her.
Defamatory profiles that imitate a real person; we'll remove them if we receive a full and complete report from the person being impersonated.

To file a report on any profile or community you believe may fall into any of the categories listed above, simply visit the profile or community in question and click the “report abuse” link. On profiles, this link will appear once you hover over the "more" link. We are counting on you to help us keep orkut nice and clean.

Stay beautiful!

Community News

Natalie Schwartz — Thu, 06 Dec 2007 20:16:00 +0000

Posted by Eduardo Cordeiro, Software Engineer

Are you a fan of soccer? Heroes? Britney Spears? Formula One? Whatever your passion, you've probably found a community around it on orkut. And when you're not on orkut, chances are you also visit a favorite news site to check for news on that subject too, right? Well, now you can stay up to date on news from within your community, because community owners can now display a news feed on that subject within the community. So while you talk to your fellow members, you can see what's in the news on the same subject, without leaving orkut. When this feature is available for your community you will see a message on its page. Click on the "edit profile" link from that community and you'll see a new feature, called "customized news". Once you click to enable it, you will enter the subject or term you'd like news about.

We're enabling this feature for all communities slowly, and soon even the fans of cotton-swab lifting (the professional series, of course) will be able to talk about the latest developments in that sport from within their communities. Oh, and by the way, if you're a developer, you can bring the same power to your website with the Google AJAX Search API.

Keeping your content private

Natalie Schwartz — Tue, 04 Dec 2007 02:06:00 +0000

Posted by Vlad Patryshev, Software Engineer

Have you desperately wanted to show off photos from a recent romanitc getaway or from friends' really "colorful" party? Or have you wanted to put up videos that feature your family & friends but held back because you didn't want the whole world to see them? Well then, we have just the feature for you! You can now make your photos, videos and testimonials viewable to just your friends. While many of you love orkut for its open nature, we understand that there are some things you'd rather not share with the whole community (and we've heard you say so in our help group). So if you'd prefer to keep your photos, video or testimonials amoung friends, just go to the settings page and click the privacy tab. You can then set the privacy to friends, add personal content to your heart's content and rest assured that no one other than your own friends will be able to see it!