Latest Update from your orkut Friends

Posted by Viviana Agostinho, orkut Operations Team

In the last week or so, you've probably noticed one major change on your orkut homepage: there is now a box displaying updates from your friends. With this feature you can take a peek at what your friends are doing on orkut. Has someone uploaded a new photo? Added a video? Changed their favorite movies? You can easily see in the "Updates from my friends," list. As always, we've received a lot of feedback on this feature, and we're psyched that most of you are finding it a helpful way to stay up on the latest from your orkut friends.

However, we did get feedback from some of you that your friend updates were preventing you from seeing the birthday list, which was pushed lower on the page. So we've put the birthday list back on top, so you won't miss the party. Some of the traditionalists among you have told us that this box is cluttering up your homepage. Personally, we welcome this friend-update clutter, but if you'd rather not have it there, you can now go to "settings" and uncheck the box next to "updates from my friends" to remove it from your homepage. If still want to check out your friends updates (just not see them every time you log in), you can click on the new "Updates" link in the left navigation under your profile picture.

These improvements could not be possible without your awesome and prompt feedback. So keep it coming: join the help group and share your suggestions to make orkut a better place!

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orkut trends

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

Greetings! We're launching a new column to share some of the fascinating trends that we've discovered about orkut users through looking at the aggregate trends of our user base.

Our unique worldwide user base lets us investigate questions that have been debated for millennia:

1. Do gentlemen prefer blondes?
2. Are Latin Americans the world's friendliest people?
3. Do women talk more than men?
4. Is it true that men overestimate their attractiveness and women underestimate theirs?
5. Are beautiful people more popular?

Here's a sample of what you'll find in our monthly post:

Do you remember that moment of honest self-assessment when you had to rate your own attractiveness in the profile? After all, who among us believes they could be considered a "beauty contest winner"? Six percent of orkut users, that's who! Take a look:

1. Africa (14%)
2. Caribbean (13%)
3. North America, Central America, and Oceania (Australia, New Zealand, and surrounding islands) (12%)
4. Europe (10%)
5. Middle East (9%)
6. South America (6%)
7. Asia (3.5%)

Fully two-thirds of Orkut users who rated themselves said they were more attractive than average (giving a new meaning to average). Asians were most likely (32%) to consider themselves average looking. Oceania residents were most likely to rate themselves as "mirror-cracking material" (14%), and South Americans the least likely (4%).

Data-heads can find the complete results, broken down by sex (as so many of us are), here.

You can suggest questions you'd like us to answer and vote in polls by putting on your helmet and visiting orkut trends. And remember, these trends and stats are compiled using aggregate data, not individual or personal data, so your secrets are safe with us.

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Add more photos to orkut!

Posted by Zachary John, Business Product Manager

Too many photos and never know which ones to choose? Bring your craziest, hottest, funniest photos onto orkut for your friends to see and enjoy. Having a great photo experience is an important part of sharing and connecting with friends, so the orkut team plans to continue to innovate our photo experience until it's the one place that you would go to upload your photos. This week, orkut will double the number of available photos for you to upload, and continue to grow the number of photos over the coming weeks. You already enjoy having all your friends on orkut, why not start bringing all those photos too? Additionally, we're working on features that will make your photos more social and easier to share.

Stop reading and get started! I have already started picking out mine: New friends in Rio, my favorite taxi driver in SF, dancing in Barra, sunset in Salvado, going out with my flatmates and relaxing in California

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Why I'm an Orkuteer

Posted by Alexandre Luis Vignado, orkuteer*

*orkuteers are orkut members (outside of Google) who have shown incredible dedication and helpfulness in our orkut Help Group. Alexandre has provided us with his story and permission to share it with you here. Here's more - about the Help Group and orkuteers.

I've been an orkut user since the early beginning and what has most impressed me is the ability to reconnect with old friends whom I hadn't met for ages. Recently, I found Thainá, my high school platonic love. Six years ago, I had to move from our city and we lost contact. However, recently, we found each other on orkut and started talking again.

Without orkut, it would have been impossible to contact her or meet up, which we did last month, in the same town where we used to live. Since then, we've found that we had many common interests that we didn't notice when we used to live in the same town. Now we have a much stronger connection because of orkut.

That's why I love orkut, and I'm always willing to help other users in the Help Group: so more and more people can have a similar experience, which is extremely important to me, and is changing my life.

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Searching for better search

Posted by Eduardo Thuler, orkut Product Manager

Though I've discovered dozens of people on orkut, searching for them has never been easy. Trouble is, there are so many people in orkut that you'll always find several people with the same name. It's usually easier to find people in friend's lists than actually searching for them. Well, we just can't accept that search wouldn't also be a good way to find someone, so we're working on a bunch of improvements.

For example, you'll now see that when you search for a name, we'll show your friends (and friends of friends) as the first results. This will make search an alternative quick way of finding a familiar profile. Currently we're working on a change, so that your search results show people who have interests similar to yours -- so keeping your information updated, will improve the search results you get. So stay tuned for that in the coming months. We'll let you know as even more improvements go live.

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With a little help from your friends

Posted by Robin Norvell, orkut Operations Team and orkut Guide

Got a question about a feature? Need a refresher on how to manage a community? Our beloved orkut is a work in progress, but we’re always working to improve it for you – and with you. So we’d like to introduce you to a place you can go for your orkut-related questions and discussions.

The orkut Help Group is a forum where the knowledgeable and the curious meet to discuss orkut. You can post about your favorite features, tell us your suggestions, and find out what others are saying. From complex questions to new features to bug fixes, anyone can post a question or response on an innumerable array of topics. Think of it as one big orkut community: It’s a one-stop shop for you to visit and share your comments about orkut with everyone.

An especially nice thing about the help group is that you can get an answer in minutes or hours by anyone in the know, instead of having to wait in the huge queue of email messages our team sifts through each day. You'd be surprised at how helpful you all are to each other. In fact, we've got a group of volunteer helpers who have proved to be both expert orkut users and super-helpful question-answerers called"orkuteers." These folks are on hand to take almost any question you could have. In addition to learning from and sharing with others, you'll also see friendly orkut Guides (look for the cool Guide logo on our posts). Guides are Google employees who pop in to monitor the action, answer questions, tell you new features, and follow up on problems and bug reports.

Any time you need help, or if you just want to be heard, feel free to stop by. We’ve got you covered in both English and Portuguese. And if you think orkut’s perfect as it is, come let everyone know why!

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What's new with your orkut friends?

Posted by Priya Mandawat, Software Engineer

If you're at all like me, you constantly check your orkut friends' profiles to check out their pics from last weekend, see if they've found any funny YouTube videos lately, updated their relationship status, or changed any other profile info. If you have lots of orkut friends, this can get a little tiresome, so we thought: let's put it all in one place. Starting today you may see a "Updates from your friends" box on the homepage where you'll get real-time updates when your friend Divya has a new address, when Priya has uploaded a new favorite YouTube video, or Amar has posted his new photos. Any changes you make will show up on your friends' homepages as well, so they can be the first to wish you best of luck at your new job, or or send you a scrap about the photo from your latest vacation.

Of course, there are some things on your profile we know you want to keep private (e.g., not letting your boyfriend know about that new guy you just friended), so we've added an easy opt-out button on the settings page.

We're rolling this feature out over the next couple days, so if you don't see it yet, you will soon!

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