Google Privacy Tips, orkut style

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.

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orkut at 4!

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!

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orkut trends: Who sends scraps?

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"!

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orkut Highlights for 2007

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!

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Photo Albums on orkut

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!

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Calling all spam fighters

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!

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