Create a Private Community

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!