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Monday, March 31, 2008

The continued search for better search in orkut

Posted on 10:15 AM by Unknown
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:
  1. 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.
  2. 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.
  3. 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.

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Friday, March 28, 2008

App Highlight: iRead

Posted on 11:02 AM by Unknown
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!





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Thursday, March 27, 2008

The latest updates from your friends

Posted on 10:57 AM by Unknown
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.
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Wednesday, March 26, 2008

App Highlight: go4it

Posted on 11:38 AM by Unknown
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!


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Tuesday, March 25, 2008

The Global Community

Posted on 10:03 AM by Unknown
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!


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Monday, March 24, 2008

Happy Easter!

Posted on 2:11 PM by Unknown
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.



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App Highlight: MyMiniLife

Posted on 10:49 AM by Unknown
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.




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Friday, March 14, 2008

Find more friends on orkut

Posted on 10:45 AM by Unknown
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.
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Thursday, March 13, 2008

App highlight: Crazy Story Game

Posted on 11:13 AM by Unknown
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.

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Monday, March 10, 2008

App highlight: Hangout

Posted on 12:01 PM by Unknown
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!






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Thursday, March 6, 2008

App Highlight: PhotoAttack

Posted on 11:32 AM by Unknown
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.




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      • The continued search for better search in orkut
      • App Highlight: iRead
      • The latest updates from your friends
      • App Highlight: go4it
      • The Global Community
      • Happy Easter!
      • App Highlight: MyMiniLife
      • Find more friends on orkut
      • App highlight: Crazy Story Game
      • App highlight: Hangout
      • App Highlight: PhotoAttack
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