Photo albums on orkut– the control is in your hands

When I get together with my buddies for a party, we often tend to get a little silly. Whether my friend Vidya starts lip-syncing Beyonce's latest hit or one of the software engineers decides to challenge a product manager to a wrestling match, we always have a great time and end up with tons of pictures. But when I go to upload the photos on orkut, I often find myself in a dilemma. While I'd love to share the photos of the shenanigans that went down at the party with my friends who were there, I don't especially want everyone on my orkut friends list to be able to see them. In order to resolve this issue once and for all, now you can choose specific friends to share each of your different photo albums with.

If you want to customize the privacy settings on a new photo album you're creating, choose the "selected friends" option from the "share with:" drop down menu. Enter the beginnings of the names of your orkut friends, and the system will automatically complete the names for you.

To make sure that your friends know that you've uploaded pictures for them to check out, you can send them a customizable email invitation (look for the checkbox) that links directly to the album. No matter what, your friends will receive an update from you on their home page when you share an album specifically with them.

If you change your mind about who can view any of your existing albums, or think of more friends to add, you can go to any existing album and click on the blue "Share" button. In the box that pops up, you can see who the album is currently shared with and easily grant or take away access.

Now that I have total control over who can see my photos, I'll definitely be posting pictures of a lot more karaoke nights, dance-offs, and impromptu celebrity impersonations soon. You'll have to take my word for it though, because I'm only going to share these photos with my other wild and crazy friends. :-)

As always, we'd love for you to tell us what you think of this feature. Looking forward to to hearing from you!

Posted by Arijit De, Software Engineer