Themes to enjoy your holidays

It is almost Christmas time and we are still working to build a better Orkut. The Orkut team has two presents this Christmas: a theme for those who enjoy martial arts and another theme for children at any age who love fun stories with animals.

So enjoy it and try it. The new year will come with many surprises. Curious? So are we!

Posted by Koji Pereira, Google Designer

Read More

Lastest news on communities this year

After launching a complete communities redesign, as you probably had noticed, we are still launching new features for communities, like the live update on topics and the quote feature.

Thinking on how to make the user experience even better, we’ve added the “like” feature for topics. We are running a test of this feature and soon it will be expanded and improved. For now, you can use “like” on the first topic message. Show how you like the topics of a community using the emoticon that express your feelings best. Now enjoy this new feature and your holiday party, there’s a lot more comming next year!

Posted by Luís Guilherme Pereira, Google engineer

Read More

Happy Holidays!

2011 went by very fast, but was full of new Orkut features. Communities were revamped and got more dynamic, and we got many new themes, badges, games and even a brand new Android app.

To celebrate the busy year and properly welcome 2012, we couldn't forget to create a special Happy Holidays badge! To get the badge, open your Orkut profile, click on "manage" under the "Badges" section, and input the following code: HOHOHO2012. But be quick, because the badge will only be available for a short time!

Despite all the new features and hard work, the Orkut team is not resting on its laurels and is preparing lots of cool stuff for 2012. So enjoy the new year's, and keep an eye on Orkut's official blog to get Orkut news first hand.

Posted by Paulo Schlup, Google Product Manager

Read More

New themes: Animes, soccer and lights

We are living a month of holiday parties and Orkut team haven’t forget to prepare some gifts for you all. And this time we have three new themes: one for those who like japanese cartoons - animes, one for the soccer fans and the other one bringing the ambience of lights from this end of the year.

Enjoy the gifts and festivities, but do not forget to bring your friends!

Posted by Koji Pereira, Google Designer

Read More

Tribute to the Universal Declaration of Human Rights

On December 10th 1948, the United Nations adopted the Universal Declaration of Human Rights as a basis for the construction of a new world, based on ideas that promote peace and avoid wars.

On today’s doodle, each letter represents one of 5 most important articles on the declaration:

Art. 26º - Everyone has the right to education. 
Art. 13º - Everyone has the right to freedom of movement and residence within the borders of each state. 
Art. 19º - Everyone has the right to freedom of opinion and expression. 
Art. 16º - Men and women of full age, without any limitation due to race, nationality or religion, have the right to marry and to found a family. 
Art. 7º - All are equal before the law and are entitled without any discrimination to equal protection of the law

The declaration became a common ideal for the whole world, so this special date could not pass by without recognition!

Posted by Koji Pereira, Google Designer

Read More

New themes: rock and animals

You can be happy because we have two new themes to your profile become even more joyful. We created a theme for those who love, like us, his animal friends and for those who love rock’n roll.

Your Orkut, your self expression.

Posted by Koji Pereira, Google Designer

Read More

New Orkut themes

Cinema, motorcycles, Indian culture e pop lovers can count on new Orkut themes, they are ready to install.

We are aware to many comments and requests of Orkut users and soon we will have more news. So, it’s time to have fun, choose your favorite and invite friends to have fun!

Posted by Koji Pereira, Google Designer

Read More

Improving Orkut Communities

What feature you like best in Orkut? We've learned a lot from asking our users this question. The more frequently answer included Communities, one of the most loved features.

We've been working hard to provide a better experience in Communities and now we are ready to show to you an improved cleaner design and a bunch of new features, including:

• A new community profile, including videos on description; 
• Follow your favorite communities and receive new topics in your home page: never miss a topic again! 
• Fast one-click replies on topics and polls; 
• See who is talking to you: Profile images on topics, polls and replies; 
• A fun and colorful poll results visualization; 
• Ability for owners and moderators to close a topic with an unwanted discussion and re-open afterwards; 
• And more to come!

We hope you like it! And don’t forget to send us your feedback.

Posted by Maíra Nascimento - Software Engineer

Read More

A smarter Themes Gallery

You probably already tried a theme, colorful or monochromatic, textured or solid. Themes are one of the best tools to use your Orkut profile to express yourself in a fun way. We are always trying to create themes to please every user. Now, as our theme base continues to grow, we created a simple and smart way to compare themes and help you make the best choice, in a all new themes gallery. You can access the new gallery in the “themes” link in the main Orkut menu. Click the link to open the new gallery and see all themes in a single page. With one click you can try and install a new theme:

If you click the “my themes” link at the end of the themes gallery you will view all the themes you’ve already tried, including that special one that is no longer available ;)

Orkut continues to be the place that suits all tastes, so you can either apply your favorite theme or do not apply any theme at all by clicking “browse Orkut without themes”. This setting will apply to your profile and to your friend’s profile until you enable themes again. Have fun!

Posted by Koji Pereira, Google Designer

Read More

Making conversations on Orkut easier

Have you ever been surprised to learn that someone commented on a video you posted but you did not noticed it? Well, some of us have also been that and we wanted to fix it it.

Today we are launching four improvements for most Orkut users:

1. A new page called "conversations", which shows new scraps you get, new replies or comments to conversations you have participated on: videos you shared, scraps you’ve posted and photos you’ve commented on.

2. An indication of items you haven’t read yet. You’ll see a small box to the right of the labels “conversations”, “reminders” and “scraps”. Those will let you know that you should check those pages for updates. Once you enter the page you’ll see a small colored mark to the left of the items that you haven’t read yet. Simply opening those pages will automatically mark those items as read.

And, due to that, we are also making two small changes:

3. Bye, bye yellow ribbon on the top of the updates. As you saw, we resolved it with a much nicer solution.

4. We aren’t showing comments on scraps you sent in your scrapbook page anymore. You’ll be able to see them in your "conversations" page, which is private to you.

Those changes should reach all users in a few days. We really hope you like them!

Posted by Debora Silva, Software Engineer

Read More

Join the World Carfree Day!

Since 1998, the World Carfree Day has been celebrated every September 22nd. All over the world, people leave their cars at home and gather together to claim attention from people to our life style.

To show our support to the cause and instigate yourself to join it, we created a special theme for tomorrow, the World Carfree Day:

So, what about planning yourself to leave your car at home, jump on your bike and ride it to the places you have to go? Public transportation is also part it. The idea is to live 24 hours without a car, and maybe realize that we don't really need it seven days a week ;)

So go ahead, install the theme, invite your friends to join, and be part of it!

Posted by Ariel – Orkut Marketing Team

Read More

A little bit about copyright

Do you know what copyright is? If you do, great! You can stop reading and enjoy Orkut! If you don’t; you might be interested in learning more because this is something that can affect you and the content you post on Orkut.




When somebody creates something; a poem, a painting, a song, a research paper, etc; copyright law usually protects it automatically, with some specific exceptions.




So, what does this mean to Orkut users? It means you should only post or upload something that belongs to you. If it doesn’t belong to you, you need to make sure that it’s something for which you have adequate permissions or is in the public domain, i.e. something so old that its copyright has lapsed, for instance. Or else make sure that you’re reusing content in a way that is permitted under your local copyright laws. If there’s content out there that is violating someone’s copyright, even if you’re not the one who originally posted it, you should avoid linking to it from your Orkut account.




What happens if I post content in violation of someone else’s copyright?




We want you to take full advantage of Orkut to freely post and share your own stuff and things that interest you. But if we receive a complaint from someone who is the rightful owner of something you’ve posted, Google follows the notice-and-takedown procedures set out in the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA).




Most countries have rules which protect intermediaries (like Google) from liability for information posted by users, provided we act quickly to remove or disable access to material when the copyright holder complains. If this happens, you’ll be notified and able to challenge the complaint, but we need to comply with these rules in order to keep providing you with a great experience on Orkut.




You’ll find all our help center material regarding copyright here. There, you will also find a link to the form that you can use to make a copyright complaint.




While copyright law can sometimes be complicated, we hope what we’ve explained here and the information in our help center will help you make responsible choices when posting all the fun and interesting things you enjoy sharing with your friends on Orkut.




Posted by Andressa - Google Legal Team

Featured Apps on Orkut

Every day, millions of users use the applications and play games available on Orkut. Today, there are over 25,000 applications in the Orkut application directory.

Applications and games are a crucial part of making Orkut fun and we’re constantly working to improve the platform and the user experience for both developers and users. With that in mind, we’ve recently launched the new Featured Applications section in the application directory, where users can now discover new high-quality applications which have been hand-picked by our staff.

We hope this new feature helps everyone find new ways to have more fun with these games, applications, and their friends on Orkut. Enjoy!

Posted by Bruno Oliveira, Orkut Developer Programs Engineer

Read More

Verify your business on Google Maps and get an Orkut Badge

Thousands of small businesses owners use Orkut to share information about their products and services, and to communicate with their customers. Now it's even easier to find these businesses using Google Maps from the owner's Orkut profile!

When you visit the Orkut profile of a business owner, you'll find a badge indicating that his listing is already on Google Maps. To visit the listing on the map, just click on the badge:

If you own a business and have an Orkut profile but you haven’t received this badge yet, simply add your listing to Google Maps. Keep in mind that your business doesn't need its own website to be listed on Google! Google Places allows business owners to manage information about their listings if they're already on Google Maps, or to add them to the map if they're not yet listed.

Once they've verified that the basic information about their business is correct and up-to-date, and added details like hours of business and photos, business owners can count on their listings being shown to Google users to grow their customer base. Their listing will appear among search results across Google, including Google Maps, even if they don't have a website. And of course, this is all completely free.

Find out more about Google Places by watching this video:

Let's get started! Claim ownership or create your business listing in Google Maps, using the same Google Account you use to access your Orkut profile. Once your business listing is verified on Google Places, your Orkut profile will earn a badge in a few days!

If you need help, visit the Google Places Help Center and watch this tutorial video about Google Places:

Here's to the success of your business!

Posted by Igor Gatis and Igor Cananea, Software Engineers

Read More

New for your Orkut photos: Popularity counter!

Ever wonder how popular your photos are? Now you can know!

There’s a new feature in Orkut’s photo albums that shows you how many times each photo has been viewed. Each and every one of your photos will have a counter, keeping accurate stats on its “popularity level”. This number is refreshed every few minutes so you’ll always know how many people have checked in on the photos you keep on Orkut.

See a lot of hits? Keep the picture! No views? Maybe it’s time for a new photo, or even a new album, to give your friends something new to look at. The Orkut photo album counter is a great new and dynamic way to see how much your friends enjoy you and your photography skills!

Posted by Maira Nascimento, Software Engineer

Read More

It’s a beautiful game

Football fans, we know you have been asking for your favorite sport in our themes gallery, and today we are happy to announce that you can now add soccer as a theme, in four colors: Green, Blue, Orange and Red.

Enjoy!

Posted by Susan Taing, Orkut Marketing Team

Read More

Rock On, Orkut users!

By popular request, last week we released a set of new music themes on Orkut: Pop, Rap, New Rock and Rock Teen. Here’s a preview of New Rock:

Enjoy, and keep your suggestions coming for the kinds of themes you’d like to see!

Posted by Ariel, Orkut Marketing Team

Read More

Admin History to all Orkut communities

We believe that a well-managed community on Orkut is a better place for everyone to debate and share ideas. Looking to improve the management of all communities on Orkut, and based on the feedback we received from many community owners and moderators, we’re now launching Admin History to every community owner and moderator:

Moderators can now view the history of all important administrative actions taken in the community -- both his and those of other moderators -- in the last six months, including:

• members removed
• join requests that were declined
• users banned or un-banned
• co-owners and moderators added or removed
• topics, replies or polls deleted by a moderator

We hope you and your moderators enjoy this new tool! We're looking forward to hearing your feedback and continue improving Orkut communities.

Posted by Guilherme Trielli Ferreira, Software Engineer

Read More

Our hearts go out to Japan

We’ve been following the crisis in Japan and would like to show our support for a speedy recovery with a special doodle:

Many teams at Google came together to support the crisis, from a centralized Crisis Response page, available in Japanese, English, Chinese and Korean, a Person Finder tool, up-to-date satellite images in Google Earth and change trackers in Google Maps, and an easier donation process. See our Google.org blog post for more details.

Our hearts go out to those who have been affected by the tragedy!

Posted by Susan Taing, Orkut Team

Read More

A new full-screen photo viewer on Orkut

Browsing your friends’ photo albums is one of the coolest things to do on Orkut, and now our full-screen viewer just got even better. It can display photos like they deserve to be seen: BIG, fast, and with the ability to comment and like them (or not) right there!

To see your friends’ photos in this new format, just click the "view in full screen” link:

Voila! Now just sit back and enjoy all the photos on Orkut -- your friends’ and your own -- in full-screen. To comment or like them, use the options on the right side of each photo.

So go ahead and upload your best photos to Orkut and let your friends see and comment them with all the quality they deserve!

Posted by Gustavo Moura, User Experience Team

Read More

New Orkut features -- Like?

Two weeks ago, we announced that we are preparing a visual upgrade to Orkut’s interface. We have just started to roll it out to a small percentage of users, so some of you might start to see it. Right now, we are only upgrading those who are using new Orkut, but if you are in the old interface, please do give it a try when we complete the transition!

In addition, we are happy to announce a new feature today that we hope you will “like”:

Just as we add different smileys in emails, scraps and chat, we recognize that you likely have different reactions to your friends’ stories. Here are a few you might recognize from Google Chat, and in addition, you can find extra “smileys” if you type in the right code in the comment field.

Lastly, we now have an official Twitter account at @orkutindia. Feel free to follow us there in addition to this official blog (en.blog.orkut.com) and the official community at www.orkut.com/orkut

Give our “like?” feature a try today and see just how diverse your friends are in their reactions. Rock on, Orkut users!

Posted by Gustavo Moura, User Experience Team

Read More

Review your birthdate on Orkut

(Updated post providing additional details and the new date for this change)

Today, you are asked to enter your date of birth in a few different places for different Google products (for example, YouTube, Orkut, and Google Profiles). This is because we store this information in different back-end systems. To make this process more organized, and to prevent you from having to enter the same information in multiple locations, over the next few days we plan to consolidate the date of birth you’ve given us across these sites.

As a result, starting on April 7, the birthdate you have listed on Orkut will no longer be changeable. So take a minute to double-check your birthday before this change takes place.

Posted by Rodrigo Paiva, Orkut Operations Team

Read More

Carnival, Carnival, and more Carnival

Carnival in Brazil has just started! Our Carnival doodle this year was inspired by materials typically used by the performing Schools of Samba in their costumes and floats. To reflect the spirit of Carnival, we included the various colors and objects at the party to represent the diverse parts that come together to make the overall party so special.

For the first time, we created a doodle using real-life objects and pieced them together with scissors and glue, both typical Carnival materials. Here is a slideshow to illustrate our "making of":

We will be live streaming the festivities from the streets of Salvador between March 4th and March 8th, at 6pm every evening. Be sure to tune in to www.youtube.com/carnaval to see.

Lastly, we created photos add-ons such as masks and ribbons inside Picnik, a photo editing feature which was integrated into Orkut last December. These add-ons were created especially for Carnival, so just select a photo from your Orkut album, click the "Edit with Picnik” button and enjoy!

Happy Carnival!

Posted by Ariel, Orkut Marketing Team

Read More

Are you an Orkut Graduate?

Last year we launched Orkut Badges and wanted to create badges that would recognize Orkut’s most active users. For instance, we created the badge “Promoter” for those who made the most successful promotions, and the “Trend Setter” badge for users who got a lot of comments on things they posted on Orkut.

Along these lines, we’ve just launched a new badge for users that have “Graduated” from many of Orkut’s experiences.

To get this badge you need to:

• have at least three Groups of Friends
• use a theme
• have installed at least one game or app
• be a member of at least three communities
• have a public photo album
• have commented any of your friends’ updates
• have posted something publicly - a public scrap or a headline, for instance
• have posted something private - a private scrap to a group of friends

If you’ve done all the things listed above but haven’t received your “Graduated” badge yet, don’t worry: it might take a few days to show up. Until then, give some other Orkut features a try, since we’re already thinking about new badges for our advanced users! :-)

Posted by Frederico Quintão, software engineer

Read More

New look and feel coming soon

We’re always looking to improve the product experience for our users, and based on your feedback, we’ve worked on some simple changes to Orkut’s look and feel. We’ll roll these changes out gradually to all users, in approximately two weeks from now. No invitation will be required as everyone will get the update -- so if you don’t see anything right away, just sit tight and you’ll see them soon!

Here are some of the new enhancements that you’ll begin to see in a few weeks:

• Left navigation, to help you get to the most popular features more easily.
• A new larger profile photo, a popular request. Be sure to upload a higher resolution photo of yourself!
• New full profile view, which lets you and your friends see your info, interests, badges, testimonials and recent photos and videos.
• New fullscreen slideshow for photos.

Like what you see? Check out our our official community and let us know your feedback.

We will also have a few more surprises for you in the next month, including updates on communities and new limits on friends, photos and videos, so stay tuned!

Posted by Barbara Veloso, user experience team

Read More

Welcome to the Orkut Box Office

A good movie, popcorn, and your best friends. This weekend, Orkut helps make your movie choice a little simpler. Presenting to you, the Orkut Box Office - Your one stop shop for movie reviews, latest updates and free tickets!

For Orkut users in Mumbai, we are giving away tickets to the latest movie releases on the 19th and 20th of February at PVR Juhu and Mulund.

All you have to do is follow these simple steps:

1. Be in Mumbai on Feb 19 and Feb 20
2. Log onto www.orkut.com/boxoffice
3. Post a comment, a funny story or a movie review
4. Get an email/scrap from us telling you the day, date and time of the movie and instructions on how you can pick up your free tickets!
5. Pick up your tickets from the movie cinema at least 30 minutes before the show

So tell all your friends, and visit www.orkut.com/boxoffice to keep winning free access to the hottest movie releases in town. Each early bird gets two tickets!

For Orkut users from around India, keep the conversations going and we will surprise you with movie screenings in your home town.

Posted by Nikhil Rungta, country marketing manager

Read More

Orkut is still going strong after 7 years

On Monday, we celebrated Orkut’s 7th birthday with a doodle. Thanks to you, our users, Orkut is still going strong, and we continue to work hard at improving it for you all.

Since 2005 we’ve launched more than 30,000 visible and invisible improvements to keep Orkut fresh and useful for you. Some of the more visible of the changes that you may have seen in the last year include photo editing right inside Orkut via Picnik, badges, themes, branded communities and many more. Innovating on features that users would love is important to us, so we were happy to be the first to offer Groups, an easy-to-use privacy dashboard and high-resolution video chat inside Orkut.

Photos and scraps continue to be strong features, and over the last month, we’ve hit a few records. On Christmas Eve, users shared 93 milion scraps, an all-time high, and on January 3rd after New Years, users viewed 1.6 billion photos, which is almost 19,000 photo views a second. For context, YouTube crossed the 1 billion video view mark in October 2009, and crossed the 2 billion mark in May of last year.

To help us innovate on features and obtain good feedback on possible product improvements we run experiments, much like the Google homepage does. For example, we know that users like to see updates from their friends on orkut. While we usually show about 20 friend updates at most, could it be that more updates are better? To answer the question, we ran an experiment to show 40 friend updates to 1% of our users. While some users clicked on, commented and replied to these updates, we learned that others interacted less due to the increased time it took us to show them the extra updates. In this experiment, we received enough information to realize that more updates were probably not better for our users -- so of course, we decided not to move forward with that idea. On the other hand, most of our recent launches came from successful experiments.

Users also love apps inside Orkut, and spend much of their time playing social games by top app developers such as Vostu (developer of Mini Fazenda, Café Mania), Mentez (Colheita Feliz, Vida nas Passarelas), Studio Sol (Eu Sou, Minha Música) and others. For many of our top developers, Orkut represents the majority of their business, which means, more great games for all of you. A few fun stats to share: Mini Fazenda has 17 million users (and 2.5 billion seeds planted every month!), Café Mania with 13 million users (1.25 billion dishes created every month) and Eu Sou with more than 28 million football-related application installs!

As part of our birthday celebration, we launched an official branded community for Orkut users at www.orkut.com/orkut and we are releasing a special anniversary theme. Join the community and share your favorite moment on Orkut with us. And if you have a lot of ideas about our products, we're hiring! Check out google.com/jobs to find out more. Thanks again to you, our users. [tags:#orkut, #orkut7]

Posted by Eduardo Thuler, orkut product manager

Read More

Orkut is turning 7 today

Today marks orkut’s 7th birthday, so to celebrate, we released a new doodle in orkut.

We’d like to thank our users, and to let you know we are here working hard on making orkut better for you.

Join our official orkut community to hear about news and updates.

Posted by the orkut team

Read More

We're serious, about your fun

At Google, we make time to have fun too, whether it’s taking breaks, biking to meetings, bringing our dogs to work, but when it comes to your account and identity, we take it seriously.

We want to help you protect your orkut account. To help us do so, you can now verify your email address, which helps prevent others from using it to sign in to orkut.

Once you've verified, you'll get a new nifty badge on your profile. If you don't already see a badge in your profile, follow these instructions to verify your email.

We're working hard to keep orkut a place for you all to enjoy, so please take a moment to verify your account.

Posted by the orkut team

Read More

Spreading your promotions just became easier!

Orkut promote is a great way to share information. Just create a promotion and orkut will show it to all your friends, who can then share it with their friends and so on.

But have you ever wanted to send a promotion to more than just your friends on orkut? Maybe even share it on your scrap, blog or emails?

Well, now you can! To make your promotions spread even further, we have just introduced the Promo URL. For every promotion you create, we generate a web address that you can use to share the promotion in your scraps or outside of orkut. Just copy and paste it anywhere you want and when someone clicks on it, they’ll see your promotion on the top right corner of your orkut profile.

You’ll find the Promo URL on the Promote page. You’ll even get one of these web addresses for each of your existing promotions so they won’t be left out.

We hope this lets your promotions spread further than ever, so go ahead and start promoting!

Posted by Marcus Leal, orkut product manager

Read More