The new orkut was launched and it seems like people are really enjoying it! We're handing out more invitations so you can enjoy what's new in this version, but in the meantime we also created a video summing up the key changes:

If you can't access the new orkut yet, don't worry - there are still different ways to get an invitation. Good luck!

Posted by Rodrigo Paiva, orkut operations team

Today is a very special day for the orkut team (and hopefully for you as well). After months of hard work, we are thrilled to announce the launch of a brand spanking new version of orkut. We've been listening carefully to all of the feedback that you've so diligently left us and have rebuilt the site from the bottom up using the Google Web Toolkit (GWT). Doing so has allowed us to create a faster, richer and more intuitive experience for you and continue to increase our pace of innovation. With the new version of orkut you'll find:

• Fewer pages, faster browsing: We've concentrated orkut's principal actions onto your homepage, making it a one-stop-shop for nearly everything that you'd like to do. Now you can chat, watch videos, and browse and search within your full friends and communities lists without ever having to open a new page. See a photo, video, or status message in your activity stream that you'd like to comment on? Just start typing away. After all, fewer pages and a GWT interface mean less time waiting for things to load and more time doing what really matters– hanging out with your friends!

• A clean, simple interface: We've reorganized the most important activites on orkut so that they are easy to find and even easier to use. Look out for larger pictures, easier to access notifications, targeted friend suggestions, and key updates closer to the top of your homepage. Now you can even use your friends' profile pages to keep up with their most recent activities and leave them scraps.
  

• Greater personalization: Make your orkut profile and homepage truly your own by choosing the color that best fits your style. Have a personality that's too unique to be captured by words? We've also made it possible for you to customize your "about me" section, adding video, OpenSocial applications and much more to your array of options.
  

• And much, much more: This is just a taste of all the new things you'll find on orkut. Learn more about all of the different features you'll find on the new interface by visiting this page on the orkut Help Center.
  

Excited about the new version of the site? Then you'll also be excited to know that we're returning to orkut's roots and granting access to it via invitations. Starting today, there are two ways to get invites:

1. Join Poppy and Shashi on the official community (www.orkut.co.in/neworkut) for insights into the new version of orkut and participate in one of the many activities that will be taking place there. Be sure to check back often as the owners will be regularly announcing new ways to get access.
2. Find a friend who's already using the new version of orkut and ask for an invite. You can see who's already gotten access via your activity stream or by this icon that will appear on your friends' profile pages, next to their names.

We'd like to think of this as the beginning of a new evolution for orkut, so please stay posted for even more improvements coming in the near future. If you'd like to leave us a comment just visit the orkut Help Forum.

Hope to see you on the new version of orkut soon!

Posted by the whole orkut team

The orkut team is constantly working to keep orkut a fun and safe place for everyone. We've previously posted some tips on staying secure on orkut — if you haven't seen them yet, take a look! — but I want to share one more security tip with you: this one is about browsers.

Your Internet browser is one of the most important software programs on your computer because every website you visit runs through it. Right now you're using a browser to read this blog post, just as you use it to access orkut or any other site on the Internet.

Orkut itself is fully supported by the latest versions of three major browsers: Google Chrome, Mozilla Firefox and Internet Explorer. For the best experience, you should always access orkut via one of these browsers.

Although most people on orkut do use one of those browsers, not everyone remembers to frequently update their browser versions. This means that many people may be using an older version of Firefox or Internet Explorer. Old browsers are not only slower and sometimes prone to crashing, but they're also unsafe because they lack the latest security features and bug fixes that are included in newer updates.

So, if you want to stay safe, remember to update your browser to the latest version. It's free, and it only takes a few minutes! The good news is that if you use Google Chrome, you're already up-to-date — Google Chrome automatically installs the newest version when it becomes available.

To try Google's web browser, click to download Google Chrome. You can also download the latest version of Mozilla Firefox or Internet Explorer 8 optimized for Google.

Browse safely, folks!

Posted by Ariel, orkut operations team

With it's tens of millions of active users and innumerable communities and Open Social applications, it can sometimes be tough to stay on top of everything that's happening on orkut. While we do our best to keep you posted via the official orkut blog, there are lots of other great resources out there dedicated to exactly that purpose. Today we'd like to highlight orkutheroes.com, a site focused on honoring those users who are helping to bring people together on orkut by creating interesting, creative communities and providing useful information to others. Founded and maintained by Zaheer Abbas (known as Zazo), and Tara, orkutheroes.com offers a tremendous amount of content, including interviews, tips and updates about what's new, reviews of blogs maintained by orkut users, and orkut related graphics and posters.

In just a few minutes of browsing the site I've found everything from an article on a Reiki Grand Master who uses her 15 orkut communities to attempt to heal and educate people about her craft to a peek into the lives of four people who use orkut to share memory exercises and math tricks.

If you're ever looking for a quick diversion, take a few moments to see what quirky, surprising and informative new tidbits the orkutheroes team has posted (like this interview of Sameep Kulkarni, a budding 'software sitarist').

Know of another great resource for people looking to learn more about orkut? Stop by the orkut Help Forum and let us know– you might see it appear on the official orkut blog!

Posted by Swati Rai, operations team

It's time to turn on the lights, paint the house with fresh colors, wear new clothes and gather with family and friends to share in the festive cheer. Diwali is one of the largest holidays in India and has a simple and very important meaning: celebrate the victory of good over evil, light over darkness and knowledge over ignorance.

The Diwali fever is upon us, and orkut certainly hasn't been left out of the fun. Communities are doing everything from pushing for a 'pollution free Diwali' to voting on their favorite websites for sending Diwali greetings. Check out the I love Diwali community's active polls on people's favorite things about the holiday (right now, 'crackers' is topping the list with 27% of votes, but it's closely followed by 'holidays', 'new clothes', and 'sweets').

A number of Open Social applications have also popped up to celebrate, like the Diwali Wish app. With it, you can create a wishlist of things you'd like this Diwali and see what your friends are hoping for as well. If you want to send special Diwali greeting cards or scraps, you can also try applications like Kaamana- Greetings for U and Fun Scraps.

If you haven't seen it already, take a look at the special Diwali logo we designed to brighten the festive season... Happy Diwali :-)


Posted by Shaon Roy Chowdhury, orkut operations team

UPDATE: Beginning with this year's Diwali celebration, the orkut team will be doing special doodles and posts to commemorate festive dates around the world. Keep your eyes peeled for the next one!

What happens when one man uses his favorite social networking site to share his dreams, inspirations, and ideas? In the case of Pawandheer, it snowballs into a community of over 3000 members that hosts more than 40,000 photos and boasts hundreds of topics related to subjects as varied as yoga, blood donation, and great literary works.

Pawandheer, a 21 year-old media student in Andhra Pradesh, formed the community Orkut Photo Gallery MPG to share poetry, short stories, quotes and photographs with like-minded others. Through the active participation of its members, MPG has blossomed into a platform to discuss an incredibly diverse array of topics. Thanks to the hard work of its group of 30 odd moderators known as Team MPG, the community has turned into a true online resource. Take a look at this discussion on numerology and you'll find more than 700 posts focused solely on defining each of the numbers and the characteristics of people associated with them. Now you know where to go to read more about yourself or your partner!

Though most of MPG's members and moderators have never actually met in person, the goodwill and respect they have for one another allows the community to flourish. What’s next for this enthusiastic bunch? Regional meetings to plan the launch of a youth magazine later this year.

The orkut team is thrilled that orkut has helped to connect such an interesting and engaged group of people. If you'd like to check out the MPG community, you can visit it here: http://www.orkut.com/Community.aspx?cmm=51733930. Have a similar story that you'd like to share? Visit the orkut Help Forum and let us know. We'd love to feature you on the official orkut blog.

Posted by Ruchi Singh, Google Adwords team

Orkut is all about bringing real friends together no matter where they may be. Now that we've made it possible for all of you to chat with your friends inside orkut, we figured it was time to make the chat experience even richer. That's why we're so pleased to announce the launch of orkut video chat– a great new way for you and your friends to keep in touch face-to-face directly from your orkut homepage.

Have a webcam connected to your computer? Just take a few seconds to download a small plugin, install it, and you'll be all set to go.

Once you're signed in to orkut, you can tell which of your friends are also ready to video chat by the small green camera icons next to their names in your chat list.

When you find a friend you want to chat with, open a chat window and click on the "Start video chat" link in the "Actions" menu. If you want to get a better view of your friend, you can pop out your chat window and increase the size all the way up to full-screen.

Video chat makes it easy to keep in touch with everyone you know by letting you chat with friends signed in via Gmail and iGoogle, even if they're not orkut users. We hope this new feature helps you stay connected to the people you care about and makes orkut an even more fun place to hang out. If you've got feedback about video chat you'd like to share, we'd like to hear it– so just head to the orkut help forum and let us know!

Posted by Robin Schriebman and David Wu, software engineers

If you're as much of an orkut addict as I am, you probably spend a decent amount of time visiting friends' profiles and seeing what they're up to. While browsing, I'm often surprised to find people that I know (friends of friends), who I didn't even realize had orkut profiles. While I often use the search feature to find specific friends I want to add, up until now, there hasn't been an easy way to find those friends of mine I wouldn't think to search for.

We on the orkut team figured we could make things easier on everyone by offering suggestions of people you might want to be friends with on your orkut home page. With the new orkut friend suggestions feature, we use an algorithm to automatically create a list of people on orkut who you might know, and display it right below your birthday reminders.

Not only does the friend suggestions feature make it easy to find new friends, it also lets you add them to your friends list and send them a short message without ever leaving your home page. Just click the "add as friend" link below your friend's photo, customize the message you want to send (or use the predefined message we've created for you), and click "send invite."

We originally developed this feature to help people who were new to orkut to quickly and easily find all of their friends who had already joined, but soon realized that it could be just as useful to any orkut user, regardless of how many friends they have. As such, we've decided to make it available to all of you. We're currently in the process of rolling it out, so if you haven't seen it yet, don't worry, we'll be sure to get to you soon.

Have feedback about orkut friend suggestions? Visit the Help Forum and let us know.

Hope this new feature helps you make even more orkut friends!

Posted by Eduardo Tejada, software engineer

We almost can't believe it ourselves, but we've finished enabling orkut chat for everyone!

Those of you who have been patiently waiting will be pleased to know that we've made orkut chat even more dynamic by adding these new features:

• Chat pop out: allows you to view individual chats in separate windows

• Group chat: lets you chat with multiple friends at the same time

• Chat list: makes it easy to see which of your friends are online, whether they're logged in via orkut, Gmail, iGoogle, or Google Talk

Want to learn more? Check out this short instructional video:



Don't have access to chat from your orkut profile yet? Take a few seconds and verify your email address with us and you'll be all set.

By the way, we've still got a couple of cards up our sleeves. Do expect to see more exciting features coming to chat soon.

Posted by Rodrigo Almeida, software engineer

Almost everyday there's something that I'd like to spread to all of my orkut friends, whether that be a hilarious YouTube video, a new orkut community I just discovered or a quote that happens to fit my mood. That's why I'm so happy to announce the release of a new orkut feature: 'promote'.

orkut promote is a free tool that allows you to create announcements and automatically send them to all of your orkut friends with a single click. Promote makes it easy to show text, your original photos from your orkut photo albums and your original YouTube videos to your orkut friends– just give your promotion a catchy title and a short description and you'll be all set to go.

With this new promote tool, you get:

• the ability to easily create promotions using text, photos from your orkut albums, and your original YouTube videos
• built-in 'spread' and 'trash' features that let you pass on the promotions you like to all of your friends and delete the ones you don't so that they never show up for you again
• the 'my promotions' tool that shows you how many users have viewed, clicked on, or deleted your promotions, as well as how far they've spread
• the ability to stop or delete a promotion that you've created at any time

We've done our best to make promotions not just easy to use, but also easy to find. That's why we've placed them in the upper right corner of your friends' home and profile pages, in the same place where advertisements typically appear.

Excited as we are? Check out this short instructional video to learn more:



If you haven't seen 'promote' yet, it's important to understand that we're currently in the process of rolling it out to all of our users around the world. If you're living in India, we're looking forward to having promote ready for you in the coming months. When it appears, head to the orkut Help Center and let us know what you think.

Hope you like the new feature and looking forward to seeing your promotions spreading through orkut soon!

Posted by the orkut promote team.