We are excited with the feedback from our users about the new themes we have released lately. Because of this and following some suggestions from our users we now present another two new themes! For those who enjoy electronic music we have a great new Electronic theme. And for the ones aiming for the calmness of the countryside, we have a theme to remember the importance of taking a time to enjoy all that life has to offer.

Enjoy the new themes Drum Machine and Countryside!

Posted by Koji Pereira, Google Designer

Today is Orkut birthday! Brazil’s most loved social network is now 8 years old and in order to celebrate with you all, we created this Doodle which is grooming our page.

Almost a decade after its creation, it is still growing and getting better with the support from all of you who share news and meet your friends and interests on Orkut. It is a pride for us to be part of the lives of so many people using our social network.

Therefore, on Orkut’s birthday, we say thank you to all dozens of millions users and invite everyone to celebrate this date with us!

Posted by Koji Pereira, Google Designer

The orkut team in its quest to hear from the user community, continues its work and has news. Today we launched a theme for gamers and another one to encourage respect for diversity. Can you imagine that we would have so many surprises? Well, keep checking our blog and the next news.

Try and share this fun experience.

Posted by Koji Pereira, Google Designer

If you have an iPhone or iPod touch, you'll be happy with what we have for you today: a new Orkut app for your mobile iOS device.

With this version, you can access your friends' profiles, scraps, updates, birthdays, and even take pictures and send it directly to your Orkut albums. As always, your feedback is very important so please send us your comments and help us make an even better Orkut for you.

Download the new Orkut app today and stay connected with your friends and family anytime, anywhere - and get an exclusive badge to personalize your Orkut profile!

Posted by Ralf Botchen, Google Engineer

Everybody knows that the samba is always current, right? Orkut team prepared two new themes that will make your profile look stylish and in the rhythm of samba. After all you need to be prepared to be in a good samba party. We created a theme about samba for those already warming the tambourines for the Brazilian carnival and a fashion theme for those who believe that style is more than just clothing.

Posted by Koji Pereira, Google Designer

Many people ask us where to find the information that used to be available in the previous Orkut home page such as testimonials, friends requests and birthdays. To address this, we have created a new home page similar to the one in the previous version of Orkut. The page features the information right above the list of activities.

If you wish, you can continue using the current layout and switch between pages whenever you want by using the switch button located above the list of activities.

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

Posted by Eduardo Ferreira, Google engineer.

The new year is here and the Orkut team expects 2012 healthy year for you all, and a little rest too, right? On the vacations rhythm we created a special theme for those who want to get up early in a healthy way, but also another one for those who are always late ;) So come on, try and have a healthy new year and enjoy your vacations.

Posted by Koji Pereira, Google Designer

Over the last months we have been working hard to introduce major improvements to Orkut communities.

Today we are offering a single page to organize all your communities where you can check all of the new topics. You can also check your pending membership requests and easily unjoin the communities you are a member of.

For the moderators, this page is also a community management center where they can approve or reject pending membership requests. We redesigned the approval process and now they can approve all pending members at once with a single click. Simple and faster!

It is now time to make the improvements available to all Orkut users and offer everyone the same experience:

• Modern and smart design with new community profile, where you can also post videos 
• With automatic reply updates, the topics became big chat rooms! It's no longer necessary to refresh the topic page to check the updates, they'll appear automatically 
• Quickly reply to topics and polls with a single click 
• Want to comment to a specific reply in a topic? Just use "Quote" to get your comment clearer and simpler 
• Express your opinion by liking a topic. To do that, use to 11 different emoticons - and you may even find some hidden emoticons ;-) 
• Follow all your favorite communities e check all new topics from one single place: never loose a topic again! 
• Check who is writting: profile photos on topics, polls and replies 
• Coloured and funny view mode of polls results 
• Improvements to community owners and moderators: they can now manage their communities and close topics with unwanted discussions or reopen it later

Starting today, all Orkut users will have the same community interface and the same functionalities, ensuring that everyone can share ideas and express themselves in an improved way.

How about it? Wait, there's more: today we are also releasing a new version of the Orkut Android app with communities, so you keep updated on all the discussions, wherever you are.

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

Posted by Luis Pereira and Diogo Kropiwiec, Google engineers.

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

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