As many of you already know, today is the 60th annual celebration of Republic Day in India!

For those of you who'll be celebrating with your friends and families today, we wanted to make sure that you didn't forget about the fun ways to enjoy the holiday on orkut.

Hang out with other Indian orkuteers on one of the many Republic Day communities, add your input to one of the Republic Day related topics, or use this OpenSocial app to send Happy Republic Day wishes to all of your friends. There's even an orkut community dedicated solely to people who were born on Republic Day.

Not from India? No need to feel left out. orkut is a global social network, so we're going to do our best to make sure that we celebrate your holidays too. Be on the lookout for more special announcements throughout the year!

Posted by Miles Johnson, Marketing Manager.

Today marks orkut's 5th birthday, and the orkut team is in the mood to party. Since we didn't have quite enough cake to share with all of you, we figured we'd do a special birthday doodle instead. Check it out:



Excited? Send 5th birthday cards to your friends using this Greeting Card application.



Five years is such a milestone for us (and for all of you dedicated orkuteers too), that we didn't think that one day was enough time to celebrate. That's why we've decided to announce today as the kick-off for a year of special announcements.

Recently we've launched several new orkut features in preparation for 2009. Here are a few of our favorites:

• built-in instant messaging: talk to your orkut and Gmail friends on orkut in real time (we're still rolling this out to some of you, so don't worry if you haven't noticed it yet)
• events tool: manage your busy social lives on orkut
• total photo privacy control: share your photos with as few or as many people as you'd like (including your non-orkut friends!)
• mobile orkut: use orkut on your mobile phone; there's even a rich version built especially for the iPhone
  
• OpenSocial applications: play with the thousands of fun apps on orkut, and add your favorites to your profile page
  

We've got a bunch of new stuff planned for the rest of the year that we hope will make orkut an even more fun place for you to hang out with your friends. Be on the lookout for new developments– we promise that these are changes you won't want to miss!

Thanks for sticking with us for all of these years and best wishes for 2009!

Posted by Miles Johnson, Marketing Manager.