Remember when we mentioned that the orkut team would celebrate festive dates around the world? Well, it's time for Thanksgiving!

Lots of food, football games, parades and plenty of time to spend with the people you cherish most in your life. These things are all inescapable parts of Thanksgiving day. But who would want to escape from them anyway?

Thanksgiving is one of the most traditional holidays in the United States, having taken place since 1621. Celebrated on the fourth Thursday of November each year, this holiday is about expressing gratitude for all of the positive things in your life.

Over time, Thanksgiving has become increasingly important in countries outside of the US. If you'd like to participate in the fun, you can use the Superscrap Open Social application to send messages to your friends and loved ones on orkut.

If you haven't logged into orkut yet today, make sure you do so that you can check out our special Thanksgiving doodle in action:

And, oh, be sure to prepare your stomach— Thanksgiving is filled with plenty of food and culinary treats. So much so that in the US, it's known as Turkey Day!

Happy Thanksgiving to you and your family.

Posted by Ariel, orkut operations team

When we launched the new orkut, we thought you'd enjoy changing your profile color with a single click. It was great to discover how much you liked this new feature!

In fact, you seem to have liked it so much that we decided five colors aren't nearly enough. So we've added a range of new colors for your palette:

 

And since not all colors play nicely with our standard blue background, the orkut background color now also changes to match the new hue you choose:

Have fun coloring with orkut! And remember to keep telling us what you think.

Posted by Eduardo Thuler, orkut product manager

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