We are constantly working to make your orkut experience better, and while this includes adding new, useful features on the site, like new search features and support for applications , it also includes improving your experience when you are not logged-in to orkut.com. Recently we released a better orkut experience for your smartphone, and now you'll see snazzier emails from orkut. We decided it was time to change our emails to give them a look and feel more like orkut.

Posted by Adam Winer, Software Engineer Orkut profiles have become a lot more dynamic in the last year. Not only are your photos , videos , and testimonials showcased on your profile, but now users in many parts of the world can also add OpenSocial applications to their profiles. With so many new elements on the profile page, we've received feedback that you'd like to be able to arrange it as you wish. So,

Posted by Sam Goto , Software Engineer Photos have long been a popular feature of orkut, which is why we have engineers working full-time to make it easier for you to upload, share and browse photos on orkut. Recently, we increased our photo capacity so you can upload as many as you like, and we made it easier for you to organize your photos once you have them in your orkut albums. This week, we launched photo tagging so that you can label your orkut friends in your photos.

Posted by Kuldeep Gharat, Software Engineer Communities on orkut come in all shapes and sizes. Large, open communities are great for meeting new people and getting news on topics you care about, while smaller ones help you keep in touch with friends and people from your school or work. When we launched private communities several months ago ,

Posted by the orkut team To honor the thousands of mothers and mothers-to-be that we have on orkut, we've put this special doodle on the login page today. We expect that you've already called home, seen your mom, or at least sent her a scrap, and if you haven't already, get to it! We know you care, because our largest community on orkut is for mom lovers!

Posted by the orkut team On Apr 18, the Google office in Belo Horizonte hosted a special event for some VIP guests: the orkut super users from the Portuguese Help Group . By bringing together these orkut experts and enthusiasts, we got some critical feedback about orkut and learned more about how they sustain our help community. Here's what they thought about it: "The invite was a surprise, a dream come true,

Posted by Tim O'Shaughnessy, LivingSocial [As we get ready for apps to go live on orkut, we're excited to invite orkut developers to guest blog and preview their apps here.] Have you ever needed an easy way to keep track of which books you've read, remember the books you want to read, and see book recommendations from your friends? ReadingSocial solves these problems by giving you a tool for organizing your books on a virtual bookshelf.

Posted by Harish Abbott, Ugenie [As we get ready for apps to go live on orkut, we're excited to invite orkut developers to guest blog and preview their apps here.- The orkut team] What you read says a lot about you. So what better way to tell your friends who you really are than to show them what you have read? And what better way to discover new sides of your friends than to see what they have read? You can do all that and more through iRead.

Posted by Luiz Genoves, Software Engineer Do you have too many updates from your friends on your homepage? Are there certain friends you want to know more about, but others that you'd rather not see any updates from? If the answer is yes, I know how you feel. That's why we're now giving you more control over which friends' updates appear on your homepage. First, organize your friends in groups.

Guest Post by Muralidharan Bhoopathy, Chronus Corporation [As we get ready for apps to go live on orkut, we're excited to invite orkut developers to guest blog and preview their apps here. - The orkut team] Whether it is a birthday resolution, New Year's resolution, hobby or just something you have always wanted to do, go4it makes it fun to reach all your goals with help from your friends )and others(. You can create projects or objectives for yourself,

Posted by Ellen Spertus , Research Scientist Orkut is all about community, and we sure do have lots of them: more than 45 million, covering all imaginable topic areas )and a few that defy the imagination(. Owners can specify languages and countries for their communities, and I'm pleased to see that all of orkut's many languages and countries are represented. The most common community language is Portuguese,

Posted by the orkut team In case you were busy egg hunting and didn't sign in to orkut, here's the doodle we posted.

Guest post by Sizhao Yang, MyMiniLife [As we get ready for apps to go live on orkut, we're excited to invite orkut developers to guest blog and preview their apps here.] Are you stylish? Do you like to decorate and accessorize everything? Now you can express yourself using MyMiniLife. Imagine a world where you can create your own place that fits your unique style and shows off all the interests you're passionate about. Personalize your hangout with photos, music,

Guest post by Lalit Sarna , ActOnMe [As we get ready for apps to go live on orkut, we're excited to invite orkut developers to guest blog and preview their apps here. -The orkut Team] Bring your friends' photos to life! Attack them with fun animations, ambush them with flying kisses, throw a snow ball, ninja kick them, send them some puppy love, and more. There are tons of different ways to make a friend smile. With cool new attacks being added often, the fun never stops.

Posted by Amar, orkut Product Manager Back in November, we announced that orkut was open to developers. Developers have been building exciting new social applications over the last few months that will make the orkut experience even better. This is why we're excited to announce that apps will be available to a subset of orkut users starting in a couple weeks, and to all orkut users several weeks after that. In the meantime, here on the orkut blog,

Posted by Eduardo Cordeiro, Software Engineer Do you have a lot of friends on orkut? Do you sometimes want to find all your school friends, send a message to all your co-workers, or check out your best friends' karma? Friend groups have been on orkut for some time now, but we're now making them more accessible throughout the site to make it easier for you to create new groups or add new friends to them.

Posted by Abhishek Surana, Software Engineer Back from a vacation? Had a party? Surely you must have a ton of photos to share with your orkut friends. Well, we're happy to tell you that we've made sharing those photos with your orkut friends even easier. We have increased the photo limit, so now you can share up to 1,000 photos, and made the upload experience faster for Internet Explorer users. If you're on orkut with Internet Explorer, click on the link for "New!

Posted by Ellen Spertus , Research Scientist A question came up in the orkut trends community : What is the distribution of orkut users among the different states in the US? Here's a peek into where US orkuters come from. All 50 states, the District of Columbia and Puerto Rico are represented. The #1 state is my adopted home )and that of so many other US Googlers(, California, with 20% of US orkuters. Next comes the great state of New York )11%(, and then two southern states ,

Posted by Nishant Redkar , Software Engineer A wise man once said "Privacy is the condition of being left alone, out of public view, and in control of information that is known about you." Here at orkut, we're keeping up with your requests for additional privacy controls. We recently added new features that allow orkuteers to limit viewership of photos, videos, testimonials and scrapbook to friends. Based on your feedback,

Posted by Orkut Buyukkokten Orkut isn't the same social networking site that it used to be. When I created the site, there was less information to share and there were fewer sharing controls. Since, we've added ways for users to upload photos and post videos, include friend updates on user homepages, and send and receive scraps. To help you manage what you post on the site, and what you share with whom and when,