Orkut

Simpler and faster

Our team has worked closely with our pals at Google to create the fastest, easiest to use social network. It's all about speed: Now, you can browse photos, check your friend's profiles, and view updates faster than ever. Enjoy your friends more, and spend less time waiting around for something to happen!

Our users told us they wanted to see their favorite activities at the top of the front page. The result: Larger photos, notifications that are easier to access, faster navigation, and more updates closer to the top... these are just some of changes we've made to speed things up.

Easy navigation to other Google properties

Visiting Orkut but need to check your Gmail, or look up an address on Google Maps? Now it's easy to stay logged in and visit any Google product by clicking on the small header at the top of any page.

One-stop notifications

No more skipping around to collect your friend requests, community requests or birthday announcements! Now you can review all your requests and announcements in one place.

Fast photo uploads and photo sharing

Now you can select multiple photos and upload them 3x faster. And there's no more waiting as photos upload, so you can start reordering your images right away. Just drag and drop them as you want, rotate them, pick an album cover, or add captions.

You can also share albums with groups of friends with a single click. Your friends don't need to be on Orkut to see your photos, either - just enter their emails and they can see the images without signing up. Not sure who to share with? Orkut will suggest other people who might want to see your photos! Photo sharing is a total snap with the new Orkut.

Pick your favorite colors or themes

We've made Orkut even more colorful by letting you customize your profile and homepage with your choice of 40 colors and several themes. Just pick your favorite, and when your friends visit your profile, your page will have a whole new look.

It's all "about me" with more customization

If you want to do more than just write about yourself, now you can add a YouTube video, a photo or even embed apps in the "about me" section. Go to your profile page and click on "about me" to add, edit, and make it truly your own.

Find and invite friends - fast!

Finding friends is one of the most important activities on Orkut! That's why we've made our "find friends" feature smarter and easier to use. When Orkut finds someone you may know, you'll see a suggestion to connect right on your homepage.

And if you have a close friend who isn't on Orkut yet, we'll help you get that person on Orkut fast, too. Just select add as friend (or invite for non-Orkut users) and send a quick message to invite them to join you. Once they accept your invitation, they'll be added to your friends list so you can start sharing your world through Orkut.

Cool new friends' updates on your homepage

Tired of just reading updates from friends? Now with inline comments for status messages, photos and videos, plus easy to use inline video play, your friends' updates make it easy to interact with your friends, not just read their static postings.

Start typing anywhere you see a comment box, then click post and your comment will be added to your friend's latest update. Any photo comment you leave in updates will also show up on the actual photo page.

Want to watch a video right away? Great! Just click on the video and it will expand and play directly in the updates section. Love the video so much you want to add it to your favorites? Select the option to add to your favorites and it will show up in your own "videos" section.

More dynamic friends list

Want to find a friend quickly? Your my friends section now lets you scroll through all of your friends directly from homepage. Or just start typing a friend's name in the friends search box, and you'll see only those friends with names that match what you typed.

Latest activity updates on friends profiles

Updated streams on your friends profile pages tell you what they've been doing lately - including photo and video uploads, apps activities, new friends added and more. It's the next best thing to being there in person!

Post a scrap to say "hello"

Want to say a quick "what's up" to a friend? The scrap feature lets you write directly to them and start a conversation. It's never been easier to send a message.

Video chat

Face-to-face just got a lot easier, thanks to Orkut's new video chat feature. Simply start a chat with a friend the old-fashioned way, then click the camera icon to make a video call or the phone icon to make a voice call. You can also start a group chat with several friends!

Friends' updates are now a default feature

Updates from your friends are a core part of the Orkut experience. We've found that most Orkut users kept this feature active, so we decided to make it a standard feature.

The chat list is now on the right, and is the only pop-up

The IM list of online friends has moved to the right side of the screen. All other pop-ups for events and scraps have been removed - less clutter, more fun!

Square photos for all profile photos

Already launched in the previous version, we've now cropping and displaying photos now default to a square look. This makes it easier to see all your friends' photos quickly.

IE6 browser not supported for the new Orkut

The new Orkut is not properly viewable in the old Internet Explorer 6 (IE6) browser. If you are using IE6, you will be automatically re-directed to the old Orkut version. See how to upgrade to a supported browser - it's always free to download a new browser and you'll get a better experience on Orkut.