New Orkut features -- Like?

Two weeks ago, we announced that we are preparing a visual upgrade to Orkut’s interface. We have just started to roll it out to a small percentage of users, so some of you might start to see it. Right now, we are only upgrading those who are using new Orkut, but if you are in the old interface, please do give it a try when we complete the transition!

In addition, we are happy to announce a new feature today that we hope you will “like”:

Just as we add different smileys in emails, scraps and chat, we recognize that you likely have different reactions to your friends’ stories. Here are a few you might recognize from Google Chat, and in addition, you can find extra “smileys” if you type in the right code in the comment field.

Feel free to follow us on our official blog (en.blog.orkut.com) and the official community at www.orkut.com/orkut

Give our “like?” feature a try today and see just how diverse your friends are in their reactions. Rock on, Orkut users!


Posted by Gustavo Moura, User Experience Team

Found something interesting ? Share on orkut !

We are happy to announce the launch of a great new way for orkut users to share interesting web content with their friends - The 'Share on orkut' bookmarklet for browsers




You can install the bookmarklet from here for all browsers

When you find something interesting on the web, just click the bookmarklet and share the content with your orkut friends. Your friends will get the link and your comments in their updates. You'll also have an option to promote and recommend the content to your friends.

Web publishers and bloggers can also post orkut share buttons on their pages using a simple JavaScript library.

More details about orkut share API and sample code can be found on orkut developer site.

So spread the word, have fun sharing!

Posted by Rajiv Mathews, Jayesh Sharma

Orkut helps advertisers to engage with their customers

As the #1 social networking site^* in India, orkut helps over 17 million people stay connected - whether it’s uploading photos, videos or simply leaving a message. orkut is home to hundreds and thousands of communities and applications. Users talk about food, sports, travel, gadgets, movies, art, automobiles, schools.. almost everything.

orkut now offers an opportunity for marketeers to use the power of this social medium to engage with their audience. All kinds of businesses, from large brands to a local small enterprise, can now drive awareness and engagement for their products and services on orkut using Google Adwords.

1. Orkut allows advertisers to reach the largest online audience^* in India

Over 17 million active users. That’s more than 45% of the Indian online population

Over 6 billion pageviews in India each month

Average user visits the site 10 times each month, spending 12 minutes per visit

2. Orkut allows advertisers to focus on the users they care most about

With the highly-specific targeting options that orkut allows advertisers, they can now choose to show their ads to groups or individuals based on their age, gender, interests, geography and keywords

3. Orkut allows advertisers to get high visibility for their budget and goals

Ads appear on prominent positions on users' homepages, community pages and search results within orkut.

With only one ad position per page, the ad is guaranteed high visibility and increased user recall.

Advertisers can choose to pay on a ‘per click’ basis or on a ‘per impression’ basis depending on their campaign goals

4. Orkut allows advertisers to be creative

Advertisers can use an ad format that best suits their promotion.

Orkut supports text, static images, animated images and flash ads. We would continue to add more formats for advertisers to make the ads interesting and useful for orkut users

5. Orkut allows advertisers to tap into the power of AdWords

Google AdWords brings performance and measurement to marketing campaigns on orkut.

Advertisers get the best value for their marketing spends in an auction-based model. They can start, pause and modify campaigns at any time. They can also track performance with real-time reporting and gain insights about user's reactions.

Ad campaigns for orkut can be setup on Google AdWords by selecting social networks and online communities in the placement tool

6. Orkut allows advertisers to create custom solutions for brand building

For advertisers who require very high visibility and for those are sensitive to campaign time slots, orkut offers a 'custom branding' solution. With this option, advertisers can run targeted display ads in orkut communities and on users' homepages.

The custom solution allows advertisers to purchase and reserve ad impressions in advance. They can also block an entire day’s traffic for their ads to increase the impact of their brand campaign.

For personalized support to build the best brand campaign, advertisers can contact the Google sales team by mailing orkut-india-sales@google.com

* source: comScore, Media Metrix, July 2009

Posted by: Srikanth Belwadi, Kushagra Shrivastava & Savio Barretto

Type in your language on any website

We launched our first transliteration application on Google India Labs two years ago: it let users type in Hindi using an english keyboard. Since then we've expanded our coverage to nine Indian languages (Bengali, Gujarati, Hindi, Kannada, Malayalam, Marathi, Nepali, Tamil, and Telugu). We have also added the transliteration feature to several Google products such as Blogger, Knol, Orkut, Gmail and iGoogle. For other products, we released an API that lets 3rd party sites embed this technology at no charge. However, the most common user feedback we still receive is requests to add transliteration to even more products. We are actively working on simplifying the use of Indian languages on more websites.

With that in mind, we are happy to announce the launch of a new feature, Transliteration Bookmarklets, that will let you use transliteration on a website that does not support it currently. Transliteration Bookmarklets is a browser-based application that lets you type in your language in any text box on any website and gets added to your browser much like a regular bookmark.

For example, you can use them to:

• Chat with your friends in your language using Gmail chat.
• Search for Google news articles.
• Send messages in your language on your favorite social networks.
• Create or edit wikipedia pages in your language.

Once you install the bookmarklet on your favorite browser (we support Internet Explorer, Firefox, Chrome and Safari), you can simply turn transliteration on/off in the browser itself.

To get started, click on the links for one of our supported languages and follow the instructions on the page: Arabic, Hindi, Kannada, Malayalam, Tamil and Telugu. Alternatively, you can follow the links at http://code.google.com/p/t13n/.

Type away, and let us know what you think.

Posted by Sarveshwar Duddu, Software Engineer

Google Latitude on orkut- share your live location with friends

[x] http://www.blogger.com/post-edit.g?blogID=6296508887730508910&postID=6128274519191550303

[x] http://www.blogger.com/post-edit.g?blogID=6296508887730508910&postID=6128274519191550303

Some of you may have heard about the recent launch of Google Latitude, a fun new way to share your live location with friends. For those of you who aren't familiar, Google Latitude is a feature of Google Maps for Mobile that lets you (if you choose to opt-in) share your whereabouts and receive updates about your friends' approximate locations.

While we've already launched an iGoogle gadget, we knew that our launch couldn't be complete without bringing this to orkut. That's why a group of us on the Google Mobile team have created a Google Latitude application.



With this app, you can share your location and see your friends' locations on a map inside of orkut. Notice that an old friend is back in your hometown? Just click on her photo and send a scrap or head to her profile page and see what she's up to.

If you use Google Latitude from your mobile phone, you can even send your friends updates on your location while you're out and about, making it easier to bump into the people you care about.

Of course, none of this would be very much fun at all if you didn't have control over what and when you share and who you share it with. We've taken Latitude's privacy features very seriously and invite you to learn more about them in either the Help Center or by watching this privacy video.

Excited? Add the app and let your friends know where you are!

Posted by Surojit Chatterjee, Google Mobile Team