What are your friends up to? Check out your homepage

Ever since we added "updates from my friends" to the orkut homepage, you've been requesting that we add more information to these updates so that you can stay informed on the latest developments from your friends. Over the past several months we've some added new types of updates and ways for you to control what kinds of updates you see. You can see everything from new photos and videos that your friends upload, to testimonials they receive, to changes they make on their profiles.

Now you can tell your friends what you are doing or how you're feeling right this minute by changing your status message on your profile and letting it show up in your friends' homepages.

If you prefer to keep your updates private, we give you the option of not showing your friends your updates. To prevent your updates from appearing on your friends' homepages, go to the Privacy Settings page and select 'hide updates' under the "my updates" section. If you don't want to see updates from your friends, select the "don't show updates from my friends" option under the "updates from my friends" section on your homepage. But if you ask me, with all the cool comments I get on my new photos and the scraps I receive in response to my other updates, I'm not going near these settings!


Source: Orkut Blog.

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Privacy Feature Update

This week we are adding additional flexibility for you to manage the privacy of your testimonials, videos, scrapbook and feeds. In addition to having your privacy settings to be just "friends" or "everyone," you can now select also "friend of friends." We feel that this is a good choice for those of you who may wish to share your information with an extended group of friends without making it public to everyone. We hope this additional flexibility helps you manage your experience on orkut better.

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The latest updates from your friends

Now you can more control over which friends' updates appear on your homepage. First, organize your friends in groups. You can do that by clicking on friends in the header and then creating groups and putting your friends in them. To select which groups you want updates from, click settings in the left navigation, and then select the appropriate groups from the "updates from my friends" section. Once you've done this, only the updates of your selected groups will be shown on your homepage. If you decide you want to see more updates, you can still access all your friends' updates by clicking "view more" on the bottom of your homepage.

And if you'd prefer not have any of your updates appear on your friends' homepages, go to settings and click on privacy to set your own actions as private.

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Upload Multiple Images - Awesome New Feature

If you always wondered uploading 100 pics on orkut would consume an hell lot of time then here is some fantastic news. Orkut has introduced a new feature which allows you to upload multiple pics in a single click. So no more clicking, choosing and uploading individual images.

How to Upload Multiple Pics in One Click?

• Navigate to this page (http://www.orkut.com/PhotosUpload.aspx?uid)
• Follow the instructions written over there.
• Now, You will be redirected to your album page.
• Click on add photos option and you will experience this cool new feature

Note: Does not work in Firefox. Use Internet Explorer to Use This Feature

This Article Was Published At Orkut Plus

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Content Privacy in Communities - Block Non Members from Viewing Your Community Topics

Community owners get more powers. They can now choose who gets to see the community topics and discussions. They can now block non-community members from viewing the content of the community. If we think optimistically, reputed communities can block non-members from viewing their content. This can lead to a surge of new members in the community if the owners use it wisely.

This Article Was Published At Orkut Plus

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Create a Private Community

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, we've decided to go even further to empower the owners of communities to choose whether to make their community content private or public. The additional privacy control we've added allows you to make your community an enclosed entity so that you can discuss whatever you want within its walls (of course, content must abide by orkut community standards and policies), resting assured that only members can view your discussions, forums, and events.

Have you ever thought of creating a community poll like "Who is the best teacher at your school?", but stopped yourself from doing it because the teachers might actually see it? Or perhaps you wanted to create a community to keep in touch with family, but didn't want to share your family events and posts with the whole orkut community? While communities are a great place to meet new people who share your interests, we understand that the current structure of communities sometimes makes it difficult to have intimate discussions with a select group of people. We hope that the introduction of private communities will fill this need.

So go ahead and create your communities, and use the privacy setting that fits your needs!

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Find Orkut Files thru Google Now!!

Well here is one more update about orkut. Now you able to find profile from Google also. Seems Orkut doing really hard work in these days. Setting Under Privacy Settings.

ScreenShot:

Enjoy more Orkuting (-:

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Orkut Highlights for 2007

As we started the new year, we took some time to look back on the year for orkut. Sometimes we get so caught up looking forward to all the new features we want to launch, we forget to look back at what we have accomplished. If you've been on orkut since January, you may remember when you first saw these features. Or if you've joined more recently you may never have known the site without these favorites. So here are the highlights for this year by month - turns out orkut has come a long way!

In January, we launched our first mobile feature on orkut with orkut SMS integration with Claro, the Brazilian mobile carrier. Since then we have partnered with other mobile providers, and you can now send and receive scraps and find your friends' contact information if you have phone service with Amazônia Celular, Brasil Telecom, Claro, or Telemig Celular. If you still haven't signed up it's not too late to receive those new years scraps on your cell phone: just go to settings and click on the mobile tab.

February brought videos to orkut when we launched integration with Google Video and YouTube. People began copying and pasting URLs of their favorite videos onto the favorite videos page of their profiles. This has been one of the most popular feature launches ever. Since February you have added over 300 million videos to your profiles!

Orkut Buyukkokten, the creator of orkut.com, visited Brazil for the first time in March and spent three weeks touring the country, giving tech talks to hundreds of University Students, conducting focus groups and interviewing with the press. If you missed the visit you can check out the community and the photo album.

Community Polls were enabled in April. Since then people have been voting on topics from the best restaurants in their cities to the most important politician of their towns.

May brought feed integration, allowing you to bring in content from your favorite blogs, Picasa Web Albums or any other source that supports feeds. Still haven't added a feed? Why not add this blog so you always know the latest. Go to add stuff in the left navigation and add the URL.

You wouldn't be reading this if we hadn't launched this blog in June! In case you are bilingual, check out the blog in Portuguese as well.

We were honored to receive the award for "Best Social Networking Site!" from India PC World in July.

The biggest milestone for orkut, perhaps since the launch of the site, happened in August when we launched the visual redesign. This included a slight change to the colors, rounded corners, new icons and an easier-to-use navigation. While giving the site a facelift we also maintained the familiarity and simplicity you've enjoyed for years. Can you even remember the old orkut?

We revamped the site again in September to show updates from your friends right on your homepage. To show or hide your own updates go to the settings page.

In October, we went from allowing you to upload only 12 photos to your album to allowing 100 photos in your album. If you still haven't filled up your album, why not add your latest holiday photos?

This November, Google made the announcement that orkut would be opening up to developers through OpenSocial. If you're a software developer you can test out the platform by joining our Sandbox. We look forward to seeing what applications you're developing for orkut when we launch the platform to consumers next year.

As the year winded down in December, we launched new privacy features that allow you more control over who sees your photos, videos, testimonials and scraps.

Happy New Year orkuters-- we look forward to a great 2008!

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Keeping more of your content private

Recently, we wrote about the new functionality that allows you to chose whether to let everyone or just your friends view your testimonials, videos and photos. And now, we're announcing that we've expanded privacy settings so you can now do the same with your scrapbook and feeds. Though some of us feel perfectly comfortable keeping our scraps open to the community, we know some of you are more private and would prefer to keep them among friends. How do we know? We've heard you in the help group and help center, and we've listened! Limiting who can view your scrapbook has been a long requested feature on orkut. To adjust your level of privacy, go to your settings page and click on "privacy". Thanks for the feedback, keep letting us know what you want to see from orkut!

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News: Ask rolls out search privacy tool

The AskEraser will feature prominently on the site

Search engine Ask has launched a feature that it hopes will prove a selling point for consumers concerned about their online privacy.

AskEraser allows users to immediately delete search queries stored on Ask's servers, in contrast to rivals such as Google which stores data for 18 months.

How personal data is used is becoming more of an issue as people live more of their lives via search engines.

Some are concerned about possible deals between search engines and ad firms.

In America consumer advocacy groups have expressed doubts about a proposed merger between Google and ad-serving company DoubleClick, which is currently being reviewed by US regulators.

Privacy issues

Jumping on the privacy bandwagon, Ask is offering users the chance to take charge of what happens with their search history.

An AskEraser link will feature prominently on the Ask.com homepage and, when enabled by the user, will delete all future search queries and associated cookie information from its servers.

The information it destroys includes IP address, user ID and session ID along with the complete text of a query.

Jim Lanzone hopes the tool will lure users concerned about privacy

"For people who worry about their online privacy, AskEraser now gives them control of their search information," said Jim Lanzone, chief executive of Ask.com.

But some critics have pointed out that it doesn't entirely erase all information, as search queries relating to advertisements supplied by Google will continue to be passed to the search rival.

Other search engines are attempting to quell concerns about privacy and most operate polices which mean search histories are deleted between a year and 18 months after they were made.

But some consumers are getting twitchy about how their data is shared, following some high-profile cases.

In August 2006 AOL was forced to apologise after it released the search queries of more than 650,000 of its US subscribers to help in academic research.

Although users' names were not associated with the search terms, fears were raised that the queries contained personally identifiable data. It was not clear which researchers were given the data and how they intended to use it.

And just last week Mark Zuckerberg, the founder of social networking site Facebook, had to make changes to a new advertising system after more than 50,000 users complained about it.

Called Beacon, the system is designed to track web shopping on partner sites outside Facebook with the intention of providing targeted adverts to the social network based on purchases.

After complaints the site was invading privacy, Facebook changed Beacon from an opt-out system to opt in.

Mr Zuckerberg has said users can now switch off Beacon completely.

'Paying with privacy'

Despite these cases not everyone is convinced that privacy is a big enough winner for users to desert their favoured search engine for Ask.

"The press loves to run stories about the hidden privacy concerns caused by data collected online, but consumers have taken an 'out of sight, out of mind' approach," commented technology blog TechCrunch.

"We're finding that people are willing to pay for the best free products with their privacy," it added.

Surveys conducted in the US seem to bear this out. While a majority of Americans say they are concerned about their online privacy, only a tiny percentage are actually prepared to take steps to protect it.

Yahoo believes that its current privacy policy is sufficient.

"Search log data is anonymised within 13 months of collection except where users request otherwise or where Yahoo! is required to retain the information to comply with legal obligations.," the firm said in a statement.

"We believe the 13 month-policy is the appropriate timeline to honour our commitment to our users' privacy while preserving our ability to defend against fraudulent activity and continue to improve our services," it read.

Google said it had no plans to implement such a tool.

The highly competitive search engine market, which is dominated by Google, means rivals are increasingly searching for applications that differentiate them.

According to internet measurement firm comScore, Ask accounted for 4.7% of US searches during October. Google took the lion's share with 58.5%, with Yahoo accounting for 22.9% and Microsoft for 9.7%.

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