Orkut At 4!

You may have noticed that the orkut logo looked a little different when you signed in today -- and if the four candles on the cake didn't give it away already, it's our fourth birthday. That's right, 2/5ths of a decade ago, orkut launched. It has grown up pretty fast, with many more features, communities, friends and photos since it first opened as an invite-only community. Whether you've been with us for years or days, thank you for being a part of the orkut community!

orkut trends: Who sends scraps?

When orkut launched, we had no idea that scrapbooks would be the primary way members would interact. Billions of scraps later, we've learned that scraps are a huge hit, and have added ways to make them even more fun by enabling you to add videos, photos and HTML.

We've been wondering (and perhaps you have too): Which orkut users are scrappiest? In our recent sample, members from the island nation of Grenada had the highest scrap counts at an average of 1877 scraps. Of the biggest orkut nations, Pakistanis came in first, followed by Americans, Indians, and Brazilians. (All of these statistics are based on current scraps that have not been deleted by the recipients.)

Women receive just under half (48%) of all scraps. Women from the Cayman Islands receive the most, followed by those from the British Virgin Islands, Trinidad and Tobago, San Marino, and the Northern Mariana Islands. (What is it about those islanders?) Albanian women had the fewest scraps (81) -- still a pretty substantial number when you think about it.

On the male side, islanders still rule: men from Grenada averaged a whopping 2569 scraps each. Here's the full chart:

Country (gender)	Scraps received	Scraps received (women)	Scraps received (men)
Grenada	1877	557	2569
Cayman Islands	861	1093	715
Pakistan	758	717	779
United States	423	249	578
India	345	443	301
Brazil	267	272	263

Who's sending these scraps? The scrappiest users hail from Pakistan, followed immediately by Madagascar and the Central African Republic. Among women, the most scraps come from Jamaica, then Madagascar, followed by the nation of St. Pierre and Miquelon. Among men, Pakistanis sent the most, then Qatar.

And what are people saying in scraps? Some messages occurred again and again. Out of a sample of 1,000,000 short scraps, the following were among the most common:

scrap	# of occurrences
hi	1131
oi [hi]	689
ok	298
parabens [congratulations]	273
.	187
hello	184
=]	146
vlw [thx]	135
^^	133
blz [ok]	132
=)	124
:)	117
[:p]	115
=D	115

Not only was the word "hi" common, it also appeared frequently followed by extra "i"s. For example, "hiiiiiiiii", "hiiiiiiiiiiiii", and "hiiiiiiiiiii" each occurred more than 90 times in our 1,000,000 scrap sample.

Until next time, our 46th most popular scrap: "bye"!

Orkut Now Available In Hindi

In quest to make orkut universally accessible, Orkut is now available in 5 new languages: Hindi, Bengali, Marathi, Tamil, and Telugu. Indians have always been a vibrant part of the orkut community, and we continue to see more Indians joining orkut every day.Since there are many different nuances to these languages, orkut wants to hear your feedback. To help them improve the translation or tell us what language you'd like to see orkut in, you can visit this community on orkut: Indian Language Translations. They chose these languages initially because together they cover 80% of India. They do recognize India has more than 400 different spoken languages, but think these 5 are a good start, and hope that introducing orkut in these regional tongues brings orkut closer to many more of you to bridge the gap between language and technology. Viewing the orkut site in Hindi, Bengali, Marathi, Tamil or Telugu (or any one of our other 12 languages) is easy.

Click the settings button under your profile photo (or click the blue settings link at the top of any page).
On the general tab, choose your preferred display language from the drop-down menu at the top of the page.

Click save changes. If you are having trouble reading languages on the "Settings" page, it is likely that your browser scripts have not been updated. For Internet Explorer, proceed to "Tools" and then "Windows Update". Here you should accept the Windows XP Service Pack 2 update. All languages are included in this update. We hope this will help many more people enjoy orkut in their own language every day.