Everything You Need to Know About The New Orkut

Orkut has completely revamped its interface with new things and new ways of doing old things. The updated interface, called The new Orkut, is available to selected Orkut users. If you are lucky (like me :) ) then just look at the top navigation bar of Orkut and you’ll see this,

Just click on try the new orkut button and you’ll be in the world of The New Orkut.

The new Orkut interface is much like Facebook, however all the features of Orkut are retained, just rearranged. Following are some of the changes,

Everything on Home Page

Earlier we had to click on multiple links to check the list of friends, communities, vidoes, scraps, photos etc. Noe, all this is available on Orkut homepage with tabbed interface, so there are less clicks but more fun!

One of the features that I liked most is that the list of friends and communities are displayed with a scroll bar on homepage so that there is no need navigate through the old school next/previous page system.

Facebook like Activity Stream

The Profile page now shows Facebook like activity stream along with the Orkut Specific features like testimonials.

Colored Profiles are the New Themes

Earlier Orkut had the concept of themes. But I think that it has been deprecated now. You can customize the color of your profile though by clicking on the color of your choice in the top right corner of your home page.

Audio, Video and Group Chat Comes to Orkut

Audio, Video and Group chat, which were available with Gmail for a long time now, are now working on Orkut as well. While chatting with any friend, just click on actions in the chat window and choose audio, video or group chat.

Love it or Hate it, you can’t Ignore it!

The new interface is good or bad? it depends upon your perception. Will it hold ground in countries like India and Brazil, where Orkut is top social networking site, only time will tell. But if you don’t like the change, or if you love it, you can tell the Orkut team right now. Go to this forum page and just tell ‘em.

I guess this is all you need to know about The New Orkut for now. I will post more tips, tricks and hacks for The New Orkut as I get my hands dirty with it. Until then…

Enjoy!