Google pulls the plug on Orkut

by
in google on (#3PP)
Alas, fair Orkut, we barely knew ye. Or barely used ye, something like that. Either way, Google has decided to retire Orkut, it's first foray into social networking, after ten years. Ten years is an eternity on the Internet, but Orkut has clearly been superceded by Google Plus, into which Google is investing increasingly important amounts of time, energy, and code.

From the announcement:
Ten years ago, Orkut was Google's first foray into social networking. Built as a "20 percent" project, Orkut communities started conversations, and forged connections, that had never existed before. Orkut helped shape life online before people really knew what "social networking" was. ...
Orkut, the service, may be going away, but all of those incredible communities Orkut users have created will live on. We are preserving an archive of all public communities, which will be available online starting September 30, 2014. If you don't want your posts or name to be included in the community archive, you can remove Orkut permanently from your Google account. Please visit our Help Center for further details.
Ed note: Anyone still using Orkut is requested to close their account and open up something at AOL, Geocities, or Myspace as soon as possible.
Reply 7 comments

Maybe more popular in India and Brazil? (Score: 1)

by bryan@pipedot.org on 2014-06-30 19:17 (#29Z)

Hmm, I had never even heard of Orkut. The webpage, of course, is now just a redirect to a support.google.com page about the shutdown notice. A quick trip to the wayback machine shows a standard looking google login dialog and not much else.

Re: Maybe more popular in India and Brazil? (Score: 2, Informative)

by eliphas@pipedot.org on 2014-06-30 22:54 (#2A2)

Nothing in geocities or Myspace is comparable to Orkut.Yes here in Brazil it was like "what, you don't have Orkut yet? Let me invite you right away!" (yes, it was invite only on the first year or two, like gmail).It still has/had a bunch of people (that I knew of, and active) at least a year ago when I finally left it, closing my account.About 90% of them were also on facebook, at this time (except me heh) so the migration went smooth. The best feature were the communities, all very localized, people even got upset when "the gringos" started showing up. Still a lot active when I left. I categorized it as good auto-updated contacts list at first, then it got crowded and annoying, too much updates... like Facebook. I remember people making that comparison.In the end with people posting on Facebook and coming to Orkut for the communities, it was a social ghost town and just a dumbed down forum for whoever couldn't keep up with the alternatives, and very good at it. A lot of people will still miss it.

Re: Maybe more popular in India and Brazil? (Score: 2, Informative)

by eliphas@pipedot.org on 2014-06-30 22:59 (#2A3)

Sorry, reading your post again I realize that I got nostalgic and did not answer it :-D Orkut was like facebook, but simpler. Photo sharing, and open talk in communities or in the user's scrapbook. Online chat, for example, was implemented a lot later, we used "private messages" like email.

The best thing was the name (Score: 2, Interesting)

by fatphil@pipedot.org on 2014-06-30 21:07 (#2A0)

It was slang for "orgasms".

Re: The best thing was the name (Score: 1)

by marqueeblink@pipedot.org on 2014-07-01 02:56 (#2A5)

I figured it was the only pronounceable five-letter dot-com they could find that wasn't registered.

Re: The best thing was the name (Score: 1)

by zafiro17@pipedot.org on 2014-07-01 09:38 (#2A9)

That's awesome if it's true (I hope it is!). But i'd heard it was the name of the Google developer who created it.

invite only social network (Score: 1)

by billshooterofbul@pipedot.org on 2014-07-02 17:13 (#2AN)

If google had just made it open to anyone, it would have turned into facebook. But, they left it invite only while myspace and later facebook were open to the world. Invite only services only work for open systems ( read email) or for services without competitors. Orkut wasn't open and had plenty of competition.