Internet giant Google confirmed it be will shutting down Orkut. Ten years ago, Orkut helped start conversations and forge connections. Well, it started what we call social networking today.
Even though Orkut is still very popular in India and Brazil, it lost to rivals like Facebook and Twitter. In a blog post, Google commented, “Over the past decade, YouTube, Blogger and Google+ have taken off, with communities springing up in every corner of the world. Because the growth of these communities has outpaced Orkut’s growth, we’ve decided to bid Orkut farewell (or, tchau). We’ll be focusing our energy and resources on making these other social platforms as amazing as possible for everyone who uses them.”
“We will shut down Orkut on September 30, 2014. Until then, there will be no impact on current Orkut users, to give the community time to manage the transition. People can export their profile data, community posts and photos using Google Takeout (available until September 2016). Starting today, it will not be possible to create a new Orkut account.”
Orkut was launched in 2004, the same year when Facebook was founded. Facebook is now the world`s largest social network with 1.28 billion users. Google, of course, switched its attention to Google+ in 2011, leaving Orkut to largely fend for itself, and in June decided to pull the plug on September 30.
Here’s a highlight reel infographic to remember it by, created by One Productions:
