Announced three months back, Google today shut down the world’s first experience into social networking, Orkut.com.
Long before Facebook gained popularity for social networking, another networking giant was a monopoly in the market.
Announced three months back, Google today shut down the world’s first experience into social networking, Orkut.com.
Orkut was launched ten years back in the year 2004, the same year Facebook was founded.
While Orkut marked the dawn of social networking bringing about a revolution in the usage of internet, especially for the young generation, it did not hold onto the monopoly for a long time.
Facebook overtook Orkut as the best social networking website in July 2010, with a whopping 20.9 million visitors in July as compared to Orkut’s 19.9 million visitors. The concept of friend list, writing scraps and testimonials that anybody in your list had access to was first witnessed on orkut.
That was the time when special characters could be a part of your profile name, conversations were held through scraps, and it was easier to be friends with someone you had a crush on. Well, that definitely led to some of the most interesting love stories and relationships you get to hear in today’s date.
The first-ever social media platform used to be a favourite among users from India and Brazil, but lost its sheen as rivals came up with things, which appealed more to the young generation. “Over the past decade, YouTube, Blogger and Google+ have taken off with communities springing up in every corner of the world. Because of growth of these communities has outpaced Orkut’s growth, we have decided to bid orkut farewell”, Google said in a blog post.
The communities will be preserved by Google and an archive will be available for the users from the 30th of September. Users can also export their data from the website using Google Takeout.
