Tomorrow, September 30, Google is going to shut down its Orkut social network as announced earlier. Orkut was the search giant’s first foray into the social networking space, which failed to take off due to tough competition from rival services such as Facebook and Twitter. Google later launched another social network called Google+, which has fared much better than Orkut although in no way is it able to compete with the popularity & useability of Facebook.
Orkut was launched in the same year as Facebook but struggled to get a fan based in countries other than India, Brazil and I guess the Philippines. Indeed almost every 2nd used was an Indian and the “hai friends”, “good morning friends” and “good night friends” posts kept on coming. I created my account or rather my cousin sister created my account for me one evening in late 2005 or early 2006. The main attraction was this family group filled with all my cousins that we used to keep track of one & another and share info. I barely used Orkut as I soon got tried of the format. I got bored with the constant drivel being shared back n forth among the users.
I deleted my account a couple of years back as I hadn’t logged into it since 2008. So Orkut, goodbye and so long – thanks for all the flashy glitter gifs!