Good Bye - Orkut

One of the first social networking website Orkut is going to shut down from today. Orkut was a  owned and operated by Google. The long forgotten social network made by Google employee Orkut Büyükkökten, Orkut, is finally and officially dead now.

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 was the first social network to hit it off on a large scale in India, even as other websites like Hi5 and MySpace failed to catch the fancy of India's internet users in mid-2000s. 

 Orkut was, a social network platform where, exactly like in Facebook, you could create a profile, brag about yourself, make friends, join communities of what you like (they copied this feature in Google Plus), be a moderator there, create albums, upload photos, share links, create polls and do whatever else you wanted to do on a social network.

You could also chat in Orkut, using the Gtalk messenger (which also died and became Google Hangout) which was later introduced and even share files. You could rate your friends on features like Cool, Trustworthy, Sexy and others, on a scale on 1 to 5. You could also add people to your “Crush list”. You could choose ‘themes’ to look different, although this feature was experimental and was released much later.

However, as Facebook made inroads in India, Orkut's popularity started waning, and Mark Zuckerberg's website overtook Orkut in terms of user base in the country in 2010.

Google in June had announced that it will shut down Orkut on September 30, marking the end of a 10-year run.

Following is the statement by Paulo Golgher, Engineering Director of Orku on its end.

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, 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.

It's been a great 10 years, and we apologize to those still actively using the service. We hope people will find other online communities to spark more conversations and build even more connections for the next decade and beyond.

I was using Orkut till today. I used login to orkut to check the latest updates in the communities that i was part of like Kamal Hasan, Sachin Tendulkar,Mani Rathnam, Clint Eastwood, Dan Brown, Sidney Sheldon fans communities and some of the software communities as well. I am going to miss all those activities from now on.

If you visit Orkut now, the community has been replaced with a landing page to look through their community archives. 

Orkut does not exists anymore. it is just a memory from tomorrow. that's what life is all about. memories.

Good Bye, Orkut!

                                                                                              Source : Internet