Finally on Monday, the Orkut team went ahead and announced the shutdown of the social networking site on September 30, 2014. Starting from June 30th, Orkut will not accept any new member.
Owned by Google, Orkut was one of its kind social networking sites when it started, but as time passed, Facebook and Twitter took away a major share, leaving Google to look for better options.
The two countries, Brazil and India, has the most number of users, with the former counting to 50%. In the recent years, Orkut lost its audience massively, which eventually forced Google to come up with Google+, intended to take on Facebook.
According to a report in Times of India, the engineering director of Orkut, Paulo Golgher said, “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. Starting today, it will not be possible to create a new Orkut account.”
Golgher also added on how the presence of YouTube, Blogger and Google+ has outpaced the growth of Orkut, which will now be given farewell for good reasons. “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,” he added.
Back in 2004 when Orkut was first launched, the website had a good share in the market, but soon lost to Facebook that had emerged as the best option in many ways.
While Orkut did maintain its share in Brazil and India, it soon lost in those domains, as well. Facebook took on Orkut in India in 2010, while in Brazil, the shift was confirmed in 2012.
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