Orkut to shut down in September 2014 | Timeline of Orkut | Bidding Farewell through Orkut Facts

After about a decade long service, finally Orkut is bidding adieu. On June 30, 2014, Google announced the retirement of one of its long lasted, popular Social Networking sites before the origin of Facebook. Google in order to reduce burden from its servers, is going to remove ORKUT [Google's first ever social networking website]. Google announced that effective September 30, 2014 Orkut would be “shut down”.via blogs posts in English and Portuguese. From today onwards, no new Orkut account can be created and users can download their entire Orkut history using Google Takeout.

Though it is considered the wise move by Google to help concentrate on its latest alternative Google Plus launched back in 2011, but even after three years of its launch it is not even near to that of its contemporary social networks. Google Plus celebrated its third birthday on June 28, 2014. The service is popular with some Google fans — particularly keen Android and Chrome users. However, it's hated by some YouTube and Google Play users, because of the forced integration for comments and reviews, and ignored by the vast majority.

Funny Story behind Birth of Orkut

Orkut Buyukkokten [a Turkish software engineer], the creator of Orkut lost his girlfriend in a train accident but the gal's name nowhere appeared in the dead list. This guy grew up and went on to become IT technical architect in his late 20s. He hired developers from the whole globe and plan to make a software where he could search for his girl friend through the web. 

Fortunately, he found her, after losing millions of dollars and 3 long years. It was time to shut down the search operation, when the CEO of Google had a word with this guy and took over this application. This Software made a whopping 1 billion dollars profit in its first year, which we today know as ORKUT.

Before the rise of Zombie [Facebook], Orkut was an online community designed to make your social life more active and stimulating. orkut's social network can help you maintain existing relationships with pictures and messages, and establish new ones by reaching out to people you've never met before. 

Facts about Orkut Buyukkokten

• He gets $12 when every person registers to this website.
• He also gets $10 when you add somebody as a friend.
• He gets $8 when your friend’s friend adds you as a friend & gets $6 if anybody adds you as a friend in the resulting chain.
• He gets $5 when you scrap somebody & $4 when somebody scraps you.
• He also gets $200 for each photograph you upload on Orkut.
• He gets $2.5 when you add your friend in the crush-list or in the hot-list.
• He gets $2 when you become somebody’s fan.
• He gets $1.5 when somebody else becomes your fan.
• He gets $1.5 when somebody else becomes your fan.
• He even gets $1 every time you logout of Orkut.
• He gets $0.5 every time you just change your profile-photograph.
• He also gets $0.5 every time you read your friend’s scrap-book & $0.5 every time you view your friend’s friend-list.
• Many Global Financial Consultants think this person might become the richest person in the world by the end of 2009.
• He has 13 assistants to monitor his scrapbook & 8 assistants to monitor his friends-list.
• He gets around 20,000 friend-requests a day & about 85,000 scraps a day.
• A company named Affinity Engines that builds social networking products for universities (that just so happens to have been founded by Orkut Buyukkokten - the creator of www.orkut.com - quite interestingly is now suing Google for stealing their code.

 

Timeline of Orkut

• Orkut was launched on November 17, 2002 by the Google. We have some doubt on these dates, according to some sources, Orkut was launched on January 22, 2003 by Google as an independent project of Orkut Büyükkökten. Acc. to Wikipedia, the date is January 24, 2004.
  
• Orkut Büyükkökten, software engineer and product manager at Google developed Orkut as an independent project while working at Google. All employees at Google can spend 20% of their time working on personal interests.
• Marissa Mayer, the current Yahoo CEO was the Project Manager who approved Orkut.
• Despite failing in America, Orkut was very popular in both Brazil and India. If one were to look at global trends, Orkut comes in 9th place (according to comScore) when it comes to unique visitors.
• In 2006, some hacking experts discovered a lethal virus which had spread it’s tentacles all across Orkut. Named as MW.Orc worm, it was launched when an ignorant user shared a jpg files which had this virus. Once installed in the System 32 folder of the user, this virus siphoned off private details such as passwords and bank account details.
• In 2007, Mumbai police has asked the court to place a ban on Orkut as several hate groups had suddenly sprung all over the social network. The case is still pending.
• May 2008, 53.86% of Orkut's users are from Brazil, followed by India with 16.97% and 23.4% of the traffic comes from Brazil, followed by India with 18.0%. In 2008, more than 23 million of Brazilians had an account on Orkut.
• In August 2008, Google announced that Orkut will be fully managed and operated in Brazil due to the large Brazilian user base and growth of legal issues. Originally was hosted in California. This is the reason Google announced the shutting down of this social network in English and Portuguese.
• As of 2009, 70% of Orkut users were aged between 18 and 30 years, making it the largest platform for youngsters and teenagers. Only 3% of Orkut users were above 50 years.
• Till June 2011, Orkut was the clear leader among the social networking sites in Brazil.
• Till March 2012, 41% of online metropolitan Mexicans, and 11% of online metropolitan Brazilians, connect to social networks on their mobile phones every day and 54% of online metropolitan Mexicans, and 38% of online metropolitan Brazilians, regularly connect with others via social networks like Facebook and Orkut on their mobile phones.
• Till June 2012, the average Latin American Facebook user spends 460 minutes per month on the site, compared to 22.5 minutes for Twitter, and 96.6 for Orkut.
• Till September 2012, 83% of Orkut users were under 35 years of age. 
• As of May 2014, Orkut was world’s 6101^st favourite site, as per Alexa ranking. 48% of the traffic to Orkut still came from Brazil whereas India was second largest userbase with 14% traffic. Around 35 million accounts are still active in India.
• Only three countries had the courage to block Orkut for their citizens: Iran, UAE and Saudi Arabia.
• About 50 per cent of the people on Orkut are there ‘for friends.’ Only 16.42 per cent are manifestly for the dating purpose on Orkut [please note that people often check here more than one column]. - See more at: http://vikas-gupta.in/2009/09/08/some-interesting-facts-on-orkut-users-and-demographics/#sthash.LYaf8nYG.dpuf
  About 50 per cent of the people on Orkut are there ‘for friends.’ Only 16.42 per cent are manifestly for the dating purpose on Orkut [please note that people often check here more than one column].
• About 55 per cent have ‘no answer’ in their relationship status. 27.75 per cent of all Orkut users are married. Committed people are about 6 per cent, Open Marriage 0.21 per cent and Open Relationship 1.88 %.
• Orkut has the greatest user base in Brazil, India and the United States in that order. About 52 per cent of Orkut users are from Brazil, about 20 per cent from India and about 18 per cent from the US.
• Orkut officially celebrates India’s independence day and is presently celebrating Brazil’s Independence day for obvious reasons. The Orkut logo shown on top is specially designed to wish ‘Happy Independence Day to Brazil [7 September]‘. Users from Pakistan are about 0.94 per cent while users from UK are about 0.41 per cent only.

Time to have a last look at your ‘Scraps’ & ‘Orkut Timeline’.  

RIP Orkut :'( . . . . . . .  Most Colourful Social Network Site Ever ....

www.Orkut.com