The Changing Times and Orkut
“Hey guys! We need to update the blog.” I exclaimed to the M&P Heads. “Let’s get started with the list of what’s trending” And then, all of sudden, I realized that we missed something from last week. Yes, with the crowd in the FIFA World Cup, incessant commentary from cricket fans on Sachin vs. Sharapova and the brainstorming over how the budget was going to turn out, we all missed the Orkut shutdown that was announced about a week ago. So, how does that matter?
Not being an avid fan of social networks, I had heard of Orkut during my 7th — 8th standard days when we (the to be Fb and Whatsapp guys) were growing up . They used to use a word called ‘scrap’ which I just confirmed, while writing this article. No country other than India has been as faithful to social networking sites. Facebook, Whatsapp and a heck of other sites claim India as one of their important markets. In fact, Indians are the ones who are credited to take Quora on to the top of the charts and now today, nobody cared to bid goodbye to the child that we all nurtured. Orkut was almost dead, once Facebook started trending in the US, but the faithful Indian user stuck to it.
Only four years after its launch in 2004, Orkut had close to 13 million unique visitors in India. At the time, that was more than thrice the number of people on Facebook. Although, Facebook quickly caught up and overtook Orkut in 2010, Orkut was popular with Indian users because it was one of the world’s first social networks. It also helped that it worked well in spite of slow Internet connections. Close to 20 million early adopters however, failed to help Orkut survive the growing dominance of Facebook and other better known global brands. Orkut’s relevance and number of users dwindled in India. There still exist some die-hard fans of the site. Around 20% of Orkut’s users till past week were from India, while 50% were from Brazil and around 18% from the United States. But even that couldn’t help the site from dying.
It was really great, reading stories of people who met on Orkut and then went to live life together. One of the users of Orkut recalls, “One day, I came across the profile of Miss. You won’t believe that 95 per cent of our interests matched. So, I sent her a friend request along with a poem. She accepted it and the very next day, she sent me a chat request. We were supposed to chat at 6.30 pm, but I was waiting since 6.30 am. First love, what more can I say.”“After our marriage was fixed, she flew to California for three years. Yes, we would chat on Orkut everyday” he added. Till date, the couple posts updates about their married life on Orkut. Now, they have downloaded all their photographs onto their PC, reports Deccan Chronicle.
I was alive both during the birth and death of the world’s first social networking site but never bothered to give it a try. I just have the ‘grandma’ type stories which I have heard during my lunch hours in school and will carry them with me forever. It was Orkut which first taught us to stay in touch, be connected. RIP Orkut.
Written by: Ravish Agarwal
