I used Orkut in the early days (from 2004 - 2008). The growth trajectory was similar to facebook. All the elite colleges in India were using it in the beginning and then it rapidly spread across other colleges.
But the thing was:
1. There was no News feed. You had to actually visit your friend's wall to make a comment/see what they were up-to.
2. That other person would know the next day that you visited their profile. This discourages people from taking interest in the lives of others. You didn't want to come across as a creep or having nothing better to do with your time.
3. Communities/Forums were a big thing. There wasn't too much to do so you visited "communities". It became a turf war between Indians, Brazilians and a few other countries over content. So if you were from another country, you would get the feeling of not belonging here. I always thought that it drove people from other countries away.
4. Facebook created a personal bubble/universe centered around you. Discussions on forums/pages were not a high priority. News feed was the game changer. I remember people moving away en masse from Orkut to Facebook around 2007 - 08.
It's funny about #1, since when the NewsFeed appeared on Facebook most people were mad about the change. It was a weird thing going from assuming that only people who viewed your profile (e.g. enough to care) would see your goofy pics, and then now they were splashed in front of anyone you added as a 'friend'.
Don't forget FB Apps. The idea that social graph could be viewed as a data platform was revolutionary. I remember lot of young engineers around me going crazy about it and building silly apps. There were a lot of useful apps as well; book lending, used articles sales and so on.
Indian here. One of the biggest problems with Orkut was spam. They did nothing to combat the countless unsolicited "fraandship" requests. A lot of women I know abandoned Orkut early due to the harrassment.
Another big factor for the communities' explosion was their misuse. The way communities were displayed in your profile page leaked enough metadata that people started using them as badges instead. Some time around 2006 people started creating communities with nonsense names, and it was not unusual to see people with hundreds of them on their profile. Things like "I cry everytime I see Mufasa die" or "Nobody expects the spanish inquisition" were the kinds of titles used in order to display your sense of humor.
In some sense this is akin to Tumblr's hashtags we see today, in which people abused the metadata channel to convey real meaning.
This could have been something. First social network I joined was Orkut in 2004. Back in 2006, it was all rage not only in Brazil, but also in lots of other countries where facebook was virtually unknown (iirc the MAU was over 100 million). In fact, facebook didn't overtake orkut in India and Brazil until 2010 and 2011 respectively.
If google had nurtured this social network instead of ignoring it for years, it might have become credible rival to facebook in markets outside US/EU. Instead, years of negligence and atrocious design decisions turned it into a ghost town since around 2011 or so. One has only to blame oneself.
I was told (source who used work for Google) that Orkut required massive amounts of resources that made it hard to run at scale. And there was no money in it.
This is why I'm a bit surprised that G+ is so bloated, as there is no money in that either....
"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)."
I really kind of find this odd. I'm sure that other services have popped up to take it's place and that it's popularity is dropping, but I really find it hard to believe that they are Youtube (completely different service), Blogger (Which up until now I was under the impression that Google had forgotten that it even owned) and Google+ (More recent and less established than Orkut, and still a small amount of active users). I'm thinking more that non-Google services are the real threats, and that Google just has no benefit anymore in having users in any other service than Google+.
I don't find it odd, however, that another social network owned and operated by Google is shutting down though. While I think it's smart for them to try to consolidate their social strategy, I feel like they're engraining themselves in a service deeper and deeper that will, at some point, work more towards holding them back than allowing them to branch out into new products. That is all an incredible amount of opinion though, so we'll see.
> I really kind of find this odd. I'm sure that other services have popped up to take it's place and that it's popularity is dropping, but I really find it hard to believe that they are Youtube (completely different service), Blogger (Which up until now I was under the impression that Google had forgotten that it even owned) and Google+ (More recent and less established than Orkut, and still a small amount of active users).
Google didn't say that YouTube, Blogger, or Google+ have taken Orkut's place. Google said that YouTube, Blogger, and Google+ have outpaced Orkut's growth and are, largely as a result of that, more appropriate focuses of Google's resources.
> I'm thinking more that non-Google services are the real threats
This isn't about "threats", its about opportunities -- more specifically, its about where Google effort has the best returns for Google.
It's odd because it's a bullshit rationalization that pretends to explain the decision while avoiding the all-to-obvious fact that Facebook won the present round of social networking.
And I say that as someone who's never had a personal Facebook account and doesn't care much for social networking in general.
The problem, in other words, is that it's a lie by way of omission and dissembling. And that everybody knows it.
As someone who has used G+ fairly heavily for 3 years, and eventually came to sort of like parts of it: it's annoying, creaky, and creepy. The underlying infrastructure is robust and reliable. The platform built on top of it is a mish-mash. Complaints from the first days of public deployment over noise, a confusion of controls, and a lack of clear purpose remain valid. And as a tool to destroy trust and goodwill in Google it's been unparalleled.
I'm with you there. I still fondly remember Google Buzz and haven't really found an alternative that has the same feel to it yet.
I hope there is some post facto analysis a few months from now. IMO Google is risking that this shutdown effectively causes the migration of a few hundred thousand Brazilian Google users to Facebook.
Google+ is much larger than Orkut and has far more active users. Orkut never caught on outside of Brazil. Even in Brazil, its userbase is shrinking as users adopt Facebook and Google+.
Similar but less high-profile news: the once biggest hungarian social network site, iwiw.hu is shutting down tomorrow.
Launched in 2002, by 2006 it had pretty much every hungarian internet users signed up who could be bothered by such sites. T-Mobile/Deutsche Telecom acquired it for 4 million euros in 2006 and at the time it seemed unthinkable that it would lose its momentum.
As a result, Hungary was one of the very last countries for Facebook to overtake the local competition, but eventually people with international friends started to sign up for Facebook too and the network effect kicked in: for the past 1-2 years iwiw.hu was in a free fall and one month ago they announced that they would pull the plug completely.
Unless you hang out with Brazilians, you would think this had already happened 5 years ago. Even the Brazilians have largely given up, which makes the announcement timed to the World Cup a little less ironic.
What happens to the developers that are on the individual teams what maintain these projects? Are they all dispersed to different areas? Do certain groups that work well together get to stay together? Are some let go?
Google products remind me of HBO's Game of Thrones series. They have so much going on at any given times, they can kill plenty off and still have their head high above water with plenty of forward momentum. What would Vegas bet is next to go?
On a slightly unrelated note, why do blog sub-sites always lack a link to the main web site? It always takes time to realize the blog site's logo links to itself, that there is no obvious link to the main one anywhere on the page, and that you will have to edit the URL by hand. Such a trivial usability issue.
Well, this was a long time coming. No surprises here. I'll fondly remember Orkut though. It was the first social network I really used and participated in.
An interesting story: When I was in college, my friend and I figured out a way to see hidden pictures from users using a simple URL "hack". It was quite fun showing it off to friends, before they added an extra hash element to their URLs (if I remember correctly) and stopped our tinkering.
I was in that team from about 2006 to 2008.
We grew the subscriber base, reaching about 40M,
beating FB those days, but FB was catching up.
Seems like FB was doing everything right,
and we did what Larry told us - "improve latency".
It says in the second sentence of the announcement that it was a "20 percent project" - basically, it was started by one or more Google engineers as a side project and developed into a full-fledged attempt to create a Google-based social networking site.
I discovered that Orkut had helpfully created one for me.
How do you know Orkut crreated it?
I've had accounts created "for me" on all sorts of sites.
Turns out I'm not the only person named James Britt. But I just happen to have a particular gmail account with that name, and there are some number of other people who mistakenly use that email address when signing up for things.
(This is one reason I'm a fan of Web sites sending out E-mail verification notices.)
It's anecdotal but I remember being intrigued, not being able to get an invite, and then losing interest/forgetting about Orkut by the time it opened up. I think in general with invite-based launches there's a fine line between creating buzz and stifling it.
[+] [-] redmaverick|11 years ago|reply
But the thing was:
1. There was no News feed. You had to actually visit your friend's wall to make a comment/see what they were up-to.
2. That other person would know the next day that you visited their profile. This discourages people from taking interest in the lives of others. You didn't want to come across as a creep or having nothing better to do with your time.
3. Communities/Forums were a big thing. There wasn't too much to do so you visited "communities". It became a turf war between Indians, Brazilians and a few other countries over content. So if you were from another country, you would get the feeling of not belonging here. I always thought that it drove people from other countries away.
4. Facebook created a personal bubble/universe centered around you. Discussions on forums/pages were not a high priority. News feed was the game changer. I remember people moving away en masse from Orkut to Facebook around 2007 - 08.
[+] [-] swang|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] vishnugupta|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] chengiz|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] bonobo|11 years ago|reply
In some sense this is akin to Tumblr's hashtags we see today, in which people abused the metadata channel to convey real meaning.
[+] [-] jamesbritt|11 years ago|reply
That seems like a compelling game plan in general.
[+] [-] unknown|11 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] flyrain|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] unknown|11 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] the_ancient|11 years ago|reply
This is a bad thing?
[+] [-] 4k|11 years ago|reply
If google had nurtured this social network instead of ignoring it for years, it might have become credible rival to facebook in markets outside US/EU. Instead, years of negligence and atrocious design decisions turned it into a ghost town since around 2011 or so. One has only to blame oneself.
[+] [-] scholia|11 years ago|reply
This is why I'm a bit surprised that G+ is so bloated, as there is no money in that either....
[+] [-] publicfig|11 years ago|reply
I really kind of find this odd. I'm sure that other services have popped up to take it's place and that it's popularity is dropping, but I really find it hard to believe that they are Youtube (completely different service), Blogger (Which up until now I was under the impression that Google had forgotten that it even owned) and Google+ (More recent and less established than Orkut, and still a small amount of active users). I'm thinking more that non-Google services are the real threats, and that Google just has no benefit anymore in having users in any other service than Google+.
I don't find it odd, however, that another social network owned and operated by Google is shutting down though. While I think it's smart for them to try to consolidate their social strategy, I feel like they're engraining themselves in a service deeper and deeper that will, at some point, work more towards holding them back than allowing them to branch out into new products. That is all an incredible amount of opinion though, so we'll see.
[+] [-] dragonwriter|11 years ago|reply
Google didn't say that YouTube, Blogger, or Google+ have taken Orkut's place. Google said that YouTube, Blogger, and Google+ have outpaced Orkut's growth and are, largely as a result of that, more appropriate focuses of Google's resources.
> I'm thinking more that non-Google services are the real threats
This isn't about "threats", its about opportunities -- more specifically, its about where Google effort has the best returns for Google.
[+] [-] dredmorbius|11 years ago|reply
And I say that as someone who's never had a personal Facebook account and doesn't care much for social networking in general.
The problem, in other words, is that it's a lie by way of omission and dissembling. And that everybody knows it.
As someone who has used G+ fairly heavily for 3 years, and eventually came to sort of like parts of it: it's annoying, creaky, and creepy. The underlying infrastructure is robust and reliable. The platform built on top of it is a mish-mash. Complaints from the first days of public deployment over noise, a confusion of controls, and a lack of clear purpose remain valid. And as a tool to destroy trust and goodwill in Google it's been unparalleled.
[+] [-] vincentleeuwen|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] sentenza|11 years ago|reply
I hope there is some post facto analysis a few months from now. IMO Google is risking that this shutdown effectively causes the migration of a few hundred thousand Brazilian Google users to Facebook.
[+] [-] eps|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] JohnTHaller|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] bjano|11 years ago|reply
Launched in 2002, by 2006 it had pretty much every hungarian internet users signed up who could be bothered by such sites. T-Mobile/Deutsche Telecom acquired it for 4 million euros in 2006 and at the time it seemed unthinkable that it would lose its momentum.
As a result, Hungary was one of the very last countries for Facebook to overtake the local competition, but eventually people with international friends started to sign up for Facebook too and the network effect kicked in: for the past 1-2 years iwiw.hu was in a free fall and one month ago they announced that they would pull the plug completely.
[+] [-] mathattack|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] dalek2point3|11 years ago|reply
https://www.linkedin.com/in/orkutb
[+] [-] soupboy|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] scrapcode|11 years ago|reply
Google products remind me of HBO's Game of Thrones series. They have so much going on at any given times, they can kill plenty off and still have their head high above water with plenty of forward momentum. What would Vegas bet is next to go?
[+] [-] lewisflude|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] timmclean|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Zigurd|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Sami_Lehtinen|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] mojuba|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] munimkazia|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] dennisgorelik|11 years ago|reply
http://ivan-gandhi.livejournal.com/2793482.html
[+] [-] jnazario|11 years ago|reply
http://archive.wired.com/techbiz/media/news/2004/06/64046
[+] [-] judk|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Cthulhu_|11 years ago|reply
Second, wouldn't they rather put it up for sale?
[+] [-] ithkuil|11 years ago|reply
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Orkut_B%C3%BCy%C3%BCkk%C3%B6kte...
Perhaps it depends on too much of the internal infrastructure they wouldn't want to sell?
[+] [-] yellowapple|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] brianbreslin|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] unknown|11 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] JeremyBanks|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] jamesbritt|11 years ago|reply
How do you know Orkut crreated it?
I've had accounts created "for me" on all sorts of sites.
Turns out I'm not the only person named James Britt. But I just happen to have a particular gmail account with that name, and there are some number of other people who mistakenly use that email address when signing up for things.
(This is one reason I'm a fan of Web sites sending out E-mail verification notices.)
[+] [-] smackfu|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] tesseract|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] saraid216|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] thescrewdriver|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] pinkskip|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] sumedh|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] bkamapantula|11 years ago|reply
[1] http://imgur.com/zziDXJt