Google Has Finally Decided To Shutdown it's product.An end of era.

Google Has Finally Decided To Shutdown it’s product.An end of era.

It was the year 2007, when I was first got acquainted with the phenomenon that Orkut was, back then. I had undergone a school transition and one of my friends mentioned this new site to connect to friends and remain in touch with the old ones, even being geographies apart. Back then, we did not have any relevance, whatsoever, about the so called ‘social networking sites’. It’s only now that the term is so omnipresent. Orkut was the platform which gave a new meaning to scrapbooks, which until then were the colored pages of a book for sticking pictures, and showed how a single page can open a whole new world of possibilities. Dozens of friends, profile themes and views, testimonials, communities and what not, it all appeared to be a fantasy and more than anything, Orkut became a place for likeminded people to discuss their hobbies, teens to search and reconnect with their long lost friends, cherish the present ones and pursue new ones. The beauty of knowing what is going on with your friends who are sitting miles apart, a visual treat of their lives, the anticipation of how many new scraps you have and who viewed your profile frequently… amongst these many frolicking activities on Orkut, somewhere love bloomed. I still recall finding my first ‘crush’ on a community to which we both were members of. Then chatting became common and soon it was a gush-gush feeling. Many a people bear testimony to this connection with their loved ones through the matchmaker that Orkut was. Quite a significant amount of time must have been devoted to the building of profiles, updating them and connecting with people. Orkut was a revolution among the youth with its new ideas that changed the old system of communication and paved the way for extravagant, large scale social networking sites like Facebook, Google+, blogger, etc. Link

This 10 year long legacy of the first social networking site is coming to an end this year. Created as a consequence of a “20 percent project” by Orkut Büyükkökten, Google bids adieu to this giant come 30^th September. Until the closing date, the current user profiles will be unaffected; however, new accounts cannot be registered succeeding 1^st July. Google gives the current and active users to import their details, community posts and photos using Google Takeout. Also, it plans to archive the incredible communities, which will be available for public viewing. Link For over a decade, Orkut has been an era. So

much so that the word ‘orkutting’ gained common use as a verb, meaning socializing on Orkut. However sweet and everlasting the memories of this pal-site may be, the truth is that it is being pulled off the grid. Google deems fit to spend the same resources in pacing up other social networking sites. The engineering Director of Orkut Blog, Paulo Golgher, signs off with an apology to the users of Orkut saying, “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”.