Well-known multinational, Google has officially announced to shut down its first social networking site- Orkut. September 30, 2014 will be the last day that people get to use this once most visited website in India and Brazil. Ten years ago, Orkut was the first attempt by Google in the social networking sector, but due to a decreasing rank in the Alexa traffic, it has decided to say goodbye to it. On May 2014, the global Alexa traffic ranking of orkut.com was 6,101. The prime reason cited for this shutdown is that Google is planning to focus on other websites like YouTube and Google+ which are performing better off.
“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”, writes Paulo Golgher, Engineering Director at Google.
To explain the reason behind pulling down the shutters on Orkut, Paulo Golgher writes, “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. We’ll be focusing our energy and resources on making these other social platforms as amazing as possible for everyone who uses them.”
As the Orkut is going to be shut down on September 30, 2014, until then, there will be no impact on the current Orkut users. Meanwhile, the users can operate their account and can also export their profile data, community posts and photos using ‘Google Takeout’ which will be available till September, 2016. While no new account can be created hereafter, starting from July, 2014.
Graphics : Amarpreet Singh, One World News
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