Adios Orkut: Google To Shut Down Its First Social Network In September | TechTree.com

Adios Orkut: Google To Shut Down Its First Social Network In September

It's been 10 years since Orkut was launched and Google still hasn't got the social network stuff right.

 

Internet search giant Google has announced that it will shut down its earliest social-networking service Orkut on September 30 this year. Despite being ten years old, the service has largely been successful only in Brazil and India, which is why the company is shuttering it to divert all its focus on other social-networking initiatives.

"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," said Google in a post on the Orkut blog.

Orkut was launched in 2004, the same year as Facebook, but failed to become anywhere near as successful as the latter service. While Google did not reveal the number of users still on Orkut, it doesn't really matter because rival Facebook already has 1.28 billion users and continues to grow.

[See also: Facebook's Study To Alter User Emotions Sparks Outcry]

Front-lining Google's current social-networking push is Google+, but even here the company hasn't been able to rival the all-mighty Facebook. Google's social-networking plans are currently surrounded by a cloud of uncertainty as Vic Gundotra, the head of Google's social networking services, has now left the company.

Currently Google is trying to transform G+ into a service that unifies a person's 'user identity' across the various Google services they use. It still comes loaded with social sharing and streaming functions, but overall nothing seems to be going the company's way right now.


TAGS: Social Network, Orkut, Google, Google+, Facebook

 
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