Unlike most people who swear only by Facebook, C.P. Sini still logs into her Orkut account.
“I too am more into Facebook like everybody else these days, but I still visit my Orkut page and to see whatever little activity there,” says Sini, a city resident.
She will not be able to do that after September 30, though. Google, which set up Orkut in 2004, announced on Tuesday through the official Orkut blog that it was shutting down Orkut so as to focus their energy and resources on its other social platforms.
Orkut used to be extremely popular in India, where it provided the first social networking experience to many.
Google’s decision is not much of a surprise, though, as Orkut had been losing out to Facebook, even in India and Brazil, another country where it used to have the upper hand. But for V.S. Nimisha, Orkut brought back friends she thought she would never meet again. “I was also able to track down my old neighbours through Orkut,” said the HR trainee. “But I migrated to Facebook along with my friends, so I am not going to miss Orkut much.”
Sini is grateful to Orkut, though. “I had organised a meeting of my classmates because of Orkut,” she says.
You can download your archive of scraps and photographs from Orkut.
