Want to read Slashdot from your mobile device? Point it at m.slashdot.org and keep reading!

 


Forgot your password?
Close
typodupeerror
×
Google Social Networks

Google Kills Orkut To Focus On YouTube, Blogger and Google+ 71

Posted by samzenpus from the so-long-farewell dept.
An anonymous reader writes "Bad news for Brazillians. Google's first social network, Orkut, will be shut down at the end of September. A farewell message on the Orkut blog reads in part: "Ten years ago, Orkut was Google's first foray into social networking. Built as a '20 percent' project, Orkut communities started conversations, and forged connections, that had never existed before. Orkut helped shape life online before people really knew what "social networking" was. 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). We'll be focusing our energy and resources on making these other social platforms as amazing as possible for everyone who uses them."
This discussion has been archived. No new comments can be posted.

Google Kills Orkut To Focus On YouTube, Blogger and Google+ More

Google Kills Orkut To Focus On YouTube, Blogger and Google+

Comments Filter:

  • But I thought it was already dead? (Score:3)

    by Megane ( 129182 ) on Monday June 30, 2014 @11:34AM (#47351105)
    I thought Orkut was already scrapped a couple of years ago in the normal progression of Google abandoning old stuff. This is like hearing about a celebrity dying and your first thought is "he was still alive?"

    • Re: (Score:2, Insightful)

      by Anonymous Coward

      I think in general it's best to assume any Google service is dead: you're probably right, or else you will be in a few years (except possibly for mail, maps, and google.com).

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by Urkki ( 668283 )

        (except possibly for mail, maps, and google.com).

        Don't jinx it!

        • Re: (Score:1)

          by Anonymous Coward

          Why not? The only thing that Google really does better than anyone else is search (and maybe free machine translation). For everything else, there's a better or at least equivalent option.

          • Re: (Score:3)

            by cpghost ( 719344 )

            Why not? The only thing that Google really does better than anyone else is search (and maybe free machine translation). For everything else, there's a better or at least equivalent option.

            Gmail is actually doing quite a good job as well. What other mail provider does probably BCC every mail you receive and send to the NSA cloud for safekeeping and backup?

            • The interface in Gmail has been getting more and more obnoxious. In the name of simplicity if I write a reply it does not even bother showing me the subject field anymore. WTF.

          • Re: (Score:2)

            by Urkki ( 668283 )

            Why not?

            Spreading a new email address would be total PITA. Street view of Google Maps is kinda unique and useful. Bing sucks compared to Google.

    • Not dead, it was actually pretty big in Brazil (therefore the tchau reference, which is how they say "ciao" in Brazilian Portuguese). Big in Brazil, not so much anywhere else.

      • Re: (Score:1)

        by dafradu ( 868234 )
        No! Brazilians don't use Orkut anymore, for a long time. Young kids probably never heard of it. They just say "I'll put that on face - i saw it in your face" etc. That or "whats", for WhatsApp. Yeah, i don't know why but they like to make things shorter.. kids, you know. Cheers from Brazil!

        • I guess this is why it's going away... if even Brasil is not using Orkut anymore, then no one is.

          A side conversation.... and Apple really isn't even in the conversation at this point. At least Google has a social network or two to shut down. Apple had what, Ping? Because of lawsuits iMessage isn't going to spread much past iOS/MacOSX. Though I don't like the explosion of places im supposed to lose my privacy to... it's like Oprah Winfrey "You get a social network! You get a social network!..." the big gu

    • Part of the reason for Orkut's decline in the US was that it was overrun by Portuguese speakers (mostly Brazilian) who posted (in Portuguese) in every English-language discussion, making the system unusable by anyone who didn't speak Portuguese. For the same reason, it remained popular where Portuguese was the national language or commonly spoken.

      Anyway, you've got to love the message from Google: Use social networks, you're giving a third party the ability to kill your online presence and the identity

      • Anyway, you've got to love the message from Google: Use social networks, you're giving a third party the ability to kill your online presence and the identity that you use for communicating with your friends on a whim!

        It's not the first time they send out this message. Didn't you hear about them dropping gtalk, and with it, XMPP support?

        • Google Talk was fine. Sure I use the service most often from inside a browser but if I wanted to use it all the time, as I do on occasion, a standalone client is a lot more energy efficient and convenient to use than running something inside a browser.

          • I fail to see the correlation between dropping XMPP support and standalone clients being more efficient. There's plenty of standalone clients for XMPP, and there have been for many years.

  • Nobody used it anymore (Score:3)

    by rbprbp ( 2731083 ) on Monday June 30, 2014 @11:38AM (#47351137) Homepage
    Orkut already was a wasteland 2~3 years ago as everyone in Brazil moved to Facebook. Not much will be lost.

  • Alternate universe. (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward

    Google kills Youtube, Blogger and Google+ to focus on Orkut.

  • and found that the nannyware at my office blocks Orkut. FB and Twitter work fine, so it looks like Orkut was sabotaged by the nannyware clowns at WatchGuard.

  • Come on Google (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward

    I get why Google is getting rid of the service, but two months notice is the best that they can do?

    For the random people that use Orkut like others use Facebook, it really is not a lot of time to figure out what to do with potentially gigabytes of information. That holds particularly true for anyone that is not technically savvy.

    Seeing as they own Google+, it would seem like it would make more sense to have a single click to transition accounts over to Google+ rather than simply kill this for the people tha

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by Urkki ( 668283 )

      it really is not a lot of time to figure out what to do with potentially gigabytes of information.

      Anybody who stores (instead of just sharing, with actual storage elsewhere) gigabytes of information at any social service deserves what's coming to them.

    • For the random people that use Orkut like others use Facebook, it really is not a lot of time to figure out what to do with potentially gigabytes of information. That holds particularly true for anyone that is not technically savvy.

      How long does it take to slide over to Google Takeout [google.com] and download all of your data?

      A few minutes? An hour?

      When Goog crushed Wave, I downloaded all my stuff in a matter of minutes. Couldn't really do much with it, but it lowered my White Hot Rage down to Red.

  • Really? Google+ has taken off? That is news to me and anyone working outside of Google.

    • Re:Google+ has taken off? (Score:5, Informative)

      by Grishnakh ( 216268 ) on Monday June 30, 2014 @12:03PM (#47351395)

      Really? Google+ has taken off? That is news to me and anyone working outside of Google.

      It's their attempt at a Big Lie: a lie repeated over and over until everyone believes it's true.

    • Re: (Score:2, Funny)

      by Anonymous Coward

      G+ is awesome. The smart techy type people do use it. If you aren't on it, that says a lot more about you than about it.

      • Re: Google+ has taken off? (Score:4, Insightful)

        by RobotRunAmok ( 595286 ) on Monday June 30, 2014 @12:22PM (#47351567)

        Marketing a special social network for smart people is like marketing a special vanilla-creme filled chocolate cheesecake to health fanatics.

        Which is to say, the moment they take the bait is the moment they demonstrate they're not whom you thought they were...

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by rtb61 ( 674572 )

        G+, yep lots and lots of smart techy types certainly are on it, how much they use it, is another question all together. It must be the social app with the greatest number of registered members who never use the social app.

    • It's taken off in the sense that it gets shoven down your throat every time you sign up for a Google service.

      Of all the Google+ accounts (basically all Google accounts), how many actually log into that specific service?

      • Not only that, but its tied into the search engine as well - you can only establish canonical authorship on your own website of something by linking it with your Google+ account. Which means that not having a Google+ account can affect your page rank.

    • Re: (Score:1)

      by jetkust ( 596906 )
      Don't you basically have to sign up for Google+ when you get an Android phone just to get to the Play Store and download apps? I'd suspect most people have google+ accounts and are actively using it, so it HAS taken off. It's just not the same as a Facebook account. It's used differently.

  • Obligatory Orkut joke (Score:5, Funny)

    by ribuck ( 943217 ) on Monday June 30, 2014 @12:20PM (#47351551)

    Larry Page says to Sergey Brin: "Hey Sergey, did you know that Orkut has ten million Brazillian users?"

    Sergey looks puzzled, then says "Larry, remind me again how many is a brazillion..."

    • how many is a brazillion...

      = the number of Brazilians queued at passport control in Miami Airport?

  • Long and drawn-out death but will be missed (Score:4, Informative)

    by vivaoporto ( 1064484 ) on Monday June 30, 2014 @12:37PM (#47351711)
    Orkut is dead a long time ago but it was not always this cesspool of spam, chain letters and filth. Once upon a time it was a cool project.....

    In the best of my recollection, once upon a time, in 2004, Orkut (the site) was nothing but a 20% project of some Orkut Buyukkokten dude on Google. It had a simple goal: to connect Orkut (the dude) with his close friend and to map the whole six degrees of separation thing. In an era of the web development when breadcrumbs where not in vogue Orkut (the site) had it, even two: one with the degrees of separation between you and whoever profile you were viewing (through your common friends network) and the other with the degrees of separation between you and Orkut (the dude).

    And in the very beginning it worked because it was invite only and that made the invitees to be more or less part of the same socioeconomic and cultural background (even among countries). Orkut (the dude) invited his pals on Google Campus and on Stanford. Some Stanford dude invited some Brazilian dude on a federal university (UFRGS), who invited his pals on campus, who invited some pals on other federal universities (UTMG, UFV, UFRJ) and, in the invite only degrees of separation phase, everything was good and beautiful.

    Everybody knew everybody else, connections were forged, Adam Rifkin gamed the system, some robot put people in jail, baby animals got lasers and everybody partied hard.

    The it died, the cool kids moved away either to Facebook or completely away from public social networks. Now get off my lawn!
  • Google suspending Orkut is but a tiny example of why you better communicate with people by using e-mail directly. Or, if you must, go the old fashioned way (*cough* Usenet *cough*). But rely on a specific social network run by a single company, and you're sure that it will be shut down sometimes down the road. Even Facebook, not to mention Google+ will someday go the way of Geocities.

  • I keep wondering when the world will wake up and realize that 'social networking' is a scam. How many times in how many ways does Facebook have to ream its user base before people realize that they are being abused there? How many times in how many ways do people's personal information (posts, contacts, emails, etc) have to be mined, analyzed and resold/abused before people realize that they are the 'product' with these free 'social' services? What do you think happens with everything you do with Gmail (

  • So Google+ has apparently taken off! I must have missed the memo!

    Well, I suppose if the frame of reference was Orkut, then yes it has. Sure, Google+ has tens of millions of members... who aren't actually aware they are members of Google+.

  • Comment removed based on user account deletion
  • Maybe next they'll pull the plug on google+ try giving a shit about search results sucking Malda's sweaty asshole.
  • What, nobody make the XKCD reference yet? Too proud?

    http://xkcd.com/1361/ [xkcd.com]

  • Page after page after page of retarded HEUAHEUAHEUA. When brazillians invade a service they crap on it to the point nobody else wants to use it.

    • True. We Brazilians even coined a term in Portuguese: "orkutizar" ("orkutize"), that is, invade and ruin with crappy stuff a service that was good once.
      For the record, many of us are not proud of it though.

  • "Orkut" is Finnish slang for orgasms (the singular is "orkku").

  • I abandoned Orkut well before the Brazilian invasion due to hideously slow performance. Back then it was because I thought that Google had simply badly under-provisioned a "20%" project. Then I remembered another early social network, Friendster, that also collapsed due to hideously slow performance. Basically, the first social networks failed to take into account the issue of scaling to massive numbers of users... and you *need* massive numbers of users to make the site interesting and to accommodate ev

  • I thought this was long gone. I tried using it early on but and it never gained any traction. I don't think folks in the US took it seriously. It was way early as a social media platform, but when Twitter came along, it blew it away.

Slashdot Top Deals

"Hello again, Peabody here..." -- Mister Peabody

Close