Emily Mitchell
February 4th, 2023
What Orkut is:
Orkut was a social networking site owned and operated by Google in 2004. This social networking site was one of the firsts to be launched, even before Facebook! It allowed users to create an account, add friends share activities, photos, and even send personal messages. Unlike social media now, this one was meant to find communities based on keywords and even having features like custom themes, having “crush lists” and even rating your friends. Which to me, thinking about rating and having a crush list on my profile is CRAZY!
The Rise:
Orkut rose pretty quickly with over 50,000 communities created after only four month of the launch and only took six more months to hit 1,500,000 communities and 90% of the users were from Brazil. Many users were interested in communities for finding friends, classmates, workplaces, residential groups, etc.
Orkut allowed users to not only friend people they knew in person but also people they admired, and it carried a “high prestige factor” because there was an invite only membership. Orkut also made a decision to add a competition element to the site and allowed users to rate their friends based on how sexy, cool, and trustworthy the users found each other. That would make me really insecure- especially if this was today because we all know how ruthless people will be behind a screen!
The Fall:
Google had announced the shut by with this statement:
“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.” (What Was Orkut and Why Was It Discontinued? n.d.)
Orkut was shut down in September of 2014 because they were unable to grow with their users which means they stopped meeting the needs of the culture and audience. Orkut was then replaced with other social media platforms like Facebook. Orkut started out simple and reliable however, after some time it became complicated which affected negatively. The site would take a while to load, it was difficult to navigate and they never adapted to the amount of people using their site. Also, with the site users being mostly Brazilian, cultural aspects came into play. “In order for brands to be successful in Brazil, they must allow users to blog, engage through social gaming, and incorporate online video into marketing campaigns.” (Translate Media, 2015). This is another reason the site failed, because it was hard for brands to share videos because there were many functionality issues that arose including limited friends, blockages and problems loading and sharing photos.
In order to be successful over a long period of time, companies have to be adaptable and grow with their audience. Many say this shut down wasn’t surprising at all.
References:
Mahoney, L. M., & Tang, T. (2016). Strategic Social Media: From Marketing to Social Change. Wiley Global Research (STMS).
Translate Media (2015) Brazil social media. Available at http://www.translatemedia.com/us/translation-service/ social-media/brazil-social-media/ (accessed June 8, 2016).
What Was Orkut and Why Was it Discontinued? (n.d.). http://Www.failory.com. https://www.failory.com/google/orkut
One response to “Orkut: The Rise and Fall”
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Emily, great post! I enjoyed reading. I like that it was not drawn out and hard to read!
You are right, to stay relevant companies have to adapt and change with the current trends. When companies don’t, they end up like Orkut. I like that you added the quote from Google! That was insightful.
Do you think that Orkut would be successful now? If they were able to adapt?
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