Farewell To Orkut: Google To Shut Down It's First Social Network

Orkut, the first social networking site, launched by Google in January 2004, is now to be shut down on Sept 30 after more than 10 years of service.

Image Courtesy: Wikimedia Commons

Orkut had many active users in Brazil and India but didn't have a firm place in rest of the places. Nevertheless, it has a unique acetic feeling, nostalgia to it, for all those who had ever been an active user on Orkut.
Existing users will be able to export all their data using Google Takeout but creating new Orkut accounts won't be possible as per the announcement made by Google's Orkut team on 30th June in their blog post.

Tchau Orkut 

Monday, June 30, 2014 | 10:23 AM
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.
We will shut down Orkut on September 30, 2014. Until then, there will be no impact on current Orkut users, to give the community time to manage the transition. People can export their profile data, community posts and photos using Google Takeout (available until September 2016). Starting today, it will not be possible to create a new Orkut account.
Orkut, the service, may be going away, but all of those incredible communities Orkut users have created will live on. We are preserving an archive of all public communities, which will be available online starting September 30, 2014. If you don't want your posts or name to be included in the community archive, you can remove Orkut permanently from your Google account. Please visit our Help Center for further details. 
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.
Posted by Paulo Golgher, Engineering Director

Google is now completely focussing on Google+ , which recently celebrated it's third Anniversay in social networking.