Early Social Media Pioneer Orkut Eyes Return As Founder Seeks Human-Centric Internet

More than a decade after its shutdown, early social networking platform Orkut could make a return as its creator pushes for a human-centred internet. Orkut was originally created by former Google employee Orkut Buyukkokten on January 24, 2004, and became a defining digital space in the early years of social networking.

The Comeback Campaign

The official website of Orkut is running a campaign to gather users who want real connections on social networks. The site currently asks users to sign a petition for a new social network focused on authentic experiences. The page has received over 2,60,000 signatures from users across 115 countries. Founder Orkut Buyukkokten published an open letter on the site warning that social media has betrayed its original purpose and that artificial intelligence is accelerating the problem. He argued that platforms are now built around engagement, advertising and attention rather than meaningful relationships.

History and Decline

During the mid-2000s, Orkut became massively popular in India as internet access expanded for the country's youth. By 2008, it was the most popular website in Brazil and India, fully managed and operated by Google Brazil. The platform offered easy ways to connect with friends through features like communities, testimonials, scraps and personalised profiles. To cater to its soaring popularity in India around 2007, Orkut introduced a redesigned interface with support for Hindi, Tamil, Kannada, Telugu, Marathi, and Bengali. However, intense competition from Facebook led to a shift of operational base to Brazil. Facebook eventually overtook Orkut in Brazil in 2011, marking a turning point in its decline. On June 30, 2014, Google announced that Orkut would shut down, and new account registrations stopped before the platform completely closed on September 30, with Google pointing to the growth of services like YouTube, Google+, and Blogger as reasons for the shutdown.

Context

Orkut represents an earlier era of the internet before modern smartphone apps and algorithmic feeds dominated digital life. The platform is best remembered by millions of users for its interest-based communities and personal scrapbook features that predated Facebook's widespread adoption in India and South America.