Orkut was HUGE. Google acquired it and it basically had *the* social media platform in Brazil pre-Facebook. IIRC, it also had a big-ish market share in some other countries. When Facebook came along, it was clear that Google was not doing as many updates as they needed to compete, so Orkut felt more and more "outdated".
They killed it after a while to replace with "something better". That was Google+.
I still think that it was one of the most impressive fumbles of a social media "monopoly".
It was built in-house at Google, not aquired. Orkut (the person) had been working at Google for several years before he built orkut.com. He'd done a similar site at Stanford pre-Google (and pre-Friendster!)
It was also a product of its time and it's sunsetting was just a side effect of the consolidation of the economy of attention. It would fail today just as it ended up failing back then unless people change how they consume social media altogether.
Other poster is correct, it was a 20% project, so it didn't even cost Google any money to acquire, which is crazy.
I remember it getting absolutely destroyed by Spam at some point. Then they tried some redesigns, and an integration with Google+ that caused more problems than it solved. Each one of these events drove people to other websites.
It was also huge in India. I remember most of my classmates were on Orkut and only a few were using Facebook. Apparently, Facebook felt a safer place for girls.
In India, Orkut was a massive success back in the day. We've had testimonials, and we used to spend a lot of time writing them. We used to spend hours hacking the corporate firewall to access Orkut during office hours!
Even if I cosign the spirit of the letter, this has big 90s viral email energy to the benefit of… another company/service/etc that I have no connection to.
Sounds like his vision is to be a better version of Reddit. Could be good if done well. Not sure how doing his viral marketing for him plays into that. If I'm gonna send a friend a thing, I want it to be a thing I endorse.
The original Orkut site was written in C# - it was very slow and couldn't handle the growth. Orkut was only a big success in countries like Brazil and India where internet connections were already so poor that nobody noticed how slow the site was.
Is the platform or network really the issue? Digg tried this same kind of reboot, but the same dynamics of Reddit (plus AI bots) emerged practically overnight. This is how social networks are now.
>Do you remember when the internet was human? When a message from a stranger on another continent felt like magic?
I remember the time when the only people on the internet were people who could pay for an expensive toy (a computer) with a keyboard, which they used in the evenings after their education-intensive jobs. Ah, and also naive kids of the same people.
This age is not coming back, because the reason it disappeared is smartphones.
I arrived well after Eternal September began, but even that looks very rosy-tinted compared to the slop-filled internet of today. An Eternal Sloptember, if you will.
My friends and I used Orkut back in the day for a hot minute. Then it was taken over by spam, and also Brazil. Looks like most of the interest in the new one is also from Brazil.
No matter how well-intentioned and good a new Orkut is, it’s an no-go. I’ve learned my lesson. For the rest of my life, I will not be joining any new platforms that are not under my control.
Hard to take this seriously when the website is obviously vibe-coded without a single ounce of effort or taste.
Also, what exactly is the point of this petition? I guess Orkut (creator) wants to use it as validation for potential users, perhaps to show to potential investors about the possible interest for the platform.
But honestly, just start. Give Brazilian MySpace another change
It's a way to collect emails and phone numbers, and gauge interest. Pretty common marketing tactic in the startup world, just rebranded to something else.
I had an account on orkut way back in 2006. It wasn't very active - I had IRL friends and none of them were there, so I had no reason to go there. The first social network that really caught on among us was LiveJournal.
I really do miss "old" forms of social media like forums and live journal, but unfortunately I think the era of people talking to each other on large public platforms is well and truly over. Even if _somehow_ it was possible to get everyone out of the claws of corporate social media, there is no fighting the onslaught of bots. There is simply no way to remake Orkut as a "good" form of social media because the world in which such a thing was possible doesn't exist anymore.
I don't understand what this is for? I mean, a petition? Addressed to whom? To what end?
I'm not really investing my time in centralized social media owned by surveillance capitalists (or likely to be owned by surveillance capitalists or a literal genocidal white nationalist), anymore. Mastodon and, to a lesser degree, Bluesky, are where I spend my attention for social media.
It'd be cool if facebook didn't suck and funnel bizarre AI propaganda into old people's noggins 24/7. It'd be great if the worst people on earth didn't have a monopoly on average folks' internet usage. But, I don't get what a new social network owned by one entity, without serious commitment to public benefit, can do to help. And, a petition is...less than even that?
I recently created a social media platform as a hobby project: https://nyhyl.app.
The main selling points are no ads, no algorithms, no infinite scroll, and no tracking.
I don't have any expectations from it of course, but it is amazing that I am able to create this on my own in just a few weeks. Maybe years of experience plus a few weeks, but nonetheless, I find it amazing.
I don't understand why this was downvoted. While I agree it's very unlike this gets any traction, I praise the creator for trying something different. +1
They killed it after a while to replace with "something better". That was Google+.
I still think that it was one of the most impressive fumbles of a social media "monopoly".
I remember it getting absolutely destroyed by Spam at some point. Then they tried some redesigns, and an integration with Google+ that caused more problems than it solved. Each one of these events drove people to other websites.
Interestingly, the first version used ASP.NET, visible in the .aspx domains, which really deviated from other Google tech.
Just before launch there was a attempt to hide that it was google.
- early social media really struggled to scale the social graph algorithms. Facebook made real technical innovations.
- early social media had serious problems with trust/safety and really nasty content. Many complex problems from deeply adversarial userbase.
Together, Orkut got bogged down and couldn't compete for resources with ads/search/maps/etc.
Sounds like his vision is to be a better version of Reddit. Could be good if done well. Not sure how doing his viral marketing for him plays into that. If I'm gonna send a friend a thing, I want it to be a thing I endorse.
I remember the time when the only people on the internet were people who could pay for an expensive toy (a computer) with a keyboard, which they used in the evenings after their education-intensive jobs. Ah, and also naive kids of the same people.
This age is not coming back, because the reason it disappeared is smartphones.
What about making you social media desktop-optimized?
In the words of some people at Google at the time:
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31809240
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41439540
https://upscrolled.com
No matter how well-intentioned and good a new Orkut is, it’s an no-go. I’ve learned my lesson. For the rest of my life, I will not be joining any new platforms that are not under my control.
Similar vibe back in 2022 https://web.archive.org/web/20220430215443/http://www.orkut....
Endlessly trying to reboot. This thing was super big in Brazil, is interest enough there to push this fwd?
If your social media platform is not sufficiently addictive, then it will die.
Also, what exactly is the point of this petition? I guess Orkut (creator) wants to use it as validation for potential users, perhaps to show to potential investors about the possible interest for the platform.
But honestly, just start. Give Brazilian MySpace another change
The letter is nice and all, but "sign this petition" is beyond useless
I really do miss "old" forms of social media like forums and live journal, but unfortunately I think the era of people talking to each other on large public platforms is well and truly over. Even if _somehow_ it was possible to get everyone out of the claws of corporate social media, there is no fighting the onslaught of bots. There is simply no way to remake Orkut as a "good" form of social media because the world in which such a thing was possible doesn't exist anymore.
I'm not really investing my time in centralized social media owned by surveillance capitalists (or likely to be owned by surveillance capitalists or a literal genocidal white nationalist), anymore. Mastodon and, to a lesser degree, Bluesky, are where I spend my attention for social media.
It'd be cool if facebook didn't suck and funnel bizarre AI propaganda into old people's noggins 24/7. It'd be great if the worst people on earth didn't have a monopoly on average folks' internet usage. But, I don't get what a new social network owned by one entity, without serious commitment to public benefit, can do to help. And, a petition is...less than even that?
The main selling points are no ads, no algorithms, no infinite scroll, and no tracking.
I don't have any expectations from it of course, but it is amazing that I am able to create this on my own in just a few weeks. Maybe years of experience plus a few weeks, but nonetheless, I find it amazing.