Hello from Orkut! (4)
Orkut was a truly pioneering early social network that was developed within Google by a brilliant Turkish Google engineer named Orkut Büyükkökten. Soon after its launch, Orkut grew like a weed and became the dominant social network in a number of the fast growing BRIC countries. At one time, pretty much everyone I knew in Brazil and India was on Orkut. At its peak, Orkut had 300 million members.
Unfortunately, in a classic case of a company not knowing what to do with a business different from its core, Google pretty much ignored it internally while focusing on search. It received very little management support or investment. And ultimately, Google, in its foolishness, shut it down.
Orkut could have easily become as big (if not bigger) than Facebook.
Well, looks like Orkut has decided to say hello again: www.orkut.com
"The world is a better place when we get to know each other, when we are a little less strange to each other. I've been a stranger myself sometimes: I was born in Turkey and grew up in Germany where I was a geeky muslim boy in a class of blondes. Back in Turkey in middle school, I was the funny guy with the German accent. All my life, I have felt like someone on the outs: I was a programmer, I was gay or I was short and had a foreign accent. I haven't always had the easiest journey. But the truth is, I've never had trouble making friends because I love people.
I think we all should be a little bit friendlier. The world needs it. We are living in a strange time. We hide behind our devices, ignoring the people around us. We stay with locals when we travel abroad but we don't even know our neighbors at home. We click through feeds of updates from our friends from under our covers in the dark. Our lives are splinters of anonymity and isolation. Too often, we are lonely. Too often, we are afraid of what we don't know. Too often, we are hateful toward what we don't understand.
But I'm hopeful about our world. I'm confident the more we connect, the more beautiful it will become. I created orkut with this in mind. It's also why I created the world's first social network when I was a grad student at Stanford, and it's why I have dedicated my life to helping people connect with each other.
So to all my friends, thank you for making orkut such a loving community. I'm so blessed to share this world with you. As a token of gratitude, I am making a new social network just for you. I'm not so good at goodbyes, so I'm calling it hello. hello is the next generation of orkut."
I personally would not mind some more alternatives in the social networking space and some more decent competitors to FB.
god orkut, theres a blast from the past... Remember spamming that bad boy back in the day.. 
Haha wow I remember launching campaigns on Orkut too.
Back in 08 international social traffic was cranking on Plenty of Fish, Friendster, Hi5, Orkut, Bebo. The days where every ad platform had some crazy bidding exploits.
Anyone tried hello.com yet? thoughts?
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