Once upon a time, Orkut used to be the life of social networking. Orkuting would take up most of the youngster’s time. But now, those times seem like ancient past. The Orkut link is hardly clicked anymore.  But the question is- what led to the downfall of this social networking giant? Orkut is a social networking site managed by means of Google. It helps connect people, both old and new acquaintances. It was created by Orkut Buyukkokten, after whom the site is named.  It used to be undoubtedly the most visited website in India. Most of the users were from Brazil, India and Japan. The website was fully operated from Brazil as a result of huge Brazilian member list along with development of legal issues. The main distinguishing features of Orkut were:

• Addition of videos from YouTube or Google videos.
• Option to integrate Gtalk.
• Changing themes- users had options to change interfaces from a wide option. Currently the feature is available only in India. Brazil, US and Pakistan.
• Visiting profiles without restriction- unless the person is on the ‘ignore list’.
• Customize profile to limit the information shared.

Coming to the reasons why Orkut lost is former popularity, many reasons may be enumerated, only a few of which maybe described here:

Technical- the Orkut server uses two types of web languages- ASP and JavaScript. Operating such an application may not be easy. Other social networking sites, including Facebook, use PHP, the easiest web language for HTML. Due to this these social networking sites can come up with many fun apps which Orkut could never have. This somewhat reduced the popularity of orkut.

Secondly, the Orkut links need more time to open and the server is slow, more often than not.  Compared to other social networking sites, this was a serious lapse. Of course any user would prefer the speed of other sites. The fact that Orkut was popular in the developing nations only was a solid proof. In these nations, people are used to internet latency. Hence they were not slowed down. But for developed nations like US, slow speed proved to be a serious hindrance.

Lack Of Certain Important Features

• Orkut lacked promotional options. Business promoters therefore lost all interest in orkut. They could create ads but never publicize them.
• Orkut does not provide sharing options from social sharing plugins.
• Orkut profiles cannot be viewed without logging in. this may be important for security, but due to this, orkut lost its lusture in the eyes of many.
• It lacks entertainment facilities and therefore could not hold users to the site.
• Facebook and Orkut were launched within a month of each other, but due to lack of user feedback orkut is still in the testing stage whereas Facebook has reached new heights of success.

One factor for failure maybe that the sites like Facebook and Twitter are completely devoted to social networking whereas Orkut was just an offshoot of Google and hence extra attention was not paid to it. Whatever be the reason, the fact remains that in the world of Social Networking, Orkut is as good as dead. But what cannot be denied is that once, it held utmost importance in the very same networking world.