Orkut

Orkut was a social networking service owned and operated by Google. The service was designed to help users meet new and old friends and maintain existing relationships. The website was named after its creator, Google employee Orkut Büyükkökten. Orkut was one of the most visited websites in India and Brazil in 2008. In 2008, Google announced that Orkut would be fully managed and operated in Brazil, by Google Brazil, in the city of Belo Horizonte. This was decided due to the large Brazilian user base and growth of legal issues. On June 30, 2014, Google announced it would be closing Orkut on September 30, 2014. No new accounts could be created starting from July 2014. Users could download their profile archive by Google Takeout. In April 2022, the website was reactivated. Orkut's features and interface changed significantly with time. Initially, each member could become a fan of any of the friends in their list and also evaluate whether their friend is "Trustworthy", "Cool", "Sexy" on a scale of 1 to 3 (marked by icons), which was aggregated as a percentage. Unlike Facebook, where one can only view profile details of people in their network, Orkut initially allowed anyone to visit everyone's profile, unless a potential visitor was on a person's "Ignore List" (this feature was eventually changed so that users could choose between showing their profile to all networks or specified ones). Each member was also able to customize their profile preferences and restrict information that appears on their profile from their friends and/or others. Another feature was that any member can add any other member on Orkut to his/her "Crush List". When a user logged in, they saw the people in their friends list in the order of their login to the site, the first person being the latest one to do so. Orkut's competitors were other social networking sites including Myspace and Facebook. The site Ning was a more direct competitor, as it allowed for the creation of social networks similar to Orkut's "communities".