Orkut was a google owned and operated social media company that was founded in 2004, and was actually named after a google employee, the founder Orkut I honestly don’t even want to type his last name because it is too long. The platform was created as a way for people to connect with new and old friends, and grow relationships.
Orkut, unlike Facebook, originally allowed any of their users to visit any profile, even if they were not friends with that person. As one could imagine this was a poor idea and Orkut quickly changed their ways and allowed users to set their profiles to private so only their friends could view or set it so open, which allowed anyone to view their profile. Orkut was highly popular within the Brazilian community, so much so that Google decided that the headquarters for Orkut would be stationed within the country, because that was where the majority of their users were located. Only makes sense…..right?
Orkut went through the normal social media network troubles, of fake profiles as well as racism. The Brazilian government even required Google to pay 23k per day until they released the information of users that the government believed were using the site to sell drugs. This eventually became a platform that the benefits did not outweigh the problems, and Google decided to completely terminate the platform on September 30th 2014. While the platform had a good run of fourteen years, it never really picked up traction here in the United States, which maybe could have been enough to keep Orkut up and running……we will never know.
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