Google going to shut Orkut

Before Facebook i think all most everyone used Orkut. Now on Monday google finally going to shut down Orkut. At the month of september it will be over for orkut.

The service launched in 2004, the same year as Facebook, and is a hub for online interactions and photo sharing. The site never quite won over users in the US, but found success in countries like India and Brazil.

The social-networking world is starkly different from when the site launched a decade ago. Facebook, with more than 1.2 billion users, is now the clear king of social. Mobile social networks like Instagram -- owned by Facebook -- and Snapchat, which specializes in photos that disappear after a few seconds, also have become popular among young people.

Google has tried its hand at social a number of other times. In February 2010, the company launched Google Buzz, a social network built into Gmail that pulled together contacts from a user's email account. In October 2010, the company announced it would shutter the Buzz service.

Google's most formidable attempt came with Google+,launched in June 2011, a few months before the company pulled the plug on Buzz. Google said in October that 300 million users visit the Google+ homepage every month. While it has not found the kind of traction that would make it a true Facebook rival, Google has used the service more as a way of tying together the company's catalog of different services.

Google did not immediately respond to a request for Orkut's user numbers. We'll update this post when we hear back.

Google touted the growth of Google+, as well as YouTube and Blogger, as a reason it decided to shutter Orkut. "Because the growth of these communities has outpaced Orkut's growth, we've decided to bid Orkut farewell," Paulo Golgher, Orkut's engineering director, wrote in a blog post.

The site will officially go dark on September 30. Existing users can export their photos and profile information using a service called Google Takeout, but new users are no longer able to set up accounts.

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