Opinion We used to be friends

Cast your mind back to 2004. Manmohan Singh was sworn in as prime minister for the first time and Tony Blair was still wallowing in his special relationship with George W. Bush. In those primitive times, mobiles had buttons, the iPhone was just a twinkle in Steve Jobs’s eye and fingers were only appendages we used mostly to eat and gesticulate with. MySpace and Friendster were duking it out for social network supremacy, and much of the media was grappling with these newfangled virtual soapboxes called blogs — microblogs weren’t even on the radar. Into this technological stone age charged a brash new entrant that upended the social networking world with its “scraps” and “testimonials”. Orkut, launched in January that year — a scant few days before a 19-year-old Harvard undergrad came up with something called “thefacebook” — was, for many across the globe, the site of and portal to a more sustained and enriching internet experience than email or search.

In its heyday, Orkut was more popular than Facebook, especially in India and Brazil. But it wilted under competition from Mark Zuckerberg’s juggernaut, and the profusion of trolls and spambots on the site did nothing to enhance its appeal. When Google, which owns Orkut, abandoned its first foray into social networking for the snazzier, though more dully monikered, Google+ in 2011, it was only following the droves of users who fled Orkut, leaving it a ghost town. Now, as of last Tuesday, the late and only slightly lamented Orkut joins the Google graveyard of ill-fated services that is also home to Reader, Wave, Buzz and Listen.

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If there’s a lesson to be learnt from Orkut’s demise, it is that the digital world is a harsh and unforgiving place where technologies constantly clash and perish. Innovation reigns supreme, and there is always a new, nimbler kid on the block itching to take a stuffier incumbent down, off its lofty pedestal. Just ask Yahoo.