Google closes social network Orkut at the end of September

Google is going to close Orkut, ten years after the social network’s release. From Monday it will no longer be possible to create an account and at the end of September the site will be permanently blacked out, the internet giant announced.

In a blog post, Google employee Paulo Golgher wrote on Monday that services such as YouTube, Blogger and Google+ have taken over the role of Orkut over the years. “We’ve decided to say goodbye to Orkut because these communities are growing faster,” said Golgher.

Orku will close its doors on September 30. Until then, no one can create a new account on the website, Golgher continues. Google Takeout allows existing users to export profile data, messages and photos until the site disappears.

Google says it will present an archive after September 30 in which all messages on public Orkut communities can still be consulted. Those who do not want to see their messages in that archive can permanently remove Orkut from the Google account, the blog post says.

With the closure of Orkut, Google’s longest-running social network, which saw the light of day on January 24, 2004, will come to an end. That happened when MySpace was still in its infancy and Friendster and CU2 were still actually being used. Facebook and Hyves did not yet exist at that time.

Access to Orkut was initially restricted: to access it, a user needed an invitation. It’s a tactic that Google would later adopt more often, with varying degrees of success. In the case of Orkut, that success was limited: the service really caught on in Brazil in particular.