Orkut
I have always wondered .... why did Orkut fail? It was established way before Facebook . As late as 2009 it dominated India , Russia and Brazil so three of the BRIC economies , yet it is never mentioned even in the same breath sad MySpace It was a google product. Yet it still failed. Google never innovated on the offering. Any of the smart people out here want to hypothesize / brainstorm ? Please keep the discussion constructive
Ahh, this brings back nostalgia. As far as I know, a lot of people in India moved to Facebook between 2008-2010. By 2012, the exodus was complete. It’s all about getting a critical user base in any region. The same thing has been happening to Facebook. A lot of the user base has moved to Instagram. The same thing might happen to Instagram in the future. It’s cyclical. PS: I miss trolling on Orkut communities. That...and Yahoo! chat rooms.
It wasn’t popular in the US, UK or rich English speaking markets. It was great as a functional social network but sucked as an aspirational platform.
Yeah , google did not invest in it beyond the MVP version
FB:exclusive club of US YOUTH+elite Orkut : users just felt FB was kool and exclusive . When FB opened up its gate to sign up for masses + with right advertising ...it gained market share . Simple strategy worked for them
When did Orkut dominate Russia? In 2009 Russian social networks were dominated by Vkontakte and Odnoklassniki IIRC, Orkut was never popular in Russia as far as I remember.
My guess is that orkut probably never got too much attention from higher ups. Android and Chrome were the big thing then, and search was still growing. Social media was probably ignored until G+.
Fb gave the teens an opportunity to stand on a pedestal and speak to an entire audience. Orkut was more p2p. Fb's model appealed to the young more. Also, I remember Google introducing Google plus at roughly the same time as they were deprecating Orkut, but it never really took off as well.
Because of the stupid name.
There ware many things which makes Orkut fail. Orkut name is very similar hindi name as Chirkut in India. Chirkut mean useless ... Also it becomes spam and medium to connect with stranger. They have a feature which tells who has visited your profile that was silient killer (sweet poison). Everyone like to know who has visited mine but don't want to disclose their identity. So lots fake profiles... ML/AI was not mature enough to deal this kind of situation ended up with natural death. Don't you wonder FB still didn't introduce that feature yet?? Why? I guess they understood flaws in that...
I think FB ate their lunch
Facebook sure as hell did not. It had a 6 teR lead on fb