Some [many] of you might have received the email on the bottom of this IMS blog

Orkut (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Orkut), created by a Turkish computer specialist was a strong contestant of Facebook and MySpace (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Myspace) in the early days when Mark Zuckerberg was only a college kid. While LinkedIn was brought to oblivion by Facebook and reinvented itself as a site for selfstarters/artist, Orkut became the “Facebook” for Brazil and India.
Purchased by Google in 2008, it was doomed when Google+ came to existence.

Pulling the plug on Orkut signifies closes the first chapter on the history of social media

From: orkut <3504732672376623859@mail.orkut.com>
Date: July 5, 2014 at 2:30:29 AM CDT
Subject: A Farewell to Orkut
Reply-To: orkut <noreply-orkut@google.com>

A Farewell to Orkut

After ten years of sparking conversations and forging connections, we have decided it’s time for us to start saying goodbye to Orkut. Over the past decade, YouTube, Blogger and Google+ have taken off, with communities springing up in every corner of the world. Because the growth of these communities has outpaced Orkut’s growth, we’ve decided to focus our energy and resources on making these other social platforms as amazing as possible for everyone who uses them.

We will shut down Orkut on September 30, 2014. Until then, there will be no impact on you, so you may have time to manage the transition. You can export your profile data, community posts and photos using Google Takeout (available until September 2016). We are preserving an archive of all public communities, which will be available online starting September 30, 2014. If you don’t want your posts or name to be included in the community archive, you can remove Orkut permanently from your Google account. Please visit our Help Center for any further details.

It’s been a great 10 years, and we apologize to those of you still actively using the service. We hope you will find other online communities to spark more conversations and build even more connections for the next decade and beyond.