Orkut to shut down on September 30, 2014

The dark past of all the Facebook users, their Orkut profile will cease to exist after 30th September 2014. In an official announcement on Orkut's blog, Paulo Golgher, Engineering Director at Orkut confirmed the news.

In 2004, Orkut became Google’s first foray into social networking which was built as a “20 percent” project. Eventually, Orkut communities started conversations, and forged connections, before people really knew what “social networking” was . The official blog stated,

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 bid Orkut farewell (or, tchau). We'll be focusing our energy and resources on making these other social platforms as amazing as possible for everyone who uses them.

Orkut will be shutting on September 30, 2014. It was clarified that until then, there will be no impact on current Orkut users, in order to give the community time to manage the transition. People can export their profile data, community posts and photos using Google Takeout (available until September 2016). Starting today, it will not be possible to create a new Orkut account.

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.

Paulo signed off with a heavy heart but hopes for a positive future for social networking,

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