Orkut is coming back to India with something brand new. No, we are not talking about the once-popular social networking platform that had the air taken out of it with Facebook’s advent. Instead, we are talking about Orkut Büyükkökten the platform’s founder, whose new app Hello is now open for Indian users.
Back in the day, Orkut was probably the social network to have around. Everyone we knew was using Orkut and everyone who wasn’t, was getting pestered by their friends to do so. Things were going great – until Facebook came. With Zuckerberg’s platform, we had one of the largest mass migrations in human history as droves of people left Orkut. The service dragged on its existence for a few years until 2014, when Google announced that it would be shutting it down for good.
It took Orkut two years to find his next idea, Hello. In 2016, he announced a platform that would be built around common beliefs and wold seek to connect people who held shared interests. The service is finally available in India as well.
The service is app only, and it has two different iterations for iOS and Android. Again, it is important to note that the platform does not lay as much focus upon people as it does upon activities. So, folks who like doing the same sort of stuff are more likely to be thrown together.
While announcing Hello, Orkut had said:
The world is a better place when we get to know each other, when we are a little less strange to each other… Fear and hatred have no place when you make such a simple and friendly gesture to someone else.
The company currently has around 20 members, and is headquartered in San Francisco. Meanwhile, there isn’t much buzz about its India launch yet, and Orkut may find pulling users from Facebook and all of its other properties, harder than it was for Facebook to pull users from Orkut back in 2008.
