Amnesia is rampant in the Web world, especially with regard to social networks which didn’t really take off. So, it is surprising that Google which is riding a popularity wave with its recently launched Google+ does not have plans to retire Orkut, its near-decade old social site.
A Google spokeswoman said, “Orkut and Google+ are different products, and will both exist. Over time, we’ll determine what makes the most sense in terms of integrating these products. Uptil then we will continue investing in the product.”
Though Orkut does not have users in the Western world, it has millions of followers in countries like India, Brazil and Estonia and rather than alienate the existing followers just like it did with Wave, where users were given a matter of months to find alternate arrangements, Google is doing the right thing by allowing Orkut to co-exist for the time being.
At this point, it’s not clear whether Google will provide a mechanism for Orkut users to export their friends list and profile data to Google+, or add Google+ privacy features to Orkut.
Launched in 2004, Orkut is similar to social networking sites of that generation, including Facebook, MySpace and Friendster.
A Geek.Com post says, “If you log into Orkut today, you will not see the black ‘Google Bar’ across the top of your browser window. In fact, it has not received the same attention from Google’s developers over the years that services like Gmail, YouTube, Google Chat and Google Reader have.”
Maximum PC posts, “Google is betting that while Facebook is the dominant player in social networking, enough of its users feel uneasy about its privacy controls that they would be willing to switch to a rival that offered them an improvement in that area.
As the Google+ project shows, Google clearly felt that it needed to create a new social networking site from scratch in order to give Facebook a run for its money in the U.S. and around the world.
Currently, Orkut ranks 102 in Alexa.com’s list of most popular websites in the world, which is not a mean achievement but it would be interesting to see whether Google will continue to operate the two sites in a parallel manner or whether it will discover that Orkut is strategically contradictory to its stand in the privacy area with Google+.