Throwback to Orkut and the man who built world’s largest social network before Mark Zuckerberg
Words by: FWD Media Images: Various sources
Throwback to over a decade ago, before social media took over our lives, went mobile and everything from what we ate for breakfast to a boring day at the office had to be documented in detail on Instagram and Facebook, before the dawn of the millennial who lives more in the virtual world than in the real one, there was a time when social media was synonymous to one portal – Orkut. For most people, Orkut was their introduction to the world of social networking. Chances are that if you were an 80s’ born, then you probably had an account on Orkut.
Launched in the year 2004, orkut.com had more than 300 million users at its peak — a number that Facebook (which was also launched in 2004) could reach only in the third quarter of 2009. And all this was achieved with merely 30 engineers and designers in the team. Orkut was probably the first social media platform to garner immense popularity, but for its creator, OrkutBüyükkökten, it was the third time that he had built a social networking website.
Started as a 20 percent project (giving 20 percent of the time of your day job) at Google, it didn’t take too long for it to reach a stage where it had the same number of pages as Google search.Today, at the age of 42, the founder, OrkutBüyükkökten is back, and working on a new portal called ‘Hello’.
Orkut was born in Turkey but spent his early years in Germany with his parents moving there when he was one year old. He started coding (in BASIC) when he was in the fourth standard and right from his childhood, Orkut was fascinated with maths and loved logic, equations, and algorithms. He was even a part of the Turkish Math Olympiad team.
Orkut went to Bilkent University in Ankara and when applying for higher studies in the US, he almost gave Stanford a miss too because he found the application fee ($100) too steep. It was only after his father insisted that Orkut decided to send his application there. He says, “Sometimes small decisions change your life forever.” Orkut’s thesis at Stanford was on efficient web browsing on handheld devices. In the fall of 2001, he launched Club Nexus, a social network for Stanford students and then worked on inCircle, an alumni social network for the Stanford Alumni Association.
In his final year, Orkut was busy wrapping up his degree and writing his thesis. When he started getting job offers, two out of them stood out—one from Google and the other from Microsoft. Microsoft wanted him to work on their tablet team (given his experience and research with small/handheld devices). However, Orkut found Google a lot more exciting as it was a company he really believed in and knew its founders and the rest as they say is history.
At Google Orkut’s heart was still in social networking and as a 20 percent project (a concept where you devote 20 percent of your time to something you love given that it aligns with Google’s core mission), he created a social network called Eden. He picked that name because it represented a wonderful place for people to come together (like heaven). He says,
“People and technology are two of my passions. I dedicated almost my whole career connecting people through technology. When Eden was created we did a dog food (tech slang for working out the glitches) with Google employees and they really liked it. But we couldn’t get the domain eden.com. In a meeting with Eric Schmidt and Marissa Mayer it was decided that it be named after him – Orkut– which in Turkish means ‘happy city’.
“When we went live with orkut.com, we didn’t have any idea how popular it was going to be or how fast it would grow. It exceeded our expectation in every single possible way.”
Contrary to popular belief, the primary user base was not restricted to the US, but rather Orkut kept growing internationally in countries like Estonia, Brazil, and India.
Orkut left orkut.com team in 2008 and decided to become a product manager at Google.
Hello.com—team, growth, and India story
Orkut started Hello.com with his Co-founder John Murphy and two more engineers from Google. Hello.com was launched in Brazil in July 2016 which was followed by iterations (based on users’ feedback). For its launch in India, Hello.com added India-specific content—like cricket fan, Bollywood fan, and spiritual personas. The platform had a beta launch in India four weeks ago.
Orkut claims that Hello.com has over 300,000 users who are spending 400 to 500 minutes per month (which is better than all the social media apps out there except Facebook).“It’s not just about cell phones or laptops but also about all the magic that happens behind the scenes.”
(Excerpts from Orkut’s conversation with YourStory)