Orkut: Came, saw, now waiting to die

BANGALORE, INDIA: If one's memory hasn't faded so drastically, Orkut was the Facebook of its time just five years ago.

That was until Facebook came to book youths, who had just beginning to understand nitty gritty of the Internet, but eventually filled every generation gap and got everyone hooked to it.

Initially, the rise of Facebook was unbearable for Google, it sulked hard for years even as Orkut users made a conscious choice of forgetting their passwords and boarding the newbie.

Since then, Orkut has been dormant for years giving way to the question as what's Google doing with it. Evidently, Google has adopted very un-Google etiquettes in dealing with Orkut so as to say that the search giant seems to be waiting for it to die a natural death. Or, it doesn't have the nerves to write Orkut's obituary, so soon.

Arguably, Google+ is the most popular social network taking on the giant Facebook. Or at least there has been an effort to take it to that level. Forced registrations along with search result favouritism did more harm to Google+ than good. That is completely in sync with the knowledge that it is a budding Google product. However, it's still undefined as whether that can be suitably translated into a slow end to Orkut.

Wait, wait. Didn't you hear about the recent launch of Orkut phone apps? If there were plans to close it, why would Sergey Brin and Larry Page invest on pepping it up with an app, that too when the crunching popularity is pretty well evident. With their experience, they hardly make a blunder given that Orkut still has 66 million active users, courtesy its huge presence in Brazil and India.

Since its launch in 2004, the social network site recently introduced a new feature called Changing Themes, which allows users to change their interface from a wide range of colorful themes in library.

Google thinks it is absolutely right in admitting that it can't really afford to shut down Orkut given the huge user base in India and Brazil, which hasn't seen a sizeable increase for long, but hasn't decreased much.

A potential theory could be: Not all Orkut users are on Google+ and vice-versa. So, it is a sheer game plan to leverage benefit of both websites. Something is better than nothing.

Our advice to Google would be to integrate both services and make it the best. Allow Orkut users to migrate their data on to the new platform, give Google+ an all new look and then take on the rival Facebook. Google, are you listening? We are waiting to watch the all-new battle.