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10/07/2014 by
13171 views

Why Google Will Shut Down Failing Social Network Orkut?

Google will shut down its social network Orkut, which was launched 10 years ago but has failed to put Google ahead in what has become one of the Web’s most popular businesses called social networking.

Why Google Will Shut Down Failing Social Network Orkut? Story by pro speaker Igor Beuker for ViralBlog.com

No not that one guys. Google is still not clear what to call Google+. It’s not a social network. So is it a secret weapon to fuel social search?

Or is Google+ a new way to re-shuffle the SEO rankings, in order to make Google make more money out of SEA?

Discover more insights in this story.

Why Google Shuts Down Orkut?

Google declined to say how many users Orkut has. But we all know that Orkut once had communities that started conversations, and forged connections, that had never existed before.

Why Google Will Shut Down Failing Social Network Orkut?

Orkut helped shape life online before people really knew what “social networking” was. But Google will close Orkut in 2014 nevertheless.

“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,” Google said in a post on the Orkut blog recently.

Orkut is widely used in Brazil and India but hasn’t caught on more broadly that’s why Google is closing Orkut’s doors on 30 September 2014.

Orkut was launched early in 2004, the same year that Facebook, now the world’s No. 1 social network with 1.28 billion users, was founded.

The service’s shutdown comes as Google’s social networking plans remain in question. In April, Vic Gundotra, the head of Google’s social networking services, left the company.

Gundotra oversaw the 2011 launch of Google+, a social networking service similar to Facebook. Gundotra said in October that 300 million people visit the Google+ webpage every month.

Google has increasingly sought to position Google+ less as a social networking “stream” that competes with Facebook, and more as a means of establishing a unified “user identity” system to improve Google’s various Web properties.

Last year, for example, Google began requiring users of its YouTube site to sign-in with their Google+ identities before posting comments about videos.

My Opinion

I have tried to be very clear here before. Google needs a mature social strategic mind. Or a very experienced marketing strategist.

If we would exclude Google’s backlink terror, their crazy panda and penguin updates, G+ would be a boiling frog. Or even dead man walking.

For now the monopoly of the search giant continues. But Google’s innovation graveyard will soon be having another memorial service.

And Google+? It will still be wandering around, without having a clear positioning, totally unclear to almost all internet users. It’s being called the ‘forced’ or ‘mandatory’ service from Google.

What About You?
So what should Google do, to claim their piece of the social pie? We all get smarter from peer discussions, so share your ideas.

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About the Author
Igor Beuker is an acclaimed trendwatcher & pro speaker, serial entrepreneur, marketing consultant and board member at several disruptive media, technology and entertainment firms. Book Igor as keynote speaker, follow Igor on Twitter or contact him via LinkedIn.

 

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