{
  "id": 13068656,
  "title": "Why did Orkut disappear? Its founder now wants to bring it back to life",
  "url": "https://urgent.news/2026/10/09/why-did-orkut-disappear-its-founder-now-wants-to-bring-it-back-to-life",
  "topic": "tech",
  "section": "Tech",
  "published": "2026-10-09T07:52:43.000Z",
  "source": {
    "name": "Hindustan Times - World News",
    "slug": "hindustan-times-world-news",
    "url": "https://www.hindustantimes.com/trending/why-did-orkut-disappear-its-founder-now-wants-to-bring-it-back-to-life-101791531267920.html"
  },
  "original_language": "en",
  "account": "Orkut, the social networking platform that was once a sensation, especially in India, has disappeared from the internet. Its creator, Orkut Büyükkökten, a Turkish software engineer, is now seeking to revive the platform and make the internet more human again. Büyükkökten developed Orkut while working at Google and co-founded Hello Network with John Murphy. He completed his Bachelor of Science from Bilkent University and a PhD from Stanford University before working at Google for nearly 12 years, from 2002 to 2014.\n\nOrkut was launched in 2004 after Google failed to acquire Friendster. Initially, it garnered millions of users, three times more than Facebook at the time. However, Facebook quickly surpassed Orkut's popularity in 2012. In 2014, Google officially shut down Orkut, citing that other platforms like YouTube, Blogger, and Google+ had taken over and outpaced its growth.\n\nBüyükkökten believes that the internet has become too focused on attention and feeds that hook users rather than fostering genuine connections. He wants to bring back the spirit of Orkut, characterized by real people and communities that reward kindness, trust, and belonging. He shared a website asking people to support his mission to revive Orkut and posted a letter emphasizing the magic of connecting with strangers across the world. Büyükkökten's initiative has garnered over 266,102 signatures.",
  "summary": "Orkut Buyukkokten created Orkut while he was working at Google as a software developer. The tech giant formally launched the platform in 2004.",
  "key_points": [],
  "editors_take": null,
  "illustration": null,
  "coverage": {
    "outlets": 1,
    "also_reported_by": []
  },
  "ai_generated": true,
  "disclaimer": "Summaries, key points and the editor’s take are written by software from other outlets’ reporting and may contain errors — always check the linked original."
}