Ever heard of Orkut? Me either until recently. The site launched in 2004 and quickly grew to over 300 million subscribers worldwide. Founded by Google employee Orkut Büyükkökten, the site was a vision to build an online community where people across the world could gather to share their interests with like-minded people. The site was taken down in September 2014, just ten years after it was launched. So what happened? Let’s take a look.

Climbing in Popularity

Orkut saw rapid success, especially with members of the tech community. Google’s first social networking platform (even before Facebook) steadily climbed with subscribers who had to be invited to become a member. The site had a clean look and was easy to navigate for users, further leading to the appeal of the site. Four months after launching, Orkut had over 500,000 communities and within 18 months had over 1,500,000 communities. While Orkut never saw widespread success in the United States, users in Brazil were enamored with the social networking site.

Beloved in Brazil

At the time, 79% of Brazilian residents were using some form of social media. With outdoor advertising being banned in Brazil, marketers turned to the internet to spread word about their products and services. Online shopping was also a big hit and retailers were meeting people anywhere they could. Communities were created on Orkut for these purposes and served as much more than just a marketing tool; it connected people in rural areas to the city. The site was so popular, Google even moved operations for Orkut to Brazil in 2008. Users on Orkut far outweighed the number of users on Facebook for several years at a ratio of 3:1, but in a span of six months, Facebook stole the crown of social media users and never looked back. What made people jump ship from Orkut to Facebook? A myriad of problems that Orkut Büyükkökten predicted before even launching the site.

The Trouble With Orkut

Facebook’s success comes from the ability to adapt to give people features they want. Orkut was not as adaptable and had problems behind the scenes. The site was plagued with scalability issues and infrastructure problems and the founder knew before launching the site wouldn’t be able to handle more than 200,000 users. The site was limited on how users could share content lacking the ability to handle popular media such as streaming videos or playing social games, which are the most desired features in Brazil. Collectively, these issues were not addressed by Orkut and the site shut its doors.

So Now What?

Orkut Büyükkökten was right about his site and launching before fixing the kinks doomed it from the beginning. Had he taken the time to make adjustments before launching and continued to add new features, the site could have rivaled Facebook and still been in operation today. In terms of marketing, there are several lessons to learn from Orkut:

• If it isn’t ready, don’t launch it – this goes for your strategy too!
• Understand your audience
• ADAPT

Social media is a constantly changing landscape and marketers should be continuously learning what the next big thing is and adjust their social media strategy to stay relevant and give the people what they want. Otherwise, they too will be overtaken by the competition and eventually be out of business.

Learn more about Brittny Hatfield.