Earlier than Orkut launched in January 2004, Büyükkökten warned the workforce that the platform he’d constructed it on may deal with solely 200,000 customers. It would not be capable to scale. “They mentioned, let’s simply launch and see what occurs,” he explains. The remainder is on-line historical past. “It grew so quick. Earlier than we knew it, we had hundreds of thousands of customers,” he says.
Orkut featured a digital Scrapbook and the flexibility to provide individuals compliments (starting from “reliable” to “attractive”), create communities, and curate your very personal Crush Listing. “It mirrored all of my persona traits. You would flatter individuals by saying how cool they have been, however you could possibly by no means say one thing damaging about them,” he says.
At first, Orkut was well-liked within the US and Japan. However, as predicted, server points severed its connection to its customers. “We began having plenty of scalability points and infrastructure issues,” Büyükkökten says. They have been pressured to rewrite your complete platform utilizing C++, Java, and Google’s instruments. The method took a whole yr, and scores of unique customers dropped off resulting from sluggish speeds and one-too-many encounters with Orkut’s now-nostalgic “Dangerous, unhealthy server, no donut for you” error message.
Round this time, although, the positioning turned extremely well-liked in Finland. Büyükkökten was bemused. “I could not determine it out till I spoke to a buddy who speaks Finnish. And he mentioned: ‘Are you aware what your identify means?’ I didn’t. He instructed me that orkut means a number of orgasms.” Come once more? “Sure, so in Finland, everybody thought they have been signing as much as an grownup website. However then they would go away straight after as we could not fulfill them,” he laughs.
Awkward double meanings apart, Orkut continued to unfold the world over. Along with exploding in Estonia, the platform went mega in India. Its true second house, although, was Brazil. “It turned an enormous success. Lots of people assume I am Brazilian due to this,” Büyükkökten explains. He has a idea about why Brazil went nuts for Orkut. “Brazil’s tradition could be very welcoming and pleasant. It is all about friendships they usually care about connections. They’re additionally very early adopters of expertise,” he says. At its peak, 11 million of Brazil’s 14 million web customers have been on Orkut, most logging on by cybercafes. It took Fb seven years to catch up.
However Orkut wasn’t with out its issues (and lots of faux profiles). The location was banned in Iran and the United Arab Emirates. Authorities authorities in Brazil and India had considerations about drug-related content material and little one pornography, one thing Büyükkökten denies existed on Orkut. Brazilians coined the phrase orkutização to explain a social media website like Orkut changing into much less cool after going mainstream. In 2014, having hemorrhaged customers resulting from sluggish server speeds, Fb’s extra intuitive interface, and points surrounding privateness, Orkut went offline. “Vic Gundotra, answerable for Google+, determined towards having any competing social merchandise,” Büyükkökten explains.
However Büyükkökten has fond reminiscences. “We had so many tales of individuals falling in love and shifting in collectively from completely different elements of the world. I’ve a buddy in Canada who met his spouse in Brazil by Orkut, a buddy in New York who met his spouse in Estonia and now they’re married with two children.” he says. It additionally offered a platform for minority communities. “I used to be speaking to a homosexual journalist from a small city in São Paulo who instructed me that discovering all these LGBTQ individuals on Orkut remodeled his life,” he provides.
Büyükkökten left Google in 2014 and based a brand new social community, once more that includes a easy five-letter title: Hello. He needed to deal with optimistic connection. It used “loves” fairly than likes, and customers may select from greater than 100 personae, starting from Cricket Fan to Style Fanatic, after which have been linked to like-minded individuals with widespread pursuits. Smooth-launched in Brazil in 2018 with 2 million customers, Howdy loved “ultra-high engagement” that Büyükkökten claims surpassed the likes of Instagram and Twitter. “One of many issues that stood out in our person surveys was that folks mentioned once they open Howdy, it makes them joyful.”
The app was downloaded greater than 2 million instances—a fraction of the customers Orkut loved—however Büyükkökten is pleased with it. “It surpassed all our goals. There have been quite a few cases the place our Ok-Issue (the variety of new those who present customers convey to an app) reached 3, main us to exponential progress,” he says. However, in 2020, Büyükkökten bid goodbye to Howdy.
Now he’s engaged on a brand new platform. “It’ll leverage AI and machine studying to optimize for bettering happiness, bringing individuals collectively, fostering communities, empowering customers, and creating a greater society,” he says. “Connection would be the cornerstone of design, interplay, product, and expertise.” And the identify? “If I instructed you the brand new model, you’d have an aha second and every thing can be crystal clear,” he says.
As soon as once more, it’s pushed by his enduring want to attach individuals. “One of many largest ills of society is the decline in social capital. After smartphones and the pandemic, we’ve got stopped hanging out with our buddies and do not know our neighbors. We’ve got a loneliness epidemic,” he says.
He’s fiercely important of present platforms. “My largest ardour in life is connecting individuals by expertise. However when was the final time you met somebody on social media? It’s creating disgrace, pessimism, division, despair, and nervousness,” he says. For Büyükkökten, optimism is extra necessary than optimization. “These firms have engineered the algorithm for income,” he says. “But it surely’s been terrible for psychological well being. The world is terrifying proper now and plenty of that has come by social media. There’s a lot hate,” he says.
As a substitute, he desires social media to be a spot of affection and a facilitator for assembly new individuals in particular person. However why will it work this time round? “That’s a very good query,” he says. “One factor that has been actually constant is that folks miss Orkut proper now.” It’s true—Brazilian social media has just lately been abuzz with memes and reminiscences to have fun the positioning’s twentieth birthday. “A teenage boy even just lately drove 10 hours to satisfy me at a convention to speak about Orkut. And I used to be like, how is that even attainable?” he laughs. Orkut’s touchdown web page continues to be stay, that includes an open letter calling for a social media utopia.
This, together with our collective want for a extra human social media, is what makes Büyükkökten imagine that his subsequent platform is one that can actually stick round. Has he selected that each one necessary identify? “We haven’t introduced it but. However I’m actually excited. I really care. I wish to convey that authenticity and sense of belonging again,” he concludes. Maybe, as his Finnish followers would joke, it’s time for Orkut’s second coming.
This story first appeared within the July/August 2024 UK version of WIRED journal.
