Before Orkut shuts, take a final walk through your memories

Google has announced a shutdown of its first ever social networking site, Orkut, on September 30. Launched almost a decade ago, Facebook has been ruling the social networking world, and by now people have almost forgotten about Orkut. In fact, the younger generation may not even know about the existence of such a thing called Orkut.

It was only a few days back that people were dragged down the memory lane when Google decided to bid farewell to Orkut. The news about Orkut’s shut down kind of worked as a re-wind moment for most of us who have used Orkut.

Remember how till some time back it was one of the coolest thing to be on Orkut, and it was much more cool if you had over one thousand scraps. It actually turned into a competition to have the highest number of scraps and people on your friend-list, and how can we forget the ‘testimonials’. People actually begged each other and lured their friends to write testimonials for them.

Now after years when we think of it, Orkut with itself brought in not just the idea of staying connected but also a wave of competitiveness and narcissism. If you don’t believe it, open your Orkut accounts again, and see what was your life like during the days of Orkut. Dig in to your teen days and take a final walk through your teenage and salvage those memories. (That is if you actually remember your passwords!)

When you revisit your Orkut page, download those old pictures, which you had totally forgotten, existed. You could even take screen shots and if you find something really special or close to your heart you could maybe take a print of it.

Although Google has said that it will archive the Orkut ‘communities’, but it would be a good idea to take screen grabs because once its archived, it will lose the ‘Orkut’ essence.

Since the Orkut is about to shut, there are also a lot of chances of accounts being hacked, misused. So if you have any important content (photos or any other information) that you think could be misused, make sure you erase it for good. At present, since Orkut is set to shut down by September 30, you have just three months to secure your information, so take out some time from your busy schedules and return to the good old days atleast once.