“In 2014 when Google announced that orkut would be shutting down, it was a sad moment for us. orkut had become a community of over 300 million people and was such an amazing adventure for all of us. Nobody wanted to lose what we had created together. We met amazing new people. We went on dates. We found new jobs. We even got married and had kids because of orkut,” reads the defunct website now. 

Long before Facebook seeped into our lives and made us addicted to it, Orkut was where we chatted and interacted with friends, along with Yahoo! Messenger. The social media network is now dead, and just yesterday, we had a discussion in our office about the various things we miss about it. 

Scrapbook

Well, not many of us write a lot of stuff on other people’s Facebook timeline anymore. Mostly, we prefer to talk to people on the messenger, so that everyone can’t see our conversation. But back in the day, writing stuff and interacting on scrapbooks was extremely common. Also, the number of scraps you had was a demonstration of your social value. 

Testimonials

It was a pleasure to receive testimonials from your friends, and you had to write testimonials in return. It was to show the public how much your friends loved you. If we didn’t get any, we would request our friends, “Yaar! Ek testimonial likh de.”

Communities

We remember having a class community, much like how WhatsApp groups function these days. However, WhatsApp groups don’t have a thread system. Communities were like forums where you could play games and even anonymously tease people, if the group administrator allowed anonymous comments. 

Themes

Well, with Facebook, you have to be content with the blue top bar. But at Orkut, you could change your theme to give the website the color of your choice. Not that we dislike Facebook’s blue, but imagine if we could change it to black.