When Google launched a new social media platform, Orkut, named after an employee within the first four months of launching in 2004 it had over 50,000 established communities, eventually hitting 1.5 million users and ultimately reached 30 million that year. It also had an incredible 90% page view rate by Brazilian and Indian users, Orkut’s primary demographic. The intent was to give users a way to find classmates and friends through online communities such as schools, workplaces and residential street groups through key word searches by title, description and browsing other members. Users were even able to make recommendations about products and services through the community memberships. Sounds incredible, right? So why did it dissolve in 2014…
The good, the bad and the ugly
The good:
- Popular with workers and students
- Allowed users to connect with people interpersonally and people they admired
- Google gave the app credibility
- Membership-based, giving it prestige in the technology realm
- The interface was simple, sophisticated, clean and easy to navigate and join communities
- Friends could rate how cool, sexy and trustworthy they found others
The bad:
- Privacy concerns became a major issue
- Functionality of the website eventually led to blockages, limiting the number of friends, loading and sharing videos and photos
The ugly:
- Poor implementation of structure and social listening
But market conditions were favorable
Brazil emerged as one of the strongest markets for online retailers, as a matter of fact they became fifth largest in the online market in the world. The country’s culture has a high affinity for digital and social media, their cell phones outnumber the people! Seventy-seven percent of Brazilian social media users have a positive attitude towards online shopping and four out of five users trust other users for online recommendations. Brazil even banned outdoor advertising giving Orkut a huge advantage in advertising.
So why the demise?
Their is a simple explanation as to why Orkut ultimately failed and that is they didn’t apply structure theories properly in their platform. These are hard rules and resources that place constraints on individual action. A good example of what to do would be Twitter, initially people were limited to 140 characters which ultimately proved not to be enough so they listened to their users and changed it to 280 characters and are thriving today.
In the case of Orkut, after going through two major redesigns they still had major structural issues such as slow speeds taking a long time for things to load, and the interface became more complex rather than simpler with each redesign. Add in less engagement and privacy issues which they didn’t address, and here you have it (the demise). One of the privacy concerns which is fascinating to me, especially in regards to structure is when people visited your profile on Orkut you could tell just like LinkedIn. For some reason people did not like that feature on this app. So why is it so well received on LinkedIn and not on this app? And even more astonishing, why didn’t they just remove the feature – did they fail to listen to their customers? I always wondered why other apps didn’t have the feature… Now I know why!
Rather than tolerating these structural issues users opted to seek out alternatives and they did, you’ve probably heard of it… it’s called Facebook! While Orkut remained stagnant, Facebook came in with a much simpler platform to navigate and continued to progress addressing all the concerns exhibiting good social listening skills while Orkut didn’t. Interestingly enough, when Google’s Friendster was phasing out this was their next attempt as a social media platform innovator, then there was Google plus. We all know how that turned out.
Just a thought, maybe Google should focus on the things they are really good at (and there are many) and forget social media platforms. What to you think?