Did you know Why Google Shut Down Orkut the First Social Media Network ?
Today's generation may doesn't know about Orkut but 90's Kids still missing it. Do you know why Google Shut Down Orkut? Here is what Orkut says itself:
Fake profiles
As with any online social networking community, a number of fake and cloned profiles exist on Orkut.[19] Due to the large number of users and the deactivation of the jail system[clarification needed], the profiles were often left unremoved or, when removed, recreated easily.
Hate groups
In 2005, various cases of racism were brought to police attention and reported on in the Brazilian media.[20] In 2006, a judicial measure was opened by the Brazil federal justice denouncing a 20-year-old student accused of racism against those of Black African ancestry and spreading defamatory content on Orkut.[21] Brazilian Federal Justice subpoenaed Google in March 2006 to explain the crimes that had occurred in Orkut.[22]
Orkut had a Report Abuse feature available for all communities. Orkut communities can be reported if they contain hateful/violent content.
State censorship
In Iran
Orkut was very popular in Iran, but the website is now blocked by the government. According to official reports, this is due to national security issues, and Islamic ethical issues about dating and match-making. To get around this block, sites such as orkutproxy.com (now defunct) were made for Iranian users. Other websites such as Yahoo! Groups and Google Groups had communities dedicated to receiving updates on the newest location of Iran's Orkut proxy. At one time it had been possible to bypass governmental blockage of Orkut, but the site had closed its HTTPS pages on all anonymous proxies. Then it was almost impossible for ordinary users to visit this site inside Iran.[23]
Many other sites have been published in Iran since Orkut's blockage, using the same social-networking model – examples include MyPardis, Cloob and Bahaneh.[24]
In the United Arab Emirates
In August 2006, the United Arab Emirates followed the footsteps of Iran in blocking the site. This block was subsequently removed in October 2006. On July 3, 2007, Gulf News revisited the issue, publishing complaints from members of the public against Orkut communities like "Dubai Sex", and officially bringing the complaints to the attention of the state telecom monopoly Etisalat.[25] By July 4, 2007, Etisalat had placed a renewed ban on the site,[26] which remains in effect despite Google's promise to negotiate the ban with the UAE.[27]
In Saudi Arabia
Saudi Arabia is another country that has blocked access to Orkut, while Bahrain's Information Ministry was also under pressure to follow suit.[28]
Security
MW.Orc worm
On June 19, 2006, FaceTime Security Labs' security researchers Christopher Boyd and Wayne Porter discovered a worm, dubbed MW.Orc.[29] The worm steals users' banking details, usernames and passwords by propagating through Orkut. The attack was triggered as users launched an executable file disguised as a JPEG file. The initial executable file that causes the infection installs two additional files on the user's computer. These files then e-mail banking details and passwords to the worm's anonymous creator when infected users click on the "My Computer" icon. The infection spreads automatically by posting a URL in another user's Orkut Scrapbook, a guestbook where visitors can leave comments visible on the user's page. This link lures visitors with a message in Portuguese, falsely claiming to offer additional photos. The message text that carries an infection link can vary from case to case. In addition to stealing personal information, the malware can also enable a remote user to control the PC and make it part of a botnet, a network of infected PCs.
The initial executable file (Minhasfotos.exe) creates two additional files when activated, winlogon_.jpg and wzip32.exe (located in the System32 Folder). When the user clicks the "My Computer" icon, a mail is sent containing their personal data. In addition, they may be added to an XDCC Botnet (used for file sharing), and the infection link may be sent to other users that they know in the Orkut network. The infection can be spread manually, but also has the ability to send "back dated" infection links to people in the "friends list" of the infected user. According to statements made by Google, as noted in Facetime's Greynets Blog, the company had implemented a temporary fix for the dangerous worm.[29]
Session management and authentication
On June 22, 2007 Susam Pal and Vipul Agarwal published a security advisory on Orkut vulnerabilities related to authentication issues.[30] The vulnerabilities are considered very dangerous in cybercafes, or in the case of man-in-the-middle attack as they can lead to session hijacking and misuse of legitimate accounts.[31] The vulnerabilities are not known to be fixed yet and therefore pose threat to the Orkut users.
A week later, on June 29, 2007 Susam Pal published another security advisory which described how the Orkut authentication issue can be exploited to hijack Google and Gmail sessions and misuse the compromised account of a legitimate user under certain conditions...
Joseph Hick performed an experiment on the basis of the advisories published by Susam Pal, to find out how long a session remains alive even after a user logs out.[32] His experiment confirmed that the sessions remain alive for 14 days after the user has logged out. It implies that a hijacked session can be used for 14 days by the hijacker because logging out does not kill the session.[33]
W32/KutWormer
On December 19, 2007, a worm written in Javascript started to cause havoc. Created by a Brazilian user called "Rodrigo Lacerda", it automatically made the user join the virus related community and infect all friends' scrapbooks with copies of itself, the worm infected over 700,000 Orkut users. The worm is spreading through Orkut’s recently introduced tool that allows users to write messages that contain HTML code. The ability to add Flash/Javascript content to Orkut scraps was only recently introduced.[34][35]
Legal issues
India
On October 10, 2006, the Bombay High Court's Aurangabad bench served a notice on Google for allowing a hate campaign against India.[36] This referred to a community on Orkut called 'We Hate India', which initially carried a picture of an Indian flag being burned and some anti-India content.[37] The High Court order was issued in response to a public-interest petition filed by an Aurangabad advocate. Google had six weeks to respond. Even before the petition was filed, many Orkut users had noticed this community and were mailing or otherwise messaging their contacts on Orkut to report the community as bogus to Google, which could result in its removal. The community has now been deleted but has spawned several 'We hate those who hate India' communities. Prior to the 60th Independence Day of India, Orkut's main page was revamped. The section which usually displayed a collage of photos of various people, showed a stylized Orkut logo. The word Orkut was written in Devanagari script and was coloured in Indian national colours. Clicking on the logo redirects to a post by the Orkut India ProductManager, Manu Rekhi,[38] on the Orkut internal blog. There has also been some media outcry against Orkut after a couple of youngsters were apparently lured by fake profiles on the site and later murdered.[39]
On November 24, 2006, Bombay High Court asked the state government to file its reply in connection with a petition demanding a ban on social networking site, Orkut, for hosting an anti-Shivaji Web community.[40]
In 2007, the Pune rural police cracked a rave party filled with narcotics.[41] The accused have been charged under anti-narcotic laws, the (Indian) Narcotic Drugs and Psychotropics Substances Act, 1985 (NDPS). Besides the NDPS, according to some media reports, the police were deliberating on the issue of charging the accused under the (Indian) Information Technology Act, 2000 perhaps because Orkut was believed to be a mode of communication for drug abuses of this kind.[42]
The police in India have entered into an agreement with Orkut to have a facility to catch and prosecute those misusing Orkut since complaints are rising.[43]
Brazil
On August 22, 2006, Brazilian Federal Judge José Marcos Lunardelli ordered Google to release by September 28 Orkut user’s information of a list of about twenty-four Brazilian nationals, believed to be using Orkut to sell drugs and to be involved in child pornography. The judge ordered Google to pay $23,000 per day in fines until the information is turned over to the Brazilian government. According to the Brazilian government, the information would also be used to identify individuals who are spreading child pornography[44] and hate speech. As of September 27, 2006 Google has stated that it will not release the information, on the grounds that the requested information is on Google servers in the U.S. and not Google servers in Brazil, and is therefore not subject to Brazilian laws.[45]
Shutdown
On June 30, 2014, Google announced that Orkut would be shutting down completely on September 30, 2014. Users could export their photo albums before the final shutdown date. Orkut profiles, scraps, testimonials, and community posts could still be exported until September 2016.[46] Google engineering director Paulo Golgher said in a blog post: "Over the past decade, Facebook, YouTube, Blogger and Google+ have taken off, with communities springing up in every corner of the world. Because the growth of these communities has outpaced Orkut's growth, we've decided to bid Orkut farewell." Orkut was the result of a 20 percent project in which Google workers got to spend a fifth of their time on ideas not necessarily related to their job responsibilities.[47][48] However, the public contents of all public communities were archived by Google, and are available permanently for consulting online in the Orkut Community Archive (although editing is no longer possible.)
The website still exists, but shows a letter from the founder, stating that Hello would be the replacement of Orkut and "it is the first social media site based on loves, not likes." Hello is available on the web at hello.com and an app for mobile devices is also available. Hello is operated under Hello Networks, not Google.
Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Orkut
Hello,
I’m Orkut.
You may not know me but 13 years ago I started a social network called orkut.com while I was working as an engineer at Google. I'm the guy orkut.com was named after. 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. We made it happen, together.
The world is a better place when we get to know each other, when we are a little less strange to each other. I've been a stranger myself sometimes: I was born in Turkey and grew up in Germany where I was a geeky muslim boy in a class of blondes. Back in Turkey in middle school, I was the funny guy with the German accent. All my life, I have felt like someone on the outs: I was a programmer, I was gay or I was short and had a foreign accent. I haven't always had the easiest journey. But the truth is, I've never had trouble making friends because I love people.
I think we all should be a little bit friendlier. The world needs it. We are living in a strange time. We hide behind our devices, ignoring the people around us. We stay with locals when we travel abroad but we don't even know our neighbors at home. We click through feeds of updates from our friends from under our covers in the dark. Our lives are splinters of anonymity and isolation. Too often, we are lonely. Too often, we are afraid of what we don't know. Too often, we are hateful toward what we don't understand.
But I'm hopeful about our world. I'm confident the more we connect, the more beautiful it will become. I created orkut with this in mind. It's also why I created the world's first social network when I was a grad student at Stanford, and it's why I have dedicated my life to helping people connect with each other.
So to all my friends, thank you for making orkut such a loving community. I'm so blessed to share this world with you. As a token of gratitude, I am making a new social network just for you. I'm not so good at goodbyes, so I'm calling it hello. hello is the next generation of orkut.
What is hello?
hello is the first social network built on loves, not likes. I designed hello to help you connect with people who share your passions.
hello connects us all. Think about it: you can say "hello" in any language and people will understand. "Hello" is probably the most widely spoken word in the world after "Okay." Aló, halo, ʾāllo, alô, hallo, alló, hello. Fear and hatred have no place when you make such a simple and friendly gesture to someone else. So come join me, and make some new friends. Say hello, and love your world.
stay beautiful,
Source: http://www.orkut.com/index.html
More from Wikipedia:
Controversy:
As with any online social networking community, a number of fake and cloned profiles exist on Orkut.[19] Due to the large number of users and the deactivation of the jail system[clarification needed], the profiles were often left unremoved or, when removed, recreated easily.
Hate groups
In 2005, various cases of racism were brought to police attention and reported on in the Brazilian media.[20] In 2006, a judicial measure was opened by the Brazil federal justice denouncing a 20-year-old student accused of racism against those of Black African ancestry and spreading defamatory content on Orkut.[21] Brazilian Federal Justice subpoenaed Google in March 2006 to explain the crimes that had occurred in Orkut.[22]
Orkut had a Report Abuse feature available for all communities. Orkut communities can be reported if they contain hateful/violent content.
State censorship
In Iran
Orkut was very popular in Iran, but the website is now blocked by the government. According to official reports, this is due to national security issues, and Islamic ethical issues about dating and match-making. To get around this block, sites such as orkutproxy.com (now defunct) were made for Iranian users. Other websites such as Yahoo! Groups and Google Groups had communities dedicated to receiving updates on the newest location of Iran's Orkut proxy. At one time it had been possible to bypass governmental blockage of Orkut, but the site had closed its HTTPS pages on all anonymous proxies. Then it was almost impossible for ordinary users to visit this site inside Iran.[23]
Many other sites have been published in Iran since Orkut's blockage, using the same social-networking model – examples include MyPardis, Cloob and Bahaneh.[24]
In the United Arab Emirates
In August 2006, the United Arab Emirates followed the footsteps of Iran in blocking the site. This block was subsequently removed in October 2006. On July 3, 2007, Gulf News revisited the issue, publishing complaints from members of the public against Orkut communities like "Dubai Sex", and officially bringing the complaints to the attention of the state telecom monopoly Etisalat.[25] By July 4, 2007, Etisalat had placed a renewed ban on the site,[26] which remains in effect despite Google's promise to negotiate the ban with the UAE.[27]
In Saudi Arabia
Saudi Arabia is another country that has blocked access to Orkut, while Bahrain's Information Ministry was also under pressure to follow suit.[28]
Security
MW.Orc worm
On June 19, 2006, FaceTime Security Labs' security researchers Christopher Boyd and Wayne Porter discovered a worm, dubbed MW.Orc.[29] The worm steals users' banking details, usernames and passwords by propagating through Orkut. The attack was triggered as users launched an executable file disguised as a JPEG file. The initial executable file that causes the infection installs two additional files on the user's computer. These files then e-mail banking details and passwords to the worm's anonymous creator when infected users click on the "My Computer" icon. The infection spreads automatically by posting a URL in another user's Orkut Scrapbook, a guestbook where visitors can leave comments visible on the user's page. This link lures visitors with a message in Portuguese, falsely claiming to offer additional photos. The message text that carries an infection link can vary from case to case. In addition to stealing personal information, the malware can also enable a remote user to control the PC and make it part of a botnet, a network of infected PCs.
The initial executable file (Minhasfotos.exe) creates two additional files when activated, winlogon_.jpg and wzip32.exe (located in the System32 Folder). When the user clicks the "My Computer" icon, a mail is sent containing their personal data. In addition, they may be added to an XDCC Botnet (used for file sharing), and the infection link may be sent to other users that they know in the Orkut network. The infection can be spread manually, but also has the ability to send "back dated" infection links to people in the "friends list" of the infected user. According to statements made by Google, as noted in Facetime's Greynets Blog, the company had implemented a temporary fix for the dangerous worm.[29]
Session management and authentication
On June 22, 2007 Susam Pal and Vipul Agarwal published a security advisory on Orkut vulnerabilities related to authentication issues.[30] The vulnerabilities are considered very dangerous in cybercafes, or in the case of man-in-the-middle attack as they can lead to session hijacking and misuse of legitimate accounts.[31] The vulnerabilities are not known to be fixed yet and therefore pose threat to the Orkut users.
A week later, on June 29, 2007 Susam Pal published another security advisory which described how the Orkut authentication issue can be exploited to hijack Google and Gmail sessions and misuse the compromised account of a legitimate user under certain conditions...
Joseph Hick performed an experiment on the basis of the advisories published by Susam Pal, to find out how long a session remains alive even after a user logs out.[32] His experiment confirmed that the sessions remain alive for 14 days after the user has logged out. It implies that a hijacked session can be used for 14 days by the hijacker because logging out does not kill the session.[33]
W32/KutWormer
On December 19, 2007, a worm written in Javascript started to cause havoc. Created by a Brazilian user called "Rodrigo Lacerda", it automatically made the user join the virus related community and infect all friends' scrapbooks with copies of itself, the worm infected over 700,000 Orkut users. The worm is spreading through Orkut’s recently introduced tool that allows users to write messages that contain HTML code. The ability to add Flash/Javascript content to Orkut scraps was only recently introduced.[34][35]
Legal issues
India
On October 10, 2006, the Bombay High Court's Aurangabad bench served a notice on Google for allowing a hate campaign against India.[36] This referred to a community on Orkut called 'We Hate India', which initially carried a picture of an Indian flag being burned and some anti-India content.[37] The High Court order was issued in response to a public-interest petition filed by an Aurangabad advocate. Google had six weeks to respond. Even before the petition was filed, many Orkut users had noticed this community and were mailing or otherwise messaging their contacts on Orkut to report the community as bogus to Google, which could result in its removal. The community has now been deleted but has spawned several 'We hate those who hate India' communities. Prior to the 60th Independence Day of India, Orkut's main page was revamped. The section which usually displayed a collage of photos of various people, showed a stylized Orkut logo. The word Orkut was written in Devanagari script and was coloured in Indian national colours. Clicking on the logo redirects to a post by the Orkut India ProductManager, Manu Rekhi,[38] on the Orkut internal blog. There has also been some media outcry against Orkut after a couple of youngsters were apparently lured by fake profiles on the site and later murdered.[39]
On November 24, 2006, Bombay High Court asked the state government to file its reply in connection with a petition demanding a ban on social networking site, Orkut, for hosting an anti-Shivaji Web community.[40]
In 2007, the Pune rural police cracked a rave party filled with narcotics.[41] The accused have been charged under anti-narcotic laws, the (Indian) Narcotic Drugs and Psychotropics Substances Act, 1985 (NDPS). Besides the NDPS, according to some media reports, the police were deliberating on the issue of charging the accused under the (Indian) Information Technology Act, 2000 perhaps because Orkut was believed to be a mode of communication for drug abuses of this kind.[42]
The police in India have entered into an agreement with Orkut to have a facility to catch and prosecute those misusing Orkut since complaints are rising.[43]
Brazil
On August 22, 2006, Brazilian Federal Judge José Marcos Lunardelli ordered Google to release by September 28 Orkut user’s information of a list of about twenty-four Brazilian nationals, believed to be using Orkut to sell drugs and to be involved in child pornography. The judge ordered Google to pay $23,000 per day in fines until the information is turned over to the Brazilian government. According to the Brazilian government, the information would also be used to identify individuals who are spreading child pornography[44] and hate speech. As of September 27, 2006 Google has stated that it will not release the information, on the grounds that the requested information is on Google servers in the U.S. and not Google servers in Brazil, and is therefore not subject to Brazilian laws.[45]
Shutdown
On June 30, 2014, Google announced that Orkut would be shutting down completely on September 30, 2014. Users could export their photo albums before the final shutdown date. Orkut profiles, scraps, testimonials, and community posts could still be exported until September 2016.[46] Google engineering director Paulo Golgher said in a blog post: "Over the past decade, Facebook, YouTube, Blogger and Google+ have taken off, with communities springing up in every corner of the world. Because the growth of these communities has outpaced Orkut's growth, we've decided to bid Orkut farewell." Orkut was the result of a 20 percent project in which Google workers got to spend a fifth of their time on ideas not necessarily related to their job responsibilities.[47][48] However, the public contents of all public communities were archived by Google, and are available permanently for consulting online in the Orkut Community Archive (although editing is no longer possible.)
The website still exists, but shows a letter from the founder, stating that Hello would be the replacement of Orkut and "it is the first social media site based on loves, not likes." Hello is available on the web at hello.com and an app for mobile devices is also available. Hello is operated under Hello Networks, not Google.
Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Orkut
