In a post on X on Thursday, Orkut Büyükkökten, the founder of the eponymous social network, urged users to visit Orkut.com and add their names in support of bringing it back, as well as invite others to join.
Orkut first debuted in 2004 as a side project by Büyükkökten, 51, while he was at Google. The social network went on to become hugely popular in India and Brazil but later lost ground to Facebook. Google eventually shut it down in September 2014, shifting its focus to other platforms, including Google+ and YouTube.
In a letter published on Orkut.com, Büyükkökten criticized how social media has evolved over the past two decades, particularly the growing influence of algorithms and AI-generated content. “Artificial intelligence is extraordinary technology, but it’s dissolving the one premise that made social networking special and worth building: that there was a person on the other side,” he wrote.








