Dear Orkut…

Dear Orkut,

Well, it’s kind of embarrassing for me to write to you only when you are at the terminal end of your lifetime, after conveniently ignoring you for years. It is definitely a sad moment to see you vanish from the virtual world, which has overtaken our lives. But then as they say, it was just a matter of time to bid you good bye. It hurts to say you good bye. But perhaps good bye is the only perfect conclusion left for us!

      You were the one who started the era of Social Networking even before the word ‘Social Networking’ was known (and before it went anti-social, too). It was the time when people were just introduced to vast uses (and misuses) of Internet. People were trying to rise above Gtalk and Yahoo messenger. Modern lifestyle created a vacuum in communication. You perfectly filled in the vacuum.

     Dear Orkut, it was you who spoiled our generation by turning us into net addicts, though our parents blame Facebook for the same. I was one of those teenagers who visited Net Cafes and paid Rs. 20-30 per hour for availing your service. I don’t know how you feel about Facebook, which came later and overshadowed you. Well, it had the advantage of spread of mobile phone internet, which you lacked. And therefore, you deserve a special credit of being popular in a not-so-tech-savy era.

     It’s not the goodbye that hurts, but the flashbacks that follow. There are a lot of flashbacks linked with you. Adding friends, sending scraps, being fan, creating communities and above all, writing testimonials. It was simply awesome to get back in touch with long lost childhood friends…

     But I am glad that I found some ‘good’ in goodbye. You were lucky enough to escape the menace of trolling, stalking, defamations, senseless photoshops and more importantly planned and targeted social media campaigns. You were never involved in any mispropaganda or invasion of personal life. That must give you some relief, and satisfaction indeed!

     Things won’t change much as you vanish from the internet. Maybe, some people might think of visiting you in coming days just to revive memories. Maybe, this will flood you with visitors with something like #GoodByeOrkut hashtags. Or, maybe this might make Google rethink over closing you (Well, is the announcement to close you a last ditch effort of Google to revive you? Conspiracy theory alert!!). Well, at least I will make it a point to visit you more often in coming times. You will always be a fond memory to every youngster of my generation. Good luck, and good bye!

Yours,

A.