Orkut to close down on September 30

The forerunner of the social networking site, Orkut, owned by Google will shut down on September 30 of this year. The Orkut team has also announced that it would stop accepting new user request from today.   
Orkut lost its popularity since the emergence of Facebook and Twitter. One of the most visited websites once in countries like Brazil and India, Orkut by 2010 had become so irrelevant that Google was forced to launch Google+ to take on Facebook.
According to the data available on the website, 50% of Orkut users are based in Brazil while 20% are from India.
Paulo Golgher, Engineering Director of Orkut mentioned in a blog that the company will shut down Orkut on September 30, 2014. Until then, there will be no impact on current Orkut users and will give the community time to manage the transition. People can export their profile data, community posts and photos using Google Takeout (available until September 2016). Starting today, it will not be possible to create a new Orkut account.
Orkut was started in 2004 and saw impressive early growth. But after Facebook, which too started in 2004, started gaining pace, Orkut started losing the social media race. From 2008 onwards, it topped the social media sites in Brazil and India but lost to Facebook in other countries. Gradually, Facebook took over Orkut even in Brazil and India. In India, Facebook surpassed Orkut in terms of total registered users in 2010. In Brazil, the same happened in 2012.