A social pursuit

As he looks to launch his new social network in India, Orkut Buyukkokten chats about all things social.

For 20 and 30-something Indians, the early and mid-2000s served as introductory years to the crazy world of social networking websites. For all the facebooks, Snapchats, Instagrams and Twitters today, there was Hi-5, MySpace and Yahoo chatrooms. The ultimate status symbol of being hip and with the times, however, was having an Orkut profile. The social networking website reigned for over half a decade before the user base eventually shifted out to other sites, and the website was killed by Google in 2014.

Orkut Buyukkokten, creator of the website he named after himself, reminisces the good times associated with the social network. “I know of a lot of friendships formed on Orkut, and they’ve lasted,” he says with a smile. “I had a user who made me autograph a picture of his baby, because he’d met his wife on Orkut! I thought it was very moving and touching. I get to hear stories of how the website helped build relationships everywhere I go.”

The 41-year-old Turkish software engineer is casually dressed in a blue t-shirt and jeans, as he settles in for a freewheeling chat about social networking websites. In the midst of rolling out his new social network, Hello, to more countries, including India, he says, “I see Hello as a continuation of a chapter in a book. Orkut was the first chapter, and we built a community of over 300 million users. But as I sit back and think, the past decade in social networking and information has changed. Things have moved from desktops to mobiles and tablets. This generation is different; they’re growing up with social networks.”

Prod him on how he thinks the definition of being online has changed and Buyukkokten’s infectious smile becomes smaller and he sighs, “Our real life connections don’t come from the number of likes we receive or the number of followers or fans we have. They happen when we have genuine authentic interactions and experiences that we share with other people. If you look at social network today, it’s made us lonelier over time. You see people behind their devices on social media, ignoring the world around them. I believe technology should bring us together, not divide us. People broadcast information but we’ve stopped making friends or connecting.”

Orkut regulars will recollect that the site centred around communities, and that’s something Buyukkokten swears by, “One of the most beautiful things about Orkut was creating vibrant communities where you made new friends and got to know them. And those magical moments don’t happen that often anymore. With Hello we want to build bridges again. Instead of user created groups like Orkut, Hello has system generated passion communities so you don’t have to wonder which one from the thousand groups you need to join.”

With the likes of Facebook and Twitter around, does he think breaking into the market again will be tough “I don’t look at them as competition,” says Buyukkokten quickly. “Twitter and Instagram are used for broadcast, Facebook is more a global directory. People end up using the likes of LinkedIn, a professional site and Tinder, a dating website to make friends, and here’s where I come in — to provide for the human need to connect with a community.”

You can sense the zeal of creating an interesting product in Buyukkokten’s eyes. “My biggest passions, growing up, were always computers and people,” he says animatedly. “Throughout our lives, we meet a limited number of people who have a huge impact on our lives — how happy we are, how safe we feel and how fulfilled we are. If you connect people with each other, if you make it easy to meet each other, you have a better experience and you make the world a better place. It’s been my passion to connect people through technology. . It’s a great experience to connect people. That’s where all the magic or the wonders happen.”