Orkut passed away on Tuesday. It was just 10. He is survived by its rivals Facebook and Twitter though.

Google’s decision to shut down its once-upon-a-time-a-massive-hit social networking site Orkut, which was one of the first social interactive initiatives on the Internet platform, has left old-timers in a state of mourning.

“It was the time of Yahoo Messenger and weird chat rooms where one used to meet numerous fake profiles. The only social networking site, which I had known prior to Orkut was Hi5. One fine day in 2005, a friend of mine asked me whether I am on Orkut. I found the word (Orkut) really weird. However, after using it, I found that Orkut was altogether a new experience to remain connected with friends,” said Mukesh Roy (32), an employee with a private firm in Patna.

Named after Orkut Buyukkokten, a Turkish software engineer and Google’s employee who had developed the site, Orkut was the first foray of the search giant into the social networking space in 2004, the same year when Facebook was launched.

While Facebook survived the what’s-new-on-the-Internet frenzy in the past 10 years, Orkut failed to innovate and gradually prompted Google to shut its ambitious venture. Orkut was one of the most visited websites in India and Brazil in 2008. In that year itself, Google announced that Orkut would be fully managed and operated in Brazil, by Google Brazil, in the city of Belo Horizonte.

Sumit Kumar, a software engineer, felt nostalgic while sharing his memories of Orkut.

“Today people talk about ‘like’ and ‘share’ on social websites. But back in my school days, terms like ‘scraps’ and ‘testimonials’ were cool. Orkut was the website where all my school friends, even those who were not Internet savvy, gradually connected with each other,” said Sumit (26).

It was also available in Hindi, Bengali, Marathi, Tamil, Kannada and Telugu. In acknowledgement of the second highest number of users in India, Orkut greeted its Indian users “Happy Diwali” on November 8, 2007, and allowed them to change their scrapbook look to a Diwali-flavoured reddish theme.

While Orkut is no longer available, Google launched an archive on the same web address (orkut.google.com) on Tuesday. The archive is like an online museum of all Orkut communities as reminisce to the premier social networking website.

In a blog titled “Tchau Orkut” on June 30, Google had announced that it would shut down the service. It asked Orkut users to export their profile data, community posts and photos using Google Takeout (available until September 2016).

Users can download their Orkut content either through a zip file using Google Takeout or merge the Orkut photos with Google+ account.

“Over the past decade, 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,” the Orkut blog had stated.