Why is Orkut Buyukkokten ever remembered in history?

          The name Orkut Buyukkokten may perhaps bring back memories for a few, early users of the Internet. It reminds one of ‘Orkut’, a social media platform and the forerunner of networks like Facebook and Twitter.

          Orkut Buyukkokten is a Turkish software engineer who developed Orkut. Hailing from Turkey, Buyukkokten earned B.Sc. in Computer Engineering and Information Science from Bilkent University, Ankara. He then moved to the US and received an MS and PhD in Computer Science from Stanford.

          In 2001, Buyukkokten introduced the first college-specific social network Club Nexus for Stanford. It helped the users send emails, invitations, chat, post events, search for people etc. and in just a few months, attracted over 2000 students.

           Buyukkokten then introduced InCircle, an alumni social network for use by alumni groups. On January 24, 2004 he founded Orkut which was owned and operated by Google. On September 30, 2014, the parent company announced the shutdown of Orkut. In 2016, Buyukkokten launched yet another social media service called ‘Hello’.