If you go to the Orkut page within Google, you get this note: ‘Orkut was officially shut down on September 30, 2014, but you can view public community discussions in the Community Archive’.
Orkut was the first ever Google social network. Google kills lots of its products. It has its own graveyard. The best way to visit the graveyard and pay respect to the dead is… well…google ‘Google Graveyard’ for an article in Slate magazine (June 30, 2014). There you will find graves with names such as Google Health, Google Reader, Google Labs, Google desktop and others.
The Slate article has pictures of 42 graves. Some names are familiar, such as Google Reader (but, why? why? why did you kill that? Some users (like me) might shed a tear at the grave), other names maybe me more or less esoteric unless you are a tech addict.
Each grave has digital flowers, and you can click a grave to leave a flower in respect. I did. Actually I tried to leave more than one flower on the Google Reader grave but the Digital Undertaker would not let me. He knew my IP address already. One click is enough.
The point is that Google kills technologies/products that either don’t make the big use or are substituted with better ones. It’s self-regeneration. It’s brave and it’s healthy. Of course having technology products helps. Life and death in the digital world is different. In the non-digital world, people don’t have that luxury. However, the principle of regeneration applies.
It takes some discipline to review your assets, say goodbye to some and welcome other new ones. Call it reinvention, renewal, regeneration or anything. We call it Reboot! [1] in our consulting practice.
The visit of the Graveyard (please do so in silence) is a good exercise of reflection. I never thought of cemeteries as places of inspiration, but I welcome this one. Thanks to Slate magazine.