Remember Orkut? This is what "he" looks like now!

Many millennials, especially from India and Brazil, will remember Orkut fondly. It was the first social network for many of us (especially since MySpace didn't catch on quite as much in India).

Orkut, perhaps the only social network to really take off in India till Facebook, offered fairly ballsy features for the time such as the Crush List, which let you secretly add your crushes' names to a list. If your crush happened to add you to their list as well, then both of you would be notified. Yup, those were truly the days when nerds used their superpowers to solve real human problems!

What some of you may not know is that the word "Orkut" was not some slick coinage or the name of a mythological character or anything hammy like that. The social network was actually named after its founder, Orkut Büyükkökten (pictured below). Now don't get it twisted and think of Büyükkökten as some egomaniac running around naming cricket stadiums and national monuments after him. Büyükkökten had originally wanted to name the platform 'Eden'. It was Google's Eric Schmidt and Marissa Mayer who suggested that he name the platform 'Orkut'.

Now where did Google come into the picture, you may ask?

It probably won't surprise you that Orkut, who grew up in Germany, was a bit of a wunderkind. In fact, Orkut was not even the first social network he built. While he was pursuing higher studies in computer science (who saw that coming, eh?) at Stanford, Orkut first built a social networking site for the college's students called Club Nexus. The site was launched at a college party to a thundering reception, with students rushing to sign up using their college emails. Sound familiar? And after that, while still in college, our man built a social networking site for Stanford's alumni organization called inCircle. Come graduation, Orkut reportedly rejected multiple job offers to join Google as a Frontend Engineer.

Now Google, at least at the time, had this concept called "20 percent project" where employees could spend a fifth of their time working on a passion project that aligned with Google's values. And that's how Orkut, originally named "Eden",came about. The platform was shared among Google employees to... yes, another thunderous reception.... and one of Eric Schmidt or Marissa Mayer suggested that the network be called "Orkut" since "www.eden.com" was taken. Pretty cool, huh?

Now I think we can all agree Orkut Büyükkökten probably doesn't need our felicitation to be recognized as a genius. So what is this article really about? Well it's about the idea of the "20 percent project". It's the kind of innovative work culture that Google was famous for, and reaped rich dividends from in the form of "side projects" like AdSense and Google News. The idea behind the 20 percent project simple: Employees could work on a side quest they cared deeply about on company time, as long as it was understood that the resulting product was the intellectual property of the employer. Many such side projects resulted in new product verticals or improvements to existing products for companies like Google, Apple and Atlassian.

While you may have reservations about someone's passion project ending up the intellectual property of a billion dollar corporation, it's undeniable that many of us (let alone the wunderkinds at some of the most innovative companies in the world) spend a lot of our working hours trying our hardest to look busy. Twitter is full of techies formerly employed at the Googles and Facebooks of the world claiming that they could have polished off in a few hours the work they did over a week for their former employers. We have all heard the same from our -possibly- less illustrious peers.

Corporations presumably don't keep the lights on at work to just keep employees from their personal lives. There's a whole upper management apple cart waiting to be toppled by answering why a working day needs to be 8 to 10 hours long, and not 4 or 5. But would a formal policy that permitted us during company hours to go on the odd side quest from time to time result in a happier, more productive workplace? Would it result in more innovation, creativity, industry? Would it really benefit the employer, like it did Google or Apple? What stops companies from adopting some version of the 20 percent project, and how can it be made more efficient for all parties involved?

Just a little something for HR managers to chew on while they plan the next Rangoli competition.

---

What next?

• Well if you like articles like this one about music, film and culture, you could sign up for our Newsletter (No spam, just one weekly article about something interesting) below.

• Or you could check out our limited edition clothing collection over at the Deadend Clothing store and do a little shopping to help us keep the lights on at Deadend Studio.

Deadend Origin T-shirt (Oversized Fit)

Buy Now

Counter Couture Brain T-shirt (Oversized Fit)

Buy Now