Google shuts down Orkut today: How to back up your photos, scraps and communities

Today is September 30, the day Google has choosen to bid adios to Orkut. To many, Orkut was the first social networking site that got people across the globe to actually engage on the Internet. With time, many have abandoned their Orkut accounts in favour of Facebook, Twitter or Pinterest.

But what happens to all those scraps, photos and communities? Google has said that it will “preserve” public information in its archives. If your Orkut profiles still exists, you might want to revisit it one last time to make sure your information and personal conversations remain in safe hands. If you haven’t already, note that you only have the a few hours left to take some of these actions, so you’ll need to hurry.

Photos

You can export your photos to your Google+ account with this link http://www.orkut.com/AlbumsExport or save them to your computer. By default, the albums you export to Google+ will be set as private and only you will be able to see them. You won’t be able to log in to your account to see your photos or export your them to Google+ after today, though you have until September 2016 to save them to your computer using Google Takeout. Google Takeout lets you download your profile, received scraps, received testimonials activities and photos in a zip file. To do this:

1. Go to the Google Takeout page

2. Click Choose services and then select Orkut.

3. Click Create archive.

4. When it’s ready, click Download.

Communities

Google says on its blog that public communities will get added to Google’s archives once it dumps Orkut. All conversations including polls, topics and comments will be searchable and can be viewed publicly on the web. If you’ve created your own communities, deleting your profile won’t delete the communities you’ve created, but will only remove your name behind your comments. You will need to delete communities separately before deleting your profile.

Scraps and testimonials

All scraps get deleted by deleting your Orkut account, which is also the case with testimonials. As there’s more sentiment attached to testimonials, so you may choose to save all your testimonials to your computer using the Google Takeout service. As mentioned earlier, you’ll be able to save these until September 2016. However, note that you won’t be able to access any of your scraps or testimonials after you’ve deleted your account.