Orkut Büyükkökten (born February 6, 1975) is a Turkish software engineer who developed the social networking services Club Nexus, inCircle and

Orkut Orkut was a social networking service owned and operated by Google. The service was designed to help users meet new and old friends and maintain existing relationships. The website was named after its creator, Google employee Orkut Büyükkö ...

. He is a former product manager at

Google Google LLC (, ) is an American multinational corporation and technology company focusing on online advertising, search engine technology, cloud computing, computer software, quantum computing, e-commerce, consumer electronics, and artificial ...

Early life and education

Originally from

Konya Konya is a major city in central Turkey, on the southwestern edge of the Central Anatolian Plateau, and is the capital of Konya Province. During antiquity and into Seljuk times it was known as Iconium. In 19th-century accounts of the city in En ...

Turkey Turkey, officially the Republic of Türkiye, is a country mainly located in Anatolia in West Asia, with a relatively small part called East Thrace in Southeast Europe. It borders the Black Sea to the north; Georgia (country), Georgia, Armen ...

, Büyükkökten obtained a

B.Sc. A Bachelor of Science (BS, BSc, B.S., B.Sc., SB, or ScB; from the Latin ') is a bachelor's degree that is awarded for programs that generally last three to five years. The first university to admit a student to the degree of Bachelor of Scienc ...

degree in Computer Engineering and Information Science from

Bilkent University Bilkent University () is a private non-profit research university located in Ankara, Turkey. It was founded by İhsan Doğramacı, the first president of the Council of Higher Education and the head of the prominent Doğramacı family, with th ...

Ankara Ankara is the capital city of Turkey and List of national capitals by area, the largest capital by area in the world. Located in the Central Anatolia Region, central part of Anatolia, the city has a population of 5,290,822 in its urban center ( ...

. He received both a

M.S. A Master of Science (; abbreviated MS, M.S., MSc, M.Sc., SM, S.M., ScM or Sc.M.) is a master's degree. In contrast to the Master of Arts degree, the Master of Science degree is typically granted for studies in sciences, engineering and medicine ...

and a Ph.D. in Computer Science from

Stanford University Leland Stanford Junior University, commonly referred to as Stanford University, is a Private university, private research university in Stanford, California, United States. It was founded in 1885 by railroad magnate Leland Stanford (the eighth ...

. His research at Stanford focused on Web search and efficient PDA usage.

Social media platforms

He has been building and working on online communities since 2000. He introduced his first social network, named Club Nexus, at Stanford in the fall of 2001. Club Nexus was the first college-specific social network. It was a system built to serve the networking and communication needs of the Stanford online community. Students could use Club Nexus to send e-mail and invitations, chat, post events, buy and sell used goods, search for people with similar interests, place personals, display their artwork or post editorial columns. Within a few months of its introduction in 2001, Club Nexus had attracted over 2,000 Stanford undergraduates. Later, Büyükkökten introduced an alumni social network, named inCircle, for the Stanford Alumni Association intended for use by university alumni groups. In 2002, Büyükkökten launched a company, Affinity Engines, to commercialize inCircle and Club Nexus. After leaving Affinity Engines and joining Google, he decided to use his 20% time to develop a social networking service. He said: "My dream was to connect all the Internet users so they can relate to each other, it can make such a difference in people's lives." The product manager and

Marissa Mayer Marissa Ann Mayer (; born May 30, 1975) is an American business executive and investor who served as President (corporate title), president and chief executive officer of Yahoo! from 2012 to 2017, when it was sold to Verizon. She was a long-tim ...

thought of naming the service after its creator. "Orkut.com" belonged to Orkut Büyükkökten himself. Google convinced him, and its social networking service was called

. Büyükkökten and Google were sued by Affinity Engines in 2004 for trade secret misappropriation. Affinity Engines claimed that Büyükkökten and Google had stolen Affinity Engines' code to launch the "Orkut.com" social networking service at Google. The lawsuit was settled in 2006. In 2016, he launched a new social networking service,

Hello Hello is a salutation or greeting in the English language. It is first attested in writing from 1826. Early uses ''Hello'', with that spelling, was used in publications in the U.S. as early as the 18 October 1826 edition of the '' Norwich Cou ...

. The social networking site can be customized in three languages — English, French and Portuguese. By August 2016, Hello was available in the US, Canada, France, UK, Australia, New Zealand, Ireland, and Brazil — both on iOS and Android. Hello announced its entry into the Indian market in April 2018. By September 2022, Hello had shut down.

References

External links

Instagram profile

Facebook profile

Twitter profile

Orkut.com

Hello.com
{{DEFAULTSORT:Buyukkukten, Orkut Turkish male non-fiction writers Turkish computer scientists People from Konya Computer programmers Google employees Stanford University School of Engineering alumni Bilkent University alumni Turkish LGBTQ scientists 21st-century Turkish scientists 1975 births Living people Turkish expatriates in the United States 21st-century Turkish LGBTQ people 21st-century Turkish non-fiction writers 21st-century Turkish male writers