What has become of Orkut?

Nathan Weinberg said:

There's no shortage of people at Google who are disappointed with the way Orkut is not catching on. Google really wanted to build a powerful community, and it isn't going to happen through Orkut.

When I read Nathan's post, I realized it had been months since I used Orkut. Like many people, I played with it a bit when it first came out, set up my little network, got in contact with a few old friends and colleagues.

It was a fun toy. But the fun died quickly. The discussion forums were useless, all noise, no signal. The messaging system was full of spam, people foolishly broadcasting inane messages out to all friends of friends. And Orkut became so slow as to be unusable (something that, I can only assume, is quite embarrassing to the rest of Google).

My visits, initially a couple times a day, dropped to once a week, then dropped off entirely.

The toy wasn't fun anymore, so I stopped playing with it. Had it been more than a toy -- if it were a useful tool that helped me with my life -- I would have stuck with it, but there was no real value to Orkut.

Checking it out again now, it seems that everyone else abandoned Orkut too. The only ones left seem to be Brazilian teenagers. Oh, Orkut. What has become of you?