What happened to Orkut might seem like old news, but its biggest failure still echoes in how we train pilots today.
In 2004, Google rolled out Orkut—a social network that, for a brief time, actually felt exciting. It caught on fast in places like Brazil and India, helped by its exclusive, invite-only setup and a rush of new communities. Within a year, users had created over a million of them. It felt fresh. Personal. Social in a way that hadn’t really been done before.
But ten years later, it was gone.
Why? It didn’t keep up. As people started wanting more—photos, privacy settings, apps that worked on phones—Orkut stayed mostly the same. It missed the shift. By the time it tried to catch up, users had already moved on (Mahoney & Tang, 2016, Part 3, Chapter 11, p. 181).
That dance card—early success, missed signals, slow decline—should feel familiar to anyone working in aviation safety. Because here’s the thing: legacy systems can fall into the same trap. If training programs stop evolving, if they don’t meet pilots where they are or adapt to what they need, risk creeps in. Not just theoretically. We’re talking about real-world threats, like Loss of Control In-flight (LOC-I).
Orkut might seem like a strange comparison—but its downfall is a reminder. It’s not enough to build something that works. You have to keep it alive. Relevant. Responsive. Otherwise, even good systems fail.
Orkut worked at first because it gave people a place to gather. You could find others who liked what you liked, talk about it, build something that felt a little like home online. But things changed. Mahoney and Tang (2016) note that Orkut never really moved past the old marketing model—it was more about broadcasting than listening (Part 3, Chapter 11, p. 183). And while it kept pushing out the same experience, Facebook was watching what users did, making small changes, getting better. That shift mattered. People noticed. Slowly, they stopped showing up for Orkut—and gave their attention to the place that felt like it was actually paying attention back.
Planes don’t just lose control out of the blue. It builds—missed signals, weak feedback, training that doesn’t quite prepare you for what really happens up there. Sounds familiar, right? Orkut didn’t fail overnight either. It just didn’t respond when things started to shift. And that kind of silence? It catches up to you.
In flying, the stakes are way higher. That’s where EPIC-S2™ makes a difference. It doesn’t lean on checklists alone. It brings in real cockpit time, pressure, feedback—the stuff that teaches you to stay sharp when the unexpected hits. The kind of adaptability Orkut never had.
Mahoney and Tang (2016) talk about strategy needing to go both ways—listening, not just talking (Part 1, Chapter 1, p. 13). Orkut missed that completely. It mostly just threw features at people and hoped they’d stick around. But once users started wanting something different, the platform didn’t—or couldn’t—shift. That was pretty much the beginning of the end.
The same thing in some flight training. Programs that just walk through procedures but don’t really teach pilots how to adapt. No feedback, no room to adjust in real time. It’s like reading off a checklist while the plane’s in a spin. Doesn’t work.
Take away real feedback—doesn’t matter if you’re in a cockpit or online—and people start checking out. Things go wrong. Maybe not right away, but it happens. Paek et a. (2013) looked at this—found that real engagement, back-and-forth stuff, makes behavior stick. Without it? Not much changes.
In pilot training, that’s everything. If you just hand someone a checklist and run them through routines, it’s not going to help when they’re under pressure. Aviation Performance Solutions, APS, for example, doesn’t do that (APS, 2025). They build in the stress—real scenarios that pile on mentally and physically—so pilots can actually deal with the chaos when it shows up. It’s training that moves with you. That’s where Orkut fell short. Different world, same mistake.
Orkut started strong. It felt like it was going somewhere—until it didn’t. Once it stopped paying attention to what people needed, things slipped. And eventually, it just faded. More on user-centric design, Twitter Publisher Best Practices.
In aviation, it’s not all that different. Loss of Control In-flight doesn’t just show up out of nowhere. Usually, it’s been building. Hidden under systems that look like they’re working—until they’re not.
Orkut didn’t adapt. It stayed static while everything around it moved forward. Some flight departments are kind of in that same place now—still using outdated training that doesn’t really line up with what flying demands today.
But here’s the thing: when Orkut dropped off, Google lost a product. When a pilot isn’t ready for an upset? The stakes are way higher. That kind of loss doesn’t get written off; it ripples through the generations of the victims' families for ever more.
Adapt or Become Obsolete: Orkut didn’t flop because it was a bad platform. It just didn’t change when it needed to. That happens in flight training too. Programs that once worked fine can become a problem if they stay frozen while everything else keeps moving.
Feedback Loops Save Lives: Social platforms survive by learning from what people do and adjusting fast. It’s not that different in the cockpit. Pilots need that same kind of loop—real feedback, often in real time. Without it, things fall apart under pressure.
Community Alone Isn’t Enough: Sure, having a strong team or culture helps. But if that group can’t actually perform when it gets rough, the connection alone doesn’t save you. They have to be sharp when it matters—not just close.
Orkut’s rise and fall shows how fast things can fall apart when a system stops responding to the people using it. The same risk shows up in aviation. Just keeping pilots engaged isn’t enough. What actually keeps them safe is training that grows with them—training that works when the pressure’s real.
That’s what leading upset training providers like APS lean into with their EPIC-S2™ program. Those core principles are built to keep pilots sharp, even when everything around them starts to shift.
References
APS (Aviation Performance Solutions). (2025). Every Pilot In Control Solution Standard (EPIC-S2™). APS Training. https://apstraining.com/epic-s2
Mahoney, L. M., & Tang, T. (2016). Strategic social media: From marketing to social change (1st ed.). Wiley.
Paek, H. J., Hove, T., Jung, Y., & Cole, R. T. (2013). Engagement across three social media platforms: An exploratory study of a cause-related PR campaign. Public Relations Review, 39(5), 526–533. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.pubrev.2013.09.013
Pierret, J. (2017). 4 ways to align traditional and digital marketing for healthcare conversions. American Marketing Association. https://www.ama.org/marketing-news/4-ways-align-traditional-digital-marketing-for-healthcare-conversions/
X for Business. (n.d.). Publisher best practices. https://business.x.com/en