Friendster was founded by Canadian programmer, Jonathan Abrams, in 2002, before Myspace and Facebook were around.
It had hit 3 million users within a few months of launch.
In 2003 it refused a US$30m acquisition offer from Google. Ouch.
By 2008 it had 115 million users, mostly in Asia, and had raised US$50m in funding.
But from 2009 things started to decline as fast as Ben Johnson on steroids (he’s the guy in front).
The mistake that Friendster made was that it didn’t focus on the news feed like Facebook did. That’s why people loved Facebook - they wanted to know what their friends were up to.
Frien
Friendster was founded by Canadian programmer, Jonathan Abrams, in 2002, before Myspace and Facebook were around.
It had hit 3 million users within a few months of launch.
In 2003 it refused a US$30m acquisition offer from Google. Ouch.
By 2008 it had 115 million users, mostly in Asia, and had raised US$50m in funding.
But from 2009 things started to decline as fast as Ben Johnson on steroids (he’s the guy in front).
The mistake that Friendster made was that it didn’t focus on the news feed like Facebook did. That’s why people loved Facebook - they wanted to know what their friends were up to.
Friendster, instead, focused the site around profiles.
And so users turned to Facebook instead.
In 2015 it was shut down…
Here's an interesting story called The Rise and Fall of Friendster: http://www.nytimes.com/2006/10/15/business/yourmoney/15friend.html?_r=1 - excerpts below:
“Friendster ended up with three levels of V.P.’s, C.E.O.’s and board members who, although they had great résumés, they were not connected to the social networking concept and didn’t really use Friendster,” she wrote.
But the board also l
Here's an interesting story called The Rise and Fall of Friendster: http://www.nytimes.com/2006/10/15/business/yourmoney/15friend.html?_r=1 - excerpts below:
“Friendster ended up with three levels of V.P.’s, C.E.O.’s and board members who, although they had great résumés, they were not connected to the social networking concept and didn’t really use Friendster,” she wrote.
But the board also lost sight of the task at hand, according to Kent Lindstrom, an early investor in Friendster and one of its first employees. As Friendster became more popular, its overwhelmed Web site became slower. Things would become so bad that a Friendster Web page took as long as 40 seconds to download. Yet, from where Mr. Lindstrom sat, technical difficulties proved too pedestrian for a board of this pedigree. The performance problems would come up, but the board devoted most of its time to talking about potential competitors and new features, such as the possibility of adding Internet ph...
Where do I start?
I’m a huge financial nerd, and have spent an embarrassing amount of time talking to people about their money habits.
Here are the biggest mistakes people are making and how to fix them:
Not having a separate high interest savings account
Having a separate account allows you to see the results of all your hard work and keep your money separate so you're less tempted to spend it.
Plus with rates above 5.00%, the interest you can earn compared to most banks really adds up.
Here is a list of the top savings accounts available today. Deposit $5 before moving on because this is one of th
Where do I start?
I’m a huge financial nerd, and have spent an embarrassing amount of time talking to people about their money habits.
Here are the biggest mistakes people are making and how to fix them:
Not having a separate high interest savings account
Having a separate account allows you to see the results of all your hard work and keep your money separate so you're less tempted to spend it.
Plus with rates above 5.00%, the interest you can earn compared to most banks really adds up.
Here is a list of the top savings accounts available today. Deposit $5 before moving on because this is one of the biggest mistakes and easiest ones to fix.
Overpaying on car insurance
You’ve heard it a million times before, but the average American family still overspends by $417/year on car insurance.
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Consistently being in debt
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Missing out on free money to invest
It’s no secret that millionaires love investing, but for the rest of us, it can seem out of reach.
Times have changed. There are a number of investing platforms that will give you a bonus to open an account and get started. All you have to do is open the account and invest at least $25, and you could get up to $1000 in bonus.
Pretty sweet deal right? Here is a link to some of the best options.
Having bad credit
A low credit score can come back to bite you in so many ways in the future.
From that next rental application to getting approved for any type of loan or credit card, if you have a bad history with credit, the good news is you can fix it.
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How to get started
Hope this helps! Here are the links to get started:
Have a separate savings account
Stop overpaying for car insurance
Finally get out of debt
Start investing with a free bonus
Fix your credit
I was a UX consultant at Friendster. I'm not as intimately aware of the issues as Jim or Jonathan, but from my perspective I'd propose a few additions to Jim & Jonathan's list...
1. Success Can Be a Paralytic
While the site was getting hugged to death by the insane viral growth ("be careful what you wish for"), there was also a challenge in answering the "what next" question in terms of features and functionality. Users could browse the site to see who was in their social network, but after that there wasn't much reason to keep coming back.
2. Choose Mature Technologies That Increase Efficienc
I was a UX consultant at Friendster. I'm not as intimately aware of the issues as Jim or Jonathan, but from my perspective I'd propose a few additions to Jim & Jonathan's list...
1. Success Can Be a Paralytic
While the site was getting hugged to death by the insane viral growth ("be careful what you wish for"), there was also a challenge in answering the "what next" question in terms of features and functionality. Users could browse the site to see who was in their social network, but after that there wasn't much reason to keep coming back.
2. Choose Mature Technologies That Increase Efficiency
This essentially re-affirms Jim Scheinman's point #4 ("don't experiment with the newest stuff"). Friendster's front-end developer adopted a table-less "pure CSS" approach that (IMHO) was too early. Browser support for CSS positioning was poor, best practices were yet to be established, and the relevant engineers didn't have prior real-world experience implementing the technology. This made it slow and high effort to implement features and functionality. This also significantly reduced the audience as the site was now essentially incompatible with browsers used by 30-40% of the internet audience at that time. Increasing deployment time was compounding the existing problem of being slow to introduce badly needed new functionality.
This discussion has focused on technical/site performance issues, but there were also some key product decisions made at Friendster that (at least from our perspective at MySpace) left an opening for a competitor to come along and capitalize on users' frustration with slow page load times. ("Hey, not only is this other site faster, it also lets me do this and that....")
I never used Friendster or worked there, but from what I heard from my colleagues at MySpace, the biggest point of differentiation was its openness. Tom and others put a lot of thought into what they (or users in general) foun
This discussion has focused on technical/site performance issues, but there were also some key product decisions made at Friendster that (at least from our perspective at MySpace) left an opening for a competitor to come along and capitalize on users' frustration with slow page load times. ("Hey, not only is this other site faster, it also lets me do this and that....")
I never used Friendster or worked there, but from what I heard from my colleagues at MySpace, the biggest point of differentiation was its openness. Tom and others put a lot of thought into what they (or users in general) found frustrating about Friendster and designed MySpace accordingly. Examples include insisting on a real-name culture (as Facebook did as well) vs. allowing pseudonymous profiles; requiring that profiles be for actual living people, as opposed to your band, your dog, your DJ name, etc. MySpace also allowed radical customization of profile pages including HTML, CSS, JavaScript, Flash, etc. -- resulting in a nightmare for engineering as we had to close loophole after loophole that was being exploited by bad guys -- but enabled a whole ecosystem to emerge of widgets, page layout generators, not to mention an embeddable video player thing called YouTube. :) That's a pretty major product decision with people passionate on both sides (calling sites like Facebook boring vs. MySpace ugly and unusable). At least for the early-adopter audience, anything that limited their flexibility could be considered a negative.
Friendster, one of the first social networking sites, made several key mistakes that contributed to its decline:
- Technical Issues: Friendster faced significant scalability problems. As its user base grew rapidly, the site encountered frequent downtime and slow performance, frustrating users and driving them to other platforms.
- Lack of Innovation: After its initial success, Friendster failed to innovate and adapt to changing user needs. Competitors like MySpace and Facebook introduced new features and improved user experiences, while Friendster stagnated.
- Focus on Gaming: In an attempt to regain r
Friendster, one of the first social networking sites, made several key mistakes that contributed to its decline:
- Technical Issues: Friendster faced significant scalability problems. As its user base grew rapidly, the site encountered frequent downtime and slow performance, frustrating users and driving them to other platforms.
- Lack of Innovation: After its initial success, Friendster failed to innovate and adapt to changing user needs. Competitors like MySpace and Facebook introduced new features and improved user experiences, while Friendster stagnated.
- Focus on Gaming: In an attempt to regain relevance, Friendster shifted its focus to gaming and social gaming features. This move alienated many of its original users who were more interested in social networking than gaming.
- Poor User Experience: The user interface and experience were not as intuitive or engaging as those of emerging competitors. This made it less appealing for new users and contributed to user attrition.
- Inability to Monetize Effectively: Friendster struggled to develop a sustainable business model. While it attempted various monetization strategies, including advertising and premium features, it could not find a formula that resonated with users or advertisers.
- Failure to Leverage Data: Friendster did not effectively utilize user data to enhance the platform or tailor experiences, missing opportunities to create personalized content and recommendations.
- Delayed Response to Competition: Friendster was slow to respond to the rise of Facebook and other competitors. By the time it attempted to pivot and rebrand, it was too late to regain its former user base.
These mistakes ultimately led to Friendster's decline, paving the way for other social networking platforms to take the lead in the market.
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Here’s the thing: I wish I had known these money secrets sooner. They’ve helped so many people save hundreds, secure their family’s future, and grow their bank accounts—myself included.
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Thinking back to 2006, three things killed Friendster:
- The site was buggy. Facebook was faster, so people switched over.
- Ugly layout customisation was rampant. Giving people too much control over their page layout is never a good idea.
and (most importantly)
- The 'who viewed' me feature. Friendster learned the hard way that people prefer anonymous profile 'creeping' to knowing who has visited their page.
A decade ago I’d come up with this framework for developing software product and the order of priority:
Since then many others have come up with similar frameworks and it pretty much defines how users expect to interact with products.
The problem with Friendster from the way I remember it (being on the Orkut team) is that they had pretty much skipped step 2 (stability) to move up the chain.
The pyramid was unstable and it came crashing down.
My simple analysis.
A decade ago I’d come up with this framework for developing software product and the order of priority:
Since then many others have come up with similar frameworks and it pretty much defines how users expect to interact with products.
The problem with Friendster from the way I remember it (being on the Orkut team) is that they had pretty much skipped step 2 (stability) to move up the chain.
The pyramid was unstable and it came crashing down.
My simple analysis.
Friendster made several key mistakes that led to its decline as a social networking platform. These include technical problems, an inability to scale, slow adoption of new features, and a lack of focus on user engagement.
In my opinion, Friendster lost the social networking battle because it lacked in these key areas: technology, user-experience, and platform.
a. Technology - Friendster was commonly hampered by its success. Servers would slow down immensely because of database issues or even coding that wasn't optimized. Users got frustrated from total site shutdowns, or by its utter slowness to even allow users to login.
b. User-Experience - Facebook is designed very well. And it appealed to a more mature crowd that didn't like the content clutter of MySpace, or the navigability of Friendster. Also, AJAX was hea
In my opinion, Friendster lost the social networking battle because it lacked in these key areas: technology, user-experience, and platform.
a. Technology - Friendster was commonly hampered by its success. Servers would slow down immensely because of database issues or even coding that wasn't optimized. Users got frustrated from total site shutdowns, or by its utter slowness to even allow users to login.
b. User-Experience - Facebook is designed very well. And it appealed to a more mature crowd that didn't like the content clutter of MySpace, or the navigability of Friendster. Also, AJAX was heavily used so content loaded dynamicly without having the page fully reload (like friendster). Facebook was a better product in every way - sharing, photos, profile, app content, privacy, etc. A simple thing like 'poke' caught on immensely.
c. Platform - Facebook allowed developers to create content on their platform and leverage the social network. This platform spawned a whole generation of social-apps ranging from personality quizzes, games, and vampire bites. This kept the network interesting, and people stayed on it longer.
Cornell did a autopsy with computer scientists taking lessons: The Autopsy of Friendster
Basically, the nodes were limited to too few people. Small exodus collapsed the network.
http://qr.ae/Y6vt3 is a good read. Specifically, answers at What were the key mistakes that Friendster made? are helpful.
Geez, David, ouch, thanks for asking such a fun question! 8-)
I think a great explanation of what happened can be found in the excellent paper "Common Shareholder Vulnerability in Venture-Backed Startups", by Jesse M. Fried, Professor of Law at the University of California Berkeley, and Faculty Co-Director of the Berkeley Center for Law, Business and the Economy. (Unfortunately this was published after Friendster took venture funding haha!)
So I'm going to cite his paper here:
"Most academics studying venture-backed startups have failed to understand the frequency with which VCs end up in con
Geez, David, ouch, thanks for asking such a fun question! 8-)
I think a great explanation of what happened can be found in the excellent paper "Common Shareholder Vulnerability in Venture-Backed Startups", by Jesse M. Fried, Professor of Law at the University of California Berkeley, and Faculty Co-Director of the Berkeley Center for Law, Business and the Economy. (Unfortunately this was published after Friendster took venture funding haha!)
So I'm going to cite his paper here:
"Most academics studying venture-backed startups have failed to understand the frequency with which VCs end up in control of boards. VCs formally take a majority of the board seats in only about 25% of startups. In about 15% of startups, common shareholders maintain a majority of board seats through successive financings. In the remaining 60% or so neither common nor VCs end up with a majority of the seats; instead, the “swing votes” are held by so-called “independent directors” – industry experts agreed to by both the common stockholders and the VCs. However, these outside directors are usually acquaintances of and recommended by the VCs. Entrepreneurs rarely have sufficient contacts to fill these positions, and tend to acquiesce to the VCs’ recommendations. Most of these outside directors have – or can expect to have – long-term professional and business ties with the VCs, who are repeat players. Cooperative outside directors can expect to be recommended for other board seats, or even to be invited to join VC fund as a “venture partner.” Thus, the
outside directors are not truly independent. Should a conflict between the VCs and other investors arise, they can be expected to side with the VCs. As a result, the percentage of start-up boards effectively controlled by VCs is closer to 80-90%."
In the words of VentureHacks (an amazing resource for entrepreneurs, which I am an investor in), "Valuation is temporary, control is forever".
http://venturehacks.com/articles/biggest-mistake
Mistake, singular: Did not acquire the facebook. You see now what some of these companies will fork over to acquire and retain attention.
It's all about focus. Facebook is extremely focused:
- Focused on what users use and what they don't -- investing more on and continually refining things that get used and abandoning things that don't.
- Focused on performance -- their BigPipe architecture (http://www.facebook.com/notes/facebook-engineering/bigpipe-pipelining-web-pages-for-high-performance/389414033919) and the HipHop PHP compiler is a testament to that (and killer computer science too).
- Focused on the social dynamics of features and what gets people to use them more and tuning the features to maximize network usage.
Chris and Tom a
It's all about focus. Facebook is extremely focused:
- Focused on what users use and what they don't -- investing more on and continually refining things that get used and abandoning things that don't.
- Focused on performance -- their BigPipe architecture (http://www.facebook.com/notes/facebook-engineering/bigpipe-pipelining-web-pages-for-high-performance/389414033919) and the HipHop PHP compiler is a testament to that (and killer computer science too).
- Focused on the social dynamics of features and what gets people to use them more and tuning the features to maximize network usage.
Chris and Tom at Myspace, on the other hand, come from the "throw it against the wall and see what sticks" school of product development. Stealing MySpace talks about that at some length. They stumbled upon something that worked with the original Myspace, but didn't isolate its essence and refine it -- instead they continued to throw stuff against the wall. That's where horoscopes and classifieds and news and weather and local restaurant listings came from. Myspace was the antithesis of focus for a long time...too long. While the new management brought more focus, it was too little, and likely too late.
Ultimately, great products are all about discipline and focus.
(I started working at Myspace in 2009.)
See discussion on Why is Facebook successful? and Why specifically did MySpace fall so fast and so far? and What were the key mistakes that Friendster made?, but in summary:
- Facebook focused on real personal information and social connections, leveraging a genuine network effect, starting with college communities, while MySpace did not.
- Facebook developed several very sticky features, including the news feed and photo tagging, which were novel and kept people coming back to the site.
- Facebook built a developer and technology platform for other social applications and is becoming the defacto ident
See discussion on Why is Facebook successful? and Why specifically did MySpace fall so fast and so far? and What were the key mistakes that Friendster made?, but in summary:
- Facebook focused on real personal information and social connections, leveraging a genuine network effect, starting with college communities, while MySpace did not.
- Facebook developed several very sticky features, including the news feed and photo tagging, which were novel and kept people coming back to the site.
- Facebook built a developer and technology platform for other social applications and is becoming the defacto identity on the Internet.
In general, Facebook has executed well in technology (scaling to 100s of millions of users) and management (lead by passionate, capable, and competent leadership), which particularly distinguishes it from Friendster.
But note that remains to be seen if Facebook will remain as successful in the long term.
Because MySpace let you put all kinds of crap on your page, making it look and sound horrible, which resulted in it getting a really bad reputation. Facebook, by constraining user's freedoms, kept a better reputation - despite all the furores about privacy and changing the design of the site.
not that long.... a few months in early private testing amongst my friends in 2002. btw, sixdegrees.com is often mentioned, and certainly pre-dates Friendster, but did not have the features that Adam mentioned above.
Jonathan Abrams lost control of Friendster by taking on venture capital investment and losing control of his board of directors. By the second round of financing, the board is investor-controlled in approximately 85-90% of companies, depending on the sample of companies you are looking at.
"Table 9 indicates that founders’ cash flow, voting, and board rights decline over financing rounds while VC rights increase. The most notable pattern involves voting rights. Founders relinquish voting control by the second VC round in all but 11.5% of the financing rounds. Analogously, the VCs obtain explici
Jonathan Abrams lost control of Friendster by taking on venture capital investment and losing control of his board of directors. By the second round of financing, the board is investor-controlled in approximately 85-90% of companies, depending on the sample of companies you are looking at.
"Table 9 indicates that founders’ cash flow, voting, and board rights decline over financing rounds while VC rights increase. The most notable pattern involves voting rights. Founders relinquish voting control by the second VC round in all but 11.5% of the financing rounds. Analogously, the VCs obtain explicit voting control in over 60% of the second VC rounds."
I was just tweeting about this. Here is the full article: "Financial Contracting Theory Meets the Real World: An Empirical Analysis of Venture Capital Contracts." http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/download?doi=10.1.1.35.5071&rep=rep1&type=pdf
The investor-controlled board of Friendster removed 5 CEOs in a row, without understanding the technical problems the company was facing or removing the VP of Engineering.
Companies are best managed when the decisions of the companies are made by the people in the companies with the best information for making those decisions. The board of directors is not the place decisions in a company should be made.
The most efficient and best-managed companies have pushed decision-making down from the board of directors, down below the executives and into engineering and the people responsible for execution.
This is the conclusion that Drucker had come to and its still a valid conclusion today. A large number of executives do not even understand their core business.
"I've consulted to countless companies where there's no one left on staff who understands quite how the core business works." -- p. 153, Rushkoff, " The board of directors of a startup is even further removed than even the executives from the concerns a company's customers.
This is actually the best example of importance of execution even if you have an amazing idea or first to market.
I would say biggest issue was that Friendster’s tech, it couldn’t scale up with the growth. When facebook and myspace and friendster all are fast growing, and suddenly Friendser reach the point that it buckled under its own weight that people couldn’t even login.
For tech companies, technology is surprisingly important.
Quote from the Founder of Friendster:
"The fact that we didn't launch those products was a problem, but even more fundamentally, people could barely log into the websit
This is actually the best example of importance of execution even if you have an amazing idea or first to market.
I would say biggest issue was that Friendster’s tech, it couldn’t scale up with the growth. When facebook and myspace and friendster all are fast growing, and suddenly Friendser reach the point that it buckled under its own weight that people couldn’t even login.
For tech companies, technology is surprisingly important.
Quote from the Founder of Friendster:
"The fact that we didn't launch those products was a problem, but even more fundamentally, people could barely log into the website for two years," Abram says. "By the time Facebook and MySpace was doing those things, Friendster had lost a lot of market share in the U.S. for stability issues."
Scalability is hard. Even twitter have had the fail whale problem for a long time. But they rebuild the entire system (in a complete different language and infrastructure) before another competitor able to take over.
Mainly due to slow servers and down time. Curiosity drew people to Friendster. But users wanted something more.
Users swarmed over to MySpace, which had a better solution for where people were mentally situated in 2005-6. MySpace was more shiny. It had more customization options, and empowered users and 'connectors.'
Power-user/connectors were tired of slow servers with Friendster, and wanted to feel a sense of ownership, and MySpace gave them that by allowing them to create the ugly-rudimentary but highly personalized pages.
Okay , so Facebook and Friendster were both social networking sites, but man, they were totally different vibes , you know? Friendster was , like , *so* early 2000s . I remember the music player thing, it was awful , and the whole thing was clunky and slow . Loading a profile picture? Forget about it . took forever. My dial-up modem would just scream its little digital lungs out trying . And the design ? Yikes . It was all neon and bad graphics . I think it was mainly used for finding people you actually knew , not really strangers . Facebook felt so much more polished, even at the beginning.
Okay , so Facebook and Friendster were both social networking sites, but man, they were totally different vibes , you know? Friendster was , like , *so* early 2000s . I remember the music player thing, it was awful , and the whole thing was clunky and slow . Loading a profile picture? Forget about it . took forever. My dial-up modem would just scream its little digital lungs out trying . And the design ? Yikes . It was all neon and bad graphics . I think it was mainly used for finding people you actually knew , not really strangers . Facebook felt so much more polished, even at the beginning. It felt cleaner, more intuitive, and I think thats why it blew up and Friendster just kinda fizzled. I mean, Friendster had that whole "add as a friend" thing and it was kind of a big deal when someone accepted but it also was really kinda impersonal - Facebook was like, more about what you were *doing* and , you know, seeing pictures of your friends cats, and all that stuff . I think, ultimately , its a classic case of who got there first and who did it better , a bit . Friendster was first - but it was limited - its like the first iPhone vs some other phone that looked like a brick. Friendster had those little "Top 8" thing, right ? Oh my god, that was such high school drama . The social anxiety around that , omg it was brutal . Who made your top 8 ? Who didnt ? It was crazy. I dont think that level of intense drama really was a thing on Facebook. Facebook was . . . social, for sure , but way less about those small little things - it felt broader its hard to explain. I think Friendster was more of a niche thing . Like , its part of the history now , everyone remembers it . it was a "thing" back then . But Facebook , its just everywhere. You still see people’s Facebook posts sometimes - but who even *thinks* about Friendster anymore? It was a stepping stone I guess. Check my bio for more about social media history , if you are into that sort of thing !
Friendster's decision to stay private instead of selling to Google in 2003 is considered one of the biggest blunders in Silicon Valley history.
That and an endless succession of CEO’s did not lend itself to any sort of critical stability at that point.
Then changing direction toward a gaming site and disabling the ‘friend’ section essentially nailed its carcass to the sinking ship.
Overall? Poor management and incompetent backers.
The discussion of loss of control probably cannot be complete without reminding ourselves of why the company ended up with VC's owning too much of the business in the first place. In what way did company issues and investors dynamics contribute to the demise of Friendster ?
The first round of funding was auspicious, with KPCB and Benchmark investing in late 2003. The company later went on to raise $30M from later stage investors such as DAG (a regular KPCB follower) and IDG Ventures.
Friendster at the time was at the forefront of a number of technology advances including dealing with well-know
The discussion of loss of control probably cannot be complete without reminding ourselves of why the company ended up with VC's owning too much of the business in the first place. In what way did company issues and investors dynamics contribute to the demise of Friendster ?
The first round of funding was auspicious, with KPCB and Benchmark investing in late 2003. The company later went on to raise $30M from later stage investors such as DAG (a regular KPCB follower) and IDG Ventures.
Friendster at the time was at the forefront of a number of technology advances including dealing with well-known issues related to scaling MySQL.
Jim Scheinmann, later at Bebo, went on record to say that the inability to scale (the tech) is the core reason why Friendster did not become facebook but started losing users in droves. " Jim Scheinman, former Bebo and Friendster exec, puts the blame squarely on Friendster's inability to scale as why they lost the social networking race" and "I remember coming in to the office for months reading thousands of customer service emails telling us that if we didn’t get our site working better soon, they’d be ‘forced to join’ a new social networking site that had just launched called MySpace…the rest is history." Source: http://highscalability.com/blog/2007/11/13/friendster-lost-lead-because-of-a-failure-to-scale.html. There were other product and policy issues that killed growth, documented elsewhere.
So it's critical to understand and protect against loss of control issues, but a discussion of why the founder lost control cannot be complete without a look at why the company failed to maintain its growth trajectory.
When underperformance hits and confidence is broken, dilution is the result and with it comes loss of control at the board. In other words, loss of control here seems linked to a variety of issues including lack of true independents, aggressive recapitalisation late in the life of the company, and a continued search for improved performance.
Simply answering the question with principal-agent concepts and board composition issues trivializes what is a complex and real problem.
Thesis
Raising too much money from investors who may not be willing to ride the most difficult times is a recipe for disaster. Entrepreneurs need to think hard about the tradeoffs they are making and the cautionary tale of board control and the true nature of independents highlighted by Jonathan. Success cures all ills, whilst the gravity of capital can lead to failure. Old silicon valley saying: a poor board ruins a company every time. In this case, product failure and board failure seem intimately linked. Friendster raised a lot of money, did not scale, and as a result the capital structure and board went out of whack and may have contributed to a negative outcome.
Facebook and Friendster are both social networking websites that allow users to connect with others and share information, photos, and videos online. Friendster was one of the first social networking sites to gain popularity, launching in 2002, but it eventually lost its popularity and was shut down in 2015. Facebook, on the other hand, was launched in 2004 and has since become the largest social networking site in the world, with over 2.8 billion monthly active users as of December 2020. Both platforms have similar features, such as user profiles, news feeds, and the ability to connect with f
Facebook and Friendster are both social networking websites that allow users to connect with others and share information, photos, and videos online. Friendster was one of the first social networking sites to gain popularity, launching in 2002, but it eventually lost its popularity and was shut down in 2015. Facebook, on the other hand, was launched in 2004 and has since become the largest social networking site in the world, with over 2.8 billion monthly active users as of December 2020. Both platforms have similar features, such as user profiles, news feeds, and the ability to connect with friends and family, but Facebook has evolved to include additional features like groups, events, and marketplace.
The worst privacy bug in the history of Facebook, told to us this summer in an all-hands meeting by the engineer who committed the code, was the misdirection of private messages to the wrong recipients.
From WSJ on February 25, 2010:
Last night, in an embarrassing glitch for Facebook that raises questions about privacy on the site, some users of the social-networking service began getting hundreds of personal messages that weren’t intended for them.
A Business News & Financial News editor, Zach Seward, tipped Digits off to the apparent glitch after his Facebook inbox was flooded with messages ran
The worst privacy bug in the history of Facebook, told to us this summer in an all-hands meeting by the engineer who committed the code, was the misdirection of private messages to the wrong recipients.
From WSJ on February 25, 2010:
Last night, in an embarrassing glitch for Facebook that raises questions about privacy on the site, some users of the social-networking service began getting hundreds of personal messages that weren’t intended for them.
A Business News & Financial News editor, Zach Seward, tipped Digits off to the apparent glitch after his Facebook inbox was flooded with messages ranging from the mundane to the truly private.
“I am sorry for letting my jealousy and worry get the best of me,” reads one of the emails. Another, apparently talking about the application Love Farm, says “just letting you know that if you would like me to plant seeds on your farm etc…I can only access it, if you steal/share one of my plants that are ready for harvest.” Some users noticed the glitch and either tried to resend the message or sent Mr. Seward notes such as “I’m sorry… I don’t know why FB sent that last message to you, please disregard!” And a copy of one couple’s entire explicit chat session landed in Mr. Seward’s account.
The problem is the latest to cause concern about privacy on Facebook and other sites that allow people to share personal information over the Web. Companies such as Google and Facebook have been competing for users who send and store information ranging from public updates to private email. Along the way, the privacy policies of the sites have come under fire, as has the sites’ ability to protect users’ data. Facebook recently rolled out a new design of its inbox to make it more like Gmail’s, but this most recent glitch could raise questions for users.
Mr. Seward, who received emails from about 100 people, said the deluge started at about 8:30 p.m. and that he was later temporarily unable to access his Facebook account. Facebook removed all but two of the messages. But like many Facebook users, Mr. Seward has these messages sent to his third-party email account, where they remain. He said he has not heard from Facebook regarding the glitch.
A Facebook spokeswoman emailed the following response to Digits: “During our regular code push yesterday evening, a bug caused some misrouting to a small number of users for a short period of time. Our engineers diagnosed the problem moments after it began and are working to get everything back in its rightful place. While they fix the issue, affected users will not be able to access the site.” The company said it was still investigating the problem and could not immediately respond to specific questions about the glitch.
It is unclear how many Facebook users have been affected by the problem, but several Twitter users reported the glitch. A user with the handle seantanu wrote “Some bug: Facebook messages intended for others delivered to me today. 71 and counting,” and colleen02127 wondered if her problem was a “facebook fail”. Silicon Alley Insider reported on the glitch last night and said it appeared to be affecting people who joined Facebook soon after the service started. Mr. Seward, who joined as a Harvard freshman, was the 185th account on the site.
- Facebook Glitch Sends Wrong Messages
The aftershocks of this bug were still being felt, said the engineer. Recently there had been a "poetry reading" in New York consisting of the private messages that had been sent to the wrong people.
As a side note, the point of this story was to illustrate that Facebook is a safe place to make mistakes, as this engineer still had his job, and he said that surprisingly, no one pointed fingers and shamed him afterwards. Everyone just pulled up their sleeves and got to work pushing out a fix.
Never even heard of it ’til now . . . I googled “List top 60 social media platforms” - and it was not even among SIXTY-SIX listed. Facebook was the all-time top one listed.
Perhaps they are just not offering enough to compete with the 66 “top” social media platforms I was able to find.
no, I don’t expect that.
This is like Bebo doing a new service or Myspace still being online, nobody cares.
People use Facebook, Tiktok and Instagram today and that will not change with a bit of nostalgia. I may try it out, but I will probably not use it after that.
It hasn’t existed since like 2011? Really hard to function as a social network when your domain points at MOL’s (the company that killed Friendster) investor relations page.
Zuck: Yeah so if you ever need info about anyone at Harvard
Zuck: Just ask.
Zuck: I have over 4,000 emails, pictures, addresses, SNS
[Redacted Friend's Name]: What? How'd you manage that one?
Zuck: People just submitted it.
Zuck: I don't know why.
Zuck: They "trust me"
Zuck: Dumb fucks.
Read more: http://www.businessinsider.com/well-these-new-zuckerberg-ims-wont-help-facebooks-privacy-problems-2010-5#ixzz1LmNwfFcN
Some of the reasons are hard to know unless you know someone that worked at Friendster during that period.
Also how much of the problems were associated with what Jerry Weinberg calls "People Problems"-- which finally manifested as missed opportunities, hiring the wrong people, building out the wrong features, having the wrong trade-offs, scalability being an afterthought.
Friendster “was” a U.S. social networking site based in Mountain View, CA, founded in 2002 and launched in March 2003 by Jonathan Abrams.
The following information maybe why it's underdeveloped, NOT interesting, boring etc…The company was sold in 2015 and became a social gaming site based in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia. It was originally a social networking service website.
Because they ignored user retention and engagement. Mark exclusively spent his first 2 years on User retention.
Doesn't matter how good your product is if you don't have a strategy to make them come back you lose.
Well, I have never used friendster, but I wonder whether people could see you and comment on your posts, without actually having to visit your page to see what you are upto. If that was not the case then I presume friendster and orkut lost due to the same reasons.
I researched privacy on Facebook heavily from January 2009 through May 2010 for a senior thesis (85 pages of which you can read here if you have lots of free time: The End of Privacy as We Know It?: The Ethics of Privacy on Online Social Networks). Facebook made many mistakes in regards to user privacy, the most prominent being:
Poor Notification of Privacy Policy Changes:
When Facebook proposed a new version of its privacy policy, it expected users to vote and comment on the changes, yet it made it difficult for users to even find out that there were any proposed changes at all. Users had to
I researched privacy on Facebook heavily from January 2009 through May 2010 for a senior thesis (85 pages of which you can read here if you have lots of free time: The End of Privacy as We Know It?: The Ethics of Privacy on Online Social Networks). Facebook made many mistakes in regards to user privacy, the most prominent being:
Poor Notification of Privacy Policy Changes:
When Facebook proposed a new version of its privacy policy, it expected users to vote and comment on the changes, yet it made it difficult for users to even find out that there were any proposed changes at all. Users had to go to their messages and then to their updates to find out that anything was changing whatsoever. Users were not alerted with an interstitial or even a notification from their main newsfeed.
Contrast that with any Facebook product update, which receives a much more robust tutorial for users when they sign-in.
Complicated Profile Privacy User Experience:
In 2006, Zuckerberg said "This is the same reason we have built extensive privacy settings - to give you even more control over who you share information with". Facebook's robust privacy settings actually made it more difficult for users to execute this control. Take a look at the profile privacy settings from January 2010:
Not quite as simple and easy as uploading a photo, is it? At the time, if a user wanted to block friends from seeing his photos, he would have to change the following settings: "photos and videos of me", "photo albums" and "posts of me". If a user selected custom privacy settings, he had the option of sharing information with specific friends or groups of friends, making the process even more complicated as one would have to set up and maintain specific lists or groups of friends who could see particular information. Adding buttons, toggles and drop-down menus only complicated the experience and left users feeling like they had very little control at all. This resulted in users leaving the settings to the default public option, which was in the best interests of Facebook, not its users.
Application Privacy Issues:
At one point, Facebook gave Zynga access to some (normally private) information from friends of friends of the users that played their games - a clear privacy issue as those users never authorized Zynga to have their information. This led to many of the spammy practices Zynga was known for in its early days.
Beacon:
In 2007, Facebook launched Beacon, an advertising system that send data from external webpages to Facebook. When users would purchase from Overstock, for example, a pop-up like the one below would appear saying that Overstock was sending your purchase information to Facebook:
A user would have about ten seconds before the window would disappear. The information about the purchase would appear on a user's Facebook wall. Facebook implemented this program as opt-out only. In 2008, a class action lawsuit was filed against Facebook and the third party companies who participated in the program as personal information about users was released to these companies without a user's permission.
Besides confusing privacy issues, there are confusing copyright issues. I know they have tried to clear this up and deny they "own" everything on Facebook, but it's still difficult to understand. I still not even sure what they are!
Any ideas on what this means, I would appreciate it in human speak-
From Facebook
" you specifically give us the following permission, subject to your privacy and application settings: you grant us a non-exclusive, transferable, sub-licensable, royalty-free, worldwide license to use any IP content that you post on or in connection with Facebook "
Another big problem
Besides confusing privacy issues, there are confusing copyright issues. I know they have tried to clear this up and deny they "own" everything on Facebook, but it's still difficult to understand. I still not even sure what they are!
Any ideas on what this means, I would appreciate it in human speak-
From Facebook
" you specifically give us the following permission, subject to your privacy and application settings: you grant us a non-exclusive, transferable, sub-licensable, royalty-free, worldwide license to use any IP content that you post on or in connection with Facebook "
Another big problem is when pages have been shut down by Facebook and users have tried to contact them for help. Often these shut downs are justified but many times they aren't. Facebook is not well know for stunning customer service.
Currently there is the case with Ars Technica:
http://www.thetechherald.com/article.php/201117/7124/Unknown-copyright-claim-kills-Ars-Technica-s-Facebook-page
http://arstechnica.com/business/news/2011/04/facebook-shoots-first-ignores-questions-later-account-lock-out-attack-works.ars
Basically Facebook is a behemoth and wants what it wants.
The new focus is on gaming (having been one of the architects during the reengineering phase).
Friendster is no more.
"On June 14, 2015 Friendster, citing "...the evolving landscape in our challenging industry" and lack of engagement by the online community, suspended their service."
source: Wikipedia's entry about Friendster
Believe me - Friendster has zero growth. They have been pulling some smoke and mirrors in the media throwing big numbers and future plans around, but inside it is a mess.
A few years ago, there was a setting to control what people see about you in their newsfeed. This is removed, probably to drive more traffic/engagement. See Why doesn't Facebook let its users specify what can be seen about themselves in other people's newsfeeds?
My biggest problem is that they don't remove accounts of people who stop using Facebook. I had an early account on Facebook, deleted it, and 6 months later I tried to log back in and sure enough - up popped all that old account info and posts. They say they remove closed accounts after not being accessed for 30 days, but I personally have found that to be false.