Wallflower at the Web Party: Why Friendster Failed

[bender]

A cautionary tale from Silicon Valley

MISSED OPPORTUNITY: Friendster was ideally placed to cash in on online networking, but it all went wrong after its founder spurned an enticing offer from Google

NY TIMES NEWS SERVICE, NEW YORK
Sunday, Oct 15, 2006, Page 11

Danah Boyd, 25, a graduate student at the University of California at Berkeley, studied Friendster during its heyday, hovering above the fray with a Web log called Connected Selves and interviewing Friendster users.
PHOTO: NY TIMES NEWS SERVICE

Jonathan Abrams was in a spot. He could take the safe bet and accept the US$30 million that Google was offering him for Friendster, the social networking Web start-up he began only a year earlier, in 2002.

Saying yes to Google would provide a quick and stunning payout for relatively little work and instantly place the Friendster Web site in front of hundreds of millions of users across the globe.

But at the same time, some of the biggest names in Silicon Valley were lobbying Abrams, a computer programmer, to reject Google's offer. America Online had offered the two founders of Yahoo a few million dollars each in the mid-1990s for their Web site -- and both became billionaires because they said no.

Sell us a stake in your company for US$13 million, the advisers told Abrams, and we will help build Friendster into an online powerhouse worth hundreds of millions, if not billions, of dollars.

Abrams spurned Google's advances and charted his own course. In retrospect, he should have taken the US$30 million. If Google had paid him in stock, Abrams would easily be worth US$1 billion today, one person close to Google said.

Friendster essentially created the social networking sector three years ago by offering users a site where they could browse profiles posted by friends and the friends of friends in search of dates and playmates. But so badly did Friendster fumble its early lead that, as of last month, it ranked 14th among social networking sites tracked by comScore Media Metrix.

Why and how Friendster missed the mark is a salutary Silicon Valley tale so instructive that Mikolaj Jan Piskorski, an assistant professor at the Harvard Business School, uses the company's inglorious fall as a case study in his strategy classes.

Read the full article http://www.nytimes.com/2006/10/15/bu...38e355&ei=5070

[bender]

After reading this, i revived my myspace account. Friendster seems to be doomed. The article says that the company even almost ran out of funds. It's like the Betamax vs VHS tape format situation again. The Philippines was one of the few countries where Beta was king while the rest of the world was VHS. Friendster seems to be in the same boat as Sony with Betamax.

[BlueBimmer]

nah i'd still stick with Friendster to keep in touch with long lost classmates and friends. mas Philippine friendly sa friendster e IMO. kung babagsak e di so be it ehehe