Friendster Recapitalized

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1. Jack
   

   February 2nd, 2006 at 12:54 am

   Thought I’d give the site a look after this post. I guess they need the money but their on site advertising is amazingly intrusive. The first page proper I got to made a big pop up appear in the middle of the screen.

   It’s a bit like having a man with a sandwich board in the cupboard under the stairs. Faced with advertising so ‘in your face’ you probably wouldn’t go there again.

   I haven’t been able to get to the vacuum cleaner for months….

2. Ken
   

   February 2nd, 2006 at 5:29 am

   Everyone is on MySpace

3. James J.
   

   February 2nd, 2006 at 7:10 am

   I don’t think there is anything Friendster can do to get back in the game. They are considered “uncool” now and that is hard, if not impossible, to overcome.

4. Zoli Erdos
   

   February 2nd, 2006 at 7:34 am

   I still could not confirm if news of Friendster founder Jonathan Abram’s new gig, Socializr is true.. or was it just a prank as I suspect.

5. Brian Breslin
   

   February 2nd, 2006 at 9:33 am

   sounds to me like too little too late. amazon should buy them up for a couple mil, and let their engineers do whatever they want with it.
   make it an expensive experiment.

6. John F.
   

   February 2nd, 2006 at 10:02 am

   Friendster would need a complete revamp in order to try to make a comeback. Aside from the annoying ad’s, the tried too hard to implement all of their extra features to be competitive. Their design is simple unbearable now with all the clutter.

   Myspace on the other end, needs to get with it. No one bothered to make sure they were scalable, because it is slow, buggy, and has grown too big for it’s britches.

7. Megan
   

   February 2nd, 2006 at 10:22 am

   The thing with these kinds of sites is that it’s all about who’s on them… I use myspace to find old friends from highschool etc. because theres a good chance they will be on there due to it’s popularity. Myspace is starting to suck though, last time I signed in it went to a page that was nothing but an ad that you have to click “skip” to get past. What an annoying pain in the ass. Friendster probably won’t make a comeback unless myspace hands it to them which it seems to be considering.

8. Ivan Pope
   

   February 2nd, 2006 at 10:47 am

   ‘not many companies can claim to have John Doerr, Bob Kagle, Jeffrey Katz, Tim Koogle and Roger Lee on their board.’

   Looks like that may be the problem, not the solution. Too many cooks …

9. Ricky
   

   February 2nd, 2006 at 10:47 am

   if myspace does not improve its site Tagworld will probably get big. I currently use myspace because all my friends are on it but i don’t like it at all. They have a bug in their “search through your own buddy list” from last year that never was fixed. And half the time i want to log in, i can’t.

10. Andrew
    

    February 2nd, 2006 at 10:52 am

    Agree with the above comments - it appears that both Friendster and MySpace were poorly engineered. MySpace broke in the first 5 minutes after I signed up, and Friendster is horribly slow and cluttered.

    Unfortunately I don’t think social networking sites like these are sustainable. After the initial thrill of signing up and adding some new friends, I bet most users just check it briefly once a day, and don’t browse enough to make use of an ad network. The only real value is entertainment, and that quickly wears off.

11. mo
    

    February 2nd, 2006 at 10:52 am

    frienster = R.I.P.

    what i can’t believe is that these VCs will fork over 10+ mill to a dead entity without blinking. how many great startups out there could use that money?

    the problem with friendster is that it is no longer cool. sites like myspace, xanga, hi5, linkIn, etc, etc, have better features and more members.

    the coffee shop down the road can’t slap on a new coat of paint and expect new customers. are these VCs actually paying 10+ mill for the name, planning to gut the kitchen and start new?

12. josh
    

    February 2nd, 2006 at 10:54 am

    It’s a prelude to the SN bubble burst, with no clear focus which target audience.

    Surprising to find BV on the list.

13. Ricky
    

    February 2nd, 2006 at 11:23 am

    I have to disagree with Andrew. Social networking sites are for real. I know TONS of people who check their myspace EVERY day. I even have friends who will spend hours on it. Whether the VCS start over with Friendster and are able to regain popularity, MySpace fixes their bug problems, or TagWorld can catch on, someone will be very rich.

14. Stevo
    

    February 2nd, 2006 at 12:50 pm

    Um, I kind of LIKE Friendster. They’ve got a lot of work though.
    MySpace is really a teen site. Being over 25 on MySpace (I’ll admit it, I’m both) feels weird.

15. Mitch
    

    February 2nd, 2006 at 12:52 pm

    I’d love to see a “what Friendster should do now” list, like Michael’s great “Products I’d like to Cover” list.

16. NickD
    

    February 2nd, 2006 at 1:23 pm

    Although they have gone through a revamp and started censoring, I think Tibe.net is the best social networking site, but not from a mass market perspective. It just has smarter users on it, but not nearly as many as MySpace.

17. JD
    

    February 2nd, 2006 at 2:37 pm

    long live tribe

18. sillyrabbit
    

    February 2nd, 2006 at 3:38 pm

    Social networking sites seems to either be about utility (find jobs, find dates, find a plumber) or wasting time (find people you don’t know to say random things to). The ones w/utility will develop user pops in direct relation to the size of the problem they solve. The ones about wasting time will come and go with the tides of fashion/hipness - Friendster, MySpace, door number 3.

19. Yves
    

    February 2nd, 2006 at 3:52 pm

    Thumbs down for Friendster..
    GROU.PS is far from being mature but it is my new favourite in social networking sites..

20. MrRabin
    

    February 2nd, 2006 at 4:31 pm

    Maybe they should rename themselves “Friend.st.er” so they can be cool like a Web 2.0 firm?

21. Brian Breslin
    

    February 2nd, 2006 at 8:40 pm

    does the fact that myspace is “music oriented” even matter? i use their site, not every day (i know some who visit 2-3x a day), but i could care less about the music function… i think their popularity lies in their flexibility.

22. Jeb
    

    February 2nd, 2006 at 10:57 pm

    I’d like to see Friendster make an API for other sites to determine the distance between Person A and Person B.

    Like Craigslist or review sites could show you content by people in your Friendster (and hopefully other) network(s). Friendster could charge for this and make real money, even if they never sign up another user.

    Why are Yelp and InsiderPages trying to boil the ocean when history shows things get de-coupled?

23. Tantek
    

    February 3rd, 2006 at 2:26 pm

    Meanwhile, in contrast to a lot of these centralized sites like Friendster, Tribe etc., take a look at the growing XFN (XHTML Friends Network: http://gmpg.org/xfn/ ) distributed social network.

    David Berlind made the prediction of a transition to XFN in “Will social databases give way to social protocols?” [ http://blogs.zdnet.com/Berlind/index.php?p=30 ], and Google’s recent Markup Study found that XFN was “the most popular HTML metadata profile! [ http://code.google.com/webstat.....aders.html ]

    Anybody with a site/blog/etc. can join [ http://gmpg.org/xfn/join ] XFN, and the easiest way is to start a Wordpress.com blog (which comes with XFN support built-in) and add your friends and contacts to your blogroll.

    However the biggest strength of XFN is that there are already thousands (if not hundreds of thousands) of sites that are connected in the XHTML Friends Network and it doesn’t matter if any one site goes away, unlike centralized sites which all share this weakness (years ago SixDegrees.com disappeared without a trace, will Friendster follow suit in a few months or year or two?).

24. Sensei555
    

    February 8th, 2006 at 8:29 pm

    As far as functionality, I think that long term success depends on how well the design produces a sense of community. These site focus on the client getting their friends to sign up so they can commune, and so the site gets clients to do their advertising for them. Then they focus on trying to keep you on your computer and on the site.

    But community will flourish if you can get people together more. For that, you beef up your subject groups, and localized events areas. Craigslist is popular without all the bells and whistles of beautiful design or annoying popups, I think, precisely because it focuses on localities and giving people what they need to walk away from the computer and into friendship.

    I only started looking into on-line friendship sites because a co-worker said he could go on craigslist and say he was going to go to this cafe in a few hours and wanted to know if anyone wanted to meet and chat for a while over a cup of coffee. He’d get a response in a 20 minutes or so, they’d check out each others’ profile and say okay. I thought, great! Tai chi in the park anyone? How about open mic night? What’s the best chinese food around here?

    Make a site like that and I’ll pay monthly and sign on daily.

25. lekkie
    

    February 10th, 2006 at 9:07 pm

    The fact is..that most Americans or Europeans are the ones who use Myspace. Friendster users are mostly Asians. I’v heard a most of my friends say that Myspace is so complicated and cluttered…then there are my other friends who say that Friendster is so cluttered and slow..depends on who’s using which social network. I’ve only got five friends who use Myspace..and they hardly even use it coz they say Friendster is better. Most of my friends use Friendster..and so do I. All my highschool classmates use friendster…that’s why it’s so damn cool.. and if you say it’s cluttered..so what..the main thing is.. I get to talk to my friends and get socialize with them…damn..Friendster is gonna last..

26. Migs
    

    February 10th, 2006 at 11:09 pm

    Friendster is big here (Philippines) - see Wired News, We’re a Hit in Manila! Now What? They bought a local company and are building an a system.

27. Nin-nin
    

    February 22nd, 2006 at 12:34 am

    I use Friendster to keep in touch with my friends and family in the Philippines because they all use it. I live in Australia and many of my friends have never even heard of Friendster and this is the first time I’ve used it. I just hope that Friendster is able to hang in there.. MABUHAY FRIENDSTER!

28. WO~最淘气
    

    May 5th, 2006 at 12:48 am

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29. WO~最淘气
    

    May 5th, 2006 at 12:50 am

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30. Steve L.
    

    May 21st, 2006 at 11:01 am

    Were do i find some new MS layouts?

    Thanks,
    Steve

31. safarini
    

    May 31st, 2006 at 2:22 am

    I hope Ican find a good friendster to be my friend

32. denise
    

    June 15th, 2006 at 3:56 am

    hope can find frends

33. nick
    

    August 23rd, 2006 at 12:50 am

    i have my space account but i hate using it. friends of mine are using friendster and it offers lots of stuff than the other.that is only my opinion…. but all i can say is friendster is easy and friendly to use.

34. hannah
    

    October 7th, 2006 at 2:01 am

    goin 2 gay