I agree with bill. i dont think alexa’s a good source either.

I’ve read this essay a few months ago, it should be a good read for those interested. Has some things in common with the NYT article, but focuses on different aspects.

http://www.danah.org/papers/Fr.....Essay.html

“As the number of people in Shuzak (the name of our social network) increase, it will become easier for us to implement our own ad system which will target ads based on user habits rather than the content on their profiles.”

Wow, what a thrilling website name….Shuzak. That’ll really ring off the ol’ tongue the next time I’m drinking. “Hey, you on Shuzak? No. What the fuck is Shuzak.”

Friendster, now that was a cool name.

Last month I wrote about who I think would be the perfect acquirer of Friendster — IAC (which owns Evite, among many other recognized web brands). IAC lacks a social networking website in their portfolio and this acquisition would make so much sense for Friendster (breathe new life into them and expose the company’s service to millions of daily users if integrated — or splashed — on IAC’s other property sites). As for IAC, it would allow them to create a user community around all of their properties. In my opinion, they take a chapter out of the pages of what MyBlogLog is doing and build out Friendster to become a distributed social networking website that any website could easily integrate, allowing any website to tap into Friendster’s userbase and easily create a community amongst their visitors.

And Jawad I just visited your site.

It sucks.

But that giving Karma idea…..totally brilliant. I completely applaud your creative abilities. I think if we were to meet in person I would get goosebumps because I would be in the presence of the next Einstein.

“Reality must smack even harder just after the blockbuster deal in which Google agreed to pay $1.65 billion for YouTube, the video-sharing Web site that has yet to celebrate its first anniversary”

–don’t they have any fact checkers at the NYT?

if we look at the Youtube acquisition, looks like Google is aligning its resources to devouring a lot more social networking sites. So if you are still planning to hit the jackpot, launch your sites ASAP

Gregg, you are right. Youtube was started back in Feb 2005.

Juwad wrote:

We are creating a social network for geeks, political, military, business oriented people. In my opinion it is a niche market that has yet to be dominated.

WTF?? a network for geeks , political, military..etc etc….what about the healthcare professionals and the amature athletes and the religious zealots? why stop there, let’s add the homeless vets and 3-legged dogs.

I like how you’ve highjacked this comments board to spam about your site.

TechCrunch should be sued for illegal used of commercial artwork without giving credit to the artist.

what a disgrace.

After being a loyal friendster and myspace user I decided to build my own social network. Its going to be amazing, social network for people that build social networks…I call it kaka.com

HAHA, I love how the article mentioned myyearbook.com, which the article states was started by a high school student. WHAT DUMB PEOPLE WE HAVE IN THE MEDIA THESE DAYS!!

I’m an attorney, very intelligent one! Here is the secret behind MFB for the, oh not so intelligent. myFaceBook.com was started by a 27 yrs old guy. In order to get publicity for his website, he recruited his younger bro and sis and presented them as the founders of the website. In actuality, the guy’s younger siblings are such dumb freaks that they probably can’t even use a computer.

But I have to give it to the older bro though! He planned this thing perfectly and got tons of media exposure. Damn, I don’t have any younger siblings. But i do have a 9 months old nephew. Perhaps I’ll present him as the founder of my next website. Wow, that would make some headlines: “Founder of ________ Crawled His Way to Success.”

Apologies. In my previous comment, I referred to myyearbook as myfacebook. My mistake. Gosh, I guess I’m not as intelligent as I thought I was.

I tell you… Friendster is ’spamming’ me with irritating ads. Just the other day I went on for a quick look. I wanted to search for someone and guess what….Before I could get the results, I was redirected to another page. A full page ad. And the ad was about how to make money the quick and easy way. “Buy this sure earn solution!!!” That is for sure a spam scam. I can’t believe Friendster is so desperate. It used to be fun to see how all my friends were connected. Now it is just a sad side in my book.

When some is giving you $30 please take it, don’t get greedy not every one can do what Yahoo! did.

Kind of off topic, but I’ve found that anyone that calls themself intelligent usually isn’t.

the best part of the friendster article is the quote by mark pincus..pincus is the strangest quoted guy on the internet and in social networking and he did what…tribe…right, way to go mark….and you are critical of friendster!!!!

Joe, I’m an exception to the rule :-))

Everytime someone creates a new social networking site, God kills a kitten.

^ lol

My observation of the current state of “social networking” - a gazillion sites that do pretty much the same thing (sure some say we target the teen demographic while others state that they target the 30’s demographic, etc.) - leads me to believe that there is a fundamental problem / error that needs to be addressed by the majority of respective founders.

Namely, it seems that most sites derive their etiological origin from (1) “how do we make a lot of money really fast as opposed to (2) “how do we solve a problem that is causing a lot of ‘pain’ for a number of people.”

(I once heard it said that if you try to compete with Google on a product that their employees / engineers use everyday themselves, you might as well give up, because they will beat you. However, if you compete with Google on a product that their employees do not use on a routine basis, and you use it frequently to solve a problem that plaques you, your chances of succes are exponentially higher.)

Point being … if a social networking site is being developed to “make money,” the “directors / power people” will not be sufficiently cognitive of the environmental dynamics that will drive users to their site - generate “traction.” If a social networking site is being developed that addresses a present “pain” that is felt by a number of individuals, it will generate “traction” with little effort - the “viral” effect.

In short, I hope all the developers of new social networking sites the best. Unfortunately, it seems that most will fail to get off the ground becuase most are being driven by a desire to make a quick buck as opposed to solve a “pain” - and just to be clear, their is ample “pain” yet to be attenuated that could drive the growth of any number of sites. (I’ll bet most “founders” will respond by stating a “pain” that they are trying to address, but deep down, they realize that their “desire for a quick buck” is the true “master.)

My 2c.

Good comments folks.

So doe anyone have any specific ideas of “what real-world problem is causing pain for people”?

Susan a, I’ll be purposely vague, but hope this helps.

MySpace (”first generation sites”) was driven by the “pain” of wanting to hook up with hot chicks, whereas FaceBook (”second generation sites”) was driven by the “pain” of not wanting your boss / mom seeing all of your wild photos of you partying / drunk. (I’m being very general as I’m quite cognizant that their are a host of other “pains” that both “first generation” and “second generation” sites address.)

Nonetheless, here are a couple of “pains” yet to be addressed. (1) Unfortunately, we do not live our “social lives” in one dimention. In other words, for the most part, when a “friend” visits your page, they are able to see all of your other friends. (2) Humans are only able to keep close tabs on groups as long as they stay under 150 people … nonetheless, we can manage a number of groups. (You’ve gotta be kidding me if you think individuals can keep current with all 3000 of their friends on MySpace / Facebook.)

A couple things to note:

- The average age of a user of MySpace.com is 33.
- Friendster went from Java to PHP.
- Friendster created middleware that would take user data from a user profile and give those words to Google AdWords to create relevant ads.
- The author of the NYTimes story (the story is also available on News.com without having to register) was more or less looking for dirt to create a sensationalized story. It clearly worked.

Great article. I wonder how the industry would change if the true stories of what went on behind the scenes at many of this companies often got more mainstream coverage. Even more interesting to me was comparing this article to the previous NYT article on Friendster - http://www.emaildashboard.com/....._cove.html

Friendster? Might as well you run your own blog, rather than having these information supplied to 3rd-party sources.

I gotta say, if I was in his position back then I might not have sold my site either. Hindsight is 20/20 and his hindsight saw Google and eBay holding out and being worth much more than their initial valuations.

It’s a shame really, that by seeking out the investment he had to give up so much control to an obviously clueless board of directors. I say clueless in that they had no idea what to make of Friendster, even though they were immensely successful with previous projects. I guess it goes to show that you can’t rest on your laurels… you have to remain current and innovative.

Coming from the perspective of one who is working on his first startup with a budgest equivalent to the money these board members spend on breakfast crumpets, I found this story oddly motivational. It proves that you can have the best minds and all the money in the world at your fingertips but if you lose your true vision and place your customers as an afterthought, it’s won’t get you anywhere. Sure, I won’t have the marketing budget to gain instant global exposure, but that forces me to tax my brain on other options. And other options there are.

Great post!

Friendster is still a great way to meet chicks. Thats what my friend does and thats what founder Jonathan Abrams did. So its still a cool service.

When I heard that a lot of my friends were using Friendster, I thought about signing up too. But they’d always complain about the sudden changes and upgrades of the profile page. Plus the slowness. So I was like, hey, that sucks. But I still signed up inspite of myself. Luckily when I started using it I didn’t experience such things. I even got to personalize my profile without encountering any problems, until now. I mean, I’ve spent a lot of time upgrading my profile so I could promote it to my friends and then what happened next? Friendster came up with a new profile format. And I don’t even know how to edit the new profile page! Man, that sucks!

trish stratus topless

http://myblog.es/trish-stratus

Since wen i came here in the US…
Itz been a long time since i havent seen mah frwends back in the philippines
Bout 4 years now…(sigh)
But then i heard about Frienster….
So i joined….nd OMG….
I didnt kno there were lotz of Filipinos there..like meh…
I waz surprised i saw lotz of my frwendz der….
Friendster iz the BOMB!!!

wish is my all friendster clan is ejoy ur chat mate hehehe ^_^sana maging matatag p ung relationship ng bawat isa

ang ganda q talaga hehehe ^_^ sana may bf aq pag naglaro me mamaya pa add naman po?soul_switheart@yahoo.com p add po mga kuya hehehe^^i luv u to all friendster muwhahahaha

dedicated to all loving care^-^ hahaahhahaahha
wish a upon the star are blind