Mark Brooks: Someone please give Friendster a good home and save it. I worked with Friendster in 2003 before starting my little consultancy, and am still shocked they were 'outfriendstered' by MySpace and Facebook. So near, and yet so far. They could have been worth $500 million by now. Coulda, woulda, shoulda…what's next in this saga? Can Friendster scratch back a decent position? Friendster hit the 'connectors' at the point of curiosity. But, curiosity killed the cat…it wasn't enough. MySpace hit the 'connectors' at their point of passion, music…and went one step further by empowering them with more means of customising their 'space.' Facebook hit the connectors at their point of pain, fear of loss of contact with their valuable alumni network. Facebook has the highest integrity network and represents the biggest 'threat' to the online dating market.
Agree about missing the connectors, but shocked? We (blogging social networking types) were telling Friendster to go after music from day one and unfortunately nobody listened. MP3.com was the clear writing on the wall for that one. That’s what hubris and VC money will do. What is the next topic that kids are passionate about after music? Friendster certainly did a good job of aping Myspace features, which admittedly looks much better than Myspace but you can’t explode out of the gate, screw up with slow servers and no innovation, embarass yourself with sequential bad marketing then throw up some features to try to re-grab market share. It hardly ever works that way.