What happened to Friendster?

Friendster, which was a precursor to social networking sites like Facebook and Myspace, faced significant challenges that led to its decline despite its early potential. According to Jonathan Abrams, the founder of Friendster, the site experienced a turbulent period characterized by high turnover in leadership, with six CEOs in six years. This instability, along with key strategic and technical missteps, hindered Friendster's ability to capitalize on its initial popularity. The company struggled with a poorly performing website during crucial periods of user growth, which led to user dissatisfaction and a subsequent migration to better-performing platforms like MySpace 1.

Adding to the internal challenges were findings by Safi Bahcall, who noted that Friendster's failure was primarily not due to its business model but instead to technical issues. The platform, despite being plagued by glitches and frequent crashes, was revealing significant user engagement—a fact overlooked by many observers at the time. This misinterpretation suggested that while Friendster had substantial user engagement, the users' experiences were compromised by the technical problems 2.

For more about the lessons learned from Friendster’s experience and the impact of being first in the market, you can listen to the entire discussion on the Venture Unlocked: The playbook for venture capital managers in the Jonathan Abrams, 8-Bit Capital: Learnings from founding and running Friendster, Defining "Founder Friendly", going from Angel to full-time VC.