Using Friendster

Unfortunately, by the end of 2003, the exponential growth was revealed as only the beginning of a series of difficulties for the company, and what ultimately became literally the case study for how not to manage a business.

Troubled Times in a Sea of Data

The difficulties with the load on the servers translated to the users having to wait longer and longer for their pages to load. Still, with a seemingly endless source of venture funding and lots of great publicity, Abrams was very confident that his teams of engineers could fix the problems and make the customers happy and, ultimately, the company profitable. He was so confident, in fact, that in October of 2003 he turned down a $30 million buyout offer from Google in favor of what he saw as the potential for billions down the road.

The troubles with Friendster were more than just with the software, though. Differences in direction and management style on the Board of Directors caused a series of setbacks, including development halting for six months while the code was re-written and four different CEOs in the next two years. In 2006, Friendster servers were still showing delays, and worse, competition from other copycat social networking sites was getting worse. MySpace and Facebook were soon vying for top social network, and Friendster slipped to thirteenth, with a .03 percent market share.

Still Kickin'

While it never lived up to the potential that it promised, using Friendster as a viable platform for social networking is still the choice of over 50 million users. It is immensely popular throughout Asia and it has begun to offer many of the features such as video sharing and other applications like its competing social networks.

What are the Benefits of Using Friendster?

All of the core features of Friendster remain:

1. Keep in touch with your friends.
2. Reconnect as old friends and acquaintances join the online world.
3. Find out about their friends, and stay in touch with them.
4. Create a personalized profile, with photos, a blog, and more applications being added.

To begin using Friendster, simply fill out some personal information. Most people use their real name, since the purpose of the site is to connect with real people. The site will then use your computer's address book to find out which of your friends are already on Friendster.

Inviting friends to join, using a simple and very private invitation (Friendster would not sell information to spammers) is very easy, and in the signup process, you can automate it. Once this is done, there's nothing left in the basic setup but to upload your picture and fill out the aspects of your profile that you want people to know about, such as the schools, interests, favorite books and movies, other sites.

In the original version, this was enough to entice millions of people into using Friendster. Now that other social networking sites have added functionality, however, there's also space for "My Apps."

Using Friendster for Fun and Profit

Apps leverage the connections formed with Friendster into a more robust tool for connecting, which makes the site useful for organizing and publicizing events, causes, bands, writers – anything that benefits from interactivity.

Some examples of the categories that Friendster apps are organized by include:

• Slideshows and Photos
• Just for Fun
• Entertainment
• Games
• News and Information
• Sports
• TV Shows
• Video
• Music

With a toolbox like this at the users' disposal, the Friendster team seems to be learning not only from the mistakes of the past but also from the successes of its competitors. Whether it remains an independent platform or is bought by some other new media giant, its place in the annals of the Internet is assured as the harbinger of the social media revolution.