Friendster Back from the Dead?

garzpacho writes "With a fresh infusion of $10 million in funding, Friendster is making a bid to rejoin the social networking A-list. The cash, from VC firm DAG Ventures, accompanies plans for a complete project redesign, a focus on adult users and a newly awarded patent for social networking. A real comeback might be unlikely, though: 'Turnaround stories for companies that draw on advanced Web technology known collectively as Web 2.0 remain unprecedented, says David Sze, a general partner at Greylock who specializes in consumer Internet companies but does not invest in Friendster. Still, Sze says Friendster doesn't need to have a MySpace-size traffic explosion to turn a profit. Says Sze in an e-mail, 'If those users are reasonably valuable and monetizable, I think [investors] can make money on their investment.''"

Comments

Friendster.. I remember them.

[demonic-halo]

I still have an account on there. I really like their birthday reminders, lets me know which friends to avoid so I don't end up having to buy them birthday gifts.

Windows 3.1 making a comeback as well

[xintegerx]

Why buy Windows every year when you can buy Windows 3.1 on eBay for the cheap? It has everything except DirectX for games, or the ability to run .NET and Office 2003 applications, but so does Linux.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VBNBQRXvkps

(This is a joke)

Blah.

[Rob T Firefly]

If I get hold of a once-marketable name, slap some "Web 2.0" style buzzwords on it, and do some patent-trolling, can I have $10 million in venture capital too?

Re:Blah.

[Red Flayer]

If I get hold of a once-marketable name, slap some "Web 2.0" style buzzwords on it, and do some patent-trolling, can I have $10 million in venture capital too?

Yes. Yes you can. In the last version it was all ".com" and "web" and "online." Now it's Web 2.0. There's a sucker born every minute, and apparently some of those suckers are too young to remember the 90s.

Between the lines:

[theCat]

"With our patent on social networking, we really don't need traffic at all. Maybe just enough to have a claim to *be* a valid site so that we can extort... erm... exercise our patent rights with actual... erm... other social networks that have beat us to the... erm... violated our intellectual property at the expense of our feckless... erm... creative leadership."

Re:Between the lines:

[colmore]

This is an interesting software patent case.

If we're going on the assumption that *any* software is patentable (I don't believe this, but the courts do, so that's where we are) then web software in particular is problematic. Where does software design end and business plan begin? Friendster seems as close as web software gets to the 19th century idea of "by twiddling this pressure valve my mill is 80% more efficient" patent. There might be precedents, obviously other sites have allowed users to make connections with other users before, but the main idea of having those connections and a profile be the PRIMARY feature of the site does strike me as innovative. In early 2003 if you were in a community that latched onto friendster (I was hanging around with a bunch of New York City collegiate hipsters) it definitely had the feel of something brand new.

Of course it also illustrates the problem with software patents. Friendster had a good idea and a brief monopoly by being first, but they ignored feature requests, failed to upgrade their servers as demand increased, and dropped the ball in a number of other ways. They lost their market share fair and square to newer and better sites -- their users mostly moved to facebook, and a newer younger market took up myspace -- had they had an enforceable patent at the time, this competition wouldn't have occured. I think it's hard to take an objective stance and say that a patent would have helped the market here.

Lack of interest.

[jellomizer]

I think I was speak for most slashdotters with "Meh". I am still hoping for Pets.com to get back with Web 2.0.

Re:Lack of interest.

[mmkkbb]

It isn't pets.com but it's close.

How long until?

[shr3k]

How long until we have a repeat of the IM wars? One network is going to want to be compatible with another network, but can't because that network won't open up its protocols. One network might even join forces and share compatibility with other networks (e.g., Friendster, Facebook) to take on one giant, established network (Myspace).

Hopefully, someone will come out with some kind of meta-network that lets me join each network and keeps up-to-date a basic compatibility (e.g., like GAIM and Trillian do for IM).

Re:How long until?

[generic-man]

AIM is to Jabber as Friendster is to XFN. Like Jabber, XFN would work great if anyone actually used it.

Friendster is great, but

[drgroove]

Friendster is great, but, though I personally traffic it more than MySpace, I'll never pay to use it (or allow myself to be nickel-and-dimed for using features within it), nor will I click on any ads featured within it. Frankly, I don't see how monetization of Friendster is possible; even those of my colleagues who are "hard core" Friendster users (i.e., visiting the site daily, frequent message/picture posting, etc) have no intention of paying for the service. Too many free options exist outside of Friendster for this approach to be successful; users will simply flock to the next "free" (as in beer) social networking service should Friendster become too heavily monetized.

I think they're doomed.

Re:They're going to have a hard time

[ConsumerOfMany]

All they have to do is call it Frienstr. Once you lose the e at the end, its web 2.0 gold.

Re:They're going to have a hard time

[virtuald]

Don't forget about adding a 'beta' to the end of the name as well. Also, integrating an AJAX-driven GUI will help them incentivize dynamic value from their resulting rss-driven communities.

(thanks to the Web 2.0 bullshit generator)

Please come back. Please. We miss you. Please..

[SuperBanana]

I still have an account on there. I really like their birthday reminders

I get a kick out of Friendster because I get emails saying I haven't logged in "in a while" and how great it would be if I logged in. Friends get the same emails, and we all ignore them, because friendster had/has nothing to offer beyond a popularity contest. I grew out of worrying how MANY friends I had years ago.

We agreed it was like a desperate ex...popping up every once in a while, telling you how nice it'd be to hear from you...

Wanna compete with myspace?

[British]

It's easy, Friendster, just do what your competitors can't do.

1. Quit having unexpected errors every 10 minutes
2. Actual search functions that allow exact matches, etc. Not a fake search engine that returns everything.
3. No huge influx of Brazilian users
4. Don't allow customization of pages to the point of saturating a T1 connection upon viewing.
5. Actual active moderators(in message boards, etc).
6. No spyware-deploying ads.
7. No private profiles. No purpose of a private profile on a social networking site.
8. No orkut-like invite system. No new user filtration like facebook has.
9. And the big one: no spambots allowed. Captchas, ACTIVE IP banning, and numerous other defenses. Myspace is losing the war on this.

If Friendster can set a solid ground with doing the above, maybe they can get some converts from those who are tired of myspace's problems.

Re:Wanna compete with myspace?

[Cyberhawk]

What's the problem with the influx of Brazilian users?

Ok, I am Brazilian and I know very well that Orkut and "flog" sites are annoying as hell, putting into account the exaggerated number of teenagers-with-lots-of-free-time-with-nothing-bett er-to-do-than-surfing. But the problem is not about them being Brazilian, is it?

MySpace is full of teens, all (or the grand majority) from America, and suffers from the same problems that every other successful social site does: the average user sucks.

That's a whole other issue, and one that does not care about the nationality. Reddit had a post this week in which someone complained about the drop of quality in posted content. The simple explanation would be the same: crappy average user. And as far as I know, reddit is still dominated by american users.

In short: America, say hello to globalization and its exotic creatures.