The story of Friendster's failure. By way of illustration, the people involved all blame each other for the debacle. I've gotta say, I loved watching Friendster fail...they were the poster child for stupid dot com companies during a time when that crap was all supposed to have been flushed down the toilet. "At MySpace, they rode the wave instead of fighting it [as Friendster did], and encouraged users to do pretty much as they pleased."
Cory Arcangel is committing Friendster Suicide tonight at The Believer Dec/Jan issue launch party at PS1. You can also follow along at home: "Friendster me sometime before [the performance], and around 8:40 EST on Thursday(ish), I assume if you keep reloading your browser window on Friendster, I think I will simply disappear from your friend list." Antisocial networking.
Needy software
Found this in my inbox the other day:
From: friendster@mail.friendster.com
Subject: Friendster Misses You
Date: October 30, 2005 11:09:14 AM EST
I guess when your software is social and everyone it used to hang around with spends all their time with other software, it can get a little clingy. Are drunken late-night messages next?
From: friendster@mail.friendster.com
Subject: Friendster Loves You So Much. You Were The Only One Who Really Ever Understood Friendster. Could You Come Over Right Now? Friendster Just Wants To Talk. Why Don't You Want To Talk To Friendster? It'll Be Different This Time, Friendster Promises. Please Call Friendster.
Date: November 23, 2005 02:49:14 AM EST
Friendster has a new feature...you can tell who has looked at your profile (feature is on by default and you can turn it off...if you're even aware of it in the first place). If I still used Friendster (not that I ever really did), I'm not sure how I would feel about this. On the one hand, you can tell if someone's interested in you (that guy you just met at the bar found your page as soon as he got home), but on the other hand, you might not want the girl you have a crush on to know you're obsessively reloading her page to check for updates. (Also, imagine if they added this to LiveJournal...)
