Wallflower at the Web Party details the rise and fall of Friendster. Though there’s a lot of finger pointing in the story, there’s also a lot to learn from the site’s bust. Some excerpts:
Founder Jonathan Abrams vows to never again accept a dime in venture capital.
Mr. Abrams believed that he had developed a sound business plan for building Friendster into an Internet powerhouse — and that the plan foundered when his well-known investors shoved him aside and proceeded to mess everything up…’Jonathan had all these high-powered investors to please. He had all this money in the bank, so there was all this pressure to hire people and get things done. Open up new territories: China, Japan, Germany. Add all these new features. Meantime, he took his eye off the ball.’
The company spent too much time worrying about new features instead of the poor performance of its existing site:
As Friendster became more popular, its overwhelmed Web site became slower. Things would become so bad that a Friendster Web page took as long as 40 seconds to download…[Yet] technical difficulties proved too pedestrian for a board of this pedigree. The performance problems would come up, but the board devoted most of its time to talking about potential competitors and new features, such as the possibility of adding Internet phone services, or so-called voice over Internet protocol, or VoIP, to the site.
And they made the mistake of trying to solve exciting potential problems instead of real mundane ones.
In retrospect, Mr. Lindstrom said, the company needed to devote all of its resources to fixing its technological problems. But such are the appetites of companies fixated on growing into multibillion-dollar behemoths. They seek to run even before they can walk. “Friendster was so focused on becoming the next Google,” Professor Piskorski said, “that they weren’t focused on fixing the more mundane problems standing in the way of them becoming the next Google.”
More mistake stories:
Evan Williams: How Odeo Screwed Up
Actual lessons from Kiko
The top five mistakes entrepreneurs make when they market
Paul Graham’s list of 18 mistakes
Dennis Eusebio
on 17 Oct 06Actually starting a service based on this concept. Check back in a couple months.
jim
on 17 Oct 06He’s also picked up a job at the Department of Redundancy Department
Frank 'viperteq' Young
on 17 Oct 06You know, I read that story in New York Times about Friendster and when I read that part about him not taking any VC money again, I about choked on my coffee.
After all of this time, Abrams still refuses to accept the part that he played in the downfall of Friendster: He wasn’t a strong enough C.E.O.; Had he been a little more resilient in his leadership of the company, the board would’ve never replaced him and put someone else in charge of the company who didn’t know what they were doing.
Yes the V.C.’s played a major part in the what went wrong, but the starting domino lays with Abrams and until he accepts that and makes moves to rectify that, none of his ventures will eve be successful. I think studying how bad a C.E.O. you were is the greatest mistake to learn from.
Dave
on 17 Oct 06It’s interesting reading about Kiko. One of the problems we’ve had is in trying to reduce cute hacks (from point #3) we think out farther which introduces problems with getting sidetracked on new ideas (from point #1). Especially since new stuff is much much cooler then cleaning up old stuff.
If chris is reading this #2 is definitely not a problem bud ;)
Murali
on 17 Oct 06One more,though very generic one. Paul Graham’s “The 18 Mistakes that kill startups” here : http://www.paulgraham.com/startupmistakes.html
Sean
on 17 Oct 06I’m surprised that MySpace is so successful given its horrid design, usability, and performance problems. I can’t stay on that site for any longer than 5 minutes before I get frustrated with delays, errors, and difficulty using various features. What is MySpace doing that makes it so much more successful than Friendster?
Mike McDermetn
on 17 Oct 06Mistakes are where the learning is at. No need for them to kill you, so long as you don’t string a bunch together. Sounds like Friendster strung a bunch together…
werner
on 17 Oct 06In the context of SvN I think the following quote is equally important, pointing to the root of their engineering problems:
Joe
on 17 Oct 06Interesting article, although I think its pre-mature to write off Friendster as a failure. It may be in the eyes of VC’s, who are always looking for the “next greatest thing”, but it certainly has a userbase that still updates it (MySpace has a reputation for pedophiles that actually keep some people away from it). Friendster certainly could re-make itself.
All of this is interesting to watch, however.
Joe Grossberg
on 17 Oct 06You miss the biggest one of all: discouraging innovative users.
Per the article:
MySpace, for better or worse, lets people do all kinds of stuff that Friendster never would: customizable designs, embedded media, humorous and risque photos, users that weren’t “people” in the strict sense (e.g. bands).
Friendster has always been sterile, restrictive and stern—i.e. not the least bit “social”.
I can’t help but wonder how successful a third approach would have been—instead of permitting (MySpace) or forbidding (Friendster) creativity, actually encouraging it by making skinning easy, providing an API, etc.
James Collins
on 17 Oct 06If only Mr. Abrams had read “Getting Real”, eh? Oopsie.
brad
on 17 Oct 06While I know next to nothing about what it’s like to be a CEO with a bunch of venture capitalists breathing down my neck, I agree with Frank Young. A CEO needs to be able to push back and say no to investors who try to call the shots. You have to be clear with them at the outset that you’re running the company, and that while you’ll consider their suggestions you’re going to make your own decisions. If they’re not comfortable with that, then you don’t want them as investors. You have to hire investors like you hire employees. You don’t say to every prospective employee, “oh, you want to work for me? Wow, you’re hired!” Likewise, you have to pick investors you can work with. If they’re micromanagers or if you sense that they’re not going to give you some trust, you’re going to regret taking their money.
Sammy
on 17 Oct 06snark on
From the quoted text:
Maybe they just read the “Scale Later” chapter one too many times?
snark off
pwb
on 17 Oct 06It may be tempting to use this as an example of not planning a scalable architecture in the beginning but this couldn’t be further from the truth. Fact is, Friendster stopped all development on the core system for many months while it readied a brand new system from scratch. All it needed to do was make some modifications to the existing system and it would have scaled fine (for example, caching “My Friends”).
Andy
on 17 Oct 06You’re starting a business based on learning from your mistakes, Dennis?
Killian
on 17 Oct 06MySpace is succesfull because people can easily post music to a personal site viewable by people who don’t have to sign up… When is the last time you heard of a budding musician withOUT a MySpace page?
Kristine
on 17 Oct 06Is this MySpace reign due to the ability to bring the design aesthetic down to the lowest common denominator? Or is it because Abrams is simply getting what he deserves?
Nonetheless, I still have hope for Friendster. And, Jonathan: take my advice and, next time, take some advice.
Christopher Fahey
on 17 Oct 06Performance problems led to Friendster’s downfall—is that a new insight? I thought that was the conventional wisdom.
It rings true with me: I think the fourth time I visited the site in as many days only to see a “site busy, come back later” message basically was a dealbreaker. I’d imaging tens of thousands (millions?) of others felt the same.
Dennis
on 17 Oct 06Don’t want to give out all the info yet, Andy. It does involve “mistakes” though. If anyone is interested in wanting to test it out soon then just send an email to dennis[at]thoughtandtheory.com.
Sorry for posting this on the comments, don’t want people to think this is spam.
Also, one last thing I wanted to add to the conversation, the one thing that really lost my interest in friendster was their performance issues. I tried it once when they were first starting out but now they seem to be on the up and up. Pretty interesting to see that they are on the path to turning things around.
brad
on 18 Oct 06Is this MySpace reign due to the ability to bring the design aesthetic down to the lowest common denominator?
I think it’s because only a vanishingly small percentage of web users care about design. What they’re interested in is content. As long as they can click on a link and hear some music or see a video, the rest doesn’t really matter; the page can be ugly and messy as hell but they’ll still be happy.
Dennis Eusebio
on 18 Oct 06I think the real reason people don’t care about design in general is because people react to great design, not good design. Case in point, the iPod is a case for great design. There were other and still are other mp3 players that are “good” designs but they don’t transcend into that “great” category.
Its not easy to get to that great category but its doable. If the functionality is the same things on a site that’s “okay” and “poor” then people really won’t care.
Mark O
on 18 Oct 06Did y’all know there’s STILL no social networking site with an API? Someone get on that!
Anonymous Coward
on 23 Oct 06APIs are overrated. They’ve helped a few sites (flickr, is a good example), but mostly it’s a waste of developer time.
Ankur J
on 26 Oct 06Well, there is Facebook, which is the opposite of MySpace: Well designed, pages load quickly, no bands, no spam.
Myspace got bought out for <$500 million. Facebook got offered $768 million, but the owners rejected and wanted $2 billion (the creators are Harvard students). Facebook was initially restricted to college kids, but now it’s open to all.
Down with MySpace!
This discussion is closed.