Friendster: How They Blew It

April 8, 2026 · 30 min

About this episode

The episode explores the rise and fall of Friendster, the first social media platform, and its impact on the industry.

I just love this story - it has everything - Jonathan Abrams, a young, smart coder from Canada, moved to California because he wanted to be at the very heart of the internet boom. And on nothing more than an intuition, a feeling of how things should be online, he comes up with the framework for a social media platform, the very same model that MySpace, Facebook and all the others then learnt from or copied. But Abrams and Friendster were first, and for a brief moment, they were the hottest property in Silicon Valley - Google tried to buy them. VCs were desperate to invest with them - and within just a few months, it all fell apart, leaving the door wide open for MySpace and then Facebook. It’s a fascinating story, enjoy

People in this episode

Host: Caemin

Topics covered

social media
internet boom
startup failure
technology history
venture capital

Keywords

Friendster
Jonathan Abrams
social media
MySpace
Facebook
Silicon Valley
internet history

Mentioned in this episode

Organizations: Friendster, MySpace, Facebook, Google

Places: California, Silicon Valley