Friendster: How They Blew It
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
Mentioned in this episode
Organizations: Friendster, MySpace, Facebook, Google
Places: California, Silicon Valley
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